1 00:00:01,902 --> 00:00:05,564 A few years ago I found myself in Kigali, Rwanda 2 00:00:05,564 --> 00:00:08,384 presenting a plan to bring off-grid solar electricity 3 00:00:08,384 --> 00:00:11,687 to 10 million low-income East Africans. 4 00:00:11,687 --> 00:00:14,697 As I waited to speak to the President and his ministers, 5 00:00:14,697 --> 00:00:19,042 I thought about how I'd arrived in that same place 30 years before. 6 00:00:19,447 --> 00:00:21,988 A 25-year-old who left her career in banking 7 00:00:21,988 --> 00:00:25,307 to cofound the nation's first microfinance bank 8 00:00:25,307 --> 00:00:27,745 with a small group of Rwandan women. 9 00:00:27,745 --> 00:00:31,349 And that happened just a few months after women had gained the right 10 00:00:31,349 --> 00:00:34,540 to open a bank account without their husband's signature. 11 00:00:35,310 --> 00:00:37,352 Just before I got on stage, 12 00:00:37,352 --> 00:00:39,203 a young woman approached me. 13 00:00:39,832 --> 00:00:41,460 "Ms. Novogratz," she said, 14 00:00:41,460 --> 00:00:43,432 "I think you knew my Auntie." 15 00:00:43,537 --> 00:00:44,839 "Really? 16 00:00:44,839 --> 00:00:46,284 What was her name?" 17 00:00:46,841 --> 00:00:48,655 She said, "Felicula." 18 00:00:49,955 --> 00:00:51,858 I could feel tears well. 19 00:00:52,950 --> 00:00:56,407 One of the first women parliamentarians in the country, 20 00:00:56,407 --> 00:00:58,317 Felicula was a cofounder, 21 00:00:58,317 --> 00:01:00,332 but soon after we'd established the bank, 22 00:01:00,332 --> 00:01:04,138 Felicula was killed in a mysterious hit-and-run accident. 23 00:01:04,976 --> 00:01:08,613 Some associated her death to a policy she had sponsored 24 00:01:08,613 --> 00:01:10,518 to abolish bride price, 25 00:01:10,518 --> 00:01:14,743 or the practice of paying a man for the hand of his daughter in marriage. 26 00:01:16,548 --> 00:01:18,529 I was devastated by her death. 27 00:01:19,971 --> 00:01:22,680 And then a few years after that, 28 00:01:22,680 --> 00:01:24,551 after I'd left the country, 29 00:01:24,551 --> 00:01:26,804 Rwanda exploded in genocide. 30 00:01:27,617 --> 00:01:30,532 And I have to admit there were times 31 00:01:30,532 --> 00:01:34,818 when I thought about all the work so many had done 32 00:01:34,818 --> 00:01:38,135 and I wondered what it had amounted to. 33 00:01:41,050 --> 00:01:42,695 I turned back to the woman. 34 00:01:42,944 --> 00:01:46,223 "I'm sorry, would you tell me who you are again?" 35 00:01:47,001 --> 00:01:49,294 She said, "Yes, my name is Monique 36 00:01:49,294 --> 00:01:53,024 and I'm the Deputy Governor of Rwanda's National Bank." 37 00:01:53,759 --> 00:01:57,234 If you had told me when we were just getting started 38 00:01:57,234 --> 00:01:58,904 that within a single generation, 39 00:01:58,904 --> 00:02:04,082 a young woman will go on to help lead her nation's financial sector, 40 00:02:04,082 --> 00:02:06,025 I'm not sure I would have believed you. 41 00:02:06,548 --> 00:02:12,366 And I understood that I was back in that same place 42 00:02:12,366 --> 00:02:16,608 to continue work Felicula had started but could not complete in her lifetime. 