Gratitude at Work
Gratitude transforms us. It takes us outside of ourselves and places us in connection with our families, communities, and the world. Positive psychologists and health researchers have studied the impacts of gratitude at work, with evidence linking it to improved wellbeing and fewer sick days, reduced stress, enhanced self-efficacy and prosocial behavior, and higher job satisfaction.
Institutionalizing practices of gratitude can create companies where people want to work, with truly inclusive cultures, where employees feel encouraged to contribute their full selves and are valued for who they are, not just what they do. Research has shown that gratitude can also increase employee concern for social responsibility and climate change. As an impact fund focused on partnering with purpose-driven companies solving significant social and environmental challenges, we see gratitude as a critical ingredient of company culture, and seek to foster it among our portfolio and our team.
Appreciating and acknowledging the ways in which our success depends on others is central to our philosophy at the Builders Fund. As we near the end of 2021, we gathered reflections from our portfolio companies, our “Builders”, and our team. A few themes emerge — gratitude is about relationships, about alignment with purpose, about wonder and happiness. The stories and reflections below are humbling — from natural disasters to pandemic response, we are inspired by the humanity demonstrated by our portfolio companies and our community at large. We hope you are too.
Ben Healey, EVP Finance and Corporate Development, PosiGen
The PosiGen team is grateful for employees like Liz Newell. After Hurricane Ida, Liz, a six-year account management veteran at PosiGen, took a call from a displaced customer who wanted to make a payment. The customer was very distraught, and Liz spoke with her to help ease her anxiety. By the end of the call, Liz had volunteered to meet the customer when she returned from Houston, to help her clean up her house and get her back on her feet. Two other team members overhearing the call also volunteered to go with Liz. They not only cleaned her house top to bottom, including cleaning out the refrigerator, they went and bought her fresh groceries to replace what she lost.
These are the team members that make PosiGen so different than any other solar or energy efficiency company out there.
In addition to being grateful to Liz and the team, we are proud that this story garnered the attention of the local media and received very positive coverage.
Drake Sadler, Co-Founder, Chairman of the Board and Chief Visionary Officer, Traditional Medicinals
As evidenced by the challenges of this past year, our world is in great need of transformation. At Traditional Medicinal we believe meaningful change is possible through the alliance of conscious capital and purpose led business. We are grateful to be guided by our dedication to protecting the planet, nurturing people with plants, and holding ourselves accountable. Thank you for your support.
Nioma Narissa Sadler, Founder and CEO of WomenServe, a non-profit affiliate of Traditional Medicinals
WomenServe provides support initiatives (water security, education, health/hygiene, economic development) to Traditional Medicinals’ senna herb farming villages in Rajasthan, India. As the organization’s founder/executive director, I am especially grateful how well our in-country staff of twenty were able to deliver critical COVID services and supplies this past year to these poor communities. I am also very grateful to the many WomenServe donors who increased their support during this time of exceptional need.
Michael Bush, Board Director, MPOWERD
The longer my work life extends and my life in general extends, the more I find my main source of gratitude in everyday living — the good and the bad. There are always periods of frustration and loneliness, but the times I find I am working in sync and in harmony with others, learning from other people during conversations and finding myself expanded by new ideas — these moments are actually increasing for me. Maybe the more I live in this world, the more the wonder of it all feels real, surrounds me, and becomes the dominant mode.
So my key element of gratitude is being in touch with that feeling and those moments since it makes me happier, more effective and more accommodating to others as a human being, living amongst other human beings in a world that we are all trying to figure out.
Thomas Knowles, Partner, The Builders Fund & Managing Partner, Gratitude Railroad
I am grateful that I can rely on our Builders Fund community to work together to address the enormous challenges facing humankind. It’s clear that self sufficiency will not be enough to avoid the impacts of climate change and inequity. None of us can build the solution on our own, and instead we will need to collaborate and understand our interconnectivity. I am grateful that our Builders team fosters this sense of partnership and purpose, as I know it is critical to achieving our mission.
Amelia Ahl, Director of Impact Measurement and Management, The Builders Fund
This year, I am grateful for the opportunity to show up as a whole person to my work with Builders and for the commitments from everyone on the team to look honestly at how we pursue justice and equity through our work.
Katharine Hawthorne, Vice President, The Builders Fund
Connection — I am thankful for the opportunity to be a part of something bigger than myself. I value our partnership approach at Builders and am grateful for the opportunity to learn, grow, and build together. In this time when life often feels collapsed onto my computer screen, I am grateful for the things that keep me tethered to the world — community, dogs, bikes, books, music, redwoods.
Mike Dutton, Co-Founder & Managing Partner, The Builders Fund
I feel gratitude for relationships in work and life: my family and the opportunity to be together with my kids after time spent apart; mentors like Eric Jacobsen who taught me that business can be an incredible force for good; and my Builders colleagues who inspire me to think big. And in this age of continual zoom meetings, I’m grateful for cheap web cameras on Amazon with good angles that can get rid of one of my chins :).
Tripp Baird, Co-Founder & Managing Partner, The Builders Fund
If one stops to consider the miracle of this life for a moment, that you are here and alive and sentient on this small blue planet circling an insignificant star in the Milky Way, it is almost staggering. That life exists at all on this speck of dust in the vastness of an expanding universe is a gift by itself, to say nothing of the incredible diversity of life and the beauty of the complex, interconnected and interdependent systems that have evolved! I turn then to the great fortune I have been blessed with to have my health, education, and the relative security to use both to have a family and build an investment firm. In that context, I can see no path other than to live in wonder at my good fortune, live with gratitude as my primary lens to the world, and commit the use of my few days here to make the world a better place. Onward!
