← Nonprofit Leadership Podcast
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- [00:03]
A
In a world that's changing really rapidly, where you don't have stability, stability is actually the new risk, because those things that are perceived as stable really aren't as stable. The opportunities that you thought were risky to pursue, the things that you cared about relatively are not that risky.
- [00:19]
B
This is Dr. Rob Harder with the nonprofit leadership podcast, Making your world better. What does it take to be an effective nonprofit leader today? What are the biggest challenges? What are the biggest obstacles? How should nonprofits fundraise in an economy that is constantly changing? All of these reasons combined led me to start this show. And it's my hope that through this series, people can learn not only what it takes to be an effective nonprofit organization, but to hear from effective leaders who are successfully making a positive impact in their communities. We hope you enjoy the show as together we hear how they are making their world better.
- [00:53]
A
Better. Welcome to the nonprofit leadership podcast with Rob Harder. I'm Alex Budak. I live in the San Francisco Bay Area. I'm a listener just like you. We're all on a leadership journey looking for ways to learn and grow. Each week I look forward to hearing Rob's latest discussion with his guests. I invite you to join us and subscribe. Thanks for listening. Now, here's Rob.
- [01:15]
B
Welcome back, everybody, to the show. I'm Rob Harder, your host. Well, today's conversation will cover a lot of ground, partly because my guest has such a wide range of experience in several sectors, actually. You'll find out, and we'll talk about how the workplace, for example, is changing today, specifically how the emerging generations now coming into the workplace are seeking significance and impact, not just compensation and prestige now. But one of the nuggets that I really took away from my conversation was when we were talking about innovation. And he shares this really cool concept, and here's what it is. Being innovative inherently means you need to take risks. Now, he's coming from the venture capital world, right? So that's. He's all about taking risks. Now, taking risk in the social impact sector is not always valued or applauded. If you remember my conversation with Dan Pallotta a couple of months ago, he talks about this, that we really are lacking in the innovation side because it's not honored, it's not applauded. In fact, sometimes quite the opposite. You may get penalized for taking risks that don't work out. But as my guest rightly points out, failure is not losing. Failure is stagnation. And we in the social impact sector, I think, just can get much better at innovation and being willing to take more risks. And again, I'm not talking about risking everything or being on a constant binge of risking your nonprofit at every turn, but having an intentional, a thoughtful process of taking a risk that has a high probability of success. Now that's something we can get better at in the nonprofit world. And as our world is constantly changing and everyone around us is getting more innovative and the technology is getting more innovative, we need to keep up, in my mind, in the social impact sector to become more innovative ourselves. And so my guest today is Arun Gupta. He is currently the CEO of the Noble Reach foundation, but he's also a venture capitalist, a lecturer at Stanford University, he's an adjunct entrepreneurship professor at Georgetown University, and he's a best selling author of the most recent book, the Mission Generation. There'll be a lot in my show notes today for this conversation because he talks about a lot of things that are worth following up on. But again, as always, thanks. Thanks so much for tuning in. Now to my interview with Arun. This podcast is sponsored by DonorBox Donor Box, helping you help others with the best donation forms in the business. Welcome everybody to the Nonprofit Leadership Podcast. I'm so glad to have Arun Gupta here with us on the show. Arun, thanks so much for joining us
- [03:42]
A
today and thank you for having me, Rob.
- [03:44]
B
Well, I always like to start each episode giving my guests an opportunity to talk a bit about their story. So maybe you could just start off just giving us a bit about your story, your journey of how you got to where you are today.
