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Social Impact Jobs — What They Are, and How to Find Them

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We talk a lot about social impact jobs here at MovingWorlds, but if you’ve ever found yourself wondering, “what exactly is a social impact job, anyway?” you’re not alone. Part of what makes the social impact space so exciting is how quickly it’s evolving and changing, but for job seekers, that also makes it confusing. Particularly if you’re new to the space, it’s easy to get overwhelmed by the buzzwords: social enterprise, B Corporations, nonprofits, ESG, impact investing, corporate social responsibility, circular economy….the list goes on and on! 

In this post, we’ll help you understand what a social impact job is, and how to uncover the right social impact job for you. Continue reading to learn helpful frameworks for exploring the career landscape, thinking through your options, and advancing your job search.

What is a social impact job?

“Social impact career” doesn’t automatically mean quitting your job to join a nonprofit. In fact, part of what we do in the MovingWorlds Institute is help professionals expand their future possibilities by realizing that social impact isn’t limited to a specific field or organization type; it’s a spectrum. While nonprofits are certainly on the social impact spectrum, the reality is that social impact can happen in every sector – including corporate and governmental.

A social impact job is one where you put your strengths to work in a way that is aligned with your purpose and contributes to achieving the SDGs. There are two main ways to do that: you can work on mitigating the negative impacts of an organization (“doing less harm”) or you can work on solving the problem directly (“doing more good.”)

For example, let’s say that you are most passionate about Goal #13: to take urgent action to combat climate change and its impacts. You could do more good by joining a social enterprise like Seabin, whose products and education platform are directly fighting climate change. You could also do less harm by joining a large corporation like Amazon to reduce the amount of packaging material used and waste generated. 

It’s not about whether one type of role is better than the other; the truth is that if we’re going to achieve the SDGs we need social impact professionals across all sectors, organizations, and functions. 

Examples of Social Impact Jobs

The “Organization vs. Role” framework shared by the brilliant Katie Kross on the MovingWorlds webinar The Insider’s Guide to Sustainability Careers is a valuable tool to help you think through your options. The key point to understand is that you can make an impact in multiple ways: by doing traditional work in a sustainability-oriented organization, by doing sustainability work in a traditional organization, or by doing sustainability-oriented work in a sustainability-oriented organization – all of these will create a positive net impact.

The chart has two axes: organization, and role. Each is on a spectrum from ‘traditional’ to ‘sustainability-oriented’. 

On the organization side, ‘traditional’ refers to companies where the product or service is not based on sustainability. Examples include large consumer goods companies, multinational corporations, banks, or consulting firms. ‘Sustainability-oriented,’ on the other hand, refers to organizations whose core service product or mission is sustainability oriented. Examples include social enterprises, benefit corporations, nonprofits, and certain government agencies.

On the role side, the same framing applies. A more ‘traditional’ role would include typical business functions, like data analysis, marketing, or business development. ‘Sustainability oriented’ roles on the other hand are fully centered on that aspect of the role.

As you can see, there are a multitude of social impact careers in each quadrant. In the next section, we’ll share more about how to narrow down which area (or areas) are right for you. Here are a few more examples, segmented by popular professions, to make this organization and role distinction more clear: 

  • Investing: Director of Sustainable Finance for a multinational bank, Investment Officer for an environmental trust, ESG Advisor for an accounting firm
  • Marketing: Brand Manager for the sustainable portfolio of a major corporation, Content Developer for an ocean cleanup social enterprise, Marketing Director for a climate nonprofit 
  • Supply chain: Sustainability Manager, Supply Chain Innovation for a major retailer, Social Procurement Director for a major corporation, Supply Chain Consulting for a B-Corp
  • Program management: Environmental Program Manager for a government agency, Sustainable Materials & Innovation Program Manager for a major retailer, Educational Program Manager for a climate justice nonprofit or social enterprise

Narrowing Your Options: Key Questions to Ask Yourself

The good thing about the organization vs. role matrix is that it can help you uncover options you hadn’t considered before. The bad thing is having to choose from so many options! As we mentioned earlier, there is no single right direction for your career – what matters is finding the right fit for your unique combination of strengths, purpose, and autonomy. Let’s take a closer look at each of these factors:

