Leila Janah Quotes
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I think the philosophy that you have to have if you travel frequently is, stuff is just stuff. Even if it has some sentimental or family connection, if you lose it in the world, it's still just a thing, and I think if you don't have that attitude, you will get incredibly stressed out and not enjoy your travels.
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I used to think my job as a CEO meant managing metrics and meeting goals, but I've realised now that's it's about managing my board and employees.
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Most of us working on poverty alleviation simply want to know, 'How much poverty can I reduce for every dollar I donate?'
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Much like the opportunities that factory work provided for working-class Americans in the last century, microwork will provide opportunities for marginalized people in this one. All they really need is basic literacy, a cheap computer, and an internet hookup.
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Sama means 'equal' in Sanskrit; I chose 'Samasource' because I thought it really reflected a value that I had and that I wanted the company to have, which is that everyone has equal capabilities and deserves an equal chance.
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I wish the city of San Francisco, bastion of liberalism, were more innovative when it comes to how to spread the wealth.
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Barbies were banned at our house, along with television other than PBS. As a kid, I found this horribly embarrassing.
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The thing that the Internet does is it allows labor to move freely across borders in the way that capital does but, traditionally, labor cannot. So the Internet frees workers to be based anywhere and work for employers anywhere.
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We know what happens when a woman earns money. She is far more likely than a man to spend her earnings on the health and education of her children and to invest in improving her family's standard of living.
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They say a picture is worth a thousand words. In the nonprofit world, the right picture is worth tens of thousands of dollars. I use PhotoPad to sync our Samasource Flickr account to my iPad and slip it out of my purse at cocktail parties to tell our story.
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Technology is a tough realm to navigate as a younger woman who is not married. It can be hard to cultivate professional relationships because you have to be conscious of how to engage potential investors.
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I love dancing and practiced ballet for ten years until I realized I wouldn't make it professionally - then I started taking salsa classes. I learned to dance samba in Rio and Salvador when I lived in Brazil.
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Labor looks different in the 21st century. And so should our job training programs.
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I think the way you build a company for the future has to include social impact; it has to be part of the fabric of your company. I think when you do that, you invariably end up with much better outcomes, even in the short-term.
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My personal style comes from jugaad, a Hindi word meaning doing more with less.
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It's much easier for people to compare wages or identify bad employers or discuss bad labor practices in the Internet economy than it was in, say, a factory environment, where that stuff wasn't usually published or available.
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I'd worked at the World Bank briefly as an undergrad and studied poverty levels around the world - particularly those earning less than $1.25 a day.
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In terms of environmental impact, Samasource jobs are very green. Our product is human intelligence, and it's transported through the Internet rather than via carbon-intensive trucking, shipping, and warehousing.
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I love adventure. When I'm not working or on the road, you can find me in my favorite spots around the Mission neighborhood of S.F., kitesurfing in the Bay or dancing.
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I grew up believing in meritocracy and the American dream. My parents came here from India. They had no connections. My brother and I went to public schools, and both of us succeeded.
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Social business lies in the spectrum of possibility between the traditional, profit-maximizing business, which directs little to no profit to doing good, and the traditional charity, which relies mostly on donations to sustain itself.
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Traditional charity is still fairly focused on how it makes donors feel as opposed to outcomes for people that need help.
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Handouts are not going to end global poverty, but work - real work - just might.
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Impact sourcing, a new initiative piloted by the Rockefeller Foundation and several key partners, including my company Samasource, promises to connect poor and marginalized people to digital jobs on a massive scale.