Social Enterprise – Social Impact Yodas

Our third featured social impact yoda is Keoke King, who is co-founder and CEO of Participant Assistive Products, a social enterprise which designs and produces wheel chairs, strollers, and other assistive products for people with disabilities globally. They are also currently running a WeFunder campaign to provide wheel chairs for kids around the world, if you’d like to support their work!

Keoke, thanks so much for being willing to share about your career path with us. Please start by telling us about your current role working in social impact at your organization, Participant Assistive Products.

I am co-founder and CEO of Participant Assistive Products. We have been bootstrapping for 2 years and have completed 9 iterations of our prototype, a wheelchair for children in lower income countries. My day-to-day involves a lot of Q&A with investors, coordinating our R&D team, and marketing. We have letters of intent for ~4,000 units and have raised about $400k. It looks like we will have production in May and then my role will shift towards sales and building the team.

We chose to start Participant now because this is a pivotal time in the global story of people with disabilities. Because of aging and chronic disease, the population is doubling. At the same time, many nations are adding assistive technology to their national healthcare systems, so there is a viable market opportunity. And, new technologies are opening affordable solutions. All this put a sparkle in my entrepreneurial eye and we set out to democratize assistive products so that none are left behind.

Please briefly share your career path prior to Participant.

I’ve been working in the disability field since I finished my MBA 10 years ago. My work has taken me to many corners of the world, and I have had the opportunity to work with many passionate and highly skilled people. I’ve worked on bigger projects in Indonesia, Nicaragua, and Georgia. I’ve always worked in small companies with less than 50 employees and in dynamic market environments. I’m familiar with a startup environment where decisions are made quickly, and staying in my specialty isn’t practical because there are many different needful things. I really enjoy the marketing and sales aspects of being an entrepreneur, especially where they overlap with product development and teasing out user needs.

What do you find fulfilling about your work? Why did you start Participant?

People with disabilities are the largest minority group on the planet and often the most overlooked. At the same time, working in this space is exhilarating because there are exceptional outcomes available with very little input. One of my favorite moments was following along on a motorcycle behind a guy named Purnomo. He lives uphill on a volcano in Indonesia and rides his wheelchair down to his artist studio. With that income, he has bought his family home, and his kids are on track for lives filled with opportunities in rapidly growing economy. This is a very different story line than that of the 70 million people who need a wheelchair and don’t have one. It is next to impossible for them to be productive. And in otherwise challenging situations, their families often don’t fare well versus the average. I’m delighted to see people achieve so much after becoming mobile and going where they want. With our new for-profit company, we expect the added delight of disrupting our little part of the American medical device industrial complex. It is bent towards extracting dollars from the government, not serving users. Our work abroad, where Medicare doesn’t exist, gives us an advantage in reimagining a lean supply chain that delivers high value to users.

What are the most important skills to succeed in your job? And in your career in general?

Is grit a skill? This work is exceptionally challenging, especially for someone with a preference for social enterprise versus traditional charity-oriented solutions. That’s because disability, even in ‘developed’ countries like ours, is either a charity or government-funded area. Up until recently, few lower-income country governments were buying assistive products for their people. The lack of local government leadership, lack of trained professional clinicians, and lack of funding has made solving problems more challenging. At times the little funding and government leadership available has been unstable, and we’ve seen years of work collapse. But, most things worth doing are not easy.

After grit, I’d say networking skills, speaking and writing, and a human centered design approach to product development.

What advice would you give to others who are looking to work in social impact careers? Should they go to graduate school to make the transition?

No. Please don’t. If you do, go somewhere cheap. Seriously.

Whoever it is that you want to help, my advice is, go over there, move in, and listen. You can get reading lists from wherever, buy the texts for $5 each on hpb.com, and start a book club. Also, follow the real trend. In economies that are really growing, people learn things on Youtube as much as universities. Get a volunteer job at a company that seems to be making a difference, and eventually, if you’re any good, they’ll hire you. If you are no good, then do something different. You’ll be good at something. The great news is you can switch because your diploma isn’t anchoring you to a soul killing job that is necessary for loan payments.

I’d like to see a study that surveys 5,000 Public Administration and International Development grad school candidates 10 years after graduation. I’ll bet 90% would not be in those fields and the reasons would be: #1 pay was too low or unstable (especially when covering a student loan), #2 the office culture was toxic and off mission, and #3 the work was too demanding.

If you don’t have loans then #1 is less of a problem and you can be the firebrand driving hard at #2, with less fear of getting fired. Re: #3, see below.

How do you balance your work/life?

Work-life balance helps is great for selling books and this-season’s-version of Kick Boxing classes. It is a myth and often impractical.

If you want to accomplish a lot, you’ll need to work a lot. And, if there are less resources available – the culture offers less money for progress on that problem – then to make progress, you’ll probably need to work even more. Oh, and you’re doing something hard – not selling a new flavor of booze, a fresh caffeine delivery mechanism, or a sneakier way to monetize privacy.

