Novogratz:If we keep this technology and this capital in its place, and we realize that it’s up to us to bring the moral aspect to it.
Tippett:I do love the story you tell about — was it Felicula? Is that how you say her name? This enterprising nun who also became one of Rwanda’s first three women parliamentarians. And she was such a friend and mentor and partner to you, when you were so young there, starting out. Would you tell the story of — and she died, right?
Novogratz:Well, she was murdered.
Tippett:She was murdered. And would you tell the story of how, suddenly, or just a few years ago, her name was invoked in a new century, in a new world?
Novogratz:For me, in so many ways, sometimes many roads lead back to Rwanda. And it was literally 30 years, almost to the month, when I first arrived in Rwanda to set up that microfinance bank. And Felicula was one of three women parliamentarians who were among my co-founders. And she was the one I loved most. And she really wrapped her arms around me and — talk about crossing every line of difference — and taught me so much about her country. She didn’t have such a head for business, but she had a heart for the world, man. And I loved her. And one of the first things she and her fellow parliamentarians did — women parliamentarians did — was to eradicate bride price, a few years into their tenure. And it was too quick, probably, for their constituency.
Tippett:Explain what that meant.
Novogratz:So bride price — which still exists in traditional form — was that you would — an enterprising and prospective son-in-law would gift his prospective father-in-law three cows to marry the man’s daughter. And Felicula was really insulted with this idea of reducing women to chattel and wanted to change it. And so a few days after this law was passed, it was rescinded in another vote — a big backlash happened — and Felicula was killed in a mysterious hit-and-run accident. And that was really the first time in my life, at age 26, that I had to confront the price some people pay for rejecting the status quo.
And then we went on to build this bank, and then the genocide happened, and the surviving women with whom I had started this bank ended up playing every conceivable role, including bystander, victim, and perpetrator. And so the bank continued to stumble along, somehow, in those early years after genocide.
And now here I am, 30 years later, and I’m standing at a hotel reception with the president of the country and most of his ministers —
Tippett:In Kigali.
Novogratz:In Kigali, the same place, except I’m a much older woman, with wrinkles on my face to show it, and I know the downsides of what this work can be. I’m laying out this vision for this 70 million dollar, for-profit, off-grid energy fund that’s going to help electrify the country, and before I get onstage, a young woman walks up to me and says, “Miss Novogratz, I think you knew my auntie.” And I said, “Really? What was her name?” And she said, “Well, her name was Felicula.” And I burst into tears. And I said, “I’m sorry — who are you?” And she said, “My name is Monique. I’m the deputy general of the central bank.” And I literally, still crying, I turn to the president and his ministers, and I said, “If you had told me 30 years ago, when we were starting that microfinance bank, that in one generation a woman would be running the economic sector, the financial sector, I’m not sure we would’ve believed you. Maybe our dreams weren’t big enough.” And I understood, in that moment, that I was back in Kigali on that night to complete work that Felicula had started but couldn’t complete in her lifetime and that at this point in my life, I needed to continue that work but, also, dream so big I won’t complete them in my lifetime, but to enable another generation to take that work forward, too.
Though this little institution that we had started endured the murder of Felicula and genocide and so many challenges; the work had continued anyway, her work had continued, and it continues today; and that all of us stand on the work of those who went before us. And it’s really our individual and collective obligation, in a world that focuses too much on our rights and not enough on our responsibilities, it’s our collective obligation to take that work forward and imagine and then integrate human dignity, sustainability, and elevate the best of ourselves and bring ourselves to each other. And I think, in this moment of such peril and possibility, if we tapped into that stirring, that awakening, we really could build a world like the world has never seen before. And if there was ever a decade to do it, it’s this decade.
Tippett:And this century may require that of us if we’re to flourish in it.
Novogratz:I think this century does require it of us. And I’m not a shame person, but man, I want future generations to look back on us and say, “Look how hard they tried,” not “Look at how blind they were.”
[music: “Hotels” by Tape]
Tippett:I’m Krista Tippett, and this is On Being. Today with Jacqueline Novogratz of Acumen, an incubator of human-centered capitalism.
[music: “Hotels” by Tape]
Tippett:This is really granular but, I think, really helpful — you describe in the book how you have modified the Jesuit Examen, which is supposed to be five steps. And I’ve tried this, so I found this really useful, because I never was able to stick with the five steps.
Novogratz:Five is too many. I’m sorry. [laughs] I know that’s sacrilege.
Tippett:But you’ve turned it into three, so just talk about this, because this is a daily practice that you weave into …
Novogratz:I try to do it every day. I don’t do it every single day. But when I do do it, my day is different; and that is, to start with intention. What do you want to accomplish in the day? Who do you want to be? And then check in with yourself later and ask yourself how you did. Do an account. And what did you learn from it? And then, importantly, forgive yourself for what you didn’t do or what you did poorly. And then the most important part of all is to express gratitude.
And when I do those acts, whether you call it three or four, I feel like I’m moving, and I’m also, at the same time, grounded.
Tippett:One thing we haven’t — one word we haven’t discussed that I — well, no, you’ve mentioned “accompaniment.” It’s an important word to you, it’s an important word to me, but also, I feel it emerging all over the place. I didn’t realize — you taught me this — that this was also a Jesuit phrase. I did not know that.
