YouSaid · the spoken record

Saadia Madsbjerg

lines on the record: 67
first: 2017-01-27
most recent: 2017-01-27
sittings or episodes: 1
sources: podcast

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“It is really, really difficult. So, with all the other jobs I had before coming here, including city government, it was about, you know, I have this idea. Where do I get the money from and what do I do? And then with this job, I was like, this is brilliant. Now I'm the one who has the money and I get to have the conversations about where to get. Every time we had our board meetings, you know, got a chance to meet him, he would say, what are you working on right now that excites you the most I remember the first time he asked me the question, you know, I had a slight moment of panic. And I was like, if I can't with conviction, give him an answer to that question that I don't deserve to be in this role because it was, you know, his family that started it all because of him that we're doing what we're doing and I better do a good job”
2017-01-27 · Masters in Business · Interview With Saadia Madsbjerg: Masters in Business (Audio) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I would say one thing, which is have respect for the problems. Something that we were talking about earlier. These are complex messy problems. You have to have respect for them. You have to really understand them before you start jumping to solutions. They're no quick fixes around here. The other thing I would say is you better buck up because you're going to get knocked down many, many, many times. And that is part of working in this space. You try many things before you get to the one that really works. Be willing, able to just jump in there and keep going at it.”
2017-01-27 · Masters in Business · Interview With Saadia Madsbjerg: Masters in Business (Audio) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So it is, and we do try to build solutions around it. But it's again about having context for that data, understanding what it means and what you need to do instead of blindly following it.”
2017-01-27 · Masters in Business · Interview With Saadia Madsbjerg: Masters in Business (Audio) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So, in the last four years a light has changed. Think more philanthropic money with big names has come in, Zuckerberg Chen initiative is just an example of that. So I guess that's good for the broader field in terms of more people focusing on the things that we focus on. I think there's been a clear recognition of the role of private sector in getting to solutions. And I think the work around climate change and the involvement of the business community in that largely speaks to it. I think there's also been more of a recognition of the interdependence and problems cutting across boundaries than before. I think climate change again is part of it. You can't as one country just solve it. You're dependent on every other country around you. Global migration is another example of that.”
2017-01-27 · Masters in Business · Interview With Saadia Madsbjerg: Masters in Business (Audio) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I just started reading it Strangers at the door. It looks at the moral crisis brought upon by the massive refugee crisis. It kind of argues that it's a Challenge that cuts across borders, and we are all dependent on each other defines the right solutions. So taking a more protectionist approach isn't the way forward.”
2017-01-27 · Masters in Business · Interview With Saadia Madsbjerg: Masters in Business (Audio) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“It's about what happened in Afghanistan, what has happened since in other parts of the world as well, where NGOs to a large extent are dependent on funding from big governments. And if the governments want them to go to certain part of, say, a country to perform their work there, sometimes you don't really have an influence over that. So if you look at where the bulk of the foreign aid went in Afghanistan, it went to the places where there was also the biggest military presence.”
2017-01-27 · Masters in Business · Interview With Saadia Madsbjerg: Masters in Business (Audio) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“No, not so much about postwar reconstruction. It's about how our humanitarian agenda has been brought closer and closer to our military priorities. Really? So humanitarian organizations have always worked on the principle of neutrality. You know, you go where the need is greatest, you do what's needed to be done. It's not about politics. It's just about helping the people. And that's changed. That has changed in many ways. You should read the book. It's a fascinating recount of the author's Peter Gill.”
2017-01-27 · Masters in Business · Interview With Saadia Madsbjerg: Masters in Business (Audio) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So I spend a lot of my time reading white papers and research reports. I'll set those aside. I know, I know. Actually, my seven-year-old daughter is really into Harry Potter these days. And, you know, once in a while when she sees me with an actual book, she'll come over and she's like, how long is that book? And I'm like, oh, 350 pages. Like, oh, doesn't matter. I just read 700 pages, you can do this. Oh, she's looking down at your 300 pages. I get shamed by my daughter. But to mention a couple of interesting ones I've read recently, there's this fascinating book called Today We Drop Bombs, Tomorrow We Build Bridges.”
2017-01-27 · Masters in Business · Interview With Saadia Madsbjerg: Masters in Business (Audio) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So Denmark is very buttoned up. It's very focused from the time you announce an election to the time the election happens. You're talking about weeks. You know, there isn't any sounds delightful.”