Good news, you will feel better about the dent in the world that you are making. Meaning is more indicative of happiness than leisure time.

If you’re reading this, then it is likely that your privilege allows you to decide what to spend your life accomplishing. This is one of the most precious choices.

Life lessons learned: Any other general advice you’d like to share about careers?

If you can’t switch, you are not free. So, become awesome at something marketable.

Be loyal if you find a mission and a solution that has real potential.

Don’t be afraid to call foul on toxic, abusive, egoist, or wasteful team situations. The people you are trying to serve deserve the team’s best efforts and you can help move towards that.

Knowing that you don’t understand is the beginning of understanding.

Get up early.

Laugh more.

This is a Q&A with Maureen Klovers, the Director of Social Impact for MPOWER Financing. Among other experiences, she previously taught the urban poor in Ecuador, worked in US Intelligence, was a Presidential Management Fellow for the US Department of Commerce, and helped launch the US Department of Treasury’s State Small Business Credit Initiative.

This profile is in three sections: Maureen’s current role, her professional background, and her career advice.

Current Role

Q: Maureen, thanks so much for volunteering to share about your social impact journey. To start, please share about your social enterprise and your current role.

A: I’m the Director of Social Impact for MPOWER Financing, a fintech startup based in Washington, D.C. that was named the best lender for international students by U.S. News and World Report. We’ve also been named by American Banker as one of the best fintechs to work for three years in a row!

I oversee our scholarship programs and our Path2Success Program, which provides resources on immigration/work authorization, career preparation and financial literacy for our borrowers and other international students. I also serve as a liaison to current or prospective impact investors, and recently my role has expanded to include customer engagement— newsletters, video contests and case competitions, and the like!

We like to say that “when our borrowers succeed, we succeed,” so a lot of my role is just that: ensuring our borrowers succeed!

Q: Why did you join MPOWER? What do you find fulfilling about your work?

A: As I’ve matured, I’ve realized that most of my job satisfaction comes from working with great people to accomplish something meaningful. Intellectual stimulation is also important to me.

During my job interview, I felt like I “clicked” with my potential boss and the team. Plus, I was drawn to MPOWER’s mission and its fast pace. (I didn’t enjoy the slower pace of the government, although there were many other things I did like.)

I constantly try new things and the attitude is “if something doesn’t work, that’s okay—just be sure you learn from it.” That appeals to me a lot, too.

Plus, I think I have one of the best jobs in the company! I give money away to needy, high-potential students and help them achieve their dreams. I also develop cool webinar series, meet lots of interesting people, and do lots of writing.

Q: What are the most important skills to succeed in your job?

A: Our HR team looks for a fit with our mission first, as well as whether you have a strong understanding of our business model. Then they look at whether you have the skills necessary to succeed in your job. In my case, they probed whether I could effectively measure and communicate our social impact, support our fundraising efforts, and grow our scholarship programs.

Professional Background

Q: I’d love to hear more about your background before working at MPOWER.

A: I have an eclectic background, which probably isn’t surprising given that social impact wasn’t even a “thing” when I graduated from college. There was Ben & Jerry’s and that was about it! No one made a career in social impact. So I graduated with a degree in International Relations, and I worked at the first organization which offered me a job, which ended up being in U.S. intelligence! So I worked as an intelligence analyst for several years, before deciding I wasn’t cut out for that life.

I planned to go to grad school, but I wanted to get more “life experience” first, particularly in Latin America. So I moved into a convent with two nuns, a Jesuit priest, and 20+ volunteers in Quito, Ecuador. I taught the urban poor from Quito’s shantytowns. Talk about an education! This experience made such an impact on me that I even wrote a book, In the Shadow of the Volcano: One Ex-Intelligence Official’s Journey through Slums, Prisons, and Leper Colonies to the Heart of Latin America.

From there, I went on to get my MBA and Master of Public Policy from Georgetown. I didn’t realize it at the time, but the dual degree program was a good mix of the business and policy work that I’d later be doing in my social impact work. At the time, though, there seemed to be an unbridgeable divide between those two worlds. I couldn’t imagine two more different sets of classmates!

After Georgetown, I was a Presidential Management Fellow at the Department of Commerce, where I was thrust into managing our troubled $850 million Revolving Loan Fund Program. That was my introduction to both grants and lending. From there, I took a job as the second employee of Treasury’s brand-new $1.5 billion State Small Business Credit Initiative.

Starting a brand-new government program whetted my appetite for entrepreneurship, so once everything was humming along, I quit my job to start my own consulting business, working with universities and state and federal agencies to become more efficient, effective, and outcomes-driven.

