Latest / Imagine If with Doone Roisin | Health, Wealth & Wisdom for Women (formerly Female Startup Club Podcast) / Malala Fund’s CEO Suzanne Ehlers on why it’s important we all fight for girls’ rights to access 12 years of free, safe quality education and changing social norms around the world

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Malala Fund’s CEO Suzanne Ehlers on why it’s important we all fight for girls’ rights to access 12 years of free, safe quality education and changing social norms around the world · Imagine If with Doone Roisin | Health, Wealth & Wisdom for Women (formerly Female Startup Club Podcast)

• 0:00
  This is Suzanne Aylers for Female Startup Club. Hey everyone and welcome back to another episode of the Female Startup Club podcast. I'm your host, Doon Roshin, and today I have a very special guest joining me on the show, the CEO of Malala Fund, Suzanne Aylers.
• 0:28
  For our 80th episode, I wanted to do something a little different to our usual founder stories. But first, let's rewind a year. Female Startup Club was born so we could empower women to launch startups and solve global problems primarily through e-commerce. On May 27th of this year, when we launched our very first program for women, we also knew we wanted to give back to someone who aligned with our message and our mission. And for me, that meant the Malala Fund.
• 0:56
  We donate a portion of our sales to Malala Fund to help the fight for girls' rights to have access to 12 years of free, safe, quality education. So for me, this is a really special episode. Suzanne and I are talking about what it means to have every single girl in the world having access to education, what it means for society, what it means for the economy, and what it means for girls.
• 1:20
  Thanks so much for being part of the Female Startup Club journey. If you know someone who would benefit from hearing this episode, please do pass it along so they can have a listen too. This is Suzanne for Female Startup Club.
• 1:33
  Hi, Suzanne. Welcome to the Female Startup Club podcast. Hi, thanks, Dune. So glad you're having me and Malala Fund on for today's episode. Looking forward to the conversation. Me too. I'd actually like to start by giving our listeners some context of this conversation and how it came about because it's not our usual founder story. So I read Malala's story many moons ago and was so impacted by her journey and just her light in the world. And I've since admired and supported the work of Malala Fund.
• 2:03
  and followed her journey too. So I always knew that if there was a charity that Female Startup Club could give back to, it would be Malala Fund. And so I reached out to you guys earlier this year to see if we could contribute to your mission to fight for girls' secondary education and if you'd be interested in talking on the show. And so I'm just so thrilled to be talking to you now about the work that you're doing and the impact that you have on girls all around the world. So I
• 2:28
  A huge thanks for joining me here today. It's a pleasure. I mean, it's interesting. So Malala is sort of the true founder, right? She's the, you know, sort of the origin story, if you will, around Malala Fund. And I know we'll talk a lot about that over the next hour or so. But happy to have your partnership. And I think there's a lot of similarities in what you do with female entrepreneurs and women who are starting their businesses.
• 2:48
  and some of the local advocates and champions with whom we work on the issue of girls' education. So the areas of alignment are actually really rich. So I'm kind of looking forward to exploring it from a slightly different angle than maybe is typical for either of us. Me too. And I totally agree. I think there's a lot of synergy and it's a really nice message to be sharing with the world. So to get started, can we have a bit of an introduction of who you are and what Malala Fund is for anyone who doesn't know? Okay.
• 3:16
  Okay. Well, let me start with Malala Fund because that's a much more interesting sort of place to start. An organization that is sort of headquartered, if you will, in a lot of different places. We have offices in Washington, D.C., in New York, in London, and we're working currently in eight countries around the world. I can list them if you'd like. Pakistan, of course, India, Ethiopia, Brazil, Nigeria, Afghanistan, working in Turkey historically, and then Lebanon around
• 3:46
  and hoping to expand our work into Tanzania and Bangladesh as well. So that model means that we are working in some of the places where girls have the hardest time, not only getting into school, but then staying in school and finishing those 12 years of school, sort of through secondary education.
• 4:02
  So our work is laser focused on making sure that any girl anywhere in the world can complete those 12 years of education. And we can explore later what that means for the world and for the economy and for politics and for decision making. But we're laser focused on what it means for the girl and all that it makes possible in her life.
• 4:21
  So we work with a lot of really incredible champions around the world, including Malala and her father, Zia Dean, who are considered our co-founders and kind of permanent board members. And Malala is serving as our board chair right now, which I'm also happy to talk about kind of what that looks like for female leadership.
• 4:36
  I joined Malala Fund only in February. So my story is one of nonprofit leadership and having worked in the space of kind of global development for several years, based in Washington, D.C. with my family and two girls downstairs right now, a 13-year-old and a 10-year-old who are being homeschooled in the time of quarantine. So that's a little bit about me and the organization.
• 4:59
  Amazing. I'm so excited to jump in and talk all things about all things. I'd love to start by talking more about your background. You've had a really long career working in not-for-profit organizations. What inspired you to get into that line of work in the first place? And what kind of has that progression been like?
• 5:16
  Yeah, I feel like there's sort of like two pieces of it. So first is sort of what's the like the mission? What's the work that's always interested me? And I honestly, Dune, cannot remember a time when I wasn't interested in working on women and girls in some form or fashion. So either it was sort of women, young girls in sports teams, or it was the role of women in places of worship. I grew up in South Texas.