43 00:02:17,015 --> 00:02:19,040 And that it was to me to recommit 44 00:02:19,040 --> 00:02:22,738 to dreams so big I might not complete them in mine. 45 00:02:23,230 --> 00:02:27,287 That night I decided to write a letter to the next generation 46 00:02:27,287 --> 00:02:32,418 because so many have passed on their wisdom and knowledge to me, 47 00:02:32,418 --> 00:02:34,680 because I feel a growing sense of urgency 48 00:02:34,680 --> 00:02:37,452 that I might not finish the work I came to do, 49 00:02:37,629 --> 00:02:40,711 and because I want to pass that forward 50 00:02:40,711 --> 00:02:45,336 to everyone who wants to create change in this world 51 00:02:45,336 --> 00:02:47,900 in ways that only they can do. 52 00:02:48,126 --> 00:02:50,788 That generation is in the streets. 53 00:02:51,133 --> 00:02:55,576 They are crying urgently for wholesale change 54 00:02:55,576 --> 00:02:57,412 against racial injustice, 55 00:02:57,412 --> 00:02:59,735 religious and ethnic persecution, 56 00:02:59,735 --> 00:03:01,864 catastrophic climate change 57 00:03:01,864 --> 00:03:03,280 and the cruel inequality 58 00:03:03,280 --> 00:03:04,993 that has left us more divided 59 00:03:04,993 --> 00:03:07,958 and divisive than ever in my lifetime. 60 00:03:08,363 --> 00:03:09,887 But what would I say to them? 61 00:03:10,965 --> 00:03:11,968 I'm a builder, 62 00:03:11,968 --> 00:03:16,684 so I started by focusing on technical fixes, 63 00:03:16,684 --> 00:03:19,680 but our problems are too interdependent, 64 00:03:19,680 --> 00:03:21,225 too entangled. 65 00:03:21,606 --> 00:03:24,323 We need more than a system shift. 66 00:03:24,889 --> 00:03:26,447 We need a mind shift. 67 00:03:26,688 --> 00:03:31,628 Plato wrote that a country cultivates what it honors. 68 00:03:32,488 --> 00:03:37,274 For too long, we have defined success based on money, power and fame. 69 00:03:37,717 --> 00:03:42,653 Now we have to start the hard, long work of moral revolution. 70 00:03:43,849 --> 00:03:46,610 By that I mean putting our shared humanity 71 00:03:46,610 --> 00:03:51,092 and the sustainability of the earth at the center of our systems, 72 00:03:51,092 --> 00:03:54,265 and prioritizing the collective we, 73 00:03:54,265 --> 00:03:56,576 not the individual I. 74 00:03:56,961 --> 00:04:00,598 What if each of us gave more to the world than we took from it? 75 00:04:01,776 --> 00:04:03,489 Everything would change. 76 00:04:04,421 --> 00:04:09,341 Now, cynics might say that sounds too idealistic, 77 00:04:09,341 --> 00:04:11,789 but cynics don't create the future. 78 00:04:12,167 --> 00:04:15,852 And though I've learned the folly of unbridled optimism, 79 00:04:15,852 --> 00:04:20,295 I stand with those who hold to hard-edged hope. 80 00:04:21,839 --> 00:04:23,879 I know that change is possible. 81 00:04:24,139 --> 00:04:28,016 The entrepreneurs and change agents with whom my team and I have worked 82 00:04:28,016 --> 00:04:31,977 have impacted more than 300 million low-income people, 83 00:04:31,977 --> 00:04:36,137 and sometimes reshaped entire sectors to include the poor. 84 00:04:36,601 --> 00:04:39,621 But you can't really talk about moral revolution 85 00:04:39,621 --> 00:04:43,066 without grounding it in practicality and meaning, 86 00:04:43,066 --> 00:04:46,812 and that requires an entirely new set of operating principles. 87 00:04:47,345 --> 00:04:48,928 Let me share just three. 88 00:04:49,461 --> 00:04:51,637 The first is moral imagination. 