My Taxi Driver Throw Me Out...

Tahmina Kohistani (Credit: The Telegraph, London)

Tahmina Kohistani is what this blog is all about:

“My taxi driver throw me out on the street when I told him I was training for Olympics,” said Tahmina Kohistani, Afghanistan’s only woman at the Games, in the halting English she had learned through mail-order language courses. “He said, ‘Get behind the man. You are disgrace to Muslim women.’ My coach fought other men outside the stadium where I train because they do not think I should run. But my country will remember me forever one day. They will see I am the right one and other girls will watch me and I will tell them, ‘Come, run with me. Run with me, Tahmina.’ ”

Who could fail to pull for this underdog?

(Full story.)

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100 Days of Gratitude - Day 30: Steve Rogers

Steve Rogers

"F&%k, f&%k, f&%k...!"

On September 26, 2005, Steve Rogers joined GlobalGiving as Director of Engineering.  He picked up where Scott McLoughlin left off,  and there was good news and bad news.

The good news was that we were getting traction.  We had tens of thousands of users, and large partners (including innovative companies) were asking us to add more and more features.

The bad news was that we still did not have a lot of resources.  Steve had a couple of coders working with him, but good technical expertise was hard to come by in the Washington DC region in those days, especially at the rates we could pay at the time.

Like a contestant in one of those world's strongest men contests, Steve came in with a scowl and roar. He picked up an inhuman workload and seemed to toss it physically around the office.  (Someone told me one day Steve reminded him of Iorek Byrnison.)

Asking him to add a feature to site or fix a long-standing bug was always a dangerous proposition, eliciting a loud response that it was impossible, that it required ten people, that it would happen when hell froze over, and that no one understood anything about how tech worked.  Many on the team feared him, and some were scared to approach him.

Over the past seven years, Steve has touched over 2.1 million lines of code, presiding over extraordinary growth in traffic and functionality on the site.  When he took over, he realized that the only viable way forward was to retrofit our fledgling single engine airplane into a jumbo jet - while flying it! First he replaced the engines, then he lengthened the wings, then he added an entire new body to the jet.  All this without losing altitude, much less landing.

I will never forget the first day that I watched Marisa Glassman from our business partnership team approach Steve to ask for a new feature.  Some of her colleagues were crouched down behind their desks to avoid the expected shrapnel.  Instead, the two sat there talking quietly, and in the end Marisa walked calmly back to her computer and started working again.

In amazement, one of her colleagues asked what happened.  "He said he would try to get it done in the next two weeks," Marisa replied.  "Holy cow, how did that happen?" her colleague wondered.  "Oh, Steve's a real pussy cat; you just need to know how to handle him," Marisa said.

Marisa was right, Steve is a pussy cat, even if he can seemingly lift a thousand pounds.  One of Steve's colleagues, Kevin Conroy, says:

Although he probably doesn't want his ice hockey opponents to know it, he's one of the most caring guys you're likely to come across and is always looking for ways to make sure that everyone is taking care of themselves and their families in addition to getting their work done.

Because of this, Steve has been able to build a tech team second to none.  I admire his ability to find, motivate, and lead people more than I can say.  Kevin continues:

He's the reason that we can handle traffic spikes when we get a shout out on Oprah. Why our system doesn't crash when tens of thousands of people come to support Japan relief, and the reason why our tech team is among the best in the industry. His no-nonsense, results driven leadership inspires those who work for him.

Amen to that, brother.  And thank you, Steve.

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100 Days of Gratitude - Day 29: Scott_Mc

Scott_Mc

In the beginning was the Code, and the creator of the Code was Scott_Mc.

Scott McLoughlin, that is. The date was early 2003, and we were reeling. The first version of GlobalGiving, which we called DevelopmentSpace, was going nowhere fast. We had launched about a year earlier, and all of our hopes for viral adoption by millions of donors had proven to be naive. The first version of our site was good technically and had a lot of cool features, but the overall design was poor. We had few users, little throughput, and minimal revenue.

We knew the site needed major surgery, including changing the name to something people actually understood. But were running out of cash fast, and we could barely pay our skeletal staff, let alone afford any major changes to the sophisticated code powering our beta site.

It was incredibly dark days, and I could not see how we were going to make it. We searched around in desperation for someone who could help us on the tech side, and we found Scott McLoughlin, who someone told us was good. When I looked at his CV, I saw that he was a philosophy major in college, but he seemed to have done some decent technical work at a company he co-founded called Adrenaline.

Scott came in to meet us and looked at things and seemed terribly annoyed, but he agreed to help. He went into hibernation with part of the team for a week or two. And then he came in to the office one morning with a big smile on his face.

"Listen, when you are in a jam like this there is only one way forward," he proclaimed.