• 5:39
  in a predominantly white middle-class community and really sort of like tried to understand sort of what was expected of girls, traditional roles, volunteered in the Central African Republic for a time after my university years, landed in Washington. And it's always been just this through line of women and girls.
• 5:57
  how women's rights are seen as human rights, whether or not we protect in advance the potential of girls from the youngest age and particularly adolescents, which is when I think it gets sort of maybe most dicey for many girls around the world. So that's the sort of first, right? The kind of like the heart of the work has always been the women and girls piece. And then on the nonprofit piece, I think I have to give credit to my parents who were both people of
• 6:22
  of faith, but faith from a place of real social justice and sort of giving back in kind of a charitable way. And I kind of just never understood that there was a sort of work that would be meaningful enough for me unless it was really rooted in mission and rooted in kind of generosity, I guess.
• 6:40
  And that's why the nonprofit sector has always most attracted me. I started in private philanthropy, which is sort of the wealthiest part of the nonprofit world, like giving out the money, but then quickly transitioned to nonprofit work and then leadership, both at a reproductive health organization here in Washington, and then most recently at Malala Fund. So
• 6:58
  I'm proud of the path that I've taken so far. I still have a lot of learning to do and I'm constantly in kind of like sponge mode with the people around me and the different organizations and sectors in which I've worked, but proud to see that there's two true norths of women and girls and sort of the nonprofit space.
• 7:15
  Mm, totally. And you spent 16 years, I think I read, at your last company. Is it PAI or PAI, how you say it? Well, it's funny because the Europeans have always called us PAI, but the acronym is actually PAI. And I was there for 16 years, which sounds kind of crazy in today's terms, like nobody stays anywhere that long. But the truth is, and I'm sure maybe this would resonate with some of the women that you've spoken with in business over the years, but
• 7:39
  If the job continues to reinvent itself and you're given new opportunities, you're allowed to grow new wings, you're allowed to stretch and flex new muscles. If it sort of stays interesting at its heart, then it's worth sticking around. And so that was sort of my first six years just constantly evolving in the work in my portfolio.
• 7:57
  And then six years in, my predecessor CEO became ill and had to exit the organization. And I was in my kind of mid-ish 30s. I had just found out I was pregnant with my second daughter. And the board asked me to step in as interim president just to kind of stabilize things while they thought about next executive leadership.
• 8:17
  And so then that story means that I went for the job and got it and so spent 10 years as CEO, really stabilizing and kind of rebuilding an organization that had a decades long history. So really different than Malala Fund, which is such a new and young organization. And it's been such a delight and honor to step into this space these last nine-ish months, I guess.
• 8:38
  Yeah, I mean, I bet it must be so exciting working on another such a current topical mission that's so important for women and girls around the world. How did Malala enter your world? What was the moment that you were like, oh, hang on, I'm actually going to think about switching here?
• 8:57
  Yeah, it's interesting. So when you were talking earlier about how having read the books, of course, I'm older. And so those books were not out when I was in school. But of course, knew Malala as like sort of a global icon and a global authority as it relates to girls' education.
• 9:12
  And I think that moment in 2014 when she's awarded the Nobel Peace Prize as this young woman, I think to myself, my God, it's possible, right? Like the credibility and legitimacy of her movement and her activism sort of lifted up. I have to confess that I didn't follow really closely that Malala Fund itself had been established. I was really laser focused on Malala as a personality and as a brand and what her kind of activism meant for young girls around the world.
• 9:39
  So it would have been in the early part of 2019 that the fund was looking for a new executive. And when it came across my desk, you know, I didn't sort of immediately take to it. I thought, well, that's not my sector and I haven't really worked in that space. But the more I thought about the opportunities for women and girls and how education is literally like the cornerstone of so much that can then be achieved in the rest of someone's life,
• 10:03
  it began to attract me more and more. I obviously had the opportunity to meet Malala and Zia Dean both throughout the course of the interview. And that seals the deal because she is everything that you'd expect her to be. She's humble, she's thoughtful, she's an activist sort of through and through in a way that I'm still kind of in awe of.
• 10:24
  She's got a keen mind, very analytical and kind of forward thinking. So the prospect of having my boss essentially be someone like Malala and Zia Dean was, you know, sort of like a challenge, I think, that I really wanted to step into and sort of live up to the expectations that they have for themselves, but quite frankly, that the whole world also has for them in the work that they do for girls' education. So it was a huge, in some ways, a huge kind of courageous leap to say that I could be capable of this.
• 10:54
  and working alongside someone like Malala with her reputation. So it's been a definitely, it's been a stretch exercise and so far so good. Must be so inspiring to work alongside her. I can only imagine. For anyone listening who might not know the story and might not know who Malala and her father is, can you share a little bit about her story and her activism, you know, since she's been a young girl?
• 11:18
  Yeah, I mean, I think what's, I mean, there's a couple of pieces that are really interesting. So certainly Zia Dane is an educator himself. And if you've ever seen him kind of hold forth in front of a classroom or a boardroom, he really is sort of still professorial in his bearing.
