Join us in the Journey to Transformation: A new series
MENU
Group 2 Created with Sketch Beta.

It’s Time for a New Myth of the Social Entrepreneur

July 23, 2019

By Gary Cohen - Health Care Without Harm

The organizations in the Skoll Foundation portfolio are a leading corps of global change makers. We receive awards, funding, and celebratory fanfare at the annual Skoll World Forum on Social Entrepreneurship. With this mantle comes much expectation.

On a stage in 2006, Robert Redford and Ben Kingsley gave me my Skoll Award. On my one side was the Sundance Kid; on the other side was Gandhi. Talk about pressure! Some say the social entrepreneur is supposed to ride into town on a white horse and save the world. But I don’t know how to ride a horse.

Then there’s the expectation to scale up. If you’ve educated two million girls in India, scale that to 10 million girls. If you’ve saved a third of the Amazon rainforest, scale that to the entire Amazon. If you’ve eliminated mercury thermometers from around the world—as my organization had done—then take that victory and transform the supply chain of the entire global health care sector.

Ambitious organizations have similar dreams to bring their innovations to more places, impact more people, raise more money, and save more of the planet. The expectation is to raise your ambition by at least a magnitude of 10.

That pressure to scale our organizations takes a serious toll on our personal lives. Celebrated as entrepreneurial saviors, we internalize the expectation to make good on the myth. All the travel I have done has made it difficult to create a consistent positive connection with my wife. The persistent travel has also meant that I have not been available to my daughter during critical moments of her childhood. These realities weigh heavily on me.

Resist unreasonable expectations

The expectations on social entrepreneurs also take a toll on our health. There’s always the next meeting to attend, the next conference call that starts in the evening, the next trip to visit a funder that may help us make our budget, the endless hours dealing with money issues and staff issues and coalition partners.  It’s relentless. It’s easy to forget to eat, to drink, to exercise, to see friends. It’s easy to forget to have fun with our spouses and friends and children. It’s easy to put our needs last. It’s an occupational hazard.

Then there is the work itself. The mission. The struggle. The movement. In my life, I work to engage and mobilize the health sector to play a leadership role in addressing the climate crisis as an extension of its healing mission. My organization, Health Care Without Harm, understands that you can’t have healthy people on a sick planet. To support healthy people in healthy communities we need to phase out fossil fuels, toxic chemicals, and industrial agriculture as core public health transformations.

The impact of the climate crisis on human health and environmental devastation is now plain as day. We live in Biblical times, with fires, floods, pestilence, drought, and refugees scattered across the globe. I struggle to hold the enormity of this suffering without it crushing me. I struggle to keep an open heart and respond with power, to anchor myself in integrity and fierce compassion.

A few lessons worth sharing

After faithfully living the larger-than-life myth of the social entrepreneur for over 35 years, I have come to realize a few things worth passing on.

The first is the value of the perspective of time. I have been “all in” building a global movement for environmental health and justice for 35 years. In that time, the world has dramatically changed. I now have a much stronger sense of solidarity with people across the world and across issue areas. Technology has enabled this solidarity as has our expanded understanding of how all our issues intertwine. The struggles of others are my struggles. As this sense of solidarity grows exponentially it can’t be stopped by any regime, by any dictator, by any fake news media apparatus. We are witnessing the maturation of the largest social movement in human history.

What a gift to be part of this movement. This global healing work will continue long after me. I will have been a storyteller for a new myth, where the basic needs of Earth’s residents will trump the rights of corporations that externalize harm for short-term gain. I will have been a mapmaker, charting a path that others can follow. There are still so many chapters in this new story that others far younger than I will be able to tell.

I try to cultivate an attitude of passionate engagement with what must be done, but I try to hold the outcomes of my actions lightly—an attitude hard to cultivate. I know how desperately we need to kick our fossil fuel addiction and stop the violence and corruption it has created all over the world. I want our children to be born toxic free, to have clean air to breathe, clean water to drink, and healthy food to help them grow strong. But I find that holding onto the intention of my actions without attachment to the results allows me to remain centered amidst the maelstrom of this epic struggle for the Earth’s future.

Why large-scale change requires inner work

The second realization I have had is about showing up for myself. If I don’t care for myself, then I am not much use to anyone else. If I am depleted, I’m only more likely to be impatient, resentful, and burdened by the ten thousand things that need to get done. It serves no one to deny my basic needs so I can devote more time to my organization and the movement. I’ve learned that meditation, yoga, and exercise, are essential to my wellbeing. Eating and sleeping well are also critical, as is pursuing activities that replenish me, like walking in the woods.

Self-care isn’t selfish as we try to repair the world. It’s the soul food that makes that work possible. It’s what allows us to be present for those we with whom we work, for those we love, and for all who travel the path with us.

These days I try not to look at e-mail when I spend time with my wife. These days I try to be a full-time dad for my daughter in those precious moments when she needs me most. I try to bring kindness and patience to the people with whom I work. I try to understand their private sorrows, their ardent hopes and dreams.

I don’t believe the story of the social entrepreneur is simply to scale our ambition further, to work in more countries, or raise more money in an endless cycle of expansion.

What about all the social entrepreneurs who have transitioned out of their organizations? Where does all their wisdom and expertise go? Is there a place for them in the broader healing work that continues in every corner of the planet? Why would we replicate the same toxic leadership culture the venture corporate sector has embraced? We should honor the innovation and creativity of our elders and find places for them to pass along their knowledge.

The new story of the social entrepreneur involves stepping into the river of justice and bathing in its healing waters. It means feeling surrounded by ancestors and sages who have bathed in that same river before us. It is to know that millions more will come after we’re gone. It’s all about showing up with whatever gifts we have to share and offering them with humility and grace.

The new story of the social entrepreneur has no white horse. It requires us to be conscious vehicles for healing the Earth and our global community and to know this work is never done.

Want more stories of large-scale change on the world’s most pressing problems? Sign up for Skoll Foundation’s monthly newsletter

“Death Valley”by AndrewSeles is licensed under CC BY-ND 2.0

Related Organizations

No Result