89 00:04:51,903 --> 00:04:54,940 Too often we use the lens only of our own imagination, 90 00:04:54,940 --> 00:04:57,027 even when designing solutions 91 00:04:57,027 --> 00:04:59,969 for people whose lives are completely different from our own. 92 00:05:00,568 --> 00:05:06,317 Moral imagination starts by seeing others as equal to ourselves, 93 00:05:06,317 --> 00:05:08,597 neither above nor below us, 94 00:05:08,597 --> 00:05:11,267 neither idealizing nor victimizing. 95 00:05:11,758 --> 00:05:14,504 It requires immersing in the lives of others, 96 00:05:14,504 --> 00:05:18,082 understanding the structures that get in their way 97 00:05:18,082 --> 00:05:21,582 and being honest about where they might be holding themselves back. 98 00:05:22,946 --> 00:05:27,614 That requires deep listening from a place of inquiry, 99 00:05:27,614 --> 00:05:28,862 not certainty. 100 00:05:29,897 --> 00:05:33,548 Several years ago I sat with a group of women weavers 101 00:05:33,548 --> 00:05:36,474 outside in a rural village in Pakistan. 102 00:05:36,718 --> 00:05:38,949 The day was hot ... 103 00:05:38,949 --> 00:05:41,038 over 120 degrees in the shade. 104 00:05:42,344 --> 00:05:46,584 I wanted to tell the women about a company my organization had invested in 105 00:05:46,584 --> 00:05:52,259 that was bringing solar light to millions of people across India and East Africa, 106 00:05:52,259 --> 00:05:55,205 and I had seen the transformative power of that light 107 00:05:55,205 --> 00:05:59,356 to allow people to do things so many of us just take for granted. 108 00:05:59,910 --> 00:06:01,507 "We have this light" I said, 109 00:06:01,507 --> 00:06:03,030 "costs about seven dollars. 110 00:06:03,030 --> 00:06:04,596 People say it's amazing. 111 00:06:04,596 --> 00:06:08,265 If we could convince the company to bring those products to Pakistan, 112 00:06:08,265 --> 00:06:10,024 would you all be interested?" 113 00:06:10,096 --> 00:06:11,576 The women stared, 114 00:06:11,576 --> 00:06:14,850 and then a big woman whose hands knew hard work looked at me, 115 00:06:14,850 --> 00:06:17,927 wiped the sweat off her face and said, 116 00:06:17,927 --> 00:06:19,269 "We don't want a light. 117 00:06:19,269 --> 00:06:20,635 We're hot. 118 00:06:20,635 --> 00:06:21,961 Bring us a fan." 119 00:06:22,254 --> 00:06:23,547 "Fan," I said. 120 00:06:23,547 --> 00:06:24,913 "We don't have a fan. 121 00:06:24,913 --> 00:06:26,019 We have a light. 122 00:06:26,285 --> 00:06:27,567 But if you had this light, 123 00:06:27,567 --> 00:06:28,950 your kids can study at night, 124 00:06:28,950 --> 00:06:30,072 you can work more -- " 125 00:06:30,072 --> 00:06:31,409 she cut me off. 126 00:06:31,596 --> 00:06:32,874 "We work enough. 127 00:06:32,874 --> 00:06:33,888 We're hot. 128 00:06:34,030 --> 00:06:35,265 Bring us a fan." 129 00:06:37,015 --> 00:06:42,089 That straight-talking conversation deepened my moral imaginaton. 130 00:06:42,631 --> 00:06:44,321 And I remember lying -- 131 00:06:44,321 --> 00:06:48,268 sweltering in my bed in my tiny guest house that night, 132 00:06:48,268 --> 00:06:52,923 so grateful for the clickety-clack of the fan overhead. 133 00:06:53,188 --> 00:06:55,202 And I thought, "Of course. 134 00:06:55,607 --> 00:06:56,950 Electricity. 135 00:06:57,262 --> 00:06:58,432 A fan. 136 00:06:58,726 --> 00:07:00,078 Dignity." 137 00:07:00,508 --> 00:07:02,778 And when I now visit our companies 138 00:07:02,778 --> 00:07:06,392 who've reached over 100 million people with light and electricity 139 00:07:06,392 --> 00:07:08,094 and it's a really hot place, 140 00:07:08,094 --> 00:07:09,869 and if there's a rooftop system, 141 00:07:09,869 --> 00:07:12,015 there is also a fan. 142 00:07:12,755 --> 00:07:18,094 But moral imagination is also needed to rebuild and heal our countries. 