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A few years ago,
I found myself in Kigali, Rwanda

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presenting a plan to bring
off-grid solar electricity

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to 10 million low-income East Africans.

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As I waited to speak
to the president and his ministers,

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I thought about how I'd arrived
in that same place 30 years before.

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A 25-year-old who left
her career in banking

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to cofound the nation's first
microfinance bank

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with a small group of Rwandan women.

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And that happened just a few months
after women had gained the right

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to open a bank account
without their husband's signature.

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Just before I got on stage,

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a young woman approached me.

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"Ms. Novogratz," she said,

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"I think you knew my auntie."

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"Really?

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What was her name?"

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She said, "Felicula."

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I could feel tears well.

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One of the first women
parliamentarians in the country,

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Felicula was a cofounder,

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but soon after we'd established the bank,

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Felicula was killed
in a mysterious hit-and-run accident.

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Some associated her death
to a policy she had sponsored

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to abolish bride price,

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or the practice of paying a man
for the hand of his daughter in marriage.

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I was devastated by her death.

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And then a few years after that,

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after I'd left the country,

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Rwanda exploded in genocide.

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And I have to admit there were times

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when I thought about
all the work so many had done,

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and I wondered what it had amounted to.

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I turned back to the woman.

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"I'm sorry, would you tell me
who you are again?"

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She said, "Yes, my name is Monique,

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and I'm the deputy governor
of Rwanda's National Bank."

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If you had told me
when we were just getting started

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that within a single generation,

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a young woman will go on to help lead
her nation's financial sector,

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I'm not sure I would have believed you.

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And I understood
that I was back in that same place

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to continue work Felicula had started
but could not complete in her lifetime.

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And that it was to me to recommit

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to dreams so big I might
not complete them in mine.

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That night I decided to write
a letter to the next generation

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because so many have passed on
their wisdom and knowledge to me,

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because I feel a growing sense of urgency

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that I might not finish
the work I came to do,

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and because I want to pass that forward

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to everyone who wants
to create change in this world

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in ways that only they can do.

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That generation is in the streets.

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They are crying urgently
for wholesale change

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against racial injustice,

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religious and ethnic persecution,

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catastrophic climate change

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and the cruel inequality
that has left us more divided

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and divisive than ever in my lifetime.

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But what would I say to them?

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I'm a builder, so I started
by focusing on technical fixes,

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but our problems are too interdependent,

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too entangled.

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We need more than a system shift.

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We need a mind shift.

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Plato wrote that a country
cultivates what it honors.

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For too long, we have defined success
based on money, power and fame.

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Now we have to start the hard,
long work of moral revolution.

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By that I mean putting our shared humanity

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and the sustainability of the earth
at the center of our systems,

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and prioritizing the collective we,

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not the individual I.

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What if each of us gave more
to the world than we took from it?

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Everything would change.

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Now cynics might say
that sounds too idealistic,

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but cynics don't create the future.

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And though I've learned the folly
of unbridled optimism,

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I stand with those
who hold to hard-edged hope.

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I know that change is possible.

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The entrepreneurs and change agents
with whom my team and I have worked

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have impacted more than 300 million
low-income people,

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and sometimes reshaped
entire sectors to include the poor.

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But you can't really talk
about moral revolution

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without grounding it
in practicality and meaning,

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and that requires an entirely
new set of operating principles.

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Let me share just three.

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The first is moral imagination.

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Too often we use the lens
only of our own imagination,

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even when designing solutions

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for people whose lives
are completely different from our own.

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Moral imagination starts by seeing
others as equal to ourselves,

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neither above nor below us,

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neither idealizing nor victimizing.

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It requires immersing
in the lives of others,

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understanding the structures
that get in their way

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and being honest about where
they might be holding themselves back.

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That requires deep listening
from a place of inquiry,

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not certainty.

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Several years ago I sat
with a group of women weavers

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outside in a rural village in Pakistan.

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The day was hot ...

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over 120 degrees in the shade.

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I wanted to tell the women about
a company my organization had invested in

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that was bringing solar light to millions
of people across India and East Africa,

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and I had seen the transformative
power of that light

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to allow people to do things
so many of us just take for granted.

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"We have this light" I said,

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"costs about seven dollars.

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People say it's amazing.

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If we could convince the company
to bring those products to Pakistan,

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would you all be interested?"

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The women stared,

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and then a big woman whose hands
knew hard work looked at me,

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wiped the sweat off her face and said,

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"We don't want a light.

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We're hot.

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Bring us a fan."

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"Fan," I said.

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"We don't have a fan.

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We have a light.

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But if you had this light,
your kids can study at night,

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you can work more -- "

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She cut me off.

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"We work enough. We're hot.

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Bring us a fan."

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That straight-talking conversation
deepened my moral imagination.

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And I remember lying --

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sweltering in my bed
in my tiny guest house that night,

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so grateful for the clickety-clack
of the fan overhead.

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And I thought, "Of course.

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Electricity.

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A fan.

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Dignity."

