Month: December 2020

How to Align Your Purpose and Paycheck to Build a Career with Social Impact in 2021 and Beyond

Posted on by Liz

As we close out what has been a challenging and in many respects, an eye-opening year, you may be wondering about how to align your desire to make a difference in our world, with your need to earn a living in 2021 and beyond.

Last week, I had the honor of speaking on the Cornell University alumni panel, Purpose and Paychecks: Building a Career with Social Impact on how to align one’s purpose and one’s paycheck with Lauren Braun, MScPH (founder of Alma Sana Inc.) and Dan Schiff (Assistant Director of Institutional Development at Martha’s Table), and moderated by Mike Bishop (Director for Student Leadership in the Cornell University Office of Engagement Services).

This Cornell Alumni News article, Finding Your North Star: Aligning Your Purpose and Your Paycheck, highlights what we shared about our individual journeys, as well as resources we provided to the 175 webinar attendees.

Below are quotes from each of us (also included in the article) that might be helpful as you think about your own journey:

  • My advice on the importance of proactively sharing your story – a key element of your personal brand that helps to facilitate your career pivots, “By not sharing your story with others, you’re actually depriving those who could potentially be inspired by, partner with, or hire you, of the opportunity to learn about what you uniquely bring into this world. The failure to share your accomplishments, though it may be inspired by humility, is actually an act of selfishness.”
  • Dan Schiff on how to pivot into a social sector career: “Find a way to volunteer, write a blog, or do whatever enables you to tell a new story about yourself that allows you to pivot”.
  • Lauren Braun’s advice for those considering a career pivot, “Don’t be afraid to challenge what you think you wanted and what you think it says about you and your values. We want and need different things at different stages of our lives. It’s ok to change your mind—that’s how we evolve.”

As I also shared on the panel, one does not necessarily have to leave a corporate job to create social impact. Here are two of my presentation slides providing the spectrum of organizations and funders that provide opportunities to do so.

Finally, in this eCornell Keynote presentation, Your Personal Brand: Leveraging Your Unique Knowledge and Experience that I recorded earlier this year (LINK), I provide strategies and tactics to help you think through how to develop your own impact-driven journey, as well as develop your personal brand.

 

Read the full Article »

Finding Your North Star: Aligning Your Purpose and Your Paycheck

Posted on by lizngonzi

Elizabeth (Liz) Ngonzi MMH ’98 is founder and CEO of The International Social Impact Institute®, which is currently developing training programs and events to help non-governmental organizations in under-resourced communities in the U.S. and around the world rebound from the pandemic.

“Now is the right time for all of us to get involved and engaged,” she says. “What’s seemingly impossible is possible if you focus on what you want to do and why you’re doing it. You are able to create a lot of change.”

“You don’t necessarily need to leave your corporate job to have a social impact,” Liz says. “There is a spectrum of organizations you can get involved with.” She notes that these include existing non-profits, such as Cornell University, for-profit corporations with a social impact mission, such as Patagonia, and funders, such as foundations and venture philanthropy organizations.

 

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How This iSchool Alum Uses Digital Skills For Social Impact

Posted on by lizngonzi

If there’s anything you should know about Liz Ngonzi (’92), it’s that she’s bold, she’s courageous, and she’s devoted her life to strengthening the social impact ecosystem around the globe.

But her path to a career as a social entrepreneur, educator, and international speaker didn’t take the direction you might expect.

It’s true that Liz has always been a bit of an entrepreneur. By the time she was 14 years old, she had created a babysitting service and scaled to at least six different client families. It was a “baby empire,” as she describes it.

When she came to Syracuse University in 1988, however, she didn’t major in business. Instead, she started out in visual and performing arts. About mid-way through her freshman year, a mentor introduced her to the iSchool. She was hooked and decided to transfer in the following semester.

“I barely knew how to type!” Liz said, “[But] I loved the fact that you could solve problems with technology and information.”

In 1992, the year Liz graduated, the country was in the midst of a recession. While many of her peers took jobs waiting tables just to get by, she graduated with five job offers in hand. She started receiving some of them as early as the fall of her senior year and credits the real-world skills learned in her major with making her stand out in a struggling economy.

Liz ended up taking a job in marketing with Digital Equipment Corporation, the legendary computer company founded by Ken Olson and Harlan Anderson. They had recruited her as one of 16 people nationwide for their exclusive Marketing Development Program, a rotational program which exposed her to areas such as aerospace marketing, corporate communications and sales. Following that, she worked in B2B sales for MICROS Systems Inc., the leading provider of hospitality Point of Sales Systems in the world, where she learned about the hospitality industry through her clients, ranging from independent restaurants to amusement parks.

 

Discover more by reading the full article here »