  • Strengths: Where are you most likely to find a job where you can put your strengths and experience to work? In helping hundreds of professionals transition their careers for greater social impact, we’ve found that the most successful career changes happen from a foundation of self-understanding. Research has proven that we perform better when our individual strengths align with our job tasks, which also leads to feeling more fulfilled at work, too. You can learn what strengths are (and aren’t) along with an interactive template to help you uncover yours in Step 1 of our #SocialImpactCareerGuide.
  • Purpose: What type of impact do you need to see to feel like you have purpose at work?. Taken together, your strengths and purpose form the foundation for the rest of your job search, acting as a compass to ensure you’re heading in the right direction to end up somewhere where you can truly thrive. Purpose matters because it’s a key component of meaning, which in turn drives satisfaction at work. You can learn more about each of the three dimensions of purpose, along with an interactive template to help you make your own purpose statement in Step 2 of our #SocialImpactCareerGuide.
  • Autonomy: What type of organization and manager is most likely to honor your working style and preferences? It can be tempting to jump right into researching specific companies, but before you do, first develop a mental picture of the workplace environment that would be the best fit for your unique combination of strengths, purpose, and causes of interest. Your work environment is one of the biggest determinants of your ability to activate these satisfaction drivers, particularly when it comes to autonomy. We all have different preferred levels of autonomy, but generally having too much of it results in feeling overwhelmed, while not having enough of it results in feeling stifled. You can learn how much autonomy you personally need to be most successful with the autonomy audit exercise in Step 4 of our #SocialImpactCareerGuide.

Keep in mind that the combination of the above factors is dynamic rather than static, so it’s a good idea to validate your career hypotheses throughout your journey. You can find a career-validation board template and explainer here.

Where to Find Social Impact Jobs

There has never been more interest, and therefore more opportunities, in the growing social impact space. Corporations are making more bold climate commitments, demand for ESG investing has expanded dramatically, consumer goods companies and retailers are getting more serious about the circular economy, and the growth trajectories for renewable energy alternatives remains strong. 

In addition to mainstream job boards like Monster and Indeed, there are tons of social impact specific job boards, including many for individual industries or sectors. You can Jump-start your search with this list of the 70 best social impact job boards here.

How to Be Discovered by Social Impact Recruiters

It’s a good idea to maintain an active presence on LinkedIn before, during, and after your job search – as a professional branding tool, networking tool, and source of information about the latest job opportunities from brands you follow. You can find tips for optimizing your LinkedIn profile for networking here, and a template here to take the guesswork out of asking for an introduction. 

In Summary

There are a lot of different kinds of social impact jobs out there – across industries, sectors, and specialties – and there is no single ‘right’ path. Try the tips above to start thinking through the many potential paths ahead of you, and for customized support transitioning to the right social impact job for you, apply to the MovingWorlds Institute. 

From Nonprofit to Social Enterprise: Launching a New Career In Business as a Force for Good

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Clare Healy has always been intrigued by the idea of business as a force for good. As she explained, “My parents own a small business, and growing up I spent a lot of time there with them. I really got to see the power of business in people’s lives and the communities.” She followed this interest to the University of St. Thomas, where she pursued a business degree grounded in the spirit of “all for the common good” and continues to mentor current students today. 

After graduation, Clare set out to find the place where she could leverage her unique talents for the greatest good. She began her career with a fast-paced nonprofit organization, gaining invaluable skills and experience along the way. But eventually, she found herself wondering: is there a place I could have an even greater impact and put my business background into practice? Continue reading to see how Clare navigated the transition to her dream job, and the role of the MovingWorlds Institute Global Fellowship in helping her get there, below!

Growing as a Nonprofit Leader

Clare’s search for meaningful work led her to Partners in Food Solutions (PFS), a nonprofit working to support the growth and competitiveness of food processors across Africa. Clare initially joined the team as a Process Mapping Intern, where she provided program support. She enjoyed the work – and found that it was the perfect first job for her to hone her skills in a small team that wore many hats.

After a few years, however, Clare remembers “I started to feel stagnant, and was ready for a new challenge. Shortly thereafter, a new role opened for me on the Volunteer Operations side of the team. Part of the new role involved learning and managing Salesforce for our organization, which initially I wasn’t sure I was interested in, but as it turns out I ended up loving it.”

The new role was an effective short-term fix, but Clare realized that she might not be able to find all of the new challenges and growth she wanted at PFS in the long-term. But she still felt stuck – even if the job didn’t have everything she wanted, it did have a lot of things she wanted. She wavered back and forth, sharing that “I had half-heartedly been exploring what other opportunities were out there, but because I was in a good spot with PFS, I felt like my next job had to be equal to or better than what I already had and that’s an incredibly high bar. I was starting to feel pretty disheartened when it came to looking for work because I wasn’t sure if anything would surpass my amazing first job.”