Novogratz:It is.
Tippett:I want to read this beautiful — it’s a couple paragraphs from your book, everything you’ve been talking about, this moral leadership that we are all called to, whatever our sphere, because all of our spheres have to be transformed in this way — we’re not called to do it alone, which was also a 20th-century lie.
Novogratz:It was a lie.
Tippett:So we surround ourselves with others who can hold us and hold it, the work, on the days that we can’t. So anyway, you wrote, “This is the secret of accompaniment. I will hold a mirror to you and show you your value, bear witness to your suffering and to your light. And over time, you will do the same for me, for within the relationship lies the promise of our shared dignity and the mutual encouragement needed to do the hard things.
Whatever you aim to do, whatever problem you hope to address, remember to accompany those who are struggling, those who are left out, who lack the capabilities needed to solve their own problems. We are each other’s destiny. Beneath the hard skills and firm strategic priorities needed to resolve our greatest challenges lies the soft, fertile ground of our shared humanity. In that place of hard and soft is sustenance enough to nourish the entire human family.”
Novogratz:In my way of seeing the world, I think accompaniment is so critical, and again, I think it’s so hard. And when you do it best is when you’re not asking for thanks in return.
I also — going back to this country, America — I also think, Krista, that it could be an organizing frame for how we think about a big part of our economy that we’re overlooking.
Tippett:Accompaniment could be an organizing frame?
Novogratz:I do; I do. I’ve seen it in companies in Africa and in South Asia — not just companies, in solutions, where — you look at the HIV crisis and the AIDS crisis of southern Africa, and community members were trained in showing up for people with HIV-positive who had to take their antiretrovirals and combine that with eating high-caloric food. And so the community members were trained in the rudiments of health care, and they would show up, they would check on whether they had taken their meds, etc., etc., and they would also help stave off the isolation and loneliness that comes, often, with any chronic disease. And so I’m seeing a generation of young people in the United States bring home some of these models, accompaniment models, which I think, given our opioid crisis, given our incarceration crisis, given our health care crisis, could play an extraordinarily powerful role.
City Health Works, which trains women from the community in Harlem, New York — in again, basic health skills. They show up and teach women who have chronic diseases, like diabetes and hypertension, simple things: how to go to the grocery store; how to buy food; how to go on walks — not how to go on walks. They go on walks with them. They bring them into community. And they have so reduced the number of hospital visits that they’ve created a revenue stream from government to the organization, enough so that they can cover all their costs, become profitable. So, suddenly, you have an economic and social model that has at the heart of it a healthier community, a more efficient government, and a stronger civil society.
That’s the reframe. And so we think about accompaniment as a beautiful, soft skill — you and I know how hard it is, but beyond that, if we had the real moral imagination, we could begin to create economic models that made sense for all of us and not just for a chosen few of us.
Tippett:Again, aspirational and fiercely pragmatic. [laughs]
Novogratz:I love that. Thank you. [laughs]
Tippett:So if I ask you today, this week, what is making you despair, and where are you finding hope, what comes to mind right now? Of course, we’re talking about a hard-edged hope, not a squishy hope.
Novogratz:One of the biggest lessons of my life, Krista, has been that we can’t separate the world into monsters and angels and that there’s nothing like loving people and knowing friends who played different roles in the genocide, including being perpetrators, that makes you have to confront that most raw element of what it means to be human. And the only conclusion I could make was that there are monsters and angels in each of us and that those monsters really are our broken parts — they’re our insecurities; they’re our fears; they’re our shames — and that in times of insecurity, it becomes really easy for demagogues to prey on those broken parts and sometimes make us do terrible things to each other.
We’re seeing that all over the world right now. And we have to fight against that. And that’s where the moral revolution becomes a matter of whether we choose to dive into the dark, the perilous path, or whether we choose to create a narrative and make that narrative real, which is our shared destiny, the possibility of collective human flourishment, our repairing the Earth in ways that make it more beautiful — and the choice is ours. And so my hard-edged hope comes from having lived and worked in communities that have had to contend with both. And like flowers breaking through granite, I’m gonna choose hope every time. And I frankly — despite all the dark, I remain a stubborn, persistent, hard-edged, hopeful optimist. I do!
Tippett:[laughs]
Novogratz:And that’s my story, and I’m sticking to it.
Tippett:[laughs] Thank you, Jacqueline.
[music: “Thinking About Thursdays” by Lullatone]
Jacqueline Novogratz is the founder and CEO of Acumen. She’s the author of a memoir, The Blue Sweater: Bridging the Gap between Rich and Poor in an Interconnected World and, most recently, Manifesto for a Moral Revolution: Practices to Build a Better World.
[music: “Thinking About Thursdays” by Lullatone]
The On Being Project is Chris Heagle, Lily Percy, Laurén Dørdal, Erin Colasacco, Kristin Lin, Eddie Gonzalez, Lilian Vo, Lucas Johnson, Suzette Burley, Zack Rose, Serri Graslie, Colleen Scheck, Christiane Wartell, Julie Siple, Gretchen Honnold, and Jhaleh Akhavan.
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