Pamela Hartigan

Founding Partner, Volans Venture

The Power of Unreasonable People

Pamela Hartigan

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Pamela Hartigan, founding managing director of Schwab Foundation for Social Entrepreneurship talks with Sheela Sethuraman about her new book "The Power of Unreasonable People: How Social Entrepreneurs Create Markets That Change the World". Hartigan explains why social entrepreneurs might be considered "unreasonable" and how they are different from business entrepreneurs. She also discusses the motivation for establishing a new organization, Volans Ventures.

Host Sheela Sethuraman interviews Pamela Hartigan, the founding partner of Volans Ventures, about her new book titled The Power Of Unreasonable People: How Social Entrepreneurs Create Markets That Change the World. Pamela addresses several questions related to the book -- Why are social entrepreneurs considered 'unreasonable'? What are the different kinds of social enterprises? How does one measure impact of a social cause? Why is it necessary to for social entrepreneurs to create partnerships and device new funding mechanisms? How are social entrepreneurs different from business entrepreneurs?

Hartigan also discusses the origin of the Schwab Foundation for Social Entrepreneurship and explains that the Foundation was established to meet three important needs of social entrepreneurs -- to lend them legitimacy in their own countries, to provide them with access to a network of leaders, and to mobilize capital.

In addition, Hartigan explains how the research on the book led her to establish Volans Ventures -- an effort that hopes to address some of the gaps in the social enterprise sector.

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Pamela Hartigan is the founding partner of Volans Ventures and also the founding Managing Director of the Schwab Foundation. She joined the Schwab Foundation for Social Entrepreneurship as its first Managing Director in October 2000. Of Ecuadorian origin, she holds undergraduate and graduate degrees in International Economics from Georgetown University's School of Foreign Service and the Institut d'Etudes Europeenes in Brussels. She also has a Masters degree in Education and a PhD in Human Developmental Psychology from American University and Catholic University, respectively, both located in Washington, D.C. Pamela is bilingual in Spanish and English and speaks French.

Her career has included over a decade working with youth; supporting the spawning and consolidation of community-based organizations serving the Latino community in Washington, D.C.; and twelve years at the World Health Organization, beginning at the Pan American Health Organization (PAHO), WHO's regional office for the Americas. There, she spearheaded initiatives to build collaborative work between governments and Latin American non-governmental organizations working in health and development. Subsequently, she became Chief of the Women, Health and Development Program where, among other initiatives, she launched region-wide mobilization to address violence against women.

In 1997, Hartigan was selected as Program Manager for the Special Programme for Research and Training in Tropical Diseases (TDR) where she also coordinated efforts in Applied Field Research in tropical diseases. Dr. Gro Harlem Brundtland, as Director-General of WHO, appointed her to head the Department of Health Promotion at WHO Headquarters in Geneva, and later as Director of the newly formed Department for Violence and Injury Prevention.

Resources

• The Schwab Foundation
• Everybody's business
• Teach for America
• Emergence
• Blended Value

This program is from our Design For Change series.

For The Conversations Network:

• Post-production audio engineer: John Paxton
• Website editor: Sathyaish Chakravarthy
• Series producer: Kevin Shockey

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The Power of Unreasonable People: How Social Entrepreneurs Create Markets That Change the World

by John Elkington

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Average Customer Rating: 5.0

Amazon.com Customer Comment:

Extraordinary Businesses are Changing the World. Maybe it's just me, but I could not put this book down...

You've undoubtedly heard this said about a novel, but of a business book? Never. Yet this is exactly how this book effected me. From cover to cover, I was completely captivated!

This is the book for the pioneer and champion of alternate business models. I highly recommend it to anyone interested in the future of business, whether micro-or mega-business. Not only does it feature businesses already established in carrying out some traditionally unheard-of practices, practices that incorporate the human element into what has thus far been a fairly sterile business environment, it also brings hope and a very real sense of possibility that the future will see a different model, one that is more adapted to basic human need.

Far from separating itself out as the model for micro-businesses that serve the poor, the new model suggests that basic human need is universal and that this need should be addressed through a new paradigm that recognizes, and caters to, the human element.

Those of us who follow the non-traditional start-up business world will recognize some of the companies mentioned here, companies such as the groundbreaking Grameen Bank of Bangladesh and its founder, Mohammad Yunus. But several other companies of equal importance in changing the way business is done are covered as well, making for fascinating reading for the follower of the entreprenurial world, be s/he mere spectator or active participant in the business world to come.

Get a copy of this book; it's inspiring! For progressive business owners it's a must read; for the small business start-up, it's the next best thing to a how-to guide. For both, it's a way to change the world. Unreasonable? I think not.

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