- [03:54]
A
Well, Rob, I grew up in the D.C. area. This has been home for me. My dad was in the Navy for 40 plus years. So public service has been in our family from my childhood. My professional career was Also here in D.C. was in Venture capital. I was at Carlisle and then Columbia Capital founded by Mark Warner. And you know, there sort of saw the power of entrepreneurship and innovation and technology to really build meaningful businesses. And then after my venture capital days, I started teaching. I was teaching at Georgetown, I was teaching at Stanford, Washington. And you know, while I was teaching, I really saw the class I was teaching at Stanford was called Valley Meets Mission. How do you take the entrepreneurial spirit of the Valley? And not wasted on Candy Crush 3.0, but go solve big problems that matter and that have societal value, but doing it in a for profit way. And you know, I found that the message, you know, the students felt like it was unique, but it was, it also resonated and I was sharing some of the observations with someone at Georgetown and they were like, have you thought about writing a book? Which I was, you know, the furthest from anything I was thinking about. And we went down a path to just explore what that would look like and talk to folks. In short, ended up writing a book called Venture Meets Mission, which ended up being a national bestseller and then raised a foundation where we have close to half a billion dollar endowment now called Noble Reach. And a lot of it is to take what we wrote about, which is, hey, in this country, our superpowers are that we create talent better than anywhere else in the world and we innovate better than anywhere else in the world. But what we haven't done is really modernize the infrastructure to connect our best tech talent especially and our best innovators to want to collaborate with government to solve problems at scale. And so how do we do that? And that's what we're focused on at Noble Reach, especially on the talent side and try to inspire this next generation across all career stages to be thinking about collaborating. And we're kindling the spirit of national service in collaboration with government, both federal, state and local. So that's what we're doing today. But that's the arc of how I got here and probably the lens of which I think about some of these problems from.
- [06:00]
B
Yeah, well, it is. You have a lot of experience. You're, you're involved and you've been involved in so many different areas. Thanks for giving. Just a quick summary and then we'll talk a little bit more about Noble Re specifically, but with the fact that you are a leader in emerging technology, entrepreneurship, education, public policy and venture finance, as you mentioned, and you're also an author, we're going to talk a bit about your most recent book called the Mission Generation. So through your current work, one of the questions I want to start with is when it comes to trend lines in today's marketplace, and particularly with. We'll start with global events and the big one, of course, is the pandemic a few years ago. It's aftermath and how people have responded since then in the workplace, you have written a lot about this, that people really are seeking for more purpose in their lives. So maybe we can start there, talk about some of the things you found that we kind of globally as a world, really not just a country, went through this major pandemic which then reshaped, reprioritized. What we're focused on. What have you seen? How does this play out in the marketplace?
- [06:56]
A
Yeah, Rob. So, you know, look, I come at it from the perspective of you Know, I started teaching right before the pandemic and then was teaching through the pandemic. And so I say that because I saw a very big difference in how my own students were, you know, thinking about the world, but thinking about their careers and where they fit into the world. And, you know, I think the pandemic brought a few things to them. One, the level of uncertainty that they, you know, were not expected. The black swan kind of hit. Second, though, a pause, which allowed them to be reflective and think about, you know, what was it that they wanted to do. And, you know, third, soon after, you know, we started seeing, you know, geopolitical conflict. So you, you know, we had instances in Ukraine, obviously, and events there. We started seeing environmental conflict, you know, around us, great power competition started to emerge. And, you know, you keep going and then soon thereafter, you know, you've got AI. And I say all of that because I think the pandemic was the start of this sense of disruption and creative uneasiness. But I think at the core, when we look back on it, that's a lot to have happened in over a five year span. And I think when that happens, one of the things that we're seeing was that pre pandemic, the ground felt pretty stable. And so I felt like my students were all focused on themselves. What am I going to go do? And they were kind of funneling themselves into pathways. And as the ground gets rocky, I think what happens is we reach out to others for stability. And as you reach out to others for stability, it's largely also a metaphor for looking to be part of something bigger than you want to have a bigger meaning in what you're doing. And I could see that in the kind of questions students were asking. And that was really the impetus around what we're doing at Noble Reach. But also then wanting to write the second book called the Mission Generation, because I feel like what I was starting to see is this centering theme. Pre pandemic, I felt, you know, where folks were was focused on who I work for, the prestige marker or what I'm doing, also a prestige or a financial marker. And you know, where we are today and what we're seeing through our programs are people are asking though, why am I doing? What am I what I'm doing right? And the why is a purpose marker. And I think purpose and mission as a result, I think are becoming an. In a more important question. And partially because in a world that's changing as rapidly as it is, I think mission and purpose are going to be the only things that are constant and are stabilizing. And so I think we're returning to asking those questions in a meaningful way now.
