The
Purpose-Driven
Social Entrepreneur
Karim Abouelnaga
Preface
This book was written by someone who exudes passion, for people who at some point in their lives have been passionate about something, and for anyone who wants to make decisions with more intention and purpose. My journey as a social entrepreneur, an eighteen-year-old founder, an executive director of a nonprofit, and a CEO of a public benefit corporation has heavily influenced this book. This book sets out to help you answer the questions: How do you know when you’ve found a passion that is worth pursuing? How do you live a life of purpose without losing your passion? How do you start something meaningful?
I have experienced the highs and the lows of being a social entrepreneur. There have been moments along my journey that have forced me to question the significance of my work, whether I was on the right path, and whether I could sustain the work I was doing with the financial, emotional, and psychological toll it takes on me daily.
My purpose is to improve public education to ensure that all kids have an equal chance at fulfilling their life’s ambitions. My goal is that everyone who finishes this book will at some point in the near future speak their purpose into existence with the same level of conviction that I have in mine. Only then can we create a world of more engaged, intentional people whose collective actions inspire the billions of people on this planet to do more good.
Introduction
I spent my freshman year of college at the City University of New York’s Baruch College. Just before that, my older brother and I had graduated from Long Island City High School in the same year. Because our parents came from little means and were immigrants in the United States, my siblings and I wound up attending some of New York City’s most struggling public schools. Our high school had well over 4,000 students when I was a freshman, with roughly 1,400 in my freshman class, but just under 530 in my graduating class. Of the kids who graduated, only a fifth were estimated to be college-ready. While the societal expectations were never truly that high, it took me several years to fully understand why.
My first semester at Baruch had wrapped up and I had received a 4.0 GPA. Excited by the news, I reached out to a few adults that I had started to develop relationships with, many of whom I had met through a nonprofit I participated in when I was in high school called Rewarding Achievement (REACH). Encouraged by their responses, I took a leap of faith and decided I was going to transfer colleges.
I realized that I had gone about my college application process all wrong the first time around. Instead of applying to a school that was well regarded for the major I wanted to pursue, I should have applied to the school or university that was the best school I could possibly get into—you know, just in case I decided to change majors or pursue something else, which I eventually wound up doing.
After a visit to Cornell University in February of 2010, I decided I was going to apply to their School of Hotel Administration. My senior year of high school I was rejected from Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). It was the only other school besides Baruch that I put a meaningful amount of effort into getting into. I visited the campus and went on an alumni interview. Unfortunately, or fortunately, it did not work out.
Nonetheless, the rejection from MIT bruised my ego, and I never anticipated I would apply to another elite school. Until I visited Cornell. At the time, I was working at an aquatic center when my boss had a friend who was going up to visit the university. She suggested that I spend the weekend with her and check out the campus and see what it had to offer. Initially, I didn’t jump on the opportunity, but eventually decided to take advantage of it and made the trip. Besides, I had a childhood friend there whom I could visit and spend time with if I really was not enjoying the trip.
When we finally got to Cornell on a bitter-cold day in February, I asked my childhood friend Nick to meet up. I got to see his studio and meet some of his friends, all of whom were normal-looking and -acting people. For some weird reason, after I got rejected by MIT, I thought all of the kids who were at these top colleges and universities were brainiacs of some sort. Since I was not a brainiac, I figured that not getting into MIT was for the better. Nick’s friends may have been brainiacs, but I could not tell in the couple of hours I had known them. In fact, the topic of advanced placement (AP) courses and tests taken in high school came up, and Nick’s friends openly shared how they had scored poorly on some of the same ones that I had gotten threes and fours on. (AP tests are scored on a scale of one to five, with one being the lowest and five being the highest, and if you score a three, you usually get college credit.) That discovery led me to believe that I might actually fit in on one of these campuses, and that maybe I should consider applying to transfer.
When I asked Nick and his friends what school I should apply to, they initially suggested I apply for the applied economics and management program in the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences. I laughingly said I did not want to be a farmer. That was when they suggested the School of Hotel Administration. It was sort of like a business school, but they focused on hotels and restaurants. Oh, and by the way, they said the kids there were pretty cool.
I got back after the long weekend, and I could not stop thinking about getting into Cornell and the School of Hotel Administration. I started thinking about my personal statement, and I started looking into scholarships. It was like senior year of high school all over again, except this time I was a lot more excited. I felt like I had found the perfect school for myself. Surprisingly, this was also where my journey of purpose really started. While I do believe there is an element of choice about what to focus your life on, I also recognize that there is an element of serendipity, where you find yourself engaged in something that means so much to you.