• 11:34
  And he believed deeply in educational opportunities for everyone, but especially for girls and including his own daughter, Malala. He had started a school and that was the school that Malala attended. And as their region of Pakistan was becoming even more sort of influenced by the Taliban, it became clear that learning opportunities and continued learning opportunities for girls were going to continue to be limited. Yeah.
• 11:58
  in really significant ways and in ways that should have enraged sort of the whole world, but definitely angered Malala and her schoolmates and the families and community around them. Malala began to speak out. And I think what's important here is that if you've met her and you've seen her will,
• 12:15
  You're clear that no matter what age she was, she was making decisions about how she was speaking out and the ways in which she was articulating the challenges for young girls. She was blogging anonymously for the BBC. I think many people know that under the name of Gul Makai, which was a name that we had used within Malala Fund in its early years.
• 12:33
  I think many in the world, of course, know that there was an attempt on her life for no reason other than that she was going to school and believed that girls should be able to go to school. It was out of that tragedy that, of course, she's survived sort of stronger than ever. Her family was relocated to England.
• 12:50
  And it was in the years following that tragedy that as she began to sort of rebuild and recapture sort of a voice for this work around the world, that Malala Fund as an organization was established. She was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize. And I think there was, you know, I wasn't there at the time, but clearly a real sort of coming together of a campaign, if you will, around this issue. And Malala Fund as one of the sector leaders in the fight for girls' education around the world. So, yeah.
• 13:17
  That's a very, I mean, I, again, was not there at the time when so much of this building work was happening. So I feel almost a little ashamed to be the one talking about it. But that's what I know of the history. And that's what I know of the journey that got us to where we are today with Malala having just graduated Oxford this summer, as many listeners will know, and taking an even more active role with her father alongside a board of directors and a really incredible staff to do this work.
• 13:43
  Ah, she's such just an incredible soul. And I think, especially from a young age, the adversity she's had to overcome to be able to, you know, just live on her life and do this incredible work in the world. It's just such an accomplishment that we can all really look to for inspiration.
• 14:02
  So when you've joined Malala Fund, what was your kind of CEO role to be? Like what was your, you know, instruction and your mission? What was the goal and the impact that you were going to be starting to work on? Yeah.
• 14:17
  Yeah, it's sort of, I mean, because we're talking about Malala, let's start there, that being the CEO of an organization where you have someone like Malala and Zia Dean as your co-founders is a little bit different. And I would say that I understand my voice and my leadership and any visibility that I have all in service to the organization and to the two of them.
• 14:40
  And I said it earlier, like the origin story starts with her. And so that's sort of a slightly different muscle to flex for some leaders who say it's my voice and it's my story and it's my experience with girls' education. At Malala Fund, it's not. It's Malala's experience with girls' education. It's Zia Dean's fight for girls' education.
• 14:59
  that really kind of sets our course. And so for me coming into this, I first had to ask myself that question. Can I be a leader at an organization where all of my voice and energy is in service to this much larger kind of imperative? And clearly I felt comfortable with that and quite frankly, really excited about it. What a moment to be lifting up the story of a young Muslim woman from Pakistan who has become kind of a global icon. It feels kind of...
• 15:26
  you know, like an honor I never would have expected for sort of my own career path. So, so I would just say that the CEO equation at an organization like this is a bit different. I also think that CEOs, and maybe this isn't particular to me, but any CEO anywhere should know that the skills that got you here aren't necessarily the skills that are going to get you there. And I, you don't really know what that means until you get to a new organization. And
• 15:56
  You really have to be in service to employee voice and desire for growth and desire to improve and make whole the organization in sort of all ways and facets. So you can call yourself a servant leader, and a lot of people do, and maybe I even did on my LinkedIn page before I got to Malala Fund.
• 16:19
  But being here has really already taught me like what it means to not be led by my vision as much as I'm led by kind of a co-created vision with a team that is among the most passionate and powerful and accomplished group of professionals I've ever worked with. So that's, you know, it's sort of a different dance. I think that you're doing these days as a leader in an organization. Yeah.
• 16:44
  and especially then perhaps in an organization like Malala Fund. I think the last piece of it may be the technical sort of parts of the job. I think that the board and I think, I hope the staff also was looking for someone who could come in in a, in kind of a non-drama way and really bring seasoned executive skills to some key pieces of the equation. And that's what I hope I'm doing, right? We've got great program work.
• 17:11
  So what does it mean to really deepen that work and expand it? We've got a strong presence around the world. What does it mean to really build efficient systems so that we can reach even more places around the world? We have incredible relationships with donors, both individuals and foundations.
• 17:27
  What does it mean to continue to maintain those relationships, but cultivate new supporters so that we can do more good work around the world? So I see my role in that kind of more technical skill set area as sort of continuing on what's really working well and then prepare us for the growth and the expansion and the ever strengthening of our delivery. So it's kind of a fun job to be invited to do, quite frankly.
• 17:52
  Oh, I bet. Sounds amazing. Can we talk a bit about the programming that you mentioned and what are the actual kinds of
• 18:00
  efforts that you're doing around the world to change girls' education? Yeah, I think there's sort of two big pieces. The first will be most obvious to everyone because it's using Malala's voice and Zia Dean's voice. So what we do on, you know, kind of global activism. So whether it's calling heads of state or whether it's influencing the G7 agenda, whether it's going to the World Bank or the United Nations, Malala is a UN messenger of peace. It's all of those big global opportunities that can be meaningful for either international
• 18:29
  education in emergencies or education financing and funding and kind of what its status is stacked up against other kind of key issues. So that's sort of a big piece of our work that, like I said, I think is probably best known because that's what carries Malala's voice and sort of face.
