Welcome! I’m Simi Shah, and every other week, I dive deep into the journey of a South Asian trailblazer. If you enjoy this issue, please encourage your friends to subscribe and follow us.
Hot of the Pod 🎙️ Geetha Murali: CEO @ Room to Read
In this episode, I welcomed Geetha Murali, CEO of Room to Read.
Dr. Geetha Murali is the first non-founder CEO of Room to Read, an international education nonprofit that seeks to transform millions of children’s lives through the power of education. In her 12 years with them, Geetha has expanded Room to Read’s presence to 20 countries and reached 20 million children globally. Geetha began her nonprofit journey as a Program Officer at the American India Foundation, an organization committed to improving the lives of under-resourced individuals in India. Prior to that, she spent time in the world of pharma, startups, and as a teacher. A senior leader in the industry, Geetha is also a member of Forbes Nonprofit Council, an invitation-only organization for executives at nonprofits. She holds an impressive BS in Biostatistics and a PhD in South Asian politics.
Excerpts from the pod below:
How has your identity, your PhD in South Asian politics, impacted your work?
Well, I grew up between the US and India. That experience helped me learn about different perspectives and become more adaptable. I grew up immersed in Indian culture in a variety of different ways, from the music and food to the movies. Because of that, I was incredibly conscious of the importance of diversity in my life. I moved schools every couple years and I had to figure out where I fit in in each new environment. It was challenging, but it did show me just how large the world is in terms of diversity, but also how small it is in terms of just our shared humanity and the things that matter to human beings and their families as we all try to figure out this thing we call life. I do think it played an incredible role in terms of why I want to do what I do. It also plays a role in the type of leader that I am. The board definitely saw the value in having a CEO who has roots in one of our largest countries of operations who could translate the importance of the context of what we were doing to a global audience.
"Books are more than binary tools to entertain or educate. They rewire our brain for emotional intelligence and allow us to empathize, offering a view outside ourselves," says Room to Read CEO Geetha Murali. Read more: bit.ly/2zOJbAcSomething that I think is underrated is that there's a lot of overlap in the roles of a nonprofit CEO and a corporate CEO. What do you think are some of the core skills that differ between the two?
You're right. Strong CEOs in the nonprofit sector have to have many of the same leadership qualities as those in the corporate world: entrepreneurial vision, business acumen, commitment to execution, emotional intelligence, and a leadership presence to inspire all of that. But I think if you are going to lead an organization that has a commitment to purpose over profit, then you also need to authentically be motivated by that purpose. You need to be able to articulate the mission and its value to the world. You need to treat your staff the way you want them to treat the people you serve. You need to be driven by a sense of justice in the sense that the way you operate needs to reflect what you want to see in the world. In many ways, that's the biggest challenge. Being a reflection of your mission and brand becomes all the more important.
As an organization committed to uplifting through education, you must have been heavily impacted by the pandemic. We saw literacy rates around the world drop because of school closures. And the situation is more dire in other countries that don't have necessary access to vaccines and healthcare, broadly speaking. How has this impacted your work?
We had to redesign the entire organization in a couple of months. We couldn't operate in schools anymore — we had to reach children at home. We had to look at the infrastructure available in each community. A lot of places defaulted to Internet being the channel through which education would be delivered, but we had communities where only 1 in 10 children had Internet access, and even then, it was through a parent's phone.
So we had to be incredibly thoughtful about the channels the delivery, which led us to radio — which 70% of children had access to in our communities — to television broadcast and to hardcopy distribution. We also had to provide support to parents, particularly parents who are illiterate themselves. They needed video tutorials, so we provided those over SMS, WhatsApp, Facebook, wherever possible. From a programmatic perspective, it was an exercise in flexibility. But the mission guides you, and the children are the focus of our mission.
Even from a business perspective, global audits and local audits on our financials all had to be done remotely. We had to shut our offices down for staff safety, and ensure that our 1600 person staff could be supported wherever they were working from. We had to ensure that in areas where school districts did open up, that our field teams could immediately and safely get access to those schools. So we had to continue to balance our mission with being a good employer that cared about our staff’s safety. That was obviously the biggest challenge of the last 18 months.
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