One of the scholarships I ran across was funded by the United Negro College Fund and Coca-Cola. In 2009, McKinsey & Company had just published a report on the impact of the achievement gap in America’s schools. The report was a huge deal in education and showed that the gaps between blacks and whites were costing the economy over $300 billion in GDP each year, which was the economic equivalent of a permanent national recession. The gaps between kids who were rich and kids who were poor had a negative economic impact that was almost twice that. One of the report’s conclusions was that we could avoid the economic downturns that existed if we were able to close the gaps in achievement between black and white kids and rich and poor kids. This was especially pertinent in 2009 because of the housing bubble that led to one of the biggest recessions since the dot-com bubble burst and the Great Depression. The significance of the report was compounded by the United States Census’s findings that the demographics in America were changing much more quickly than previously anticipated. In fact, where the disparities were widest, among white and nonwhite children, nonwhite children were expected to make up more than 50 percent of the school-aged population by 2023. Recent data has shown that we have reached that point in 2015.
The scholarship offered a $10,000 award to any student who could come up with a solution for the achievement gap that involved corporate intervention. I still remember how puzzled I was originally. I did not know what the achievement gap was or how corporations functioned. I had never heard anyone around me reference the disparities in achievement between my friends and me and some other kids somewhere else as an achievement gap before. And none of my parents or immediate family members worked for a corporation. As such, I was limited in my understanding of what a company could do to solve this problem that I believed I was completely unfamiliar with. No
netheless, I wanted $10,000 to transfer to Cornell. I figured I could learn the things I did not know with a little bit of research. After all, there was a significant amount of money on the line.
In my quest to understand corporations and the achievement gap, I discovered how wrong I was initially. I knew the achievement gap and the disparities that existed much more intimately than I had anticipated. My entire childhood could be summed up by achievement gaps. I found myself enamored with what I was learning, then I found myself consumed, and shortly after I was frustrated.
For months, as I prepared my application for Cornell, I researched the inequalities in education. I tried to further understand the problems in education. I did not just care about the proposal; I wanted to solve the problem. How could such a well-defined and simply articulated problem be so hard to address? That was just the beginning. As I started to work with my advisor, I began to understand why the solutions to this challenge of the achievement gap had alluded practitioners for so long. An element of the problems was believed to be genetic, and thus inherited. An element of the problems was believed to be environmental, and thus could be changed, but are complicated to change in a society that incentivized those who were motivated to take on more and do more.
After months of work, I submitted a solution that I believed had some merit. The research I was running across showed that the more engaged parents were in their children’s learning, the better their academic outcomes were. There was this trickle-down effect. While I loved my mother dearly, she rarely if ever tried to help me with my homework, largely because she herself did not understand what I was doing in school.
I started to think back to my own schooling, and I remembered the concept of fractions being introduced to me as early as fourth grade, and then it was repeated every year after. Maybe the essential years of parental involvement are early on. It seemed that if kids had a solid foundation, then they could rely on it for the years to come.
I proposed a compulsory learning program for parents in low-income neighborhoods who had children under the age of eleven, right around the transition between elementary school and middle school. My advisor at the time questioned the viability of another social welfare program at the time where our country was undergoing a major financial restructuring to keep up with the recession. I remember pushing back and saying there would be no additional funds necessary to put such a program together; we would just tweak the already existing incentives. Growing up in a low-income household, I knew the various types of support that our family relied on: EBT benefit card, Social Security income, Medicaid, food stamps, etc. Instead of adding more funds, I thought, what if we instead made it an obligatory requirement for the parents receiving the assistance with children under the age of eleven to dedicate some time, an hour or two a week, to learn the material they needed to help their kids succeed? I believed the simple act of the parents’ trying to learn would inspire the kids to work a little harder and mimic their parents. We could test the parents monthly or quarterly, and if they did well, then we could boost their welfare slightly. If they did not engage, we could shock or suspend their aid as an incentive to work. Besides, their child’s education or lack of education did not just impact them; it took a toll on society. This was their social obligation.
A week after I submitted this proposal, which I thought was brilliant, I was assured how horrible an idea it was. I asked one of my friend’s parents if they were asked to partake in such a program what it would mean. They laughed. Fortunately or unfortunately, the money is controlled by the adults. He mentioned that if money were taken away from him, then the money would just be taken away from his kids. It did not affect him as much. He would still prioritize the things that he wanted. It was a sobering moment for me after the months of hard work on this idea and proposal.