"What's that?" Mari and I replied.

"Bunt!" Scott said.

"What do you mean bunt?"

"Bunt means we come to grips with the fact that we can't support the old code, and so we just take it all down and start from scratch."

"From scratch?" I nearly screamed. We had spent the previous year pouring our hearts and soul into the existing code, which was costly and sophisticated. The idea of scrapping it was crazy.

"Yes, from scratch," Scott replied. "Working on the old code base will cost a fortune, and that's a fortune we don't have." I noticed he used the word we, which I liked. He continued: "So we are going to take it all down and start again and since we don't have any money we are just going to code the barest features that are critical for the site to take donations."

Scott was right. We could not afford to keep the old site even if we wanted to. So we gave him the green light, and he closeted himself with a couple of our young staff, including Edouard Valla, for several weeks. None of our staff had any real coding experience, but that didn't matter to Scott; he would teach them.They worked sporadic hours in intense bursts - usually very late at night. Edouard would sometimes complain that they could have gotten home earlier if Scott had not intermittently subjected them to long lectures on Wittgenstein, Hegel, and Spinoza, whose work seemed to bear no relation to what we were doing. But Scott and team delivered.

For the next year, we bunted.  And it worked.  We relaunched a painfully simple site under our new name, and we slowly began to attract users.  Over time, we built more features on top of that initial code but much of the DNA of "Bunt" remained in place over the years, even well after Scott left.  New tech guys, after poring over the code for a few days and seeing annotations by the main authors, would almost always ask: "Who the heck is this guy Scott_Mc? He's everywhere!"

Only in 2012 did our tech guys announce that the last of Scott_Mc's Code was gone. Yet most of our team has never met Scott, and few realize that GlobalGiving would probably not be around today without him.  Recently Forbes Magazine named us one of the top ten startups changing the world.  Today I want to salute and thank Scott, and to make sure the world knows that we could not have done it without him.

***

PS: Here are the very first lines of Code Scott wrote for us:

<!-- Begin of Content -->
<pre style="font-family: Georgia; font-size: 10pt; margin-left: 30pt">
The most promising site for direct international grantmaking is now easier to remember.
GlobalGiving.com is your source for some of the most innovative, high-impact development
projects on the planet.  And with the added transparency you get with GlobalGiving.com,
you know exactly where you donation is going and how much of it is getting there. </pre>
<font face="Georgia" size="4" color="#FFA500"><b>Give Globally, starting June 1, 2003</b></font>

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If You Don't Like Gay Marriage...

Yesterday I went to a fundraiser to support the new Maryland law extending marriage to same-sex couples. As I wrote out my check, I suddenly stopped and thought how archaic the whole thing felt. How, in the year 2012, could this struggle for equal rights still be going on? It felt ridiculous.  


Over two hundred years ago, the founding fathers of the new United States declared independence.  In doing so, they said that they found certain truths to be "self-evident."  Namely, that "all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness." 


The last two hundred years have been a steady struggle to realize the ideal set out by our founding fathers.  In one sense, the progress we have made is heartening; whatever our country's faults, it has shone a light for equal rights for the whole world to see, and in doing so it has been an inspiration for many.  But in another sense, it is disheartening to see how long it has taken for slaves, women, blacks, and now same-sex couples to attain the rights that they deserved all along. 

There will be bumps in the road and political and legal setbacks for the marriage equality movement in the months and years ahead.  But soon, same-sex rights will be secured, and we will all look back in amazement that it took so long.  Those who voted against these rights will feel embarrassed in front of their grandchildren, in the same way those who voted for Jim Crow laws aren't able to look their grandkids in the eye.


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Economists vs. Entrepreneurs, 5th of July Edition

I was trained mostly in economics, but lately I have been more of an entrepreneur. The mindsets could not be more different, and they color the way I respond to arguments such as the one I blogged about recently.

One of the key concepts you learn in Econ 101 is tradeoffs.  Basically, if you get more of one thing, you generally have to take less of another thing to compensate.  Diagram I below shows a curve called a Production Possibility Frontier.   The idea is that if you are anywhere on the curve, you face a tradeoff.  For example, if you are at B, you can have more production, but in return you must do less maintenance.  (Note that "production" and "maintenance"are just example variables.  We could substitute "work output" and "free time with family" if we wanted.)

Optimistic economists assume that we are at point D, not point A or B. If you are at D, then you can have both more work output and free time if you work more efficiently.  Much of the work I did as an economist at the World Bank was helping advise countries on how to get from point D to somewhere on the possibility frontier.  But we didn't know how to get to point C, which lies beyond the frontier.  We noticed that the curve does shift outward over time, as in Diagram II below, but we didn't really understand why, and could not come up with policy prescriptions to make it happen.

