Great. So uh to start off, I'm Divya Hegde. I'm a former Googler and I did my master's in integrated marketing communications from Northwestern uh University. So on paper, it sounds great, right?But as I'm going to illustrate through the presentation, uh you're going to realize that a great um company and a great degree only gets your foot in the door. The rest of it all is an uphill struggle for all of us. I'm also the um founder of a digital marketing agency called the Integrated Penguin. Uh A little bit about my company. We have offices in Bangalore and Auckland. We do branding and communications. Uiux. I know someone in the window uh spoke about uh them being in UX and wanting to um incorporate that into social entrepreneurship. We also do gaming A R and VR um I'll get to the show real. If we have time later, we're also building on uh game for kids that works towards gender sensitivity issues because we all know that adults are beyond hope, right? So we thought we target the kids and hopefully come up with a more egalitarian society. So the game incorporates gender issues like Why can't boys cry? Why shouldn't girls go to work? Why should girls be the only ones helping in the kitchen? Uh It's also incorporating topics like um uh gender confirmation, gender variant.

All the things that our society is supposed to be uh tolerant with. But unfortunately, we're not there yet. Um Next leg occupy is where we incorporate VR into physiotherapy given how the post COVID world is going to be different. This is not something we planned uh after COVID, but we were already working um on it, pre-covid where if you're a physiotherapy patient and you're lazy like me, you'd rather be engaged in an exotic world while your doctor is able to observe your um improvements in range of motions.

I'm quickly running through this so that uh we get to the meat of it all. So tip sessions is actually the meat of it all which I'll take as an example and illustrate uh to you guys how you can interview design and tech and um create social impact. So you all must have heard of this. Two most important days in your life are the day you are born and the day you find out why our session today is going to be about purpose. Uh Before we get to that, can any of you tell me what is purpose or have you found your purpose? That's great, great answers. Most of us go to our graves with our music still inside us. Unplayed and it doesn't have to be, uh, this way. Actually finding your purpose is time cons consuming but it's definitely not, uh, difficult. Your purpose is your brand who you are and what you, what makes you, um, distinctive. Right. So, it's not your degree, it's not your, um, experiences. What's there on your resume? Exactly.

Dilruba purpose is the reason of doing what we are doing. Yeah. It's a guy. So, if you know your purpose, how do you go about it? And if you don't yet know your purpose, then how do you find it? I'm going to try and give you like a four step framework. If you have a pen and paper, that's great. If not, you can get in touch with me, my details will be there. Um At the end of this uh presentation, you can always reach out to me and I'm happy uh to talk to you. Um I'm also keeping in mind that there are people still in uh college uh as part of my audience. So this will especially I think help them if you can divide your page into four halves and divide it into uh just put the title strengths, weaknesses, strength on your left hand side, weaknesses on your right hand side, fears below your strength and dreams below your weaknesses.

So if you have strengths, uh weaknesses, fears and dreams written down, please make a list under each one of those, right. So once you've made the list. I want you to really look at the list and see that your weaknesses and fears feed on each other quite often, but your strengths and dreams quite often fail to do that. And that's a very self-limiting uh habit. Does anyone agree with me? Great. So can anyone tell me if uh if they found their purpose and what it is in one line? Ok. Tia says I and diversity and inclusion, great making ecommerce more sustainable.

Mhm. Mhm. That's great.

So now that I've given you the framework, please, please please work on it. Uh Get back to me if you need help. My email address is Divya at Tip dot Agency. It's going to come at the end of the session as well. I'm happy to uh help anyone frame their uh purpose.

