#47 Megha Desai, President @ The Desai Foundation
From top dog advertising to The Desai Foundation
Welcome trailblazers! I’m Simi, and in this newsletter, I dive deep into the journeys of South Asian trailblazers. Follow us on Instagram/LinkedIn for more content + upcoming events. Find our podcast on Apple and Spotify.
Hot off the Pod 🎧 Megha Desai, President of The Desai Foundation
In this episode, I speak with Megha Desai, President of the Desai Foundation. The Desai Foundation empowers women and children in India through community programming that elevates health, livelihood and menstrual health. Initially established by Megha’s parents 25+ years ago, the public foundation has impacted 5 million+ lives across 2500 communities to date.
Before pivoting to the nonprofit world, Megha had a formative career in the advertising industry. She founded MSD (Marketing. Strategy. Dharma.), a marketing shop for emerging impact brands. She also served clients around the world during her time at top advertising agencies like BBH, Wieden+Kennedy, and Ogilvy. Today, Megha sits on the advisory boards of several startups and nonprofits and is an active contributor to the Boston Globe and Huffington Post. She is also an avid singer as a member of the Resistance Revival Chorus. In this episode, Megha delves into her unexpected foray into the social sector, insights from the advertising industry, and what the leadership of a public foundation truly entails. Episode excerpts below:
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Simi: MSD, your marketing shop, took on The Desai Foundation as a client to advise on their transition to becoming a public foundation. In their search for a new Executive Director, all eyes — unexpectedly — fell on you to lead the organization your father founded. How did that happen? How did you feel about it?
MD: In helping them look for a new Executive Director, I had a few criteria. We were looking for people that really wanted to move fast, break stuff, build quickly, make mistakes, and keep iterating. The Board we had assembled basically said, ‘Well, isn't that you?’ It genuinely had not occurred to me.
I wish I could tell you that it was one moment. It was more of a slow realization of the inevitable. Most people around me knew it before I did, but I needed to get there in my own time. Because, again, ego is an interesting thing, right? After this entire career in advertising, after this entire time building my own agency, I'm going to go work for my dad. It just felt like I was giving up or I was failing at something when actually it was literally the opposite. My father was the only person on the board that did not vote for me, because he did not want it to seem like nepotism. He said, ‘I want you to go pursue whatever you want to do. I don't want you to sit here and resent that you are in this position.’ But I decided to try it out for a year — it’s been almost 7 years now. And I spent the next year proving to him and to the board, and most importantly, to the people I serve that I was cut out for this job. And it was amazing to earn the position and to really spend so much time studying and learning. The transition was slow. It was surprising.
Simi: The Desai Foundation focuses on three core pillars: health, livelihood, and menstrual health. In your opinion, which issues demand our utmost attention right now?
MD: If you had asked me this question four months ago, my answer would have been different. But given where we are right now, I do think that menstrual equity is the issue that concerns us the most. And the reason I say that is not just because of what's happening in India, but because of what's happening globally. Fifteen years ago, when we started working in menstrual equity, we did not believe that we were working in a politically-charged industry. But right now, with the Dobbs decision and the overturning of Roe v. Wade, suddenly, the security of my period and who has that information is an issue. So many things — miscarriage, for instance — are being framed as a violation of the law. We're still combating these stigmas in India, while we are combating these laws here in America. And it's really an issue that I believe unifies these two lands and I think affects so many other countries as well. It’s really sad to watch us go backwards.
I also will say that the pandemic in India reversed a lot of the work we had done. There's so much data that proves that clocks were turned back quite significantly on women's and girls’ development in India — when it came to child marriage for instance. The percentage of girls that went back to school post-pandemic is drastically lower. And so for me, girls’ rights, women's rights, people who identify as girls and women both in America and in India is something that I think we can all come together to defend in this moment.
Interested in non-profits? Insights into the social sector? Megha’s advertising experience? Full episode on Apple, Spotify, or our website!