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And when I now visit our companies

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who've reached over 100 million people
with light and electricity

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and it's a really hot place,

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and if there's a rooftop system,

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there is also a fan.

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But moral imagination is also needed
to rebuild and heal our countries.

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My nation is roiling
as it finally confronts

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what it's not wanted to see.

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It would be impossible to deny
the legacy of American slavery

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if all of us truly immersed
in the lives of Black people.

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Every nation begins the process of healing

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when its people begin to see each other

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and to understand that it is in that work
that are planted the seeds

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of our individual
and collective transformation.

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Now that requires acknowledging
the light and shadow,

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the good and evil that exist
in every human being.

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In our world we have to learn
to partner with those

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even whom we consider our adversaries.

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This leads to the second principle:

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holding opposing values in tension.

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Too many of our leaders today
stand on one corner or the other,

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shouting.

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Moral leaders reject
the wall of either-or.

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They're willing to acknowledge a truth
or even a partial truth

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in what the other side believes.

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And they gain trust
by making principled decisions

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in service of other people,

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not themselves.

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To succeed in my work
has required holding the tension

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between the power of markets
to enable innovation and prosperity

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and their peril to allow for exclusion

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and sometimes exploitation.

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Those who see the sole purpose
of business as profit

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are not comfortable with that tension,

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nor are those who have
no trust in business at all.

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But standing on either side
negates the creative, generative potential

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of learning to use markets
without being seduced by them.

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Take chocolate.

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It's a hundred-billion-dollar industry

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dependent on the labor of about
five million smallholder farming families

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who receive only a tiny fraction
of that 100 billion.

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In fact, 90 percent of them
make under two dollars a day.

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But there's a generation
of new entrepreneurs

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that is trying to change that.

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They start by understanding
the production costs of the farmers.

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They agree to a price that allows
the farmers to actually earn income

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in a way that will sustain their lives.

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Sometimes including revenue-share
and ownership models,

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building a community of trust.

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Now are these companies as profitable

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as those that focus
solely on shareholder value?

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Possibly not in the short term.

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But these entrepreneurs
are focused on solving problems.

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They're tired of easy slogans
like "doing well by doing good."

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They know they have to be
financially sustainable,

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and they are insisting on including
the poor and the vulnerable

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in their definition of success.

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And that brings me to the third principle:

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accompaniment.

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It's actually a Jesuit term
that means to walk alongside:

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I'll hold a mirror to you,
help you see your potential,

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maybe more than you see it yourself.

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I'll take on your problem
but I can't solve it for you --

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that you have to learn to do.

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For example, in Harlem
there's an organization

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called City Health Works

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that hires local residents

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with no previous health care experience,

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trains them to work with other residents

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so that they can better control
chronic diseases like gout,

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hypertension, diabetes.

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I had the great pleasure
of meeting Destini Belton,

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one of the health workers,

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who explained her job to me.

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She said that she checks in on clients,

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checks their vital signs,

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takes them grocery shopping,

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goes on long walks,

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has conversations.

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She told me, "I let them know
somebody has their back."

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And the results have been astounding.

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Patients are healthier,
hospitals less burdened.

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As for Destini,

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she tells me her family
and she are healthier.

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"And," she adds, "I love that I get
to contribute to my community."

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All of us yearn to be seen,

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to count.

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The work of change,

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of moral revolution,

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is hard.

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But we don't change in the easy times.

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We change in the difficult times.

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In fact, I've come to see discomfort
as a proxy for progress.

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But there's one more thing.

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There's something I wish I'd known
when I was just starting out

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so many years ago.

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No matter how hard it gets,

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there's always beauty to be found.

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I remember now what seems a long time ago,

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spending an entire day
talking to woman after woman

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in the Mathare Valley slum
in Nairobi, Kenya.

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I listened to their stories
of struggle and survival

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as they talked about losing children,

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of fighting violence and hunger,

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sometimes feeling
like they wouldn't even survive.

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And right before I left,

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a huge rainstorm poured down.

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And I was sitting in my little car
as the wheels stuck in the mud

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thinking, "I'm never getting out of here,"

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when suddenly there was
a tap on my window --

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a woman who was beckoning
me to follow her,

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and I did.

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Jumped out through the rainstorm,

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we went down this little muddy path,

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through a rickety metal door,

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inside a shack

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where a group of women
were dancing with abandon.

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I jumped in and found myself lost
in the rhythm and the color and the smiles

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and suddenly I realized:

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this is what we do as human beings.

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When we're broken,

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when we feel that we are failing
or are in despair,

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we dance.

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We sing.

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We pray.

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Beauty resides too in showing up,

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in paying attention,

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in being kind when we feel
like being anything but kind.

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Look at the explosion of art
and music and poetry

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in this moment of our collective crisis.

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It is in the darkest times

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that we have the chance
to find our deepest beauty.

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So let this be our moment

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to move forward

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with the fierce urgency
of a new generation

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fortified with our most profound
and collective wisdom.

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And ask yourself:

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what can you do with the rest of today

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and the rest of your life

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to give back more
to the world than you take?

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Thank you.