Remember

it's strength, weakness, fears and dreams. That's where you start. If you don't acknowledge it to yourself, um you're not going to be able to express it uh to the world and even if you do, it's going to come out in a very confused format. Great question Mary, I'm getting to that. So my purpose is interviewing design and tech for social impact in whatever capacity it may be. So it's because of the discovery of this uh purpose that I

created

uh an NGO called Tip Sessions. Now I have um I'm really grateful that I come from a really small coastal town. So that's my birthplace and then uh I've had education in larger towns. So I have like a blend of these unique experiences where I understand grassroot problems. And I have the know how um the design, know how to tackle these problems. And this is something I discovered through the framework um that I used and that's how I arrived at my purpose, interviewing design and tech for social impact. Now, your purpose doesn't have to be something that blows the world. It can be starting right in your neighborhood, in your hometown, in your own homes. But you've got to have the grit, the conviction and the resilience uh especially coming um especially as women, we do face a lot of challenges. It could be on the home front because women are often seen as a caregiver role and men are seen as a breadwinner role here. I'm not talking only about those of us who are fortunate to have the education or the exposure. I'm talking about um women from the most remote areas, women from homes that maybe can't afford uh much in terms of facilities to give to them.

So uh when we talk about uh interviewing design and tech for social impact, we're talking not just about uh women in the metros but women um in remote areas and villages as well. So as I was saying, tip sessions, ours is an NGO that works on climate change and establishing a circular economy to bring more women into the workforce um P maybe. Um So we uh what we did initially is uh since, since I am a girl that's uh brought up in the city. I went back to my hometown and said, guys, your place is so beautiful. Why are we ruining? Um you know, our coastal, our aspirations and to give you a little background about the place that I come from, um it's called B we have the most number of literate uh, people. Um, that's not the problem at all. But the problem lies when, um, bigger corporations

for so

many years have been peddling, um, you know, plastic packaging and plastic goods as aspirational. So these people here believe that plastic could be aspirational and here we are city bred kids going to, uh small towns and saying no, no, no. You know what plastic is really bad.

You shouldn't be doing that. We know better than you, blah, blah, blah. And what do you think happened? Can anyone take a guess on what happened? How did, how do you think they responded to us spot on? Nothing much happened at all? In fact, in, in fact, they started snickering at us. Exactly. They said, oh, so you've, you, you've enjoyed all the facilities, uh, the first world has to give you and now you're coming and telling us that we're not entitled to cars and fridges and apartments and all the fancy things that we've always aspired to have. Right. So, here's where design and tech steps in, we had to really step back and research and we realized that design and tech allows high impact solutions to social problems to bubble up from below rather than being imposed from the top. What we were doing essentially is we were imposing from the um top clearly. If I came to you and told you your way of life is wrong. Listen to me, what's the proof and who are you to even lecture me? Right? So what we have to do is really step back, get off our high horses and go and live with these people. I'm, I'm from there, but I don't live there.

So we had to spend maybe over a year, almost two years living with these people, understanding their lifestyles, understanding their struggles, their dreams, their aspirations, and we finally were able to get through to them and I'm going to

take you through how we got through to them

again. It's a four point framework and I believe this is applicable um pretty uniformly in most problems that you uh solve at the community level, don't

communicate at, at

hitting sales with the next billion users. I know a lot of designers and tech folks are just given briefs and they're like, OK, this is what we need to um sell to whoever. So make customer personas, treat them as resources or treat them as um you know, um masses and individual people with dreams and go out there and sell but social impact especially is not at all like that. Exactly, Mary, I agree 100% with you. Mary says I've seen this happen all the time. Developmental organizations NGO S coming to Kampala and implementing their solutions without much regard for people. They are even solving for. It's 100% true and we're guilty of doing that too despite being from the same uh place.

And that is why like we really to had to eat humble pie, go back and really research our audiences and get them on the program with us. So like I said, four point framework, communication is key. You're not talking at them, you're not talking to them, you're talking with them, which means you have to involve local community, uh leaders, local heroes speak your audience's language, you have to learn to speak your audience's language. So first point communication, second empower local communities. Great.