• 18:46
  But then we also do an incredible amount of work in all those countries where I listed, where we're working with local education champions who in many ways are fighting the fight that Malala and her father fought in Pakistan. So how do you provide safe education spaces for girls?
• 19:02
  How do you provide high quality education? How do you get past social norms that say girls shouldn't be in school and they shouldn't have access to tech devices? So the partners that we work with in those places are leading us on kind of local advocacy and local campaigns to solve problems in their communities. And we call them our education champions.
• 19:25
  And they form or constitute a part of our Education Champion Network. And although the best known part of that work is the financial support we provide, and I'm proud of how generous and kind of multi-year the support is that we give to our Education Champions.
• 19:41
  I think some champions and certainly Malala Fund staff would say that that's only a small piece of what we do. We also do collaboration and partnership and applied learning. We amplify the voices of these champions on our own social media channels. Where appropriate, we have Malala loan her own voice on either Twitter or Instagram to the fights that are happening now.
• 20:01
  In some key places, I'm thinking of sort of the in-SARS work that's happening in Nigeria right now. I'm thinking of the complicated circumstance for Syrian refugees. I'm thinking of the explosion in Beirut and what it meant for some of our Lebanese partners. So really just sort of a whole host of kind of local fights around girls' education that we're able to invest in and amplify. And then the last example is that we've got a girls' activist program, which we should because we're Malala Fund.
• 20:30
  And it's a program that's just getting launched this year. And we'll be happy to share more about it over the coming months and years. But we will work with a small group of young women activists and we'll put them through kind of a fellowship program that is really designed by them and led by them. And that will position them to be some of the leading voices for advocacy for the rights of
• 20:55
  young girls around the world in the coming years. So a program that's sort of new still to Malala Fund, but I think one of the most exciting programs that we have available.
• 21:04
  Yeah, wow, that sounds so exciting. When you say you have these champions who are in countries and they're working to change, you know, social norms of people thinking that girls shouldn't go to school and people thinking that, you know, women belong in the home, how do you actually change someone's mind who thinks that? What are the kinds of activities that those people would be doing on the ground to, like, combat against that?
• 21:35
  Yeah, to sort of get around it. It's a good question. I mean, I think there's, you know, you can fight some of these battles with data, you know, and with evidence. And that is powerful, perhaps, for a minister of finance in a particular country where you say, you know, listen, if you help all girls finish secondary education, do you know that it contributes 30 trillion or could, I should say, could contribute $30 trillion to the global economy?
• 22:00
  Right. That's getting all girls through secondary education. So those 12 years and really securing them. So sort of using that sort of data and evidence to sort of rope at a finance minister who otherwise might not think that education priorities are sort of part of their job or their remit.
• 22:16
  We also see much less, you know, sort of data informed work, but work around, you know, sort of like hearts and minds. Like, what does it mean to ensure that your daughter is getting a digitally relevant education so that she can be part of, you know, sort of the paid labor workforce in a way that gives back to the community? I mean, if 90% of jobs today have some sort of digital skill or sort of literacy component to them, right?
• 22:42
  How are we making sure that your girls are not kept behind as that becomes sort of what the workforce looks like? Just so we can be clear, what is the impact on the world if girls don't go to school and have access to an education?
• 22:58
  Well, I think there's, I mean, we're living it right now, what the impact is. I mean, that's sort of it. We haven't even talked about COVID, which is kind of crazy, given that it's the world that we've been living in, sort of swimming in now for the past nine months. So think about pre-COVID, we had 130 million girls who weren't regularly going to school, considered out of school.
• 23:18
  And what that does, not only to their own potential and power for whatever their life course might look like, but also the really negative and harmful effect that it has on a country's stability, prospects for peace, prospects for prosperity, the contribution to a global economy that educated women and girls can make. So, so much that you lose out on and COVID threatens to put another 20 million girls out of school. So that number increases pretty significantly.
• 23:47
  I mean, I think the assets frame is to say if you get all girls in school and you give them the 12 years of free, high quality, safe, sort of well-delivered education, what do you get? And the World Bank quote that we love is right, like $30 trillion contributed to the global economy, which is like outrageous that we wouldn't be sort of like fighting to make that a real thing and a certainty for the globe.
• 24:12
  I also think that there are micro impacts at the family level in terms of greater sharing of responsibility of housework and childcare. We know that it impacts the size of families. We know that it impacts the accumulation of generational wealth when you have educated girls who then turn into educated women who are in the workforce.
• 24:33
  I think it can shift the equation of conversations around inheritance and land rights in certain places. I think it informs the political world that you've got more, you know, sort of elected officials and heads of state who are women who have been through an education system, which –
• 24:50
  I think certainly, again, in the time of COVID, we really have seen some sort of stark differences in the way that women leaders have led their countries through this time of COVID and the way male leaders have. So the impact is kind of incredible and sort of just across the board of the ways in which educated girls can change the world.