I never won the scholarship or the award. I did not even receive an honorable mention. Rightfully so. I ignored a critical part of the instructions. I never figured out how to weave in corporations to help address the achievement gap. But the frustration and burning desire to solve this problem stayed with me. I carried it in my heart, in my mind, and in my pocket, where the $10,000 check I never received would have been held until I arrived in Ithaca to start my sophomore year at Cornell.
Part i: Purpose
How do you find your purpose? How did you find your purpose? Those are two of the most frequently asked questions I get after delivering a talk or visiting a university. It may be that I speak to a selective audience of people who care more about figuring out how to make their lives count, or maybe we’re entering a period of time where people are questioning what the purpose of money is and whether there’s meaning behind it.
The proliferation of media and social media has raised awareness of human pain and suffering globally. Sharing information and research on disparities and inequality has never been easier. With eight people in the world now controlling just as much wealth as the 4 billion people who make up the poorest half of the world (according to Oxfam), we now know that money alone will not solve the large-scale problems, like hunger, sex trafficking, and racism.
In a world with so many social problems and challenges (or opportunities if you’re entrepreneurial), how do you know which one to dedicate your life to solving? And how do you know this is your purpose?
In order to unpack those questions, you need to understand the difference between passion and purpose. Passions are the simple things in life that we enjoy doing, things that encompass everything from a deep burning desire to make sure everyone is treated equally to an activity or a hobby like riding your bike or painting. While the vast majority of the things you are passionate about will never materialize into your life’s purpose or be purpose-driven work, I do not believe you can run into purpose without first engaging in your passions. Ultimately, it is passion that will fuel your purpose.
This first section takes you through the questions that mattered to me, the ones I believe people engaged in their purpose can answer with conviction.
Chapter One
Starting from Scratch
Question 1: Why Is This Important?
“We don’t accomplish anything in this world alone . . . and whatever happens is the result of the whole tapestry of one’s life and all the weavings of individual threads from one to another that creates something.”
—Sandra Day O’Connor
This is the first of my six purpose-finding or purpose-framing questions. The first question helps you understand if what you are spending your time trying to solve or address is even worthwhile. Being able to articulate why the topic or the issue you care about is an important one also ensures that you will be able to find other people in the world who care about this problem—because no one ever solves anything worthwhile single-handedly.
The most important piece about framing your issue is to make it big enough to pass what I call the “requiring help test.” When I was first starting Practice Makes Perfect, I did not ask people to come and help me put together a summer program for thirty fourth-grade students in my neighborhood in Long Island City, Queens. Anyone Most really big, successful things start really small. The purpose of starting small is to test your initial hypothesis and assumptions. Sometimes you are limited to starting really small because you do not have a lot of resources, or maybe you are like me and you are in college without access to a lot of money. In fact, starting small allows you to get the kinks out and get some initial results that could get more people interested and excited about your work. Your job as the leader of the initiative is to inspire others to join you and help grow your solution to the identified issue.
If you are a social entrepreneur or someone who is constantly trying to raise money or lobbying for a cause, the first question after you establish yourself as credible is inevitably “why is this important?” There are millions of causes and organizations out there. Everything from poverty to homelessness to s
ex trafficking to immigration reform to new problems that arise daily because of the internet is an issue. As the space becomes more and more crowded, the question “why is the problem or the cause you are spending your life working on important?” matters even more. who knew me then would have probably looked at me and said, “Karim, you are smart and hardworking, and I am sure you would be good without my help.” And they would have been absolutely right if that was all I was trying to do! Instead, I reached out to them and I framed the problem I was trying to address in a much larger context. I went around telling people that I wanted to narrow the achievement gap.
From McKinsey’s 2009 report on the impact of the achievement gap on America’s schools, I found that the achievement gap was costing our economy upwards of $300 billion each year, which was the economic equivalent of a permanent national recession. When I was fundraising or trying to get others to volunteer their time or even commit themselves to joining my team, I would lead by telling them that the problem I was trying to address directly impacted our economy. It was not just about educational equity or running a summer program. We had an opportunity to do something that could help improve our economy.
This passed the requiring help test. The problem was so big and so important that someone who heard me say I wanted to address it would react by thinking, “Karim, you are smart and hardworking, and I am sure you are going to need my help to be able to make a dent in solving this problem.” This encourages others who care about this problem or some facet of it to be compelled to support you in your journey.
Of course, in your first couple of years you may not even be significant enough to make any sort of impact on the problem. In my case, I was always thinking about ways to increase our impact. I had my eyes set on the bigger social issue of the achievement gap and creating a more equitable society. If I was ever going to make any headway in addressing those social ailments, then I would have to get people to see why this problem was so large and important while simultaneously doing what I was capable of to get the initiative going.
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