You're going with a purpose. You can see that something's wrong in that uh community or at least you perceive something's wrong in that community. You want to change the ways of thinking. How do you do that? You need to empower the local communities. It's not about you going there and making the change. It's, it's about teaching them to make that change. So with tip sessions, what we did as we went out there since plastic was a problem that we saw at hand, what we did is a we started educating the kids through schools and colleges who in turn educated the parents because these are areas where parents involve their kids even in um um purchase decisions for the household, right?

So something as big as this parents will definitely listen to their Children because Children are finally going to school and learning things that these parents didn't have exposure to. So making the Children stakeholders of our initiative was paramount. Secondly, you can't tell people, ok, don't use plastic, but I don't have an alternative for you. So then what do you want people to do? What action do you want them to take? Have your call to action and your um solution to that action? Very crystal clear. What we did is we roped in the local women. Uh We gave them jobs to stitch cloth bags so that they can replace them with plastic bags that they take uh to the store. We reached out to local shopkeepers, we gave them cloth bags so that they could put the, put the groceries and household items in the cloth bags and give it to a customer next time rather than continue the circulation of plastic bags. Now, that's a small way in which we started exactly ecofriendly type in comparison. How do we implement sustainability in developed metro metropolitan cities where things seem to have gone out of hand already. Uh Nazim here, I think the government um intentions really comes into play.

I'll get to that in a bit once I'm done with the framework. But yes, the solution to metropolitan cities and um Kyoto and three cities are um largely different. Uh And I will get to that. So here's how we empowered local communities by creating jobs. So we create

jobs. We put the articles

that were created back into their economy and try to sort of create a circular economy today where we are, we've also trained the women to make ecofriendly products uh made of turmeric. Um Basically, I if you remember your grandmother's recipes, that's what we're trying to bring back into uh circulation, be it for uh beauty, um A few health problems, et cetera. So the idea is we need to go back to our roots and that's where that's when we were really happy, right? That's right. Aishwarya homemade and we're trying to educate and uh make these people understand that they have the best treasures that they are uh sort of uh throwing in the wind for a lifestyle that we city folks have uh imbibed NAIN, which is not really helping us. Um at all, we, we've chased something that's literally coming back to bite us in the ass. Um working with hyperlocal systems. When you work in tier two and tier three cities, you cannot do it independently. You have to take into account the local administration because that's what people listen to. You cannot work independently. So uh factoring in hyperlocal systems is extremely important and so is addressing core beliefs, beliefs.

Now, if someone believes deep in their heart, that infrastructure at the cost of climate is important. Uh big apartments that are not filled up are important, plastic is attractive. Non plastic is not, what do you do? You address the core belief? How do you do that? Here's how we went about. We leveraged arts and culture. This specific place that I'm talking about. Uh Yaka Ghana is an art form that's huge in Karnataka. So we wrote in Yaks Shahana artists and had street plays at Sunday markets and um in schools where we involved the kids and made them enact plays, made them enact rules that illustrated the ill effects of um plastic and when you're entertaining audiences and educating at them, at the same time, you have a better shot at hitting your goals and changing their thought processes and sort of trying to address their core beliefs.

So four point framework, communication empower local immu communities work with hyperlocal systems, addressing core beliefs. Please note that down or contact me later for the same. So essentially what we did was we incorporated design thinking, leveraged arts and culture and engaged with people with really simple tech that works for them rather than making uh people work to understand tech. So when I talk about using design and tech for social impact, I don't mean you need to wake up one day and um you know, invent some new technology. I mean, take tech that exists, make sure it's user friendly and

allow people to use

it rather than making it such a big headache for them that they don't want to use it at all. You will be surprised at what we used. How many of you guys cringe at the mention of tiktok in my audience here? Wow, great. So that's what we use. We use Tik Tok. I used to cringe at tiktok too. But here's the thing tiktok allows for localization. And um as you guys all know, vernacular is really, really hot, finally coming of age. And yes, tiktok makes it so easy to um easy for them to understand it, entertains them on a daily basis. People started making tiktok videos on the ill effects of plastic. It could be comedy, it could be emotional, whatever it was. Tiktok was the jam. And who are we to judge that? Right. Yeah, Shina me too. But hard lessons. Uh Shina says she never thought tiktok would be uh of any use to advocacy and we were really, really surprised as well. Um It's not even that we told them to use tiktok, but school kids and college kids started using tiktok, mothers and fathers started using tiktok cause it's their language of communication and um you know, sharing feelings and we're all from the background where design thinking is um Apple technology, Samsung, whatever it