Using the Pandemic to Explore New Challenges

When COVID-19 hit and PFS transitioned to remote work, Clare doubled down on exploring what opportunities were out there for her to further her career goals. She shared, “I decided to use some of that extra time I wasn’t spending on commuting to get a formal Salesforce certification. I had really leaned into that side of my role at PFS, and wanted to get more formal authority related to being an administrator.”

Completing the Salesforce certification revived something in Clare – her love of learning. When the course ended, she wasn’t ready to stop growing and being challenged, so she went to her boss for advice.

Clare reflected that, “I was initially considering graduate school, but I didn’t have a specific focus or end goal in mind that laddered directly to a graduate degree, so my boss encouraged me to look at Fellowship programs as an alternative. It was good advice – the last thing I wanted was to spend all of that money on an MBA only to realize that I don’t want to stay in a corporate environment. At that point, I knew I wanted something more, but I didn’t know exactly what that looked like yet.” 

Taking her boss’s advice, Clare started researching and ultimately discovered the MovingWorlds Institute Global Fellowship. “Although I was already working in a social impact type of role, and unsure what my next career move would be, I was really interested in learning more about topics like human-centered design, the SDGs, sustainable development, and systems thinking. I wasn’t completely sure what to expect, but I took the leap and applied. I am so grateful I did.”

Gaining a New Perspective as a Global Fellow

The 6-month Global Fellowship starts with a 2-day virtual kickoff, where Fellows complete assessments and facilitated exercises to uncover their unique strengths and purpose drivers to get clarity on their right next move — based on who they authentically are.

These assessments were a major “aha” moment for Clare. She reflected that, “I had taken assessments like Myers-Briggs in the past, but this was a completely different level. It confirmed what I already knew but hadn’t been able to express: that my purpose is to help mission-driven organizations grow sustainably by creating processes and focusing on continuous improvement so employees can engage fully and lead with greater impact. In developing that purpose statement, I remember the workshop really challenged me to think about how I wanted that element of process and structure to carry through my work – whether that would be externally focused work like setting up new programs, or internally focused work like business process management. That prompt for reflection was like a lightning bolt for me because it helped me realize that where I really want to have an impact is at the organizational level, helping teams internally do their work more efficiently and effectively.”

This clarity of purpose helped serve as a compass for Clare moving forward, as well as a new way to frame her prior experience. Clare reflected that when she joined PFS, “it was a startup transitioning to normalizing and scaling its operations. They had a lot of visionary innovators on the team, but they needed someone task oriented who was ready to roll up their sleeves and put structures in place so that things could be done on a wider scale, and that was essentially what I was able to do over the course of my time there. So I would say that is what I’m most proud of: seeing my fingerprints on how PFS has grown as an organization over the years.”

Clare found that the kickoff weekend as a whole helped “put me on this path of being able to talk about my skills and experiences in a new way, and how I want to continue to apply them moving forward. Reflecting on the way my career has evolved at PFS, I’m proud of the impact I was able to help create, and also that I went about it in a way that was really authentic to my skills and strengths – even if I didn’t know they were my strengths at the time, like with Salesforce. At its core, Salesforce is helping people do their jobs better and more efficiently – and as I came to realize in the Fellowship, my dominant purpose driver is process and structure. Discovering and carrying that through each of my roles at PFS helped me see that I can, individually, have a big impact on how an organization operates when I help it develop structures that improve outcomes, and that’s something I definitely want to continue in my next role.”

From this foundation of self-knowledge, Clare was then better able to define what she was looking for. “I knew I wanted to find a company that was mission driven, preferably in a for-profit model so that I could leverage my business background, and where I could leverage some of those process, structure, and project management skills I’d gained at PFS in a new context. I also wanted to find a place where I could continue to grow and there was a path to leadership.” she shared.

Launching a New Career in Social Enterprise

The Fellowship helped Clare not only define new career goals, but also stay accountable for taking action to achieve them. She reflected that, “My accountability group has met every week since the beginning, and has been really proactive in figuring out how we can each make the most of our Fellowship experience. Coming in none of us were sure what to expect, but we’ve really leaned on each other to figure out how to tailor the program to our individual goals. They have been so incredibly supportive in building me up and helping me get both the confidence and motivation to finally start looking for new jobs.”

