Monisha Kapila started the innovative non-profit organization ProInspire with a monumental goal - to help organizations and individuals maximize their social impact. She has achieved her goal and continues to do so, with her work having a multiplier effect on goodness. Along the way, Monisha learned to focus on her strengths and passions, rather than what others wanted her to be.
Advice
- Spend time thinking about your personal mission or career vision
- Know your strengths; ask what are you passionate about and what does the world need?
- Recommended book – Strengths Finder
- Let your personal mission evolve over time
- Be flexible to what may come; if you have a path don't let this stop you from taking new opportunities
Key messages
- Monisha is the founder of the non-profit start-up ProInspire
- ProInspire is in its 7th year and develops leaders at all levels for non-profit organizations.
- This means recruiting leaders to join non-profits, improving training in the non-profit sector and influencing the sector to invest more in talent and inclusion.
- ProInspire influences the non-profit sector by organizing 4 fellowship programs:
- Recruiting young business people and placing them in full time roles at non-profits.
- Training people to build skills as they build careers in the sector.
- Leadership development directly for organizations
- Influencing leaders of organizations and foundations to think differently about talent and invest in their staff.
- Monisha changed jobs after her mother passed away. She decided to do what she wanted to do, not what everyone was telling her to do.
- Monisha has an MBA from Harvard and did a non-profit fellowship there.
- Her proudest moments are when she realizes the impact her work has had on people and organizations.
- ProInspire was selected by the Chronicle of Philanthropy as 1 of 7 non-profits to watch in 2015
- Monisha makes life manageable by outsourcing as much as possible.
- She also attributes her success to a supportive spouse and family.
- Monisha names childcare as the single most important change she would like to make to help women in the workplace.
Quotes
- I think my whole life has been fighting between what other people tell me i should be doing and what i really want to be doing
- Why not just do what matters to me because who knows how much time we have
- I never wanted to be an entrepreneur
- Tap into your own resources
Links
http://www.proinspire.org/about-us/our-team/