• 25:09
  Totally. And shout out to New Zealand. Their leadership is top quality. Yeah. And if you haven't watched, she gave her acceptance speech. It's on YouTube and it's just an incredible, you know, sort of five to six minutes of what it looks like for a female politician to give
• 25:27
  thanks and gratitude for a victory that was just sort of won, but also then how generous and how welcoming she is to her political opponents to come and join that larger table so that they can create solutions for New Zealand. It's really, it's a real study in leadership that I think is worth a watch.
• 25:46
  Totally. Absolutely. I want to talk a bit more about COVID-19. Obviously, this has been just a shocking year overall, but especially for women and girls. You mentioned that you were previously pre-COVID, there was about 130 million girls out of school, and now there's a further 20 million who are potentially impacted. What have you been able to do to combat that? And how have you had to shift your strategy and approach during this strange time? Yeah.
• 26:13
  Yeah, it's such a great question. And I think there's – everybody will remember that day in March when we all were leaving our offices thinking, well, I'll see you in a couple of weeks. And here we are, eight-plus months later. So I think the first thing Malala Fund did – and this, again, I can take no credit for because I was still four weeks in the job, barely, maybe six –
• 26:36
  The organizations had to really quickly pivot and say, how are we going to support our employees to continue bringing productivity and excellence no matter where they are, while also giving them the space and time they need to adjust to this really new reality? So I just want to say to all the companies out there, the nonprofits, any agency anywhere that has had to kind of reimagine who it can be for its workforce,
• 27:01
  congratulations and keep pushing. Like constantly be asking yourself new questions about the psychosocial toll of COVID, the mental health aspects of COVID, the productivity, the child caretaking, like all of it is stuff that Malala Fund I think is always thinking about and yet like constantly having to evolve in our understanding of the way in which this
• 27:23
  this quarantine and this lockdown has really changed the way we do business. No travel, you know, sort of no global gatherings, no convenings with our partners. So all the new ways that we've had to consider doing that work. So that's kind of the hardware piece of it, if you will. On the strategy side of it, which I love, we had to pivot completely, right? Like,
• 27:47
  projects and campaigns and things that they were expecting to, you know, sort of unfold over the next couple of months. And much of that came to just a grinding halt as as people were in lockdown. And not only that was that sort of the regular pace of work wasn't happening, but then COVID began to impact these communities.
• 28:04
  So we developed internally, I think in pretty quick order, what we call our COVID initiative, which was kind of reorienting the delivery of small grants to our partners around the world and applied learning and all the other kind of, you know, sort of work we do around elevation and amplification of their message and gave them not only flexibility to kind of reorient their work in ways that most answered the needs of their community in the time of COVID,
• 28:31
  but then also invited new ideas and new innovations, asked our education entrepreneurs, if you will, to tell us what they were seeing and to come back to us and see if there was ways in which we could partner with them in totally new and unexpected ways to meet the challenges of COVID. And I think that we've now just completed a bit of primary research in four of the countries where we work, so about four.
• 28:54
  7,000 respondents so far. And I think that we are finding that in the time of COVID, while on the one hand, we transitioned so easily in some places to e-learning, for example, we find that e-learning still excludes our most marginalized students, that it's not, you know, we're not able to bridge that gap always.
• 29:14
  we find that, you know, sort of very few of our learners are really using ed tech in ways that some of us might expect ed tech was sort of the answer. So what's the chasm there? What do we have to get over? And what can our champions teach us about what they're doing in their own communities? And then just last point on this sort of girl and the digital divide piece, we are finding that girls do have, quite frankly, just less access. They have less access to mobile devices and to smartphones.
• 29:42
  They have fewer resources to buy data. Internet access is choppy in some places. Electricity is unstable in other places. So if you already have, you know, sort of difficulty in kind of accessing a traditional education platform and then you add on all these new layers that COVID has complicated and accelerated, I think we've had to do a complete reconsideration of the work that we're doing in many countries based on COVID-19.
• 30:09
  Wow. And do you have any examples of, you know, when you were saying you were reaching out to people for innovation and for new ideas, do you have any examples of things that were really innovative that you were like surprised by? Yeah, I mean, quite a few. There's it's kind of an incredible collection of champions.
• 30:25
  We work with an individual named Haroon Yassin in Pakistan. In fact, had been working with him and his organization, Orinda, before COVID. He is developing a mobile app called Talimabad, and it basically is digitizing the national curriculum in Pakistan.
• 30:41
  So there was a need for his work before, I should say their work, before COVID. I mean, can you imagine the demand on Haroon and his team since COVID-19 has come into play? So we were able, of course, to provide flexibility around the funding we had awarded, but then we're able to leverage even more financial resources so that he's able to reach that many more students. So that's a great one.
• 31:03
  We are working with Pashtana Durrani in Kandahar in Afghanistan. So a part of Afghanistan was some of the lowest literacy rates. And we were supporting some of her own education sort of like innovations, but then started to really invest in sort of low tech solar tools so that we are, again, able to kind of respond to the realities of the region, of the locale, while still trying to sort of bridge this divide when it comes to kind of ed tech and e-learning and.
• 31:32
  So Digital Learning Labs is what her work has been around, powered by solar, low-tech intervention, and again, even more critical in the time of COVID. I guess the last example I would give, Kiki James is somebody that we work with, a group called Ace Charity in Nigeria, and it's radio programming. So again, interested in that idea and that delivery pre-COVID.