- [09:36]
B
Well said. And I want to get to that title that you picked, Mission Generation, for your latest book. Talk about that a little bit more about how it reflects our current workforce trends. It's more than just a title. It's really a concept that you've been working on. You've already touched it a little bit more. Talk a bit more about that. Is this located more with one generation? Is it with kind of the multiple generations that are coming up? Tell me more about that, what you found in your research.
- [10:00]
A
Yeah, so what we saw in our research and started with our, you know, just anecdotally with the, with the folks we were dealing with. You know, we could feel this with the early career folks as I was just talking to about, but then as we talked to mid career and later career folks, folks that were struggling with the same question of purpose, just in a different context. So they're asking the same questions. It was just applied differently. You know, the, the way you apply it when you're 22 to 35 and maybe single and they'll have, have no family obligations, may be different, the questions you're asking. But at the same time, folks that, you know, now had been working for 15 years are asking the same questions. Is this it? Is there more to it? What am I doing? Why does it matter? And then you get to the late career folks and they're at a different part of their career and they're asking the same questions. And part of it is because I think our systems over time, look, we talk about this in the book, but biologically we are wired to seek security and stability because we want to minimize risk. There are studies that show that people will pick security and stability over happiness. And as a result, I think our systems reinforce that and find security and stability. Having said that, in a world that's changing really rapidly where you don't have stability, we argue in the book that stability is actually the new risk because those things that are perceived as stable really aren't as stable. And the opportunities that you thought were risky to pursue, the things that you cared about relatively are not that risky. I think what we define as a mission generation as a result of why it cuts across age groups is it's a posture. It's a posture of taking agency, of saying, I'm not going to let the institution provide me, meaning I'm going to define what matters to me and I'm going to combine my personal ambition and civic responsibility together over the course of my career, we created systems where careers were viewed as very linear. My dad had one job for 40 years. I would say I had one career for 30 years. Multiple employers going forward. I think we're walking into a world where the scripts will say people are going to have four to six careers over their 60 years. And so that's a different kind of scaffolding that you need. And that's a builder mindset because I think that's the only way you can deal with uncertainty is by testing and learning, which is a very builder mindset. And that's what we define as a mission generation.
- [12:30]
B
What's so interesting, you said that stability. Seeking stability is actually now a risk in today's world. I think that's fascinating to look at it that way. So let's talk a little bit more as we unpack that. What are some of the barriers you found when it comes to people that are trying to pursue meaningful and mission driven careers today? They're bumping into barriers. What are those barriers and how can you remove them?
- [12:50]
A
Yeah, so what we identify in the writing is we classify them into four barriers. One is internal. It's probably your strongest one. Fear of failure, perfectionism. Am I ready to do this? The second is more relational. The signals you get from your friends and family, which are coming from a good place, but sometimes can, you know, like, are you sure you really want to do that? Son or daughter? You know, that sounds risky. You know, like all of a sudden if they start asking questions in that capacity, it can really inhibit your ability to kind of follow what you feel like is what you want to do. The third is societal. Will society value what I care about? And then the fourth is institutional. You know, depending on what path you pick. You know, many institutions are like, this is a pathway forever. It's hard for you to leave. And so we identify those as kind of at the core, the four barriers that I think that people really struggle with. And again, depending on whether you're early, mid and late careers, they manifest themselves in different ways. But the barriers themselves are constant. The questions you ask may be different. And then we, we highlight a sense of how to overcome them. Using both language with our compass capitals, but also process as we talk about the mission flywheel. And at the core, at the mission flywheel, it's about experimentation. I think we've been trained again to look for clarity before we act. So let's figure out what we really care about and then we'll go act. The problem with that is, in a world that's changing really rapidly, by the time you feel like you got clarity, the conditions and the inputs you used to get that clarity have changed. And then you kind of go like, oh, wait a second. This isn't what I thought it was. And so now you're. And you find yourself in this endless recursive loop. And so what we're saying is, in the world we're in right now, you need to act. And those actions will bring you clarity. Those actions will be the signals that will let you say, like, hey, I like this. I don't like that. I thought this was going to be great, but this doesn't feel right. And so that's a little bit of what we talk about around how that manifests itself. But we try to do this in a form where we're doing it through stories, through stories of people that have gone through the same kinds of questions, have struggled with the same dilemmas, and then how they walked through them and got to the other side. And largely because I'm a big believer that if you can't see it, you can't be it. And so we're hoping that through the stories that we have in the book of individuals, someone sees someone like them and they go, huh, that person resonates with me. I don't know who that person may be. It'll depend on the reader. But if they can take away from that, if that person could do it, I can as well. That, for us, is a big win.
