In this episode of the Finding Impact Podcast I talk to Juliana Proserpio, Co-founder and Chief Design Officer of Echos Innovation Lab, on using Design Thinking in the needfinding process. Juliana talks about her work at Echos Innovation Lab and how it supports organizations and entrepreneurs to use the design thinking mindset for accelerating cultural change and creating new services and business models to create desirable futures.

I'm very honoured to speak to Jack Lowe this week. He's come on share lessons learnt throughout his 40 year career in microfinance and the startup world. Jack was CEO of BlueOrchard Investments in 2004 -- a microfinance fund that he grew from $40 million to close to $1 billion, stretching to 45 countries. It became the largest private microfinance lender in the world.

This episode is about the one thing that changes everything -- mindset. Or attitude. We're living in tough times, and often, our mindset, our attitude, our outlook, can hold us back. With fear, worry, panic, stress, all these different emotions entering our day at some point. All these things hold us back. But, with the understanding of how our minds work, and with the tools to shift our attitude, we can accept this new reality and choose to take action.

James Mwangi of Dalberg Group on the podcast today. He's representing Safe Hands Kenya, a coalition of Kenyan businesses who've come together to respond to the COVID-19 crisis. They're distributing free hand sanitiser, soap, face masks and surface disinfectants to all Kenyans, as a first line of defence against COVID-19.

Today's challenge is for those businesses who're seeing a temporary loss of revenue due to the COVID-19 crisis, but also anyone in the business of raising capital, and interested in different funding instruments. We've got Amanda Cotterman on the show, and we're talking about the fund she's raising, Equalife Capital's Africa Venture Debt COVID Recovery Fund.

This week on the Finding Impact Podcast, we find out how design thinking concepts can be used to improve the needfinding process and ideation. We talk with Elizabeth Knight, Founder of Purposeful, a new social enterprise empowering young people to create careers driven by purpose. Purposeful gives young people a structured way of finding their purpose.

This week on the Finding Impact Podcast, we find out out how a young founder bootstrapped his startup and the lessons he learnt in wannapreneurship. We talk with Cyril Michino, co-founder of Chaptr Global who shares his experiences around the challenges faced by young founders and how he’s innovating around such challenges by adopting innovative revenue-sharing business models.

This week on the Finding Impact Podcast, we are talking to Boston Nyer, co-founder of BURN. Boston's played a wide variety of roles during his 8 years at BURN, including COO, where he was tasked with setting up processes in their factory in Nairobi that makes more than one stove per minute. It's the largest of its kind on the continent. On this episode you will learn: An intro to his background, to BURN, and how BURN is structured. 1:48.  How BURN is split up by departments. 6:00. Four...

This week we are talking about the challenges of maintaining culture as your social business scales, and tactics for how to adapt and scale your culture, with Paul Breloff of Shortlist. Paul's company, Shortlist, helps companies build and develop their teams through a new approach to hiring. Particularly, we’ll be talking about Paul’s experience as he grew Shortlist’s team across two continents and to nearly 100 people and lessons he’s learned from the entrepreneurs at companies Shortlist...

This week on the Finding Impact Podcast, we are talking about how founders of social enterprises can transition from being a product builder to company builder, with Glynis Rankin from Creative Metier. Glynis is the CEO of Creative Metier, a niche consultancy that works with social impact investors and their investees to support social enterprises and small and growing businesses in emerging markets through executive coaching, human capital resources, and organizational strengthening. On...

This week on the Finding Impact Podcast, we’ve got Lemia Makkar and we're going to talk about Lamia's experience as a young founder, with the hope of inspiring and helping other young founders succeed at what they're doing. Lemia started her first non-profit Haiti: Hands On, at the age of 13, when at times she had to skip school to present to CEOs in Boardrooms in the United Arab Emirates (UAE) where she lived. Fast forward 8 years later, to today, and Lamia has kindly come on to share her...

This week on the Finding Impact Podcast, we are starting off a new series to help social entrepreneurs understand and navigate the whole gamut of services and service providers in entrepreneurial ecosystems and we are talking with Maryanne Ochola, East Africa Regional Chapter Manager of ANDE (Aspen Network of Development Entrepreneurs), based in Nairobi.

Sagun Saxena, co-founder and Chief Innovation Officer of KOKO Networks, is a company operating in Kenya and India that builds and deploys a dense network of kiosks inside local corner stores that distribute bio-ethanol for the modern cookers they sell.

Simon Oshera is from Proteq Automation in Nairobi. We talk about Simon's invention that is set to propel manufacturing in Kenya to compete with the likes of China and other industrialized nations.

This week on the Finding Impact Podcast, we are continuing our second series on hardware entrepreneurs, this one with Mike Hahn of PayGo Energy about his hardware development journey. This is the first episode in our second 3-part series on invention-based entrepreneurs, supported by The Lemelson Foundation. The series aims to provide unique insights into some of the challenges and workarounds faced by entrepreneurs creating hardware products in emerging markets.

This week on the Finding Impact Podcast, we are talking to Solonia Treodos, Co-founder of The Change School, who describes why social entrepreneurs need a clear fundraising strategy and goal before starting their fundraising activities. Solonia shares her journey of fundraising for The Change School, with lessons from her experience of almost closing a fundraising deal, changing course and walking away from the deal and coming back to it later with a clear strategy.

This week on the Finding Impact podcast, we will be speaking with Caroline Bressan, the Director of Social Investments at Open Road Alliance. This incredible service at Open Road Alliance provides capital (loans or grants) to social impact organizations (non-profit and for-profit) facing an unexpected roadblock during implementation.

Tips for social entrepreneurs applying to accelerators, from Village Capital, UnLtd, MassChallenge, Agora Partnerships, Bethnal Green Ventures, Fledge, The Accelerator Guy, OnPurpose.

This is part three of a 3-part series on invention-based entrepreneurs, supported by The Lemelson Foundation. The series aims to provide unique insights into some of the challenges and workarounds faced by entrepreneurs creating hardware products in emerging markets. This third part episode is with Erik Hersman, co-founder of BRCK, which creates a modem-cum-router device aimed at solving last-mile connectivity issues in Africa. We're going to talk about the early prototypes, how they funded...

This is part two of a 3-part series on invention-based entrepreneurs, supported by The Lemelson Foundation. The series aims to provide unique insights into some of the challenges and workarounds faced by entrepreneurs creating hardware products in emerging markets. This part two episode is with Mary Mwangi of Data Integrated Ltd., and we are going to hear about her electronic hardware development journey on manufacturing products to improve security in public transport, and to reduce...

This week on the Finding Impact Podcast, we are kicking off a new series on hardware entrepreneurs, this one with William Maluki of Gearbox about creating tools for manufacturing in Africa. This is the first episode in a 3-part series on invention-based entrepreneurs that aims to provide unique insights into some of the challenges and workarounds faced by entrepreneurs creating hardware products in emerging markets.

This episode is with Washikala of Altech who operate in the Democratic Republic of Congo. We cover what Altech do, and Washikala's personal story as a refugee in Tz, we talk about the model he first developed, why they decided to transition to PAYG, what this process involved and how it was managed, and what the results have been.

This is part of one of a 3-part mini-series on last mile distribution. This series is a collaboration between the Finding Impact Podcast and the Global Distributors Collective (or the GDC). The GDC is a collective of over 140 last mile distribution companies around the world, which helps them reach underserved customers with life-changing products like solar lights, clean cookstoves, water filters, and sanitation and nutrition products.