• 31:56
  In the COVID world, it means that much more to really expand the reach of some of these radio programs. I think she's up to sort of three, if not more programs a week, five stations, possibly as many as 20 million different listeners that she is reaching with a whole set of kind of curriculum lessons, which seems to me...
• 32:16
  Maybe not a perfect solution, but an incredible way to kind of bridge the gap until we're back in classrooms in a way that is safe for all students and for all educators. So those are a couple of ideas from, what is it, Afghanistan, Pakistan, and Nigeria that are really giving us a lot of hope and inspiration this time of COVID.
• 32:35
  Wow, that is just so amazing. What incredible stories. Yeah. What are the future goals or expected impact that Malala Fund will have over, say, the next five or 10 years? Well, I think there's a couple of things that when we think about the expansion of the Education Champion Network, and we think that every year we're bringing more incredible local activists into our network and our kind of family of work,
• 33:04
  So that means that we are in sort of business terms scaling kind of constantly, you know, bringing more in, sort of reaching more girls, deepening our work as it relates to a couple of key issues. We talked earlier about social norms. So kind of really expanding what we understand to be the biggest barriers from a social norms perspective to have girls in school and finish school.
• 33:26
  Also thinking about quality education, like it's one thing to deliver education. It's another for it to be high quality and really relevant sort of to the moment. So all of those priorities will be just amplified and scaled up as we work in more countries with more champions.
• 33:42
  We are looking also to really deepen our presence in a couple of key places. So right now we're an international nonprofit and we're not registered officially as an organization in some key places and we would love to be. And so that's also a strategic goal for the organization is to have an official informal Malala Fund presence in Pakistan, perhaps in Nigeria.
• 34:05
  Places where those offices can be led by the local champions and our in-country representatives to really take Malala's, I should say, not Malala Fund's, Malala's message of education for girls to those places. I mean, I think also we feel that as an advocacy organization, we have a responsibility to.
• 34:27
  to really bring in the message of those of us who have less access than we do. Having been an advocate all my life, I'll tell you that there's no one I've ever worked for who gets her phone calls answered more quickly than Malala. And so if getting in the door and getting your call answered is less of a challenge for us because of this incredible co-founder equation we have in Malala and Zia Dean both, then
• 34:51
  Then once we're in the room and we're on the phone, what are we doing to make sure that we're including the priorities and the asks of so many of our different partners who don't quite have that same level of access? And I think that that's a responsibility that Malala Fund takes seriously. And I know Malala also feels deeply. So that's another piece that sort of thinking about strategically, what does that mean for how we grow and move forward?
• 35:15
  Amazing. Before we get into the six quick questions, I just want to ask you something because I'm interested to talk about it and I haven't spoken to, you know, someone about an organization's marketing from this perspective. So I'm wondering how Malala Fund markets to spread the word, get donors and have people, you know, on board the mission aside from the piece, which is Malala, you know, talking and sharing.
• 35:41
  being the face of the brand, sorry, not the brand, the face of the organization? Yeah. I mean, I think that that is, it's hugely powerful. And we're obviously so proud of what we're able to accomplish through her notoriety and again, through her kind of global authority in this space. But I think if we're not leveraging Malala's voice, we are always leveraging and centering the voices of girls. I mean,
• 36:05
  And that's our other strategy. We do that through a digital publication and newsletter we have called Assembly, an award-winning digital publication called Assembly, which is literally created and written by girls and tells the story of girls in STEM, in artificial intelligence, in skateboarding. I mean, I go to that publication in a regular way just to be reminded of what the real challenges are and how girls articulate their challenges, which, quite frankly, they articulate differently than we would for them.
• 36:33
  I mean, they know what's at the heart of their biggest struggle and really allowing them to sort of take the pen and tell us how to best support them and kind of advance their interests in this moment in time is really important. So if it's if it's not Malala's voice, it's the voice of those young women and those activists in some of the really most challenging places in the world to work on behalf of girls and women that kind of serves as our our guiding star, our true north.
• 36:57
  I love that. I saw that you guys got the, was it the Webby Award for your newsletter? Yep. Ah, congrats. Love that. Okay. We are up to the tweaked six quick questions. Ready? Okay. Yep. Question number one is what's your why? Women and girls, like I said earlier, I could work on any issue at any time, anywhere in the world, so long as the rights of women and girls were at the center of it. That's my why.
• 37:25
  I love that. Question number two is what's been a big marketing moment for the organization that you can recall? I think it's the 2014 Nobel Peace Prize. I think that's when if the world wasn't already paying attention, which they should have been, I think that brought incredible credibility and legitimacy and lift to the work that one girl and her father in Pakistan were doing, quite frankly, on behalf of all girls everywhere. So that would have been the sort of
• 37:55
  Mm, totally. Side note, before I continue with the third question, I also wanted to know what the impact was on the conversation she had with Prince Harry and, well, can you still say Prince Harry? Harry and Meghan Markle. You know, it was such a cool conversation. And I was like, wow, this is a really cool partnership to be broadcasting and obviously spreading the word even further. I was interested to know what the impact of that was.