is. But these folks are

not are not into that kind of uh mindset. And if you think about it, they're way more open minded than you. And I we've been given uh structures and frameworks and we think within those boxes, but unfortunately, those boxes don't apply to um say 60% of um India. So, yeah, Tik Tok is one of the main methods uh for us to spread advocacy. The other is whatsapp, whatsapp is hugely popular in India. From the time you wake up till you go to bed with your last goodnight message message, whatsapp is um something you cannot escape and people love to communicate. Ok, I'm back. Yay. Let me screenshot. OK. So our initial failures were only because we failed to consider the culture and needs of the people living in the community, which means tiktok, which means local arts and culture, which means whatsapp, which means whatever means it takes to communicate with them, getting off our high horses.

Forgetting that design is apple and apple is designed that is preached to us day and then day out and becoming one of them. It is truly in the sense of getting into the shoes of your audience and no, no cookie cutter formulas are going to work. So does that mean if you use design and tech for social impact, you're compromising on your ambition. Do ambition and social impact actually seem at loggerheads with each other. Uh not of late because more and more um V CS companies and Corporates are getting into the space where they believe that leadership is not just taking your company sales from uh 10 to 100. It's about taking society along with you and giving a good life to whoever you come in contact with. So I wouldn't say anymore that um doing social impact is compromising on your ambition. However, I did feel many years ago that it was uh the case also do remember that social changes require systematic solutions that are grounded in the audiences and customers needs. Like I've gone over with the tip sessions example. Now, what are the social benefits, costs and risks of technology? I've already discussed this where I said that you cannot use technology that bamboozles your audience or makes them work for technology, you need to use technology that works for your audience.

Like I've mentioned the acceptability rate of our NGO within the community is much higher. For example, there was a time when we had to like sort of wait at government offices. Now we're being invited by PS to take over the waste management centers. And because we've incorporated very simple apps for waste management that the waste workers themselves can use where we're working on an app that uses very simple technology that sort of

calculates people's

carbon uh footprint and this excites the college students a lot. Uh We're finally uh being invited to take care of one of the largest waste management centers. Uh in the district. And we're working on making that uh a sort of uh circular model where we're generating income from the waste management center. We have a nursery where we're selling uh plants and seeds to public and we have a close by market where the upside cycle products are also being sold. So we're working on that um sort of uh model uh right now and we've gained the trust of the local administration after many, many trips to their offices and finally sort of being accepted by the local population. Um Thank you, Barnica. Um Simple technology like you said, can really bring about huge change. Uh It's about recognizing that technology works for people, people don't work for um technology. Coming to my next slide. Ok. We're done with um social impact design and um technology if you guys have any questions at the moment. Um Please let me know, could someone tell me how much time I have left? Does anyone have any idea? Oh, wow. Ok. So then we're going to um ok, great.

Uh Let me uh skip to the next part of my session. My email address is Divya at Tip dot Agency. Please get back to me with questions if you have any, I'll be happy to um answer them women in the post COVID work force. Uh Do you think our flight is going to be any different post COVID Dia at Tip dot Agency T IP dot Agency? Great. So, since we're short of time, um I'm going to quickly run through this part of the session. Now, there's a typical sort of understanding that the meal is a bread is the caregiver. And honestly, when uh COVID happened, I and people said work from home, I was one of those people that were excited that you know what the um field is going to be a level playing field. Now, uh women will never be told, oh, you know what uh your family are going to focus on that. You're going to prioritize your home. We cannot give you promotions, we cannot give you a job part time, et cetera. Um So I was really happy that uh women um are finally coming of age in their careers in terms of acceptance.

