Tech titans' desire to reshape philanthropy is nothing new. Everyone knows the transition that Melinda Gates made from Microsoft to the Gates Foundation to Pivotal Ventures, a hybrid approach to investing in women-led startups and leveraging philanthropic grant-making to drive advocacy and social progress. Founder of craigslist, Craig Newmark, started Craig Newmark Philanthropies to give back and fight disinformation, protect democracy, and support women in tech, while Eric Schmidt, co-founder of Google, co-founded The Schmidt Family Foundation to support organizations and initiatives to work toward a healthier and more just world.
But it isn’t just the tech luminaries making these shifts. A growing number of tech leaders are answering the call to address some of the most pressing issues facing the world, change systems, and help communities by taking their experience into the social impact sector.
Smart, savvy, and innovative women, in particular, have made this transition—from Ellen Pao, CEO of the nonprofit Project Include (formerly COO of Reddit), to Ann Mei Chang, CEO of the nonprofit Candid (formerly Senior Engineering Director at Google), and Nabiha Syed, CEO of media nonprofit The Markup (formerly VP and Associate General Counsel at Buzzfeed).
What inspired these powerful people to move out of the tech sector to focus on social impact? Any of them could have easily left Reddit, Google, or Buzzfeed for another tech company or unicorn startup, but they chose to make a career pivot and, as Chang explained, “accelerate the impact and scale of solutions to the world’s most intractable challenges."
I spoke to Pao, Chang, and Syed to get some insight into why they transitioned from tech to the nonprofit sector, and the impact they are on a mission to achieve.
Continue reading: https://www.forbes.com/sites/allyso...e-transforming-social-impact/?sh=511c75ee8dab