Perspectives

It was my first encounter with Angela and I absolutely loved this back-and-forth chat with her. We dove deep into the question of what distinguishes high-performers and what makes the 'flow'-state so special. Early in the conversation she turned the tables and started asking me questions on my career as a poker player which turned into a conversation I thoroughly enjoyed. I hope you do too!

To give more backgroud on her, Angela Duckworth is the founder and CEO of Character Lab, a nonprofit whose mission is to advance scientific insights that help children thrive. She is also the Rosa Lee and Egbert Chang Professor at the University of Pennsylvania, faculty co-director of the Penn-Wharton Behavior Change for Good Initiative, and faculty co-director of Wharton People Analytics.

Angela’s TED talk is among the most-viewed of all time. Her book Grit: The Power of Passion and Perseverance is a #1 New York Times best seller. Angela is also co-host, with Stephen Dubner, of the podcast No Stupid Questions.

A 2013 MacArthur Fellow, Angela has advised the World Bank, NBA and NFL teams, and Fortune 500 CEOs.

Prior to her career in research, Angela founded a summer school for underserved children that was profiled as a Harvard Kennedy School case study and, in 2018, celebrated its 25th anniversary. She has also been a McKinsey management consultant and a math and science teacher at public schools in New York City, San Francisco, and Philadelphia.

Angela completed her undergraduate degree in Advanced Studies Neurobiology at Harvard, graduating magna cum laude. With the support of a Marshall Scholarship, she completed an MSc with Distinction in Neuroscience from Oxford University. She completed her PhD in Psychology as a National Science Foundation Graduate Fellow at the University of Pennsylvania.

Daniel Schmachtenberger is one of the most inspiring people I had the opportunity to talk to and I felt the urge to share his perspectives with a larger audience. 

Daniel Schmachtenberger’s central interest is long term civilization design: developing better collective capacities for sense-making and meaning-making, to inform higher quality choice-making towards a world commensurate with our higher values and potentials.

He has an eclectic educational background, mostly from outside of institutional settings, in the natural sciences, social sciences, and philosophy…with an emphasis in the epistemics needed to better approach ‘wicked’ problems, and the ethical considerations to inform the design criteria for adequate solutions.

Daniel has participated in projects to survey the landscape of existential and catastrophic risks, advance forecasting and mitigation strategies, and develop capacities for the kinds of multi-agent coordination needed to implement viable solutions. Associated work has been done to synthesize and advance civilizational collapse and institutional decay models, insofar as they are useful in both scenario modeling and designing more resilient systems.

Advancing those models for long term viability, along with advancing the capacities for sense-making, design, and coordination needed to support the necessary nearer-term transitional and protective work, is Daniel’s mission and focus.

He has also done work in functional medicine and biotech, education and human development, and advised private and public sector leaders on how to address complex scenarios across a number of sectors.

I had the absolute pleasure to explore more of Ian's perspective on social entrepreneurship and life in general given his vast experience in the space. It was specifically thrilling given that he's been working from and in South Africa for an extended time and shared his view on the potential he witnesses and the differences in culture and the difficulties they face.

To give you more on his background, Ian Calvert is an internationally recognised expert on purpose-driven business, innovation and entrepreneurship, with 32 years of leadership, marketing and entrepreneurship experience. 

Ian led the creation and expansion of Red Bull Amaphiko, an international programme aimed at enabling early-stage, community-based social entrepreneurs. He drove the global growth of the programme which ran in 15 countries, including the USA, UK, Brazil & South Africa, and which enabled thousands of early-stage social entrepreneurs. 

At the beginning of 2020, Ian spun-off the Amaphiko programme into an independent impact venture called FURTHER, using a high performance human development approach to grow a global fellowship of impact-driven entrepreneurs. He is also a strategic advisor and fellowship selection panelist for Ashoka, the world’s authority on social entrepreneurship. 

An Honours graduate of Birmingham (UK) and Aix-Marseille (France) Universities, he began his career at Ogilvy & Mather London before moving to Ogilvy in Cape Town, becoming the youngest ever Board Director at the age of 29. 

He founded a number of internationally successful advertising and marketing agencies, including Instant Grass, collaboration agency that harnesses networks of influential consumers to collaborate in the innovation process for global brands such as Levi Strauss, adidas, Nike, Red Bull and Diageo. Ian drove the expansion of Instant Grass International into Russia, Japan, Middle East and Africa. It is now recognised as a global authority on youth in emerging markets.