2017-01-27 · Masters in Business · Interview With Saadia Madsbjerg: Masters in Business (Audio) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Process is not. Pakistan is at a constant state of elections. I mean, and until recently, I think we'd had a very long period where none of the elected governments had finished their term before there was a new election. How does it happen?”
2017-01-27 · Masters in Business · Interview With Saadia Madsbjerg: Masters in Business (Audio) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“The other person, and this is more around our zero gap in innovative finance work, I met, he used to be the former treasurer of the World Bank. His name is Kenneth Lee. And he was the one who designed the very first green bond. Now, when we talk about green bonds and all the good and bad things that have come with it, it doesn't get associated with a person. I've had many conversations with him since, and he keeps going at the point, and I completely agree with him. And it's influenced my approach as well, which is, you know, take philanthropic funding to create new solutions that are sustainable instead of putting philanthropic funding forward as concessionary capitalistession.”
2017-01-27 · Masters in Business · Interview With Saadia Madsbjerg: Masters in Business (Audio) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So this may sound a little bit cliche, but this was ages ago. I was still in the private sector. I was getting on a plane to go to some client somewhere. And I had a magazine that had an interview with Bill Clinton. And I know it's not the popular thing to say these days and talk about the Clinton Foundation, but it talked about some of the work or it laid out some of the work that they were doing in Africa around medicine for HIV and AIDS. It talked about how they had brought together different players from the private sector to reset the price of those medicines in that part of the world and how they've done it through something called Advanced Market Commitments. And to me, that was completely fascinating that, you know, and I hadn't thought of philanthropy in those terms. I thought about it in the more traditional, you just give money and then you wait for something good to happen.”
2017-01-27 · Masters in Business · Interview With Saadia Madsbjerg: Masters in Business (Audio) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Some of the directors that I worked with when I started at McKinsey ages ago, one in particular, I remember it was one of my first projects. I was the junior associate on the team. We went in, seated there with the CEO and so on. And the CEO asked a question, and the director turned around and pointed to me, and he said, Well, she did the work, why don't we just ask her? And it was just, I mean, it showed me that it's about your ideas and what you have to offer and not rank. That matters in world. And he Showed that by example, and he gave me the confidence. Now, if the answer to this question hadn't been good, I'm sure he wouldn't have given me the same opportunity again. But that did set the tone for how I've approached a lot of things in my career since.”
2017-01-27 · Masters in Business · Interview With Saadia Madsbjerg: Masters in Business (Audio) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“No, well, a lot of that culture from Pakistan moved over with my family to Denmark. So no, not broader Danish society. It's the opposite. But if you look at it, I've drawn inspiration from many that found their own way forward, whether that was my aunt who raised her own kids the way she wanted to after her husband passed away or my mother who was a very successful doctor or some of my cousins who broke away from tradition and did what they wanted to do, which was against expectations. On the other side, I would also say in the more traditional sense,”
2017-01-27 · Masters in Business · Interview With Saadia Madsbjerg: Masters in Business (Audio) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Exactly So I think it's only now that I've come to think of them as my mentors. If you'd asked me this question 20 years ago, I wouldn't have. That's a lot of the women in my family. I grew up in a very patriarchal society, whether that was in our house in Denmark or whether it was in Pakistan. Now, Pakistan.”
2017-01-27 · Masters in Business · Interview With Saadia Madsbjerg: Masters in Business (Audio) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Lived in DC for a year while I was studying. And then when I was at McKinsey, I did, I moved over to our New Jersey office, Lifton, New York, but did that for a year. And the US, the US East Coast, has always had a special place in my heart. So my husband and I, we moved here eight years ago because we were getting restless in Denmark. I was getting restless in Denmark. And New York has always felt like home”
2017-01-27 · Masters in Business · Interview With Saadia Madsbjerg: Masters in Business (Audio) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So, I mean, if you take kind of a spectrum, you could put Pakistan at one end and you'd put Denmark at the exact opposite end, right? Pakistan is loud, it's colorful, it's messy, it's completely unorganized. And then Denmark, on the other hand, is calm, it's, you know, very black and white and gray. It has its, you know, very different feel to it. I grew up in both worlds. I grew up in both worlds when I was living in Denmark. I grew up in both worlds when I was living in Pakistan and visiting Denmark. So for me, I don't see the culture shock. I can start a thought in my head in Danish and finish it in Urdu and then say it in English. That is just how what my life was like. In terms of moving to the US, I'd say yes, I lived in Boston for half a year and then I...”
