People On Purpose — Corina Gardner
Now a staple of the On Purpose blog, the People On Purpose series has been running nearly as long as the organisation. It’s yet to achieve the cult status of Desert Island Discs, but the format of seven simple questions is our nod to the ultimate accolade in someone’s career. If you’ve an idea of who deserves to be given the People On Purpose treatment, be in touch and let us know.
Corina Gardner
Corina Gardner set-up and leads GSMA Mobile for Development Intelligence (MDI), a central source of distinctive information and expertise driving scalability in mobile for development
GSM Association (GSMA) has joined On Purpose’s mission as a placement host for Associates during the programme.
Why do you do the job you do?
I accidentally stumbled upon technology as a means of delivering services and development outcomes, working at GSMA during my MBA internship.
I worked in International Development for 10 years, but I encountered big inefficiency, I saw money wasted and mismanaged programmes, which were not getting the results that I wanted to contribute to bringing about in the world. I thought the answer to get a better social impact might be with a private sector approach. I took my MBA in order to transition from public to private sector.
I was later on converted to the value of technology. I think there is an opportunity in business models to figure out how to make people’s lives better.
What are you most proud of?
Most recently, I am proud of the launch of the MDI platform as it was a result of 2 years work and the first time in my career where I was enabled to see an idea through from conception to implementation which I think is a rare privilege. More generally, I am proud of my life path so far that has included a wide breadth of learning in experiences spanning across many countries, sectors, and walk of life.
What keeps you awake at night?
Sadly it is mostly the day to day tasks that I am trying to stay on top of, I would like to say I don’t sweat the small stuff but that would be a lie. I also spend time wondering what is the technology disruption that actually is going to change people’s lives in 5–10 years in India, or rural Africa, this is a fast paced sector and in just 5 years it will look very different.
What were you doing 5 years ago?
I have friends who I used to work with at the Federal Government of United States that had decided to start their own business. I joined them in this endeavour.
I spent a year building a consulting practice of government contracts in global health but we didn’t hit the targets and the learning was that global health is a business line that takes a long time to build before becoming a profitable one, much longer than we had predicted or budgeted for. We decided to shut it down.
After that I was considering what to do next. I had a really good job offer from a long established NGO to be their Director of Global Health Programmes. It would have been the logical next step on my career ladder, yet I absolutely did not want to take it. Why didn’t I want to do the job that I had worked toward achieving?
I took time to reflect and realised that if I had taken up the role I would have been working to solve problems with the same methods and solutions that I had already seen were not working. I decided to apply to grad school and start reflecting on the world from a different perspective. Finding different ways to approach the same problems, to change my network and conversations I was having.
And now you have a cross-sector job that combines business and international development…
Yes, but it was not instantaneous. I took me a while to become personally enthused about the role of technology in international development, I had always been so people-oriented in my work and the link between the two was not immediately obvious to me. Now, I am incredibly, in some ways surprisingly, passionate about this topic. I guess you can’t always trust your first instinct.
While I have achieved exactly what I set out to do, work in and environment that leverages private sector assets and models to achieve development outcomes, that doesn’t mean that this was an easy process at all. Before deciding to go to grad school I’d been unemployed for one year, and therefore did not enter my MBA from a financially strong place. So graduating in 2010 when the market was terrible, without a job, student debt, and an irrational need to have a job that matters was a daunting place to be.
I was interning at GSMA but I didn’t have a Visa to stay in the UK so I was flying back to the US where I didn’t have a home, I was homeless for one entire year after graduation, moving among friends and family, living off the generosity of others.
What do you expect to be doing in 5 years?
I don’t know! Which is a crazy statement for me as I’ve been a planner for my entire life, always weighing how things fit into the journey I had mapped for my career. But these last years of my life helped me to understand how little we have control over how things pan out in our lives. I’ve realised how much I used to spend living mentally in the future instead of in the present, without paying enough attention to the reality of today. I now spend more energy on today and what I have to do today to achieve our goals instead of thinking about where I want to be in 5 years.
Why are you involved with On Purpose?
I truly believe that social enterprises have a big role to play to solving the social problems we face in the world today. Making a major transition in your career is not an easy one, and requires a lot of courage. As I described before, I have recently been through this process myself and have a lot of respect for the mission of On Purpose to support individuals through this process and even more respect for the individuals that make the leap to be a part of it.
On Purpose is currently recruiting its next cohort of Associates. If you are interested in finding out more, please visit: www.onpurpose.uk.com. The application deadline is 30 September, 2013.