• 38:21
  Well, I mean, it's only a couple of weeks old, so we're still sort of finding out. But I would say that it got, you know, just sort of incredible lift in visibility. It was a great conversation. It was one that felt really heartfelt and kind of informal between the three of them. Malala, I think, had a lot of fun doing it. So time will tell. But I think it was exciting for us to have their interest in supporting Malala and to really lifting up kind of the campaign that she's been doing.
• 38:45
  on behalf of girls for so long. So, so far, so good. The response has been really positive. People have been interested to see, you know, sort of how Megan articulates like her own idea around girls' activism and empowerment. So I think the two of them had a really nice exchange throughout that conversation. Yeah, I really felt that. I really, really enjoyed the conversation. It was so nice. Me too. Question number three is where do you hang out to get smarter? What are you reading? What do you
• 39:15
  Oh, all sorts of answers. So during COVID, I've been going to the library and I've been checking out cookbooks from all over the world all the time. So I've been checking out Saffron Tales or I've been looking at Marcus Samuelsson and his sort of Ethiopian Swedish fusion. Or I've been looking at what Jose Andres does around World Central Kitchen.
• 39:34
  I love food and I've been using food as a gateway to better understand the work that's happening around the world on inclusion and on diversity and on really lifting up the kind of lived experience of our Black friends and colleagues and communities of color. And because I love being in the kitchen as a place of kind of creativity and precision, I've been using cookbooks as a way to really advance my own learning and kind of commitment to that agenda.
• 39:58
  I love podcasts. So of course, I've been listening to yours these last couple of weeks just to get more familiar with who you are and the incredible work you've done. You know, lifting up and centering women's voices has been such an experience. I do love the daily. I don't always love all the topics, but I love the sort of quick hit 30 minutes. I love Code Switch. I love some of Brene Brown's work around, you know, kind of processing sort of like shame and what that means to
• 40:25
  be bigger and bolder and kind of more empowered voices for change and leadership. And then Instagram, you know, I'm on Instagram, but I'll tell you I'm on it in a really particular way. I'm sort of trying to follow and watch, again, Black women and women of color who are leading and telling stories in ways that it behooves me to pause and really learn and listen to differently.
• 40:48
  So I listen to the Unplugged Collective. I follow Sonia Renee Taylor, New Pole Justice, Leila Saeed and her work, Me and White Supremacy, Anti-Racism Daily and Nicole Cardoza. So a lot of like IG follow that I make sure my feed is bringing me a really different lived reality that kind of reminds me of my place in the world and my sense of responsibility, quite frankly, to make it a better place.
• 41:14
  Hmm. Totally. Absolutely. And I think that's so important with Instagram because I had this realization recently where I was like, I'm not seeing the content that I actually want to see. And I had to do a real kind of purge and new follow or else you're just stuck in the same, you know, nonsense. Yeah.
• 41:31
  Yeah, yeah. No, I did. I mean, I was sort of a later comer to Instagram anyways. And so I didn't ever have to do kind of the purge. I just had been really slow and deliberate about who I bring on and follow and have, quite frankly, taken the advice of a lot of my colleagues at Malala Fund who are so much more sort of conversant within the kind of social media space.
• 41:49
  And they've told me, you know, you should really follow Brooke DeVard. And I follow Brooke DeVard and I've watched her journey toward motherhood. And I've watched, you know, some of the conversations she's having with, again, leaders in industry, in the beauty industry in that instance. And really just sort of how she kind of positions sort of stories of impact and change. I find it all to be incredibly instructive and inspiring. So I also follow on Instagram Malala Fund board member Dr. Ala Murabit. So if anyone's not following her, you should be. She's incredible. And, of course, we all follow Malala.
• 42:19
  I'm on, on IG with her as well. Amazing. I have a long list of people I need to make sure I'm following after this episode. Question number four is how do you win the day? And that's around your personal AM and PM rituals that keep you feeling happy, motivated, successful, especially, I guess for you, in a sense that you work in such a heavy space that, you know, I imagine it can be mentally taxing. Um, yeah. And so how you keep uplifted.
• 42:47
  Yeah, that's a, I mean, I sort of, I appreciate the kind of the AM and PMP. So I'm an AM person. Malala and I laugh. She's a PM person. So when I'm like kind of getting spinning at sort of like 445 or five in the morning DC time, you know, she sort of like rolls her eyes and can't believe that I get up that early. I walk the dogs every day.
• 43:06
  and listen to either music or a podcast. Like it's the days that I don't do it, I can notice like a marked shift in the way that I'm able to really relate to people and hold my own space of generosity and sort of leadership. So that is like a no brainer. I think a PM ritual, especially in these sort of COVID times when we're working from home, is that I really do need a marker at the end of my day.
• 43:29
  I either need a 10-minute stretch. I either need like a quick little yoga routine. I need again to take the dogs just around the block. I've got to have something that demarcates that my workday is done and that I'm then really fully available for my family, which includes the two girls I mentioned earlier, two crazy dogs, a wonderful husband, like...
• 43:47
  my responsibility to give them the headspace that I've just given to Malala Fund over the past eight or nine hours. So COVID has really taught me the need for that kind of demarcation or kind of categorizing of time and space. Because otherwise it starts to all bleed into each other. And I think that's unfair to sort of sense of self and to self-care. Totally. Having that switch is really, really key at the moment. Well, in general, but very much at the moment. Very much at the moment. Yep.
