Leila Janah
Leila Janah
Leila Janah is the Founder and CEO of Sama and Laxmi, two companies highlighted on Fast Company’s 2016 Most Innovative Companies list that share a common social mission to end global poverty by giving work to people in need. She is also the co-author of America's Moment: Creating Opportunity in the Connected Age, a book by Rework America: A Markle Initiative...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionBusinesswoman
Date of Birth9 October 1982
CountryUnited States of America
developing people work
Many people don't think that the poor in the developing world can do work on a computer. They won't say it explicitly. But they think it's too sophisticated.
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The more time I spent in developing countries, and the more time I spent talking to poor people, I realized what they want more than anything is a good job.
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I own a shameless number of ethnic necklaces acquired at local markets in developing countries or inherited from my grandmother. These have seen me through meetings in Davos and visits to refugee camps.
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At Samasource, a company I founded in 2008, we train people living in poverty from Kenya to California to develop and market 21st century digital skills to adapt to new economic realities.
developing dissimilar
The challenges that the homeless face aren't dissimilar to those in developing countries.
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Microwork gives marginalized people a chance to earn a living by playing a vital role in the business processes of big companies. In parallel, the organization assists local entrepreneurs in running microwork centers, helping to grow a new pool of business talent across the developing world.
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The best way to make employees happy is to set realistic goals and achieve them. The big job is to make sure those small steps are pointing us in the right direction and demonstrate at the end of the year that they all add up to something pretty great.
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The core concept of Samasource is essentially that technology helps us unlock human talent wherever it may happen to reside. That we should no longer be victims of the birth lottery. That no one should be stuck in a poor place where they don't have a job simply because of an accident of birth.
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Impact sourcing, a new initiative piloted by the Rockefeller Foundation and several key partners, including my company Samasource, promises to connect poor and marginalized people to digital jobs on a massive scale.
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I grew up in Los Angeles, where long drives on packed freeways make everyone a fan of radio and, particularly, of America's national treasure, National Public Radio.
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I'm the founder and CEO of Sama Group, a family of social enterprises - Samasource, Samahope and SamaUSA - that are working to alleviate poverty by connecting the global community to opportunity in sub-Saharan Africa, South Asia, the Caribbean and here in the U.S.
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Social business lies in the spectrum of possibility between the traditional, profit-maximizing business, which directs little to no profit to doing good, and the traditional charity, which relies mostly on donations to sustain itself.
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FlipBoard is the 'W Magazine' of the iPad-app world. The sleek interface makes content from your friends' Facebook and Twitter feeds much easier on the eyes by displaying them in a magazine format.
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We spend billions on international aid annually, but we don't find ways to connect people to dignified work. I realized that if we don't think about ways to harness private capital to solve problems, we're leaving large amounts of money on the table and doing ourselves a disservice.