143 00:07:18,996 --> 00:07:21,898 My nation is roiling as it finally confronts 144 00:07:21,898 --> 00:07:23,907 what it's not wanted to see. 145 00:07:24,073 --> 00:07:28,288 It would be impossible to deny the legacy of American slavery 146 00:07:28,288 --> 00:07:31,875 if all of us truly immersed in the lives of Black people. 147 00:07:32,280 --> 00:07:36,161 Every nation begins the process of healing 148 00:07:36,161 --> 00:07:40,662 when its people begin to see each other 149 00:07:40,662 --> 00:07:45,178 and to understand that it is in that work that are planted the seeds 150 00:07:45,178 --> 00:07:48,286 of our individual and collective transformation. 151 00:07:49,462 --> 00:07:52,939 Now that requires acknowledging the light and shadow, 152 00:07:52,939 --> 00:07:56,044 the good and evil that exist in every human being. 153 00:07:57,013 --> 00:07:59,759 In our world we have to learn to partner with those 154 00:07:59,759 --> 00:08:02,097 even whom we consider our adversaries. 155 00:08:02,585 --> 00:08:05,305 This leads to the second princple: 156 00:08:05,305 --> 00:08:08,013 holding opposing values in tension. 157 00:08:08,290 --> 00:08:12,194 Too many of our leaders today stand on one corner or the other, 158 00:08:12,194 --> 00:08:13,446 shouting. 159 00:08:13,735 --> 00:08:17,245 Moral leaders reject the wall of either-or. 160 00:08:18,070 --> 00:08:22,026 They're willing to acknowlege a truth or even a partial truth 161 00:08:22,026 --> 00:08:23,860 in what the other side believes. 162 00:08:24,196 --> 00:08:28,083 And they gain trust by making pricinpled decisions 163 00:08:28,083 --> 00:08:30,411 in service of other people, 164 00:08:30,411 --> 00:08:31,874 not themselves. 165 00:08:32,318 --> 00:08:36,566 To succeed in my work has required holding the tension 166 00:08:36,566 --> 00:08:41,172 between the power of markets to enable innovation and prosperity, 167 00:08:41,172 --> 00:08:45,573 and their peril to allow for exclusion 168 00:08:45,573 --> 00:08:47,203 and sometimes exploitation. 169 00:08:48,721 --> 00:08:52,700 Those who see the sole purpose of business as profit 170 00:08:52,700 --> 00:08:55,156 are not comfortable with that tension, 171 00:08:55,156 --> 00:08:57,951 nor are those who have no trust in business at all. 172 00:08:58,651 --> 00:09:04,420 But standing on either side negates the creative, generative potential 173 00:09:04,420 --> 00:09:08,493 of learning to use markets without being seduced my them. 174 00:09:08,861 --> 00:09:10,678 Take chocolate. 175 00:09:11,180 --> 00:09:13,702 It's a hundred-billion-dollar industry 176 00:09:13,702 --> 00:09:17,202 dependent on the labor of about five million smallholder farming families 177 00:09:17,202 --> 00:09:20,727 who receive only a tiny fraction of that 100 billion. 178 00:09:20,727 --> 00:09:25,845 In fact, 90 percent of them make under two dollars a day. 179 00:09:26,502 --> 00:09:28,955 But there's a generation of new entrepreneurs 180 00:09:28,955 --> 00:09:30,637 that is trying to change that. 181 00:09:30,969 --> 00:09:35,612 They start by understanding the production costs of the farmers. 