• 44:13
  Question number five is how do you deal with failure? You just like you lean right into it. You know, mistakes are part of learning. You say sorry if your mistake or your failure impacted someone in negative ways or harmful ways. You bring sincerity to the equation of learning what went wrong and trying to do better the next time.
• 44:41
  I mean, this is going to sound wild, but performance reviews, particularly for CEOs, are hard because it takes time and energy from your board to get organized and really. But there's no one else who gives you that sort of feedback to say, you know, like, this is what your journey has been and these things worked out really well. You met the bottom line or you ran really good board meetings.
• 45:02
  But really to give kind of constructive feedback, I'm always so hungry for it. Like, what can I be doing better? And how can I turn failures and mistakes that I made or that my team made or that the organization made and make sure that we learn from it and kind of get it right or at least a lot better the next time? I think the biggest thing there is just not to be afraid of it. Yeah, not to be afraid of it and to know that...
• 45:27
  It's the only way toward kind of true self-improvement and enlightenment. I know that sounds really kind of like out there and not that I expect to achieve that in this lifetime per se, but that's the journey that I'm on and mistakes and failures are a part of that. And so I just try not to have the fear and just embrace them.
• 45:43
  Love that. And question number six, last question. How can the everyday woman or man support Malala Fund right now? What can we do? So many ways. Yeah, I mean, listening to this podcast is like a good start because –
• 45:59
  You, Dune, have done so much to really center and lift up the voice and experience of women entrepreneurs and business leaders and company owners. That seems so simple, but it's true, right? Like change your Instagram feed. Listen to a different podcast than you usually listen to. Really try to kind of center the voice of women and girls in a way that you haven't before so that you can see that sector or that industry or that political movement from that perch and that vantage point.
• 46:25
  I think supporting groups that are looking to lift up the experience of women and girls, including Malala Fund, is important. Subscribing to stuff like Assembly, our digital newsletter, really making yourself globally curious. I know that these are tough times and that people tend to kind of hunker down and sort of worry really only about what's right in front of them.
• 46:47
  But I think constantly educating yourself about some of the challenges we talked about earlier. What is unfolding in Nigeria right now around SARS and what does that mean for young women in Nigeria? What's happening in Beirut post-explosion and what does that mean for the potential for Lebanese girls to sort of finish their 12 years of schooling?
• 47:06
  become globally curious in a way that impacts and changes the way you go about your life on a day-to-day basis. I think an investment in Malala Fund is probably one of the, you know, sort of best charitable bets that you can make. I think that we are efficient and really highly leveraged.
• 47:23
  an organization as an organization and make incredible impact with the investment that's made in us. We we spread the wealth for sure and are really focused on lifting up the voices of those who are kind of on the front lines of making change. So that's another example. But a lot of ways that really sort of start with self and start with a sense of kind of curiosity and commitment to those who are.
• 47:47
  who are being brave and courageous and putting their lives on the front line every day for stuff that, quite frankly, a lot of us take for granted, which include our kids going to school. Totally. Absolutely. I have loved this episode. Thank you so much for taking the time to join me today, Suzanne. I've really loved learning about Malala Fund and about your background and the wonderful things you're doing in the world for women and girls everywhere. Yeah.
• 48:13
  Thank you. It was such a pleasure. I really, like you said, I just, I kind of came into this with the headspace, like let's just have a really fun and rollicking conversation that kind of put the experience of girls and women at the center of it at every turn. And we did that and it was a lot of fun. I really appreciate your time and we're honored, of course, by your partnership and your support of Malala Fund. So thank you for that.
• 48:35
  Hey, it's June here. Thanks for listening to this amazing episode of the Female Startup Club podcast. If you're a fan of the show and want even more of the good stuff, I'd recommend checking out femalestartupclub.com where you can subscribe to our free newsletter. We send it out weekly covering female founder business news, insights and learnings in D2C, and interesting business resources.
• 49:00
  And if you're a founder building an e-commerce brand, you can join our private network of entrepreneurs called Hype Club at femalestartupclub.com forward slash Hype Club. We have guests from the show joining us for intimate Ask Me Anythings, expert workshops, and a group of totally amazing, like-minded women building the future of D2C brands.
• 49:22
  As always, please do subscribe, rate and review the show and post your favorite episodes to Instagram stories. I am beyond grateful when you do that.
• 49:39
  Hey, it's June here. Thanks for listening to this amazing episode of the Female Startup Club podcast. If you're a fan of the show and want even more of the good stuff, I'd recommend checking out femalestartupclub.com where you can subscribe to our free newsletter. We send it out weekly covering female founder business news, insights and learnings in D2C, and interesting business resources.
• 50:04
  And if you're a founder building an e-commerce brand, you can join our private network of entrepreneurs called Hype Club at femalestartupclub.com forward slash Hype Club. We have guests from the show joining us for intimate Ask Me Anythings, expert workshops, and a group of totally amazing, like-minded women building the future of D2C brands.
• 50:26
  As always, please do subscribe, rate and review the show, and post your favorite episodes to Instagram stories. I am beyond grateful when you do that.