2017-01-27 · Masters in Business · Interview With Saadia Madsbjerg: Masters in Business (Audio) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“It's amazing. So you mentioned my being born in Denmark, I was. Both my parents were from Pakistan. They had moved there back in the 60s. And as a result of a lot of different family decisions, I ended up moving and living in Pakistan for a long time as well. Oh, really? Yes, I did my basic elementary schooling in Pakistan. I lived there for nine years, then moved back to Denmark.”
2017-01-27 · Masters in Business · Interview With Saadia Madsbjerg: Masters in Business (Audio) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So they have to date deployed over 300 million and invested in either the preservation or the creation of more than 10,000 affordable housing units here in the city.”
2017-01-27 · Masters in Business · Interview With Saadia Madsbjerg: Masters in Business (Audio) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And this was around 10 years ago, more than 10 years now, where we came together with a number of different philanthropies, the city of New York and a number of big banks to create this fund that was targeting creating more affordable housing units here in the city. You know what the real estate market here looks like. You know how tough it can be to get loans, to do affordable housing. So what we did was this battery park city, along with a number of different foundations, we created a guarantee fund at the back of that. We attracted around 200 milligand from big banks. So you have the likes of JP Morgan, City Morgan Stanley, many of them, or most of them, that put money into it. Now, we couldn't have done that alone. The banks wouldn't have ventured into it because they saw it potentially as a risky proposition.”
2017-01-27 · Masters in Business · Interview With Saadia Madsbjerg: Masters in Business (Audio) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So, as I mentioned earlier, you're one of the core principles that we've always had is about building relationships and partnerships because we realize that we never alone can come up with the answer and then drive it forward. Now that can take many different shapes and forms. Sometimes it is... Public sector, either at the federal level or state or national, sorry, state or local, that we partner with and then bring in the private sector. And sometimes it may just be with the private sector. I mean, I'll give you one example of a place where we've collaborated quite well across the board. And it goes back to the finance work as well. It's called New York City Housing Acquisition Fund.”
2017-01-27 · Masters in Business · Interview With Saadia Madsbjerg: Masters in Business (Audio) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I would like to take out a loan. They wouldn't look at you and say, well, I'm sorry you are just a person who has no record of showing what your creditworthiness is or isn't. You actually have the ability yourself as an individual to choose how much you want to share with the institution and then figure out alternative ways of getting integrated into the new home that you found.”
2017-01-27 · Masters in Business · Interview With Saadia Madsbjerg: Masters in Business (Audio) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And then, you know, when you go from one place to another, you may keep it, you may not, you may get a new one. There are probably no record collective record of what you've done along the way. So what blockchain can allow you to do, and we're still testing it. So let's see what the results are. It can allow you to record along the way the different interactions you have. So say you're living in Jordan, not in a camp. You know, 90% of the refugees there live outside the camps. You get a cash transfer from UNHCR regularly, right? You have a cousin that lives in Europe who sends you money, remittances, on a regular basis. You have some small job that you've taken somewhere. You know, maybe part-time, maybe something. You have money that comes from it. Imagine if you had one place where all those interactions could be recorded. So at some point in time, you want to start your own business and you go to the bank and say,”
2017-01-27 · Masters in Business · Interview With Saadia Madsbjerg: Masters in Business (Audio) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So, not just that, and it's more about what it can do for the development, less about what it can do for the development organizations, and more about the individual. Today, if you're displaced from home, you know, you may have left under god-awful circumstances, you may have some form of identification or not, you end up in a camp. You get a number, and that's quote-unquote your identity.”
2017-01-27 · Masters in Business · Interview With Saadia Madsbjerg: Masters in Business (Audio) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I think that you need on-grid and off-grid solutions to go hand in hand. But I think they have a big role to play. I mean, you mentioned decentralization. Another interesting thing that we're funding right now is, and it's very different from electrification, where it goes back to the topic of inclusion, is the use of blockchain technology to create economic identities for displaced people.”
