So I wanted to start by sharing a study from the Harvard Business Review where it was reported that nine out of 10 people are willing to earn less money to do more meaningful work.So the study argued that meaning is the new money, which automatically raises the question, how much money, so how much money are you willing to forego in order to have a meaningful job? Even further? 80% of women from a study conducted by Sean Acre, which is uh who is a specialist in happiness said that 80% of women would rather have a boss who cared about them, finding meaningful work. So having a meaningful job um as opposed to receiving a 20% pay increase. So with this, I wanted to say that I'm Cecilia and I work at the intersection of business and social impact by accelerating social entrepreneurial endeavors. So because of that, um because of my line of work, a lot of corporate people have reached out to me with a recurrent question which is how can I make an impact? How can I make my job more impactful? Um So in the next couple of minutes I'm going to tell you how. So we all know that there are countless of social problems in the world that go from undernourishment to racial justice and global warming. But this is by no means new.

What it is new is that there's a rising number of what we call social entrepreneurs. So people that are using business skills uh to tackle these social problems um more efficiently. But however, there are a rising generation of young people, especially um equipped with much enthusiasm and desire to solve the social problems. Um But they also lack a lot of the experience and business acumen uh required to develop practical and sustainable business solutions.

So it's common knowledge that creating a company, creating a start up is not easy. Um In fact, most of the of the start-ups fail, but if those statistics aren't harsh enough, the rate of success in social businesses is even lower. The reason being that creating a traditional business is comparatively simpler than a social business in a traditional business. If we quickly don't make money, you pretty much iterate your project until you do. But in a social business, you focus on two things, not one. So it's not as straightforward, you focus on solving a social problem. Um And you, you focus on making money to make that social problem disappear and unsustainable over time. So it may happen and it's actually happening more often than not that you're still not financially sustainable but you see a glimpse of social progress on your social goal. So a lot of these social entrepreneurs go into this um methodology in which they continue their business for longer than a traditional business would even though they're not making money because they're making some sort of social purpose um happen. And this is certainly great in the short run.

But as you know, or you may know, um if you have a business um sector expertise that is just not sustainable. So at one point, um the business will fail and fail unless it finds a way of making money to achieve that social purpose. So going back to the start and the Asian corporations where people want more, meaning corporations are also one of the main places where business professionals um acquire business skills, where business skills are nourished, where they're developed and encouraged. So we can see a connection here where we have a lot of corporate professionals with the needs um with the need to make their job more sustainable than ever before in this very connected world. And we also see entrepreneurs in the field with grassroots solutions, with the idealism, with the ideas, but without the proper expertise to do so well, I think it's just, you know, what's coming next in the sense that connecting these two different parties is where magic could happen.

Um And a lot of people think, I believe it, it requires more time um than it would than it actually does. And that's why I wanted to tell you very quickly about a practical example um of a mentoring relationship. So this is Lizzie, she founded a business, a social business called Phoebe. Uh She developed that business in Kenya and she basically built a platform that allows local artisans in Kenya sell their jewelry online in six months, not since she's developed the business. So two years after she had grown the business and developed the business, but she was struggling with the business sustainability. In only six months after she was juggling with, with merging the social impact with the business part, she managed to increase her revenue by 8% and increase the artisan's income uh by 142%. So what happened in these six months? Um Lizzie went into a program and she was connected with two great women, both worked full time in a corporation in a for 500 company um with a lot of demands. Um But Lizzy worked with these two mentors for a period of six months and this doesn't mean that they worked hand in hand for six months. This meant means that for six months, um two mentors guided Lizy into how to grow her venture.

So I'm gonna talk about the exponential effect of mentoring. In the case of Lissy. It was actually two hours per month for six months. So only two hours per month, that's like basically half an hour per week. Um That's the time that the mentors met with the mentee. That's the time where the mentors didn't do the work for Lizzy. That's the time where they used their corporate experience. They used the corporate training that they had in sales and in marketing um to help her understand how she needed to focus in the growth of her venture.

So I wanted to now kind of talk about like very simple steps in which you can think about um making a positive impact in your communities uh without having to quit your job without having to change your careers. At least not yet. Um And the first step is about exploring. So there's a lot of different causes in the world. Um There's racial injustice to global warming, to um to undernourishment. So there's a lot of social causes in the world and not everything inspires you as much, I think because we have, I would say unfortunately this um the, the rising amount of pressing social needs, I think it's also the time where we can explore and understand, which is the one that inspires us or motivates us or engages us the most after you have at least an understanding.