182 00:09:36,055 --> 00:09:41,249 They agree to a price that allows the farmers to actually earn income 183 00:09:41,249 --> 00:09:43,586 in a way that will sustain their lives. 184 00:09:43,976 --> 00:09:47,925 Sometimes including revenue-share and ownership models, 185 00:09:47,925 --> 00:09:50,070 building a community of trust. 186 00:09:50,397 --> 00:09:53,337 Now are these companies as profitable 187 00:09:53,337 --> 00:09:56,835 as those that focus solely on shareholder value? 188 00:09:57,679 --> 00:09:59,668 Possibly not in the short term. 189 00:09:59,945 --> 00:10:04,258 But these entrepreneurs are focused on solving problems. 190 00:10:05,290 --> 00:10:09,017 They're tired of easy slogans like "doing well by doing good." 191 00:10:09,479 --> 00:10:12,310 They know they have to be financially sustainable 192 00:10:12,310 --> 00:10:16,247 and they are insisting on including the poor and the vulnerable 193 00:10:16,247 --> 00:10:18,190 in their definition of success. 194 00:10:18,190 --> 00:10:20,345 And that brings me to the third principle: 195 00:10:20,345 --> 00:10:21,844 accompaniment. 196 00:10:22,121 --> 00:10:25,802 It's actually a Jesuit term that means to walk alongside: 197 00:10:25,802 --> 00:10:27,063 I'll hold a mirror to you, 198 00:10:27,063 --> 00:10:28,432 help you see your potential, 199 00:10:28,432 --> 00:10:30,441 maybe more than you see it yourself. 200 00:10:30,927 --> 00:10:34,501 I'll take on your problem but I can't solve it for you -- 201 00:10:34,501 --> 00:10:36,772 that you have to learn to do. 202 00:10:37,434 --> 00:10:39,973 For example, in Harlem there's an organization 203 00:10:39,973 --> 00:10:44,123 called City Health Works that hires local residents 204 00:10:44,123 --> 00:10:46,231 with no previous health care experience, 205 00:10:46,231 --> 00:10:49,157 trains them to work with other residents 206 00:10:49,157 --> 00:10:52,256 so that they can better control chronic diseases like gout, 207 00:10:52,256 --> 00:10:53,258 hypertension, 208 00:10:53,258 --> 00:10:54,476 diabetes. 209 00:10:54,825 --> 00:10:57,327 I had the great pleasure of meeting Destini Belton, 210 00:10:57,327 --> 00:10:58,768 one of the health workers, 211 00:10:58,768 --> 00:11:00,163 who explained her job to me. 212 00:11:00,424 --> 00:11:02,529 She said that she checks in on clients, 213 00:11:02,529 --> 00:11:04,254 checks their vital signs, 214 00:11:04,254 --> 00:11:05,759 takes them grocery shopping, 215 00:11:05,759 --> 00:11:08,244 goes on long walks, 216 00:11:08,244 --> 00:11:09,993 has conversations. 217 00:11:11,106 --> 00:11:14,593 She told me, "I let them know somebody has their back." 218 00:11:15,681 --> 00:11:18,313 And the results have been astounding. 219 00:11:18,671 --> 00:11:20,040 Patients are healthier, 220 00:11:20,040 --> 00:11:21,703 hospitals less burdened. 221 00:11:22,060 --> 00:11:23,509 As for Destini, 222 00:11:23,509 --> 00:11:27,133 she tells me her family and she are healthier. 223 00:11:27,753 --> 00:11:33,165 And, she adds, "I love that I get to contribute to my community." 224 00:11:34,351 --> 00:11:37,658 All of us yearn to be seen, 225 00:11:37,658 --> 00:11:39,089 to count. 226 00:11:39,397 --> 00:11:40,757 The work of change, 227 00:11:40,757 --> 00:11:42,384 of moral revolution, 228 00:11:42,384 --> 00:11:43,434 is hard. 229 00:11:43,887 --> 00:11:46,336 But we don't change in the easy times. 230 00:11:46,534 --> 00:11:48,540 We change in the difficult times. 