2017-01-27 · Masters in Business · Interview With Saadia Madsbjerg: Masters in Business (Audio) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Quite fascinating. That is fascinating. I was recently in Denmark and I was visiting my dad who spent part of his time in Denmark now, a lot of it in Pakistan. And he was telling me how he has a solar panel installed back home in the village in Pakistan because there's so much load shedding that happens. And I thought, wait, it's like you just had it installed yourself. And he said, yes. It's a panel. It's a panel. I was like, do you have a battery for it? And he looked at me as if I was an idiot. Of course not. He said, of course I have a battery. What are you going to do with it?”
2017-01-27 · Masters in Business · Interview With Saadia Madsbjerg: Masters in Business (Audio) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So, not just economically, but socially as well, because you can't distinguish one from the other. If you're a member of society, you want people to be integrated on the social side, cultural side, economic side, give them the same opportunities and treat them as equals. And I think philanthropy has a role to play. One of the programs, and you mentioned it earlier, that where funding is powerful development.”
2017-01-27 · Masters in Business · Interview With Saadia Madsbjerg: Masters in Business (Audio) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“What I've come to realize and really respect about the place that I work and about the field of philanthropy at large is, you know, it's not about hacking global poverty. You can't do that. The problem is that there's no silver bullet brand. There is none of that. And, you know, this idea you can do an app and everything will be fine. No, you have to have respect for the complexity of the problem. And then you have to just go at it. And my days are fascinating. I mean, you can start with talking about infrastructure finance and then, you know, talk about a humanitarian crisis, a refugee crisis. And from there it'll go on to natural disasters in Africa and how to think about solutions there. So there's never a dull moment.”
2017-01-27 · Masters in Business · Interview With Saadia Madsbjerg: Masters in Business (Audio) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“It really is, and it keeps me on my tiptoe. So when I was at the point of deciding whether or not to join, you know, what I would broadly characterize as the social sector, the development sector, I actually went around and talked to a lot of people. And I thought, I don't want to just jump the fence because I think it's going to be better on the other side. Let me get a realistic feel for what's happening. And it was an interesting time where, you know, a lot of people said, no, no, no, if you really want to make a difference, you know, find one of the smaller startups and go work there. Don't go in philanthropy. They're so set in their ways. And what have they done?”
2017-01-27 · Masters in Business · Interview With Saadia Madsbjerg: Masters in Business (Audio) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So we do have a very strong focus on what we call monitoring, which is doing it as the program is implemented and then evaluation, which is the actual outcomes of the program once it has been implemented. One, because we want to make sure that the impact we want to have on the life of poor and vulnerable people is actually achieved, but two, also so that we can figure out whether the starting point that we had for when we started the program was the right one or whether we need to pivot along the way.”
2017-01-27 · Masters in Business · Interview With Saadia Madsbjerg: Masters in Business (Audio) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So, if I take that as an example, there is no amount of money that I could have given as a grant that would have fixed the core of that problem. Now, there are things that we can do, we should be doing, and we are trying to do around how do you then take the people that are affected by the conflict, the refugees, and try to create more inclusive societies that they can be a part of to actually Allow them to come back into what could be a normal life away from what the left behind.”
2017-01-27 · Masters in Business · Interview With Saadia Madsbjerg: Masters in Business (Audio) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I was in Jordan recently, and it's amazing what capacity that country has had to take in refugees time and time again. And treat them with decency and dignity. But Lebanon is an example. Jordan is an example. There are even refugees going to Iraq. I mean, who would have thought, but somebody would want to go to Iraq as a refugee to get away from what's bad? And then I got, you know, Turkey. And then I started getting closer to my old home, which is Europe. And it's been front and center of the policy debate in Europe, in the US, in Australia, all other parts of the world.”
2017-01-27 · Masters in Business · Interview With Saadia Madsbjerg: Masters in Business (Audio) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“It does. I think the most stark example of what money can't fix or philanthropy can't fix today is the Syrian crisis. If you look at it, it's a crisis that started as small protests escalated into a full-blown civil war. Now, In the span of those five years, you have a quarter of a million people that have died. You have eleven million people that have been displaced from their homes. Some of them within Syria, but a significant amount of them left Syria as well. Went to neighboring countries, Jordan.”
