The Business of Giving

Have you read and studied and thought about what you need to do to be a more effective leader? My next guest suggests that a good place to start would be thinking a bit less about you and more about the people around you. She is Anne Morriss, Executive Founder of The Leadership Consortium and Co-author of Unleashed: The Unapologetic Leader’s Guide to Empowering Everyone Around You.

Every day, we make hundreds of decisions. Although many of these choices don't seem to contain an ethical component, we would be well-served to examine that carefully. In so doing, we just might find ourselves doing more good and creating greater value for the world around us. This is the subject of a new book by award-winning scholar and Harvard Business School Professor Max Bazerman titled Better, Not Perfect: A Realist's Guide to Maximum Sustainable Goodness.

When a society becomes as polarized and, in many ways, dysfunctional, as America has become, there comes a point when more and more citizens begin to look around and wonder: Is there a better way? My next guest answers that with an emphatic "Yes!" and has started a movement where citizens committed to finding solutions can work together to address our biggest challenges. He is Bill Shireman, the CEO of Future 500 and Co-author of the just released book In This Together: How Republicans, Democrats, Capitalists, and Activists are Uniting to Tackle Climate Change and More

Philanthropy can only be as effective as the ecosystem in which it operates, whether that's a community, the nation, or the world, and those ecosystems are under tremendous stress at the moment. So, to help provide us some context to better understand what is happening. It's a pleasure to have with us a person who's a master of connecting dots that help explain where we are. She's Anne-Marie Slaughter, author, professor, and the CEO of New America, an action tank dedicated to renewing the promise of America.

And it's indeed a pleasure for me to welcome to the show the Chief Executive Officer of one of the eight semi-finalists of the MacArthur Foundation’s 100&Change competition. She is Beverley Postma, the CEO of HarvestPlus

And this evening’s semi-finalist is the Human Diagnosis Project, also referred to as Human Dx. And here to tell us about it is their President and CEO, Jay Komarneni.

Brewster Kahle, founder of the Internet Archive, and Wendy Hanamura, its Director of Partnerships, dive into the ambitious mission to create a digital Library of Alexandria. They discuss the challenge of digitizing out-of-print books and the methods used to choose four million titles for scanning. Brewster elaborates on the digital lending model and the role of libraries in this transformation. The duo emphasizes how greater accessibility can profoundly benefit diverse communities, alongside navigating the complexities of copyright. Their vision aims to broaden public knowledge and empower global learners.

And this evening, we'll be joined by our second semi-finalist, Catholic Relief Services, who is looking to change how society cares for children and orphanages with the aim of getting them into family settings. And with us to discuss it is their President and CEO, Sean Callahan.

And this evening, you’re going to hear from another one of the semi-finalists in the 100&Change initiative of the MacArthur Foundation. He is Dr. Geoffrey Tabin, the Co-founder of the Himalayan Cataract Project.

And we have reached the midpoint of featuring the eight semi-finalists of the MacArthur Foundation’s 100&Change competition. And tonight, it is a great pleasure to have with us Dr. Rebecca Richards-Kortum, the Founder and Co-director of Rice University’s 360°: Institute for Global Health.