- [15:56]
B
Okay, when you think about all those barriers that you listed, is there one or two that are more difficult to overcome based on your research, or they're all equally difficult? It just depends on the person.
- [16:05]
A
You know, look, I. I do think they depend on the individual. I think the hardest ones are always the ones that are internal. Right. Like, what's. What's inside your head? Because those are the most complicated. Those aren't voiced, and those aren't actually clear to people around you. And so, you know, I think those are the hardest ones to work through. Having said that, those get influenced by the systems around you. Right. What you think and how you think about yourself is influenced by the relational peer group you have around you. Right. And how they view what you're doing. And so a big part of it that we talk about is within the mission. Flywheel is forging allies. It's not only about reframing what you want to do in running experiments, but forging allies that will support what you're doing, right? And what I mean by that is, you know, it's one thing that someone. When you tell someone you want to go do something and they go, why would you do that? You immediately are put on the defensive, right? You're immediately like, oh, maybe I'm not doing the right thing, as opposed to finding an ally when you say, hey, I look, I'm looking to do this. When I was writing a book, like, that was a very vulnerable process for me. Take myself, and I had friends that were like, why would you write a book? Like, what are you going to get out of that? Like, what do you even know about that? Et cetera. And I was like, ooh, maybe you start questioning yourself. And then I had those few friends that were like. And when I would say it to them were like, wow, that's amazing, Rune. You're going to give that a shot. Like, they didn't know if it was going to succeed or not, but they were kind of there to support. Those words mean a lot, right? And to all of you that were part of that, thank you. Because, you know, I think it's important for us to recognize that. That everyone's going through their vulnerability, like, and, you know, and so finding those allies become incredibly important.
- [17:51]
B
I couldn't agree with you more. You know, I think the internal, particularly when it comes to those internal questions, the doubts, the imposter syndrome, all these things that come from the inside, I found in my. I'm a coach and a consultant, and I think when I'm particularly working with individual coaching clients, that is one of the biggest barriers. You're absolutely right. It's most difficult to overcome. And then I love the idea of forging allies because that's that person or that group of people that you can be vulnerable with, you can be honest with, that can help you work through those things that you won't tell everybody else because it is too vulnerable. So, anyway, love that. That. That really makes sense to me. Okay, well, let's keep going into this process. When it comes to the social impact sector, and the majority of my listeners, as far as I can tell, are in the social impact sector, it is the nonprofit leadership podcast. So this issue I'm going to ask about next, though, really applies. Doesn't matter if you're in the for profit world or the nonprofit world. What role should organizations in general play when it comes to supporting this desire you're seeing for people wanting purpose and impact in their work? What would you say to both business leaders and nonprofit leaders?
- [18:53]
A
No, I think, look, I don't think this is new that people have wanted this. I just think it's it, it's more top of mind now in front, front and center. You know, there have been plenty written about purpose driven organizations and things of that sort, but I think comes down to not having it be kind of one a slogan or something you do on the weekends. Like doing your not for profit activity on the weekends is a nice thing to do for the team, but the more you can intertwine it into your business and the model of your business, you know, I think it allows you to walk the walk of doing that. I also think, look, there's, there's different ways to have impact, you know, and I think people, you know, can sometimes overthink that. Like obviously you want to have impact to society at large, but look, if you can impact your community in some way, shape or form, you know, the jobs you're creating, that's meaningful, right? If you're an entrepreneur, you're building jobs and you're taking care of them, you know, how you, the culture you're building inside the workforce can have impact, you know, creating the intergenerational mentoring kind of programs. And I say intergenerational, it doesn't need to be older mentoring younger. Like we've got programs here at Noble Reach where we've got the younger folks mentoring the older ones on AI and technology because you want to be able to show that, look, we all have something we can bring to the table, right? And it creates a level of impact and purpose when people feel like they have something to contribute. And so the big thing that we're trying to outline here is, you know, it's the question about like, what is it that you can contribute and what's the problem that you care about and being able to surface that in a meaningful way.
