One of the biggest surprises has been what it takes to help my mother, and how much power I all of a sudden need to wield. — The thing about parenting your parent at the end of her life is that it’s remarkably like parenting your child — only you don’t have any legal authority to do anything. To help my mother make decisions about her care and living situation, I need to speak with her doctors…

I wasn’t prepared for this moral dilemma. To do what’s right, I have to go counter the express wishes of my mother — against her will and without her consent. — The unfinished business that Ingrid has in her life is literally embodied in the hundreds of boxes in her attic, the stacks of old newspapers, and the piles of recycling, unwashed laundry, and general detritus that have accumulated in her apartment. …

That’s the title of a book I wish I had at my fingertips right now. — My 82-year old mom, Ingrid, has been in hospital in Cologne, Germany, since February 2021. Her cardiologist noticed she wasn’t eating right and seemed depressed, and recommended she be admitted to a psycho-somatic clinic. …

A short history of Zebras Unite — The following was written as a contribution to a book that’s coming out later in 2020 or 2021, where it will appear in a significantly abbreviated version. The editor kindly allowed me to publish the full length draft, so here goes! Beginnings There must have been something in the water and…

Reflections on truth, trust, and transformation from the frontlines of social change — Astrid Scholz and Cameron Burgess** Stupid is still winning In a 2011 op-ed, Thomas L. …

If matching investors and impact ventures online is such a good idea, why have so many efforts failed? — Impact Voices is an occasional series sharing the opinions of impact investing practitioners and leaders with ImpactAlpha readers. The views expressed in Impact Voices are the writers’ own, not ImpactAlpha’s. With Audrey Selian and Jeff Tuller As the impact investing community processes the shuttering of ImpactUS, it’s time to acknowledge…

And what superpowers will it take to change that? — You know the problem: Startup financing is demonstrably biased against women and minority owners, even though women start businesses at TWICE the rate of men. Women receive only 3% of venture capital and 5% of bank loans. Only 11 African American women TOTAL in the US have received Venture Capital…

I don’t think of myself as a female founder, just like I don’t think of myself as a tall founder, a blonde founder, a GenX founder, or a German founder — although all of these are accurate descriptions of me, too. I am just a person with a passion informed by experience, which compelled me to become an entrepreneur. — Founding a tech company was incidental to my purpose in life, to the change I am trying to help make in the world. I left what many would consider a cushy position as an executive in a non-profit organization to lead the spin-out of an enterprise we had been incubating…

What if we treated people as whole persons, and created space for personal growth in start-ups, rather than space for a keg and a ping-pong table? — Life happens, as do life changes. When my friend and colleague steve wright said he wanted to go back to the trenches of social change as a computer science teacher in his hometown of Oakland — a fascinating journey along the axes of equity, agency and education that he is…