2017-01-27 · Masters in Business · Interview With Saadia Madsbjerg: Masters in Business (Audio) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I mean, not just that, Barry. If you go to any of the farmers' markets around here, so I live close to Union Square and I go there. So I go there often. And the food isn't set up to look beautiful and well-shaped in the same proportions and the same sizes and all that. That is just nature. That's, you know”
2017-01-27 · Masters in Business · Interview With Saadia Madsbjerg: Masters in Business (Audio) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So, I don't know the exact percentage, but it is a really, really significant amount, yes. So we're in the process of deciding where to go with it. Part of it has to do with creating alternative markets, right? What is ways to you may not be waste to somebody else. I don't know how things were when you were growing up in your house and what kind of food culture there was around it. But in the old days, you used to take a lot of the things that you would consider close to expiration and you admit stock out of it, right? And you would make stock and cook it, right? And you could put it in the freezer. It tastes delicious. You can use it, you know, retirement and time again. And then you can, you know, do other things. You can donate it to local organizations that try to bring food to people that don't currently have food. So part of it is behavioral. Part of it has to do with the market dynamics.”
2017-01-27 · Masters in Business · Interview With Saadia Madsbjerg: Masters in Business (Audio) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Right. I mean, it has to do with food security, definitely. And actually, I mean, what I didn't mention was the efforts that we're doing here in the US within that initiative aren't focused on reducing harvest loss, but it's about consumer waste. There is a lot of food that comes into grocery stores, comes into your fridge, my fridge, that never gets consumed, that we end up throwing out. Again, more to say we look at what the challenges were and then figure out what we think the appropriate response would be.”
2017-01-27 · Masters in Business · Interview With Saadia Madsbjerg: Masters in Business (Audio) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So I, you know, for me, it's more about how do you, one, link it to the local markets in a more efficient way quickly and sometimes technology plays a role. Sure. Or processing close to where your harvesting plays a role. Sometimes it's about having in place agreements when it comes to bulk purchase with big food chains where you know there's somebody there to take it off your hands and know what to do with it. So it's a number of different things that come into play in terms of how you can work towards reducing food loss.”
2017-01-27 · Masters in Business · Interview With Saadia Madsbjerg: Masters in Business (Audio) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“It's a combination of that. So one of the crops that we're looking at is called cassava. It's something that you have to get to the market quickly and processed very quickly.”
2017-01-27 · Masters in Business · Interview With Saadia Madsbjerg: Masters in Business (Audio) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yield wise. So it's focused on reducing post harvest loss. So from the time a smallholder farmer harvests it till the time it gets to a market where you can sell it, there is a big loss that happens in there.”
2017-01-27 · Masters in Business · Interview With Saadia Madsbjerg: Masters in Business (Audio) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So we tried to do both because we have to be invested in areas for the long term. You can't come up with solutions in the short term and say, you know, we solve for it. Let's go in the next, onto the next one. So we have some of it dedicated towards our longer-term initiatives and programs. One example of that is what we call yield-wise. It's focused on reducing post-harvest loss in agricultural food chain in Africa. Something we love.”
2017-01-27 · Masters in Business · Interview With Saadia Madsbjerg: Masters in Business (Audio) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So we have our investment office that is led by our chief investment officer, Donna Dean. She's a brilliant, very, very smart woman who's been taking care of the money for us so that the rest of us on the program side have money to spend on fulfilling our mission. It is managed externally. We have our team internally that sets goals and along with our board and agrees on which direction we want to be going in. And then they look for the right opportunities externally.”
2017-01-27 · Masters in Business · Interview With Saadia Madsbjerg: Masters in Business (Audio) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Because you have to. And I didn't understand the complexity of it, but a lot of it is picking it up at the right time and reattaching it so it can continue to grow. You can't come back in a month, two months, three months and do it.”
2017-01-27 · Masters in Business · Interview With Saadia Madsbjerg: Masters in Business (Audio) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“It protects a lot of the local economy when it comes to the Mexican tourism system. Can you gather the Hotel Association and the local businesses that benefit from having a healthy reef, get them to pay into a fund that invests in the maintenance of the reef, but also buys catastrophe insurance on it? So when something terrible happens, one, insurance pays out immediately. So you have the money in hand.”
2017-01-27 · Masters in Business · Interview With Saadia Madsbjerg: Masters in Business (Audio) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Infrastructure, I mean oyster reaps. I mean coral reefs and marshlands and coastal wetlands. They protect a natural barrier when it comes to storms. You know, they have done it time and time again. There's science out there that shows that, you know, a healthy coral leaf can absorb around 97% of the energy of a wave. That is massive. So you don't even have to go think, you know, let's build a massive seawall or Anything equivalent to that? How do you put in place mechanisms that can allow you to protect the natural environment we have today that is protecting us? So we're funding and we're working currently with the Nature Conservancy and they're partnering with SwissRE on it is to say there's the Mesoamerican reef. It's the second largest reef in the world.”