Dagram I

Entrepreneurs, by contrast, take things into their own hands and try to invent a new machine, technology, process, or idea that will shift the entire curve outward.  The net result of this is to alleviate the tradeoffs seen in Diagram I (though, of course it is true that a new set of tradeoffs are introduced).  The evolution of smart phones is an oft-used example of this, where more and more features and capacity were invented, reducing tradeoffs significantly.  We can now talk on the phone while surfing the web and using several apps at the same time.  This is a vivid example, but there are many more.

Diagram II

Just because entrepreneurs believe they can shift the curve doesn't make it happen; most entrepreneurs fail repeatedly (I have).  New business ideas fail most of the time - 58 times for every success, by one measure.  But entrepreneurs don't give up.  They just keep trying again and again. And when they succeed, they push the possibility frontier outwards, bit by bit.

100 Days of Gratitude - Day 28: "Mood"

Mood and me, 1998.

One hundred and three years ago yesterday, my mom's mother, Neima Linnea Lepisto Johnson, was born.  Her parents were Finnish immigrants to the Fall River, MA area in the early 1900s. The Finnish word for Grandmother is "Mummu," which we shortened over time to "Mood."

Yesterday, Mood died in her sleep at her nursing home in Manchester, NH, where she had been a resident for many years.

One of my first memories of Mood was when she and my grandfather ("Opa" - the son of Swedish immigrants) arrived at our house in Leitchfield, KY by car in summer of 1967 or '68.  We ran out into the yard to greet them, and she opened the trunk and pulled out a croquet set.  We were overjoyed, and we played with that set for many years.  There are probably pieces of it still in my mom's basement somewhere.

Her visits were always a delight.  On one trip, she taught me how to play the piano (I remember, in particular, "See the witch / Fly through space / On the moon she has a base...").  On another, she taught me how to knit (though she later discouraged me from continuing, telling me that it was for girls!).

There has been a lot of talk lately about the importance of persistence in life.  I didn't appreciate how much Mood embodied that lesson until I ran across her report card from 1923-24.  She was struggling in the first reporting period (Sept-Oct), maybe because her father had died.  But look what happened by the end of the year (click to enlarge).  By any measure, Mood was a straight-A grandmother.

What Star Trek Can Teach Us About Having it All

Watch a political talk show on TV, and chances are you will see people talking - often yelling - past each other.  They don't actually listen to what the others are saying, because their main objective is to score points, win the argument, or advance an agenda.  Rarely do you hear the words "Oh, I see what you are saying - that's a fair point.  In fact, because of what you just said, I want to modify my stance to better reflect reality."

I was reminded of this when I read all the hullabaloo surrounding Anne-Marie Slaughter's recent piece in the Atlantic about the impediments to women "having it all."  This followed on the heels of Sheryl Sandberg's speech last year exhorting women to step up to the plate and make the effort and sacrifices necessary to rise the the most senior positions in business and government.

Slaughter's piece resonated with a lot of women, because she talked candidly about the challenges that even she (as a privileged woman) faced in playing at the A level in the foreign policy arena in Washington.  She pointed out how much more severe the tradeoffs are for the vast majority of less well-off women who aim for professional achievement as well as having a family.  She ended with thoughts on how some changes in work practices and norms could help alleviate some of the tradeoffs.

Other readers were furious; they read the article differently.  Lori Gottlieb, for example, perceived Slaughter as arguing (some even said "whining") that women should be able to have it all without making tradeoffs.  Friends of mine whose opinion I respect a lot, such as Bill Easterly, had the same reaction, and many pointed out that men have to make tradeoffs as well. Susan Chira, a senior executive at the New York Times, weighed in too.

Clive Crook (who falls into the Gottlieb camp) was the only one I heard make a sensible suggestion to advance the conversation.  He found himself at the Aspen Ideas Festival with both Slaughter and Gottlieb, and he wondered why Slaughter couldn't be interviewed by Gottlieb instead of by Katie Couric, who was scheduled to do it.  Aspen is the type of place where interviews are often actual conversations, so a real opportunity was missed.

Contrast this with what happened after Isaac Asimov wrote an article criticizing Gene Roddenberry, the creator of Star Trek, for scientific inaccuracies in the script.  Roddenberry responded, sharply at first, acknowledging some of the points but also telling Asimov how hard it was to get Star Trek on TV in the first place, and arguing that some compromises were necessary to make it onto the airwaves at all.  Instead of devolving into a pissing match, the relationship with Asimov and Roddenberry evolved into a friendship and even collaboration on, for example, the interplay between Captain Kirk and Mr. Spock as the series matured.