231 00:11:48,861 --> 00:11:53,563 In fact, I've come to see discomfort as a proxy for progress. 232 00:11:55,037 --> 00:11:56,793 But there's one more thing. 233 00:11:57,258 --> 00:12:01,268 There's something I wish I'd known when I was just starting out 234 00:12:01,268 --> 00:12:03,235 so many years ago. 235 00:12:04,042 --> 00:12:06,533 No matter how hard it gets, 236 00:12:06,533 --> 00:12:08,653 there's always beauty to be found. 237 00:12:09,202 --> 00:12:11,467 I remember now what seems a long time ago, 238 00:12:11,467 --> 00:12:15,480 spending an entire day talking to woman after woman 239 00:12:15,480 --> 00:12:18,271 in the Mathare Valley slum in Nairobi, Kenya. 240 00:12:18,686 --> 00:12:22,115 I listened to their stories of struggle and survival 241 00:12:22,115 --> 00:12:24,671 as they talked about losing children, 242 00:12:24,671 --> 00:12:28,953 of fighting violence and hunger, 243 00:12:28,953 --> 00:12:31,951 sometimes feeling like they wouldn't even survive. 244 00:12:33,405 --> 00:12:35,140 And right before I left, 245 00:12:35,140 --> 00:12:37,822 a huge rainstorm poured down. 246 00:12:38,058 --> 00:12:41,692 And I was sitting in my little car as the wheels stuck in the mud 247 00:12:41,692 --> 00:12:43,712 thinking I'm never getting out of here, 248 00:12:43,712 --> 00:12:45,860 when suddenly there was a tap on my window -- 249 00:12:45,860 --> 00:12:48,617 a woman who was beckoning me to follow her, 250 00:12:48,617 --> 00:12:49,691 and I did. 251 00:12:49,691 --> 00:12:51,404 Jumped out through the rainstorm, 252 00:12:51,404 --> 00:12:54,726 we went down this little muddy path, 253 00:12:54,726 --> 00:12:56,774 through a rickety metal door, 254 00:12:56,774 --> 00:12:58,325 inside a shack 255 00:12:58,325 --> 00:13:01,192 where a group of women were dancing with abandon. 256 00:13:01,192 --> 00:13:06,386 I jumped in and found myself lost in the rhythm and the color and the smiles 257 00:13:06,386 --> 00:13:09,919 and suddenly I realized 258 00:13:09,919 --> 00:13:12,961 this is what we do as human beings. 259 00:13:13,843 --> 00:13:15,278 When we're broken, 260 00:13:15,278 --> 00:13:19,524 when we feel that we are failing or are in despair, 261 00:13:19,524 --> 00:13:20,576 we dance. 262 00:13:21,238 --> 00:13:22,525 We sing. 263 00:13:22,826 --> 00:13:24,021 We pray. 264 00:13:24,957 --> 00:13:29,127 Beauty resides too in showing up, 265 00:13:29,127 --> 00:13:31,075 in paying attention, 266 00:13:31,075 --> 00:13:35,082 in being kind when we feel like being anything but kind. 267 00:13:35,505 --> 00:13:39,720 Look at the explosion of art and music and poetry 268 00:13:39,720 --> 00:13:42,800 in this moment of our collective crisis. 269 00:13:43,464 --> 00:13:45,706 It is in the darkest times 270 00:13:45,706 --> 00:13:49,636 that we have the chance to find our deepest beauty. 271 00:13:49,938 --> 00:13:53,555 So let this be our moment 272 00:13:53,555 --> 00:13:55,568 to move forward 273 00:13:55,568 --> 00:13:58,603 with the fierce urgency of a new generation 274 00:13:58,603 --> 00:14:04,539 fortified with our most profound and collective wisdom. 275 00:14:05,523 --> 00:14:07,395 And ask yourself: 276 00:14:07,395 --> 00:14:11,100 what can you do with the rest of today 277 00:14:11,100 --> 00:14:13,146 and the rest of your life 278 00:14:13,146 --> 00:14:15,902 to give back more to the world than you take? 279 00:14:16,924 --> 00:14:17,921 Thank you.