- [20:28]
B
Yeah, well, you're getting this really critical, I would say, theme of this professional personal ambition. But many people, most of us have, but also this idea of wanting a public impact, you want to make a difference in a nonprofit world in general, you typically will join organization that's mission driven. Right. They often call it the mission driven sector. But again, business, you could be the same way. And as you're mentioning that to integrate it is more important nowadays. So is there anything else you would talk about when it comes to really mirroring or bringing together integrating this professional ambition on the one hand, but at the same time really seeking that public impact? Because I think where maybe the rubber meets, meets the road is when it comes to what's your ultimate goal? Are you trying to make money with your company or you really try to make an impact? And that's difficult, right, to sometimes do both. Well, nonprofits find the same issue. Right? So talk about that. What have you found to be either companies, organizations that are doing this well, or the maybe some principles you can share with my listeners of. Here's some principles you can follow to help balance those two things at the same time.
- [21:28]
A
Yeah, no, I think, look, I think you're hitting at the core of, you know, part of it is we don't have language for it because we do still talk about this in a very binary way. Either you can have impact or you can make money. And the truth is neither by itself is sustainable. Meaning, you know, we've had a script for so long where was basically, you learn for the first third of your life, the second third, you go earn, monetize what you've learned and apply it and look. And then the last part of your life, you give back, you return. So learn, earn and return. And I think what we're seeing in the world we're walking into, where there's a tectonic shift now happening with AI and everything is learning is continuous. You're not learning for just the first third of your life and then saying, all right, I've learned this skill, I'm ready to go. And likewise, this idea of waiting till the end of your career for meaning is something that I think doesn't work anymore. People want to pull that up front. And so now it's about, I think, how do we braid careers that allow you to take those three aspects and earn and feel like you're doing something meaningful and that you're learning through the course of your career paths. And so I think what we're one seeing is that we're going to start to see more nonlinear careers. People go into business, but then they may go, you know, back into government or go into not for profit and bring some of those skills back in. Part of it also is to be able to show that these skills are transferable. And we don't do that right now. Right. And part of it is because we talk about a career. But I, you know, I think the world we're walking into, people are going to have four to six careers. We have a vignette in the book about, you know, gentleman named Nate Fick, who was a Marine HBS business school graduate and then goes to a not for profit. And he would argue that, like the not for profit, while, you know, most of his peers were like, oh wow, that's great mate. You know, like in that kind of, you know, amiable but yet condescending tone, you know, but like he would, he would tell you that, you know, going to a not for profit and learning how to lead without the tools of compensation and equity. Then when he went and you know, I had the privilege of working with him at a startup that was successful endgame, you know, and then you give him the other tools, he's a better leader. He's a better leader. He knows how to, you know, and so but we don't tell those stories right now. We don't celebrate people that have moved across sectors and have exceeded and have shared how those sectors have made them better in the other place. Likewise, look, I was been in the private sector my entire career and this is my first time in the not for profit world. I see problems differently and I think about scaling, I think about building repeatable processes and that's not good or bad, it's just different. And so if you can start to engage more people to cross that, I think that can be deeply beneficial to how we unlock what I think is trapped potential of talent in our society. Like we trap this talent into these sub silos and we don't give them crosswalks to go, you know, really expand and unlock the potential that we really have.
- [24:53]
B
We'll be right back. Are you looking for an easy and effective way to boost your nonprofit's donations? Well, look no further than DonorBox, the online fundraising platform that streamlines your fundraising efforts, maximizes donations and simplifies giving for your supporters. With Donorbox you can create beautiful donation forms, accept digital wallet payments, track donations and send auto receipts. And the best part, there are no setup or monthly fees and no long term contracts required. So what are you waiting for? Visit donorbox.org today to get started. That is www.donorbox.org. So interesting about, you know, the idea of braiding careers and then also really honoring the fact of people going back and forth between a for profit to nonprofit and back. Right. I think those are really good things that we, you're right, we don't really talk about that or champion that very much. Well, you also said something interesting with your career specifically. You've done a lot with AI, you've done a lot of course in equity raising money, you've done a lot with cyber security. Even talk about your perspective from all that for profit experience, that business experience. When it comes to being a now in more of a mission driven organization, how has that impacted the way you view innovation. And the reason I mentioned this, because I think I've had people on the show talk about this and I think it's probably true. It's not always true, but it's true with some nonprofits that we're slower to innovate, we're slower to take risks because we cannot bear the idea of like, you know, people that were donating to our organization if we, you know, somehow lose money, so to speak, and we don't do what we said we're going to do because we were trying to innovate. That doesn't go so well with donors and yet that holds nonprofits back from trying new things, taking risks. And that's what the entrepreneurial world and a lot of the world you've lived in, that's what you are good at and that's what actually has created all these great products that we use. So talk about how do you mirror and marriage maybe is a better word, the idea of innovation with a mission driven organization.
