“COVID-19 showed us that the more cross-border collaboration we have, the more we learn from each other and the quicker we can implement critical solutions”
Continuing our series of Google.org Team Profiles, we hear from Liza Belozerova, Google.org Program Manager and EMEA Economic Recovery Lead. We recently talked with Liza about her passion for women’s education, international collaboration, and making sure no one gets left behind in times of crisis.
What brought you to this work and how did you start working for Google?
Two major events marked my early life: the fall of the USSR, and then Latvia, my home country, joining the European Union. These truly historic moments triggered tectonic shifts in society around me: reimagining of borders, adaptation to the free market, integration into globalized culture, access to information and opportunities. These were truly exciting times for many, but also deeply challenging and complex for others. Living through these upheavals made me acutely aware of the inequalities and complexities that come with social transitions. I see similarities today with the unprecedented impact of the pandemic, rapid digitalization, and the critical need to ensure that nobody is left behind.
I started my career in broadcast journalism because I wanted to give voice to stories that were left on the margins of history, but I soon realized that I wanted to dig deeper and create a meaningful impact, which led me to philanthropy. After working for a nonprofit project in East Africa funded at the time by the Howard G. Buffett Foundation, I was approached by Google in London. They were looking for a person who understood both social impact and the corporate world to create a digital responsibility program for teens in the UK. I was keen to lean on my field work experience in order to leverage the best of Google’s tech and innovation for social impact. I got the job and this is how my Google journey started.
Is there a cause that is particularly close to your heart?
I once heard a Congolese activist say, “If a woman is at peace, the whole country is at peace.” For me, at the center of this peace is education — a topic that is very close to my heart — and that’s both academic education and community education.
Through academic education, women are able to discover the full scope of their limitless opportunities and learn about their strengths. Importantly, this empowers them to make the best decisions for themselves. Community education is equally as important to be able to — at the most challenging times — lean on the experience and wisdom of other women who paved the way for us, and set an example for the younger girls so they can dream big and see themselves represented in all sectors of society.
I was delighted that at the start of the pandemic in Europe we were able to give a grant to INCO as part of our global Distance Learning Fund to ensure we minimize school disruptions for children in vulnerable circumstances — and particularly girls. Sadly, only 1% of global philanthropy is currently going toward women and girls, and I’m hopeful that through our $25 million Google.org Impact Challenge for Women and Girls we will not only source innovative nonprofit projects but also increase the donor funding in this space.
What is the focus of your role at Google.org in EMEA?
A year after the pandemic swept across the region, McKinsey now estimates that in Europe, 25% more workers than previously estimated may need to transition to new jobs. The questions we are asking ourselves are: How can we best support people with significant social and economic barriers through this transition? How can we help those people get relevant professional education, digital skills, and access to meaningful, future-proof jobs?
And in Africa — in 2017, Google CEO, Sundar Pichai, made a $20 million philanthropic commitment. My mission has been to grow our philanthropic footprint in sub-Saharan Africa, with a focus on the economic empowerment of women and youth through training, cash grants, and access to critical information.
Working with nonprofit organizations, I want to scale proven training approaches while constantly looking for transformative, innovative ideas to support through catalytic funding, with a particular focus on tech. A strong equity lens is the needle that threads all my work, while we learn and innovate together with our grantees.
How has COVID-19 impacted the different programs that your grantees are involved in, and your funding approach?
The pandemic has been a very challenging time for everyone, but particularly for nonprofits. With many people suddenly finding themselves in vulnerable circumstances, they knew they had to move to online delivery, but faced significant challenges with pauses in funding and the lack of digital resources. With no digital infrastructure and a loss of communal spaces, our grantees could no longer reach their beneficiaries, so many programs were operating at only 10% capacity.
We had to help our grantees pivot and adjust quickly. This required being agile and adaptable as a funder: We listened to our grantees so we could understand their challenges and help them update their plans. For example, we allowed our grant budgets dedicated to specific projects to be repurposed for the general survival of organizations and retention of their employees, skipping reporting cycles while helping them to quickly digitize their courses and operations.