This time, Clare was able to enter the arena with a newfound sense of confidence. “MovingWorlds gave me the language and tools to refocus my job search in a way that actually was more authentic, but also actionable. I was able to realize things I hadn’t previously been able to put words to about what I wanted to be doing and how I wanted to be doing it. Reframing what I was looking for, plus the energy and motivation I got from my accountability group, is what helped me have the courage to keep moving forward.”

It didn’t take long for Clare’s efforts to pay off. She made it to the final rounds of interviews for not one but two different positions: one that involved doing the Salesforce work she loved from PFS at a different nonprofit, and one as a Business Systems Architect with a social enterprise called Angaza. As Clare explained, “Angaza is a technology social enterprise creating last mile solutions for people without access to credit or traditional banking services so that they can start on a path to financial inclusion and access life-changing products like solar lights and smartphones. The Business Systems Architect position on the Anzaga team is really my dream job: a for-profit with a social mission that would allow me to leverage both my business background and strengths around process and structure to make the organization as a whole even more impactful.” 

But before she completed interviewing with Anzaga and reached the offer stage, the nonprofit offered her the Salesforce position first. The choice she faced now was: do I say yes to a job that is a sure thing but doesn’t check all the boxes of what I’m looking for, or do I turn it down and continue interviewing for my dream job even though it’s not guaranteed?

The person Clare was before the Fellowship may have taken the safer choice, but the person Clare had become throughout the program was confident and brave enough to take the risk she knew was right for her. She remembers that moment clearly, reflecting that “when I turned down the nonprofit offer in favor or continuing with the interview process with Angaza, my accountability group was cheering me on and so encouraging every step of the way. Talking through the first offer with them and the MovingWorlds team helped me realize that I didn’t want to settle for good enough. Luckily, it ended up being the right decision, but it was a huge risk for me!” 

Clare’s next interview with Anzaga involved a real life case study – taking a problem that the Anzaga team was facing and putting together a proposal to address it. Again, the tools Clare had learned and gained over the course of the Fellowship helped her truly shine. “What I did was take the human-centered design approach to create an outline for this project plan, with timelines, a budget, Gantt charts, etc. I followed the flow of discovery, ideation and prototyping, testing, and then implementation, and the Anzaga team absolutely loved it. I got feedback from the hiring manager that it was clear, comprehensive, and easy to follow.”

The strong impression Clare left with her proposal translated into a job offer shortly thereafter. In fact, Clare remembers that “when I got the offer from the Anzaga team, one of the things they said was that my project management skills plus care and concern for the customers and end-users greatly exceeded that of people who had more years of direct experience than I did. That felt really, really good.”

In addition to leveraging her unique strengths and purpose, Clare’s new role also has the clear path to leadership she was looking for. “The Business Systems Architect position was a brand new role at Angaza – no one had been in this position before. So in a way, I’m getting to start from scratch and pave my own path, and I love that. If I can show the value of this kind of business process management and continuous improvement work, eventually it could expand into its own department. And I am more than up to the challenge!”

We’re grateful to Clare for sharing her story with us, and honored to be part of her social impact journey. Considering a social impact career change of your own? Apply to the MovingWorlds Institute for the tools, guidance, and network to achieve your career goals.

Launching a New Career at the Intersection of Science, Technology, and Social Impact for a Sustainable World

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Lewis Rowe is a lot of things: an innovator, a designer, a strategist, a father. But above all, Lewis is a changemaker – in everything he does, he looks for opportunities to not only succeed in the present, but to lay the groundwork for a more sustainable future. 

Lewis began his career by founding and running his own design studio in the UK, where he learned how to develop and launch new technology innovations for clients like Panasonic, Motorola, Pfizer, and Microsoft to market at scale. 10 years after he started the company from nothing, it was acquired and he moved his family to California to decide what his next adventure would be.

He tested a few different opportunities, mostly consulting with tech startups & investment funds in Silicon Valley. But he quickly realized that he wanted to contribute to something more meaningful than solely financial gain. Shortly thereafter, he was introduced to The Wyss Institute for Biologically Inspired Engineering at Harvard University, which uses Nature’s design principles to develop new innovations for healthcare, energy, architecture, robotics, and a more sustainable world.

Seeing the potential to combine his entrepreneurship, design, science, and technology background for the greater good, he was invited to help design & commercialize the radical human Organs-on-Chips technology – a new living tech platform for understanding human biology, that is now being used accelerate the development of medicines for uncured diseases including Covid-19.