- [26:53]
A
Well, it's a great question and I love it. And it doesn't extend only not for profits. We see this in public service as well. You know, where there the proxy is taxpayer dollars. So you don't want to lose anything. And this has always been the biggest conundrum for me. Right. Because you know, as a vc, I would always say if I were measured like government or a not for profit, I would never raise another fund because I am measured on my best deal. Right. And as long as my, you know, I may have eight failures but are two are wildly successful, you know, we'll go, I'll go raise plenty of other money and I'll raise another fund. Now if I'm measured like government, you know, if I do nine things right or like you said, a not for profit and one thing doesn't work, I get measured by my worst opportunity. Right. And so you're going to create a system then where people are then going to, you know, resist making change. So two things I say to that, one, look, what I've seen is that that's a leadership void that needs to be communicated because as a leader, I tell my board and I've told my organization, go experiment. I don't care if you fail. We just shouldn't fail repeatedly. But I also want to know what we learned from that failure because that learning will allow us to innovate and unlock something that we weren't even thinking about. To me, that's about a mindset that we need to inculcate that Failure isn't losing isn't failure. Settling is. And that mindset, I think, is wildly pervasive. And it's because we end up focusing on the downside and we don't focus on the upside. It's like, well, if I try that, it may not work. As a vc, we would always ask the question, but what if it did? What if it did work? Like, if you tell me if it doesn't work, we're going to lose all our money. And if it does work, we make a 2x. Maybe I don't do it. If you tell me if it doesn't work, we lose whatever we invested. But if it works, you know, it's 100 times, I'll make that bet, right? So, you know, I think a lot of this is not looking at it as success or failure, but looking at it as risk managers. Like, what's the risk? And so I think that's the perspective. And I've noticed that what you're getting at that perspective of like, well, wait a second, what if it doesn't work? It's almost like a. It, it's like a pressure relief valve when you're able to tell people, like, I don't care, like, just try. It's a small enough experiment and, you know, we're going to learn something from it. And I think it allows us to move, you know, a lot faster. And, you know, look, the other thing I've learned in this process is it's never about the technology. It's never about the people. I mean, sorry, never about the policy. It's always about the people. It's always about talent. Right? And so if you get great talent around you and you give them the agency to experiment, great things happen. I mean, that was, that was our number one thing in venture is just find great teams and great markets and then, you know, we'll, we'll see what happens from there.
- [30:08]
B
Yeah, well, powerful statement about failure is not losing, it's settling. I think that's a really powerful statement. And I do think in general, the nonprofit community can get better at that. And having people like yourself maybe on the board or as an executive director say, no, try it. You know, take a risk. I think that's a really, really good encouragement, I think, for nonprofit leaders that are listening, then for the rest of my listeners, if they're wanting to align a career, say, and finance or technology, but really mirror that and add national or social impact to what they do, what advice would you give them today from your experience and what you're Seeing across the board with your research. Yeah. What advice would you pass on to my listeners?
- [30:48]
A
Their skills are needed now more than ever across the, you know, public service, social sector, impact sector, you know, applying technology skills and finance skills. I'll just take public service right now. There's a dearth of it.
- [31:00]
B
Right.