Real conversations don't always lead to kumbaya.  Far from it.  Instead, they sharpen and illuminate differences, and they shed light on the topic from new angles.  Best of all, good conversations can generate new alternatives that neither side had previously thought of.  Clive Crook is a superb host of such generative conversations on a range of topics.  What if The Atlantic convened Sheryl Sandberg, Anne-Marie Slaughter, and Lori Gottlieb in a conversation led (and prodded along) by Clive?  Now that would be an event worth waiting in line to watch.

-------
*Disclosure:  I know Slaughter, Easterly, and Crook; I have met Sandberg a couple of times. I have never met Lori Gottlieb, but I have read articles excerpted from her book Marry Him: The Case for Settling for Mr. Good Enough.

Putting Misfits Together - Joi Ito

Joi Ito

It really literally, not jokingly, but literally are the people who are misfits, who can't fit in anywhere else.... What's interesting is, when you put this collection of misfits together, you get this really interesting capability.

That's Joi Ito, the new head of MIT Media Lab, in an excellent interview at Edge.org.  Joi goes on to summarize the new state of innovation:

In the old days, you'd have to have an idea and then you'd write a proposal for a grant or a VC, and then you'd raise the money, you'd plan the thing, you would hire the people and build it. Today, what you do is you build the thing, you raise the money and then you figure out the plan and then you figure out the business model. It's completely the opposite, you don't have to ask permission to innovate anymore.

He then goes on to make what may be the key and most novel observation of the interview:

The pivot that we need to make at the Media Lab, and which is sort of happening at the student level already, is stop focusing on things and start focusing on the network. Stop focusing on individuals and start focusing on communities. Stop focusing on top-down and focus more on bottom-up. Stop focusing on single experts and start focusing on the Cloud. There's a bunch of fundamental changes that the Internet has brought to the nature of innovation, the nature of society.

100 Days of Gratitude - Day 27: Donna Callejon

Donna Callejon

"Dennis, let me introduce you to your next Chief Business Officer."

The speaker was Bob Dunn, then head of Business for Social Responsibility (BSR).  The place was the World Economic Forum offices in Geneva. The date was sometime in 2003. And the person Bob was introducing me to was Donna Callejon.

"Um, well, hello, Donna," I replied, as Bob melted off into the crowd.  I had no idea what to say or do, so I asked her about her past career.  Donna had worked for fifteen years in the financial services industry, rising high in the management team of Fannie Mae (in the good Fannie Mae days!).  In that capacity, she had been on the board of BSR. After a while, she decided she needed to take a breather from her work and reassess the next stage of her career and life.  She wanted to spend more time pursuing meaning rather than just money.

"Well, we have plenty of meaning at GlobalGiving," I replied (a good thing, since we had almost no money).  Let's get together when we are both back in DC.

A couple of weeks later Donna came by the office for more discussions, met Mari, and very shortly thereafter joined the team. Mari and I were so happy, since Donna was the first "adult" we had been able to attract to to the team on a full-time basis.  (We had a lot of outstanding younger folks, but they had much less operational experience and no managerial experience).

At the beginning, Donna said she did not want to work full time, since she was still burned out from her previous job.  We had no choice but to say fine, and then we found out that Donna's version of part-time work was more intense than most people's definition of full time.  Over time, she took on all sorts of roles, from chief business officer to chief operating officer to chief bottle washer and cheerleader - basically whatever needed to get done, Donna would do.

At one stage, a successful entrepreneur tried to lure her away for his new business-process start up.  Donna was flattered but turned him down - a decision that cost Donna a lot of money when the company was later sold for millions of dollars.

GlobalGiving is now thriving and is the world's biggest aid and philanthropy platform, but we were not an overnight success story.  We faced many tough challenges in the early years.  Things frequently looked grim; we often did not take a paycheck, and it all sometimes seemed overwhelming.  Those were the periods when Donna showed her true mettle.  The more intractable the situation appeared, the more determined Donna became.  "We just have to succeed," was our joint mantra.  And we always ended up pulling through, thanks in no small part to Donna's drive and dedication.

For that introduction in 2003, I am thankful to Bob Dunn.  And for everything that Donna has done over the past many years, I could not be more grateful.

Donna recently celebrated a big birthday.  I won't tell you which one it is, although I can reveal that it has the number "5" in it.  Happy birthday, Donna.

100 Days of Gratitude - Day 26: Doris Betts

In 1980, I took a writing course with Doris Betts at UNC-Chapel Hill.  The first day of class she told us "The most important thing for a writer is to open your eyes."

She paused for a second and looked around the room.  She stopped and looked straight at me. "And keep them open," she said.

Doris Betts was a great lady, a great professor, a great writer.  I never turned out to be much of a writer myself, but I have tried to keep in mind what she told me to do.  And I wish I had told her thank you before she died on April 21.