Embody Change
As a sought-after leader, speaker, and mentor in philanthropy, Dr. Akhtar Badshah takes people who want to bend the arc of humanity toward good on a practical vision quest—one that helps them see their future as a dynamic and personal reality that calls them to act now in the everyday. We talk about how he does this on the world stage through his friendships with people like the Nobel Peace Prize winner Muhammad Yunus by amplifying his friend’s mission to end poverty through microfinancing, and locally, through his certificate on Accelerating Social Transformation at the University of Washington. Akhtar brings a fun irreverence toward our obsession with scale. In his career that included managing billions in charitable giving as the head of Microsoft Philanthropies, he somehow manages to nurture yet another 40+ year contribution to the world as an acclaimed visual artist, crafting figurative canvases of richly-hued deities, lovers, and human-animal hybrids. Hear how his art feeds into his voracious appetite for change and how we can hone our collective skill for real social impact from the “Doctor of Change” himself.
Visual Art
See more of Akhtar’s work here.
Show Notes
- Akhtar has said he wants to “spawn salmons, not create whales“—read more about his new paradigm for social transformation
- The Sybilla Masters Fund, with Akhtar’s wife Alka as a founding member, is raising $100 million and will only back companies with at least one woman on the founding team
- At the University of Washingon, Certification in Accelerating Social Transformation
- Akhtar’s Huffington Post article, “Inspiring 50,000 Indonesian Youth to Become Creators of the Economy”
- Video: exercises in embodying change
- A book by the poet David Whyte, The Heart Aroused
- More about Muhammad Yunus and his book A World With Three Zeroes
- The world’s richest 1% grabbed 82% of all wealth in 2017
- Learn more about Grameen Bank: Bank for the Poor
- The Politics of Innovation by Mark Taylor directly challenges the dominant theory that institutions are the primary drivers of innovation in science and technology