- [31:01]
A
We need, you know, we had a stat. Less than 7% of tech workers in government are under the age of 37%. Think of the average age at any of the big tech firms. It's probably low 30s. We're four times as many over the age of 60. Yet if we want to have a tech forward government at the federal, state and local level, we need these young folks coming in. Right. But we also recognize we can't be going to them and saying, hey, come here for 30 years and then you'll have a big pension at the end of it. That message doesn't resonate anymore. It did at one time when we were in a more stable environment and people were wiring themselves for stability. But in the world we're in right now, we need to be able to tell them, come here for a couple of years, work on the most difficult, complex problems at a scale that you won't see anywhere else, or impacting your local community or state in a way that you won't be able to do anywhere else. And then go take what you've learned and then, you know, if you go to the private sector or go start your own thing, that's great. But that's how we build an ecosystem. We talk about that as a community of at noblereach that we're building of dual citizens, public, private sector citizens, people that have a experience, you know, in this, in the civic responsibility world. But they're also like, look, personal ambition is important to me. And what we talk about is like if we can get people to understand the language of both sectors, understand the cultures of both sectors and then understand, have networks, trusted networks in both. That's how we rebuild trust in this country. And look, right now we're in a trust deficit when it comes to those sectors. And trust is as much as AI is coming for a lot of things, trust is about people. And it's why when we talk about, you know, even how we think about, you know, what assets personally will be valuable going forward. I think trust is a big one.
- [32:52]
B
Yeah, I agree. Well, you've talked a lot about trends. Is there any other things you like to talk about when it comes to trends with mission orientated careers, particularly in the area of technology, government and Venture finance. What are you seeing there in the future? Trend lines Anyway, when it comes to mission orientated careers, I'm going to be
- [33:09]
A
biased here because I think we're in the early innings of this and I think this is also where what personally and institutionally I think we're passionate about is that, you know, I do think, you know, we need to be creating the scaffolding to enable more people to go across sectors in these careers. And, you know, we're trying to play a small part of that and stimulating the ecosystem for that. But I think that's both the challenge and the opportunity that we have ahead. And so the way we talk about it, you know, as we head into our two 50th this year as a country, is that 250 years ago, our founding fathers created a remarkable system of independence that has allowed us to thrive in a way that's unprecedented. But I think the opportunity and the challenge for us now, and what I call the mission generation, is how do we build a system of interdependence? And the interdependence is important because we're only going to succeed if we can lean on one another and if we can move our talent ecosystem across different sectors so that we look at the same problem, but we have different lenses that we use on the problem. If we all have the same lens on a problem, we're not going to get true innovation. It's when we have different lenses looking at the problem that we can see something really powerful. And so I think a trend that we will see more of, especially with the anxiousness I think we all feel with all the change and uncertainty in the world right now, is the pendulum swinging back to folks wanting to be part communities and be part of something bigger than themselves? And that doesn't mean that that's what they do for their entire career, but I think that's how they create a sustainable career for themselves and one that lasts because we're entering a place now where people starting entering the workforce today probably are working for 60, 70 years. Not because they have to, but probably they'll want to because they're living longer. Think about all the life science breakthroughs that could happen between now and then. I'm already seeing it with my cohort where, you know, the idea like, you know, late 50s, 60s, you start to slow down. Now people are like gearing back up again because they feel like they've got another 20 years in them. And when you think you've got another five years, you think, you think one way. But when you think about 60 years, I mean 20 years, you know, you have a different heuristic. And so I think a lot of that is still going to take time to sink in, but I think we're on the precipice of that, creating a lot of change about how we think about careers.
- [35:49]
B
That's so interesting. Well, again, fascinating conversation for my listeners who listen and want to connect with you or find out a little bit more about your work and your book. Where would you send them?
- [35:58]
A
So thank you, Rob, for the book. You know, please go to the mission generation.com you can find out more information about the book. It will be out early may. Look folks, if they if whatever we're saying resonates to think about pre orders regarding mo Noble Reach and the work that we talk about as well, noblereach.org to learn how to either, you know, look to be a scholar, be a mentor, participate in our community in any way, shape or form.
- [36:26]
B
Yeah. Well, good. Well, thanks again, Arun, for being on the show and just sharing your insights. It's a fascinating conversation. So much great material. And again, I encourage my listeners check out the show notes. There's going to be lots of different links in the show notes and of course a link to the book. But Arun, you do so much and you've got such a wide range of experience. I think it's really helpful for leaders to tap into that and learn from you. So again, thanks for being on the show, Rob.
- [36:47]
A
Thank you for having me. It's great to be with you.
- [36:50]
B
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