And then I had a baby and decided that I wanted to go back to a more “normal” job. When I saw MPOWER’s LinkedIn job posting, it spoke to me, because the role combines my entrepreneurial streak with my experience in lending, grants, education, and outcomes measurement, plus my passion for exploring other cultures and crossing cultural divides.

As a side gig, to keep my creative juices flowing, I moonlight as a mystery writer!

Career Advice

Q: How did you find your current position?

A: LinkedIn! I know everyone always says that you have to network to get a job, but that’s not always true. If you see a job that appeals to you, apply! Also, don’t limit yourself. I only met two-thirds of their “must-have” criteria…and I still got the job. Studies show that men typically apply for a job if they meet half the criteria, while women won’t apply unless they meet all the criteria.

How to Transition into a Social Impact Career

Q: What advice to you have for those aspiring to a career in social impact?

A: Hone in one what industry you want to work for and what functional skills you can bring to the table. There’s no one way to do social impact. Most roles focus on measuring and driving impact, but typically you’re expected to also support the bottom line, whether it be by launching initiatives that drive social impact and brand recognition/sales volume (e.g., our scholarship program helps students while also serves as an effective marketing channel and means of garnering good will from the universities we support) or by supporting fundraising efforts (e.g., by cultivating relationships with grant-making organizations or impact-focused equity or debt investors). Know what YOUR value proposition is and then be able to communicate it.

So if you’re already a marketing or communications professional, emphasize that. If you have a finance background, figure out how to parlay that into a social impact role.

What if you don’t have much relevant professional experience? Then try to join a nonprofit board, or volunteer to write grant applications for a nonprofit. Or, if you’re still in school, join NetImpact and enter social impact-focused case competitions. Winning a competition or having a leadership role in NetImpact is a great way to showcase your talent.

Finally, prep for informational interviews and job interviews like a pro. Be sure you can connect the dots on your résumé and showcase both your passion for the organization’s mission and how you can accelerate their double bottom line impact.

Is Grad School Necessary?

Q: Should an individual go to graduate school to make the transition into social impact?

A: That depends. If you love school and someone else is paying for it, or you are getting a full scholarship, or you’re independently wealthy, then definitely! If not, though, you want to think about whether the cost is justified.

Very few social impact jobs really require you to have a specialized degree in a social impact-related degree program, and such programs are few and far between anyway. If you were going to get a degree, I’d suggest a Master’s of Business Administration at a school that has a very strong social impact focus; then, once you being the program, get a leadership position in NetImpact, compete in social impact case competitions, take social impact-focused coursework, and do internships and consulting work for social impact firms.

But for most people, you’re probably better off spending a portion of the time and money you would have spent on another degree to (a) do a year-long volunteer assignment at a social enterprise abroad, or (b) accept a lower salary to work in a job that will leverage your current experience while getting you exposure to the field of social impact. Either of these options will give you more practical experience than a degree at a fraction of the cost.

Work-Life Balance

Q: How do you balance your work/life, especially with having a young child and working full-time?

A: I’m very fortunate that my company actively discourages working nights and weekends. Being a parent is tough on any career, but social impact jobs are generally more family-friendly. However, in some social impact jobs (particularly those focused on micro-enterprise in the developing world, or those that are investor-facing), there could be significant travel, so be sure to ask about that.

Other Relevant Life Lessons

A: First of all, don’t sacrifice your personal life for work.

Second, the “following your passion” advice is terrible: it leads too many young people to pursue passions that don’t allow them to earn a decent living and/or to agonize about finding the perfect, most fulfilling career. Instead, figure out what you’re good at, that people will actually pay you a decent salary to do. Then narrow it further based on the lifestyle you want (if you are a homebody, being a McKinsey consultant won’t work; if you’re a city girl, don’t work in forestry) and your personality type (do you want to manage people, or are you more of a lone wolf?). That will help narrow down your job function and maybe your industry. Then research organizations which would allow you to do those jobs while fitting with your values. Then narrow further by figuring out which organizations have a work culture you’d like.

Third, a lot of people think about switching careers when they just need to switch jobs. Being miserable in your job may not mean you need a new career – you may need a new organization or a new boss.

Fourth, when you interview, it’s not just about you being chosen, but it’s also about you choosing them. Approach an interview almost like a date; put your best foot forward and make sure you’re not only answering questions, but asking them. Try to get a feel for your potential co-workers and whether you’re truly a good fit. Ask yourself: is this the right boss for me? Do our work styles mesh well? Will I learn something from this person? Can we communicate well?

Finally, cut yourself some slack. Remember that no one really has everything figured out. Lots of people in their 30s and 40s (myself included) are still trying to decide “what they want to be when they grow up”…and that’s probably a good thing. The world of work is changing so fast that the last job you have before retirement is probably one that hasn’t even been invented yet. So being willing to leap to a new field is a sign that you’re curious and committed to lifelong learning.