2017-01-27 · Masters in Business · Interview With Saadia Madsbjerg: Masters in Business (Audio) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So, I think in the public realm, there is this very broad understanding that you cannot just forget and pretend that it didn't happen. It's happening time and time again in different parts of this country and different parts of the world. So there is a very strong momentum and focus on saying, you know, let's get to the solutions. Part of it is also breaking away from the silos that we operate in. Don't think about, you know, this has to do about education. This has to do with infrastructure. This has to do with, you know, something else. You have to sometimes cut across the silos and say, what are the right solutions you put in place? And I mean, I'd like to give an example again from our innovative finance portfolio of something we are funding currently, which people would not normally associate with a resilience effort. And it has to do with natural infrastructure. So by natural infrastructure,”
2017-01-27 · Masters in Business · Interview With Saadia Madsbjerg: Masters in Business (Audio) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, exactly. I mean, I was living downtown Manhattan and I had to relocate to midtown. That was the extent of the suffering I went through. But no, it was a big shock to the system. That really does bring forward this whole concept of resilience and what should we do, not just at a city level and a state level, but for countries and regions as well. At the Rockefeller Foundation, we talk about resilience as the capacity of individuals, communities, societies to withstand shocks when they happen and then bounce back from them faster as well. So it's not about trying to stop the disasters from happening. It's saying, how do you put in place the systems, the solutions, the policies that will allow you to bounce back faster?”
2017-01-27 · Masters in Business · Interview With Saadia Madsbjerg: Masters in Business (Audio) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So I was working for New York City at the time Superstorm Sandy hit. And you're right, it was a massive disaster. It was a mess. It cost the local economies of the states that were hit by it a lot. The small and medium-sized businesses were shut down for a while. The public infrastructure broke down, whether you're talking about subways or telecommunications infrastructure. Electrical was.”
2017-01-27 · Masters in Business · Interview With Saadia Madsbjerg: Masters in Business (Audio) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Finance earlier. And one of the portfolios that I oversee at the foundation is called Zero Gap. And it is focused on the financing mechanisms and closing the funding gap. Within that, right now, we're funding something called Outbreak and Epidemic Insurance. Now, 10 years ago, if you weren't to anybody in the insurance industry and said, you know, public health, you know, there's a massive lack for funding. There are all these public health emergencies that come up time and time again. We don't have a good system in place to fund it. How about insurance? Many of them would probably, you know, have rolled their eyes and say, yes, that's great. We run this business based on these things. And, you know, good luck fiddling with that over in the philanthropic sector.”
2017-01-27 · Masters in Business · Interview With Saadia Madsbjerg: Masters in Business (Audio) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So it's both. That's what I was going to say. It's a fine balance, and it's both. And again, when our mission is so broad, our areas are so broad. If we're really doing our job well, we can't be going to the obvious solutions and funding the obvious things. But sometimes you need to do that too. I mean, we think of our money as America's risk capital, where we can deploy it in ways where the private sector wouldn't be able to because they maybe don't want to take on the risk. The public sector, again, may not be able to because either they don't have the resources available or they don't have the ability to take that risk. So we have a big responsibility in terms of what we do with that really precious privileged capital in terms of driving towards new solutions. I mean, and you talk about moonshots, you can look at it in many different ways. We talked about innovative.”
2017-01-27 · Masters in Business · Interview With Saadia Madsbjerg: Masters in Business (Audio) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And potential for innovation. So with dynamism, what I mean is, is there something happening at this point in time that makes it the right time for us as a foundation to go in and engage? Is it on the policy side? Is there developments in the private sector that we should be looking at and focused on? Is it something in civic society? thing that gives an indication there's a momentum that we can build on and accelerate. And then, of course, there's the impact at scale. We're here. I mean, philanthropy is here to serve poor and vulnerable people around the world. That is our role. That is what we're focused on. So at the end of it, it comes down to our ability to have impact.”
2017-01-27 · Masters in Business · Interview With Saadia Madsbjerg: Masters in Business (Audio) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source