And even if it's more than one, I think it's good to just understand from your end. What, what is it that makes you tick? Um You also need to explore how much time you have available. Uh Again, it doesn't have to be you changing your career. It can barely be half an hour per week. It could be one hour per month. Um But that one hour per month combined with someone that has no business expertise could be incredibly impactful. Um Then you have to explore what exactly are your skills? I've spoken with so many uh business women around the world. Um Everyone has an, everyone has something that they know about. They don't know about everything, but they know about one thing or multiple things. And I think it's good to do that inner exploration and discover what that is. Um It may be marketing, it may be public relations, it may be um sales, but just know that all those skills are so impactful um to others. So a second step would be connect basically with the ecosystem. So again, there's multiple opportunities out there and there's multiple people um trying to tackle these problems. So you don't necessarily have to be an entrepreneur and you don't have to be in the forefront of those solutions to make an impact. Uh the people that are in the forefront, need your support to ultimately create success with their ideas.

So I think it's important for you to connect. Sometimes it's easier, sometimes you're working in a company that has those opportunities, so speak to hr speak to CS R those opportunities exist. Um Otherwise we live in a very interconnected world. So there are a lot of programs um out there that basically work with these entrepreneurs. Um and would be so excited to hear um that you have the availability and the interest to be able to be connected with one of the people working on these solutions. So third try, mentoring. So mentoring could sound as a scary word, a word. Um I work with a lot of people from the business sector and sometimes um a very recurrent thing that they've told me is, you know, I've created a sales strategy, um very specific to credit cards and banking. Like I have no idea how to help someone in the middle of um a developing uh country trying to advocate for um a specific cause. And I think you just don't know how impactful you are until you are connected and you realize that a lot of the business skills kind of are relevant and useful across sectors. Um So again, you don't have to advocate a lot of time to this.

You just need to spend a little bit of a little time on it. Um And fourth is grow. So I think one of the things I was inspired to with this conference um is the amount of connections that, that women made uh before the conference even. And the conference has barely started. Uh So it's a very large group of, of people that are now connected and as you can see everyone's looking for something. So I think it's almost like a responsibility to share your experiences and to share um the possibilities that you see around. Um And before asking a couple of questions to the audience, I wanted to just say a lot of my focus in this, in this brief talk was about how can social impact be present in the corporate sector. Um which uh which I think it's more common now than before and it's growing. Uh but it's not so intuitive of how it can be. Um And I think the corporate sector almost doesn't have enough, doesn't get enough credit for developing and nourishing these skills that I've seen to be tremendous in terms of impact, even with a little bit of time um in the social sector.

So with that, um I'm going to finish sharing my screen just cause otherwise, I cannot see everyone here. Um I'd love to see if you have any questions. We don't have a lot of time left. Uh We have just a couple of minutes, but if you have any questions, I'd love to hear from you. I had to put a lot of information in very few slides in just very few minutes. Um So feel free to reach out to me if um you need any kind of guidance around these pieces of work. So I'm going to leave my email. Um OK, so Alan is asking about organizations that have outstanding mentorship programs so I can give you one example. Um So ct group, believe it or not. I know they're much more known for their banking services. Um So they have an incredible program that they've put together. Um So I actually worked with them quite a bit on this program. And uh every year they have about 60 employees from their companies from all around the world, mentoring young social entrepreneurs. Um This also helps me talk a little bit about the technological resources, I think before, um in many instances, we were not as connected as we are today.

And today we're able to um just get on whatsapp and be able to speak with someone in the middle of a refugee camp that needs to understand um how to set up an online platform to help sell something through an online platform in that refugee camp. So um I think it's important to note how privileged we are in terms of how connected we are today and uh take advantage of that connection. The second piece is um the COVID-19 situation we're going through. Um And the fact that there's a lot of entrepreneurs right now that are working on their business models on their business projects from their homes. And it's, it's a great moment to connect because of that. Um So um another person from the audience talks about like sales force, honestly, I don't, I don't know about that example. But um Aquiles, if you want to share with the group, I think they'd be super interested. Um So with that, if you have any questions, feel free to reach out to me. I know in only two minutes you have another session coming up. So it was a pleasure to speak to you today. Thank you for listening.