But what actually happened was women had to double down, they have homework, they have work from home and they have their caregiver

role, right?

So here's where Corporates that wax eloquent about gender equality need to step in. Here's where governments need to step in. Here's where we as women need to step in, not be afraid to acknowledge our ambition and say, you know what the work at her home has had has got to be 5050 men have to uh step up. It's time for us to change our ambitions. And I think coming out of COVID here are the eight essential skills that will help us excel in a post COVID world and those are adaptability and flexibility. I think we women are fantastic. Um at that we juggle home and uh work equally well and given the nuances and um the way things are going to change at workplaces in the post COVID world. I don't think we should have a problem. Tech savviness. I don't mean just for women in the metros, I mean for women in uh to two and three cities as well, we've got to get tech savvy if you have a maid, if you know a woman who's abso absolutely blank with tech, please help her. Come on board with tech. It doesn't have to be data analysis, but she's got to get comfortable with tech, creativity and innovation. We've seen businesses and offices pivot with their services with their style of functioning, with the products that they give to their audiences.

So you need to be able to think on your feet, which brings me to critical thinking um be practical about your decisions, digital skills, just like tech, Savviness is really, really important because everything is going online, whether we like it or not leadership, it doesn't mean you have to lead from the front.

It can be soft leadership from the back, but it just definitely means putting your foot uh down and not taking things down. Uh line leadership is a struggle. I've been trying to adapt. It is my first time leading a team and it's one of the 16 people across different regions. Yeah, I understand. I do have teams across regions and it's hard. But leadership is also about showing that you're vulnerable and you know what women are way better at doing that than men. Leadership is not about being a stone. It's about showing your human sight and that's when your team understands that you're doing your best for them. Next is emotional intelligence. No points for guessing that we women are better there and commit to lifelong learning. And you know what, I'm really happy that the great thing about post COVID work life is finally Corona has exposed that you don't need a fancy degree or a certificate to show your worth and your critical thinking skills or your ability to innovate. It's a widely acknowledged fact now that your, your degree and your certificate doesn't really reflect who you are, but you've got to continuously commit to learning. Maybe it's open source learning. It's your MOOC courses, whatever.

Uh, it is, ensure that you're constantly upskilling and upskilling without applying is I'm sorry of no use. So you've got to find situations where you, um, apply your upskilling to your courses. Let me go to the next slide. OK. We've actually come, uh, to the end of the, um, session. I don't know if you remember, but at the beginning of the session I told you that, um, I'm from Google and Northwestern. Those two things got my foot in the door into other places. But the rest of the things where we win uh start up competitions um where we get recognized by the government or any awards. It's all about understanding your um audience. It's about smoothly transitioning design and tech for social impact and it's hard work. And I think um what helped me most was to acknowledge my uh drawbacks and work on them, acknowledge that I'm ambitious and make it known to people around me. Um And just know that everyone's not going to love you. There are going to be people who don't like you but um that shouldn't stop you. You're not here to please everyone, you're here to make um a career for yourself and meet your ambitions. So MS Jane says in a country like ours, how does a woman leader get power when she has to lead senior male colleagues? I believe it's not only about good female leader who a person is, but also how supportive and open-minded her team is.

Definitely, I think so too, but uh we have an added challenge here. Sometimes your team may not be open-minded um at all. And I understand completely where you come from, Zane. And that's why I said um you need your government, your CEO S that talk about gender equality all the time. Um And everyone else to step in with the policy changes and that's where we need each other as women to support each other rather than putting each other down and I know it's an unpopular opinion but it does happen for us to make a change. We first need to unite and group together uh before we even make change outside. Right. So, agree, Jane, it is a hard task

but you've got to keep at it,

resilience, tenacity and great. Don't let things break you and sometimes it's our own family, right? We have to reason with our family. Um and they may not um love you or like you for some of the things you say. But if it's really your purpose and it really drives you, uh we have to get down to that work. It's about changing each team member. It's time consuming. It's annoying, but that's why you have so many women's uh groups, enlist the help of any woman mentor, you know, mentorship. By the way, I think is um really, really important for um anyone in their career. I'd like love to talk more on that. Uh Nancy. If you want to contact me outside of this, Mary says, how do you get your team

to trust you?