S-1 organ-chip technology featured on cover of National Geographic as the Future of Medicine
The S-1 Organ-Chip, featured by National Geographic as ‘The Future of Medicine’

The technology was the first healthcare product to be awarded the prestigious Design of the Year by London’s Design Museum, was named as a top-10 emerging technology by the World Economic Forum, and was featured on the cover of National Geographic as ‘the Future of Medicine’. 

Lewis worked his way up to the position of Chief Strategist for the spin-out startup from Harvard, and spent 5-years guiding the vision, operations, fundraising, product development, and organization’s growth. It was a grueling venture-capital funded startup environment, and he threw himself into the work – including the long hours and monthly travel between Los Angeles and Boston. It was on one of these cross-country flights back to Los Angeles, tired and worn out, that Lewis experienced a health scare that changed the trajectory of his life. 

Lewis explained, “At the end of 2018, after flying back from a board meeting in Boston, I had a major blood clot form in my heart. I spent a while in the hospital, followed by many months of recovery to get myself healthy enough to be up and walking around again. My doctors attributed the blood clot to stress, and told me it was a one in a million chance that I was still alive. I cared about the work I was doing, and felt connected to the mission of accelerating new medicines for uncured diseases, but experiencing my own health issue as a result of my environment was a major wake-up call. I realized it was time to make a change both for myself and for my kids.”

Lewis knew he wanted something different, and something more meaningful – there’s nothing like a near-death experience to put things into perspective. He just wasn’t sure exactly what that was yet. He remembers that “My experience with the Harvard spin-out venture had whetted my appetite for purposeful work that leveraged tech for good, so I knew I wanted to further explore that but this time outside of the high-pressure venture-capital environment.” 

Making the Most of a Career Gap Year

To give himself the time and space to think, Lewis decided to take a year off from work to explore his options – beginning 2020 with a fresh path. He shared, “I had two main areas that I wanted to explore during that time. The first was strategy & design thinking – I had always practiced these areas, but wanted to update my toolset with the latest frameworks. I was encouraged to apply to an Executive Education program living & collaborating on campus at Harvard Business School to study these areas in depth with great MBA professors and like-minded CEOs. The second was business as a force for good, and researching ways to explore that passion led me to connect with the MovingWorlds Institute.” Lewis was selected to participate in both programs right around the time that the pandemic hit, which led Lewis to double down on his commitment to evolve his career for greater social impact. 

Reflecting on that time, Lewis shared, “The pandemic confirmed for me that there was no going back to ‘traditional’ business work – that is, working for a business focused solely on profits. I was all-in on making the transition to purpose-driven social impact work. That isn’t to say I didn’t have doubts – with two kids and a mortgage I certainly had a lot of fear – but I knew that if I fully committed myself to using this year to learn, reflect, and grow I would be able to come out the other side with a new professional home somewhere that fit with my desire for meaningful change.”

Taking a leap of faith, Lewis decided to participate in both programs, which he found to be “really complimentary of each other, touching on similar topics but with different applications.” The executive education course helped him add new skills to his repertoire, while the Global Fellowship helped him figure out where he wanted to apply those skills for maximum impact and personal fulfillment. Rather than being prescriptive, the Fellowship program gave Lewis the tools, resources, and connections he needed to make the most of his exploration year. He reflected, “I liked that the program did not force me down a particular path or way of thinking. I still couldn’t put my finger on exactly what I wanted to do next, but the program gave me the guidance to test multiple potential paths forward by taking what I’d learned about myself and the social impact space out of the classroom and into the real world.”

As part of the Global Fellowship program, every Fellow completes a social impact project that builds on their skills while challenging them to grow. With extra time to dedicate, Lewis took a hypothesis-driven design approach to validating his career assumptions by taking on multiple different projects. He shared, “I intentionally chose three totally different types of projects – each aligned to different United Nations SDGs – to see which type of social impact organization would be the best fit for me. That real-world element was crucial: I just got out there and started networking and working on projects – I am the type of person that learns by doing.” The three projects that Lewis worked on were:

  1. Serving as a strategic advisor to the team at the Seabin Project, an Australian social enterprise dedicated to cleaner oceans that has evolved from cleaning up plastic pollution into a global marine data, technology, and educational initiative driving behavioral & policy change. 
  2. Serving as a strategic advisor to the team at Earth Heir, a Malaysian social enterprise creating sustainable livelihoods for refugees and traditional artisans by combining training, design, tools, manufacturing, and market access. 
  3. Serving as a strategic advisor to the team at Lumkani, a South African social enterprise & humanitarian organization dedicated to improving community resilience, financial inclusion and disaster response for underserved people living in slums & informal settlements
Logos for Seabin Project, Earth Heir, and Lumkani where Lewis experteered his skills as a Global Fellow