When the focus shifted toward survival of organizations and ensuring that their beneficiaries didn’t fall below the poverty line, we also had to reevaluate our balance of short-term and long-term goals. How can we help beneficiaries have a safety net today, so they are able to prepare for the future that is coming earlier than expected? How can we help them learn today, so tomorrow they can get a job?
What does economic recovery look like in EMEA?
EMEA is a region of multiple continents and dozens of countries uniting some of the world’s strongest and weakest economies. Each country has its own socioeconomic complexity and history, but there is a common need for digital acceleration and support for women who have been disadvantaged by the pandemic. When considering our contribution to economic recovery, we’re looking at regional trends while identifying solutions that work locally, taking into consideration the nuances in each country.
As part of over $20 million in Google.org funding for economic recovery efforts last year, we recently launched a grant to a consortium of French organizations called MaVoie.org. I’m very proud of this work because it was the first time in EMEA that we brought a number of our grantees together, who were all working on strong individual solutions, and empowered them to create one tech platform to help young people navigate access to employment. The aim is to help users structure their journey to employment in a series of clear steps from evaluating their skillset and building their resume to getting training, preparing for interviews, and finding a job. Having the French Ministry of Labor come on board, and having the grantees and other organizations collaborate for the first time to create this tool is a reflection of the times. We need to come together, overcome differences, and create solutions that work for the most vulnerable groups.
What is the hardest part of your job?
It’s the fact that societal trends are shifting rapidly and we need to ensure that we are able to respond quickly, while also thinking ahead of the curve. As a philanthropy team working to achieve economic impact, we have to be adaptable and consider the longevity of each project that we are funding. Will it still be successful and have the same impact in a year’s time or later? Tech innovation, changes in local policies, and governance structures all influence how we support our beneficiaries, even before considering unprecedented circumstances like the global pandemic.
At the same time, we also need to consider what’s right for the organizations that we fund. I spend a lot of time getting to know the organizations to ensure that our funded projects fit into their DNA, the local culture, and that we can achieve scale of impact without sacrificing depth. Helping organizations construct projects that consider the social climate, are agile in nature, and work together with a variety of sectors is definitely the hardest but most gratifying part of my job.
Could you share with other funders or nonprofits some of your top learnings from your work in economic recovery?
Firstly, it is knowing and understanding the beneficiaries. I always ask my future grantees how a specific approach they are suggesting will work for the people we are aiming to reach. For example, single mothers: we need to consider accessibility of courses, flexibility of learning, and professional pathways with flexible working hours. A lot of research and expertise goes into crafting projects that respond to specific needs of vulnerable people, so it’s important for funders to look for organizations who know their audience and have acquired trust and credibility.
Secondly, it is about ensuring that the economic empowerment solutions are tailored to the local labor markets. We often see trainings being rolled out for jobs that are not available in the specific region.
Finally, it is impact measurement and our approach to data. This shouldn’t be just a set of numbers that a nonprofit reports to their funder during a reporting cycle. It should be a critical tool for organizations to understand what works, so they can learn, adapt, and evolve. I believe it’s the funder’s responsibility to bake impact measurement into grant projects, have clear budget lines for it, and foster a dialogue with the grantees around data analysis that improves outcomes and accelerates scale.
What are the key needs and opportunities to make an impact in EMEA, particularly around the economic recovery?
We need more constructive learning through collaboration. I believe that the best solutions for the most vulnerable individuals come from communities and need to be local in nature. However, COVID-19 showed us that the more cross-border collaboration we have, the more we learn from each other and the quicker we can implement critical solutions. That way we avoid replicating microsolutions and develop collective answers within local contexts. If we learned that a specific mentorship approach or platform worked in one country, let’s explore how to take that model to another country, train an organization on it, and enable them to adapt it.
We also need to create an environment that supports the social sector in adopting tech and AI as an integral part of their work in economic recovery and providing access to jobs and training. There’s still a lot of untapped opportunity in the tech-for-employment space, but we are seeing a lot of progress and innovation that we hope will create a ripple effect across the region.
