Beyond the Blue Badge podcast host Paul Shoemaker talks with fellow Microsoft alum Ravi Venkatesan. Ravi has spent three decades leading organizations in the private, public and social sectors, across three continents and multiple industries. He was the former chairman and CEO of Microsoft India and founder of Social Venture Partners India. Today he’s UNICEF’s Special Representative for Young People and Innovation, the founder of the Global Alliance for Mass Entrepreneurship (G.A.M.E. India) and a trustee of the Rockefeller Foundation. Paul checked in with Ravi to discuss why his focus these days is centered on youth and helping develop future leaders. (This conversation was recorded during the early days of the coronavirus outbreak.)
• A Korean boy band, looking for leadership in all the wrong places and a new mantra: The most powerful force for change in the world is its youth.
• Theory of Change: Putting the theory to work in his own life and moving from the corporate sector to the nonprofit sector.
• Running experiments to find the next big thing: Finding the right humanitarian problem to tackle.
• Microsoft’s influence: Growing India into a major market for Microsoft; building an enterprise at impact at scale; and creating the world’s largest digital literacy program.
• Creating 1 million jobs: A social experiment; failing miserably; and pivoting to pursue an even larger mission with GAME.
• Live an intentional life: Don’t let others define what success means to you; find the highest value of the gifts you’ve been given and put it to the best possible use; make choices so that every day you respect the person in the mirror more and more.
• Look for the white spaces: In a pandemic – or in any testing time – look for the places where you can make a difference.
Ravi Venkatesan is UNICEF’s Special Representative for Young People and Innovation. He’s also the founder of the Global Alliance for Mass Entrepreneurship in India.
Learn more about UNICEF.
Learn more about UNICEF’s Generation Unlimited program.
Learn more about Global Alliance for Mass Entrepreneurship India.