These new experiences pushed Lewis well outside of his comfort zone, but as Lewis found that, “The Fellowship gave me the systems, tools, language and context to be able to confidently engage with the inspiring team members I met at Seabin Project, Earth Heir, and Lumaki. It gave me the opportunity to take a deep dive into truly understanding the social impact landscape and how these different types of organizations operate within it. The meaningful work being done by social enterprise and nonprofit environments were clearly the best fit for me moving forwards, giving me the direction I needed to take the next steps. What I also found is the people in this space are really great personalities and very genuine about achieving their mission for impact.”

The assessments, coaching, and group exercises that followed in the Fellowship program “allowed me to develop a really refined personal mission statement, set of values, and specific criteria for things I would (and wouldn’t) work on in future. I was able to narrow my focus down to the point where it hit home for me: fostering science and technology innovation for a sustainable & healthy world,” Lewis shared. He elaborated that, “What I realized is that before (working at the Harvard spin-out) I was helping to fix human health and disease that had potentially been caused by the environment we live in – new medicines are essential but they are only a patch, they do not fix the probable root cause of the disease. Human health is very much dependent on the health of our planet. So my career pivot would be a shift towards creating a more sustainable & healthy world in a new way.”

Launching a New Career at the Intersection of Technology and Social Good

Over the course of his projects, he developed meaningful relationships with all three teams, and with Seabin Project’s Founder and CEO Pete Ceglinski in particular. When his project concluded, Lewis shared that “I continued to work with them on a volunteer basis as part of their Advisory Board, just because I was so interested in the mission for cleaner oceans, and connected so much to the good people.” Before long, Pete offered Lewis a position with Seabin as their Global Chief Operating Officer. Reflecting on the experience as a whole, Lewis shared that “the combination of learning, networking, stretch experiences, and vulnerable introspection allowed me to come out of the Fellowship with both a new skill set and a new role.”

Learn more about the clean ocean technology being developed by the team at The Seabin Project in the video below, and check out their fundraising page to contribute directly!

Lewis’s new career is not only aligned with his personal mission of fostering new science and technology for a sustainable & healthy world, but it also is directly contributing to the development of the entire social impact ecosystem. Ultimately, Lewis shared that, “I found two roles, one with a social enterprise and one with a non-profit. I have a dual career now, and both roles are a direct result of the Fellowship program.”

His second role is with a well-established nonprofit based in Los Angeles called the Larta Institute – an accelerator for innovation & entrepreneurship, where he serves as the Entrepreneur-in-Residence. He explained, “Larta’s mission is to foster science & technology innovation for a sustainable planet – really aligned with my own values. Since 1993, they’ve helped over 6,000 startup founders translate their ideas into for-good ventures, raising over $5 billion in funds. They work with federal government agencies to support new ideas and have built a platform & ecosystem to translate ideas into sustainable enterprises aligned to the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). I’m getting to collaborate with progressive triple-bottom line ventures on everything from solutions for agriculture & food, cleatech & energy, to ocean & environment projects, to health & life sciences inventions.”

Lewis Rowe in his new roles with Seabin Project and Larta Institute
Lewis Rowe: Global Fellow at MovingWorlds, Global Chief Operating Officer at The Seabin Project, Entrepreneur-in-Residence at Larta Institute, & Impact Investing Fellow at MercyCorps

When Lewis met the Founder of Larta Institute back in October, Rohit Shukla – a well respected thought-leader on sustainable innovation, he remembered this “magic moment feeling” where the learnings from the Fellowship once again all clicked into place. He shared, “As with Pete, Rohit & I clicked almost immediately, and I was able to speak to the SDGs and nonprofit side of supporting entrepreneurs in a way that resonated. I had never had a first time professional conversation go so well – everything kind of gelled. I came into the Fellowship looking for a new professional home, and with Seabin and Larta, that’s exactly what I’ve found.”

Balancing two roles is a lot, to be sure, but Lewis has found them to “be both rewarding and complimentary. I split my time between social enterprise and nonprofit work, but both of them are focused on creating a more sustainable & healthy world, and allow me to channel my background in science and technology innovation into a positive impact for people and the planet.”

We’re grateful to Lewis for sharing his inspiring story with us, and are honored to be part of his social impact journey. Looking to develop your skills, confidence, and network to make your own for-purpose career transition? Apply to the MovingWorlds Institute!