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
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Samasource creates jobs in regions where more traditional forms of employment in low-income economies, such as manufacturing, are difficult to scale because of poor infrastructure. In a village in Rukka, India, for example, our small data entry partner employs over 60 people doing various types of Internet research for Samasource.
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I founded Samasource because I was frustrated by traditional approaches to poverty alleviation. Even those approaches focused on jobs often equip poor people with skills for which there is little market demand.
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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 problem in a lot of low-income countries is that people take out loans to go and get degrees, which are then irrelevant in the job market.
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Labor looks different in the 21st century. And so should our job training programs.
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I used to think my job as a CEO meant managing metrics and meeting goals, but I've realised now that's it's about managing my board and employees.
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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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In terms of environmental impact, Samasource jobs are very green. Our product is human intelligence, and it's transported through the Internet rather than via carbon-intensive trucking, shipping, and warehousing.
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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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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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Samasource's largest clients are technology companies such as Microsoft, Google, Getty Images, and TripAdvisor, which contract with my company rather than a traditional outsourcing company in order to participate in 'impact sourcing' - conscious efforts to reduce poverty by moving money into places that need it.
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Sama means 'equal' in Sanskrit; I chose 'Samasource' because I thought it really reflected a value that I had and that I wanted the company to have, which is that everyone has equal capabilities and deserves an equal chance.
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The thing that the Internet does is it allows labor to move freely across borders in the way that capital does but, traditionally, labor cannot. So the Internet frees workers to be based anywhere and work for employers anywhere.
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I used to think that the worst form of discrimination for women was being hit on or hearing something disparaging. What's even more challenging for young women is a very senior male who will take an interest in you, who see themselves as father figures or mentors.