This is something um you get done by doing rather than seeing uh Mary again, it's, it's an uphill task. You've got to be an example for your team. You've got to spend hours and hours and hours listening to them. And this is where I said, if you show them that you're human and you're doing your best, uh they will have a tendency to rep uh reciprocate. Usually there's a tendency that, oh, the management is separate, the team is separate. Literally, the management is seen as heartless at times. So if you can expose that vulnerable side to you, it uh just give me one moment. Amil Barra. How am sorry, Mary? I'm happy to um you know, talk to you out outside. Of course, I can't answer. Um I can't go through the individual um uh issue at hand now, but I'm happy to talk outside uh about it. Thanks ma so yeah, like I said, for anything to happen. First thing to do is acknowledge your ambition. Don't be hesitant or um ashamed about it. Don't just one second. Oh Yeah, I know in uh right. So it's uh sorry, I lost my train of thought. I'm trying

to keep people out of the

room. Uh Does anyone else have any questions? Uh Do you want me to go back to any specific slide and address it? There was one person that asked the boat um change in the metros. Who was that? I'm happy to share the um slides. Um Let me know who I need to send it to or if you guys will email me, I'll send it out to you all. I don't think the slides had uh the frameworks written down, but I'm happy to share the frameworks as well. One last question about change making in the metros. Uh I had said that uh change making in the metros is very different from change making in tier two and tier three cities. Um And it's true, but the good thing is in the metros. Um There are a lot of groups. Yes, Nancy, I will share the uh frameworks as well. There are a lot of groups in the metros that are working on change. Um It would be good for you to join one of those groups and see how things work. It is a lot harder to change um people with uh facilities than it is to change people without facilities unfortunately. And also it is like an unpopular um opinion. That's why I suggest that you join one of the NGO S or join one of the change making uh groups, especially during COVID. If you've seen um you know, people who cause the most problems have been folks from the city.

It's not people from outside, which is very sad on one level because we have migrants and we've all seen this on TV, who have nothing walking for miles and miles, thousands of miles. And then there are comfortable folks in their home acting completely entitled flouting uh rules.

So uh yes, it is. It is. Uh Yes, I sure there are those and we do blame the rural people and we cast judgments on uh migrants. But you know, um if you've seen um the party network or P si are talking, you'll understand that we are now focusing on migrants only beca because we, we need um, them for our work. Else. Migrants were really uh non-existent to us and that's how, mm, brutal and insensitive city folks have become. And I'm hoping that COVID now that it's exposed city for folks, it's going to, um, also change mindsets and people will consume what is only essential and required and not excessively.

It's yet to be, uh seen. But I really hope nature gets a break and people uh get a break and there's more equitable distribution in the future. Ok. I think I'm done. If if anyone has more questions, I'm happy to answer. Here are my details. If you want to take a quick um screenshot or a or a picture of it on your phone so that you can get in touch with me later. Great. Thank you so much guys for staying and connecting with me and hearing me out. Um I'm here till the session ends. If anyone has specific uh questions, you're welcome, Saloni and Farida.

Mhm. Does anyone want to

add anything to what I've said in my slides or thoughts perhaps? Ok. So shall I perfect. So Loni I'd be happy to discuss with you. Get in touch with me anytime. All right, shall I wrap up the session? Definitely, I'll definitely go through the on ground challenges next time. I thought 20 minutes was a lot, but I seem to have overshot it by a big margin. All right. Thank you so much guys for staying on and uh listening, like I said, happy to discuss about career ambition, social impact tech and design at any time. Feel free to get in touch with me. Stay safe and stay safe. Thank you.