Leila Janah
Leila Janah
Leila Janah is the Founder and CEO of Sama and Laxmi, two companies highlighted on Fast Company’s 2016 Most Innovative Companies list that share a common social mission to end global poverty by giving work to people in need. She is also the co-author of America's Moment: Creating Opportunity in the Connected Age, a book by Rework America: A Markle Initiative...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionBusinesswoman
Date of Birth9 October 1982
CountryUnited States of America
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The perception in Silicon Valley is that if you dress well, you couldn't possibly be smart, or you're in P.R. but couldn't possibly run a company. I remember briefly attempting the Adidas and jeans and sweatshirt over T-shirt look, but I realized I was trying to dress like a young tech geek, and that just wasn't me.
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I love dancing and practiced ballet for ten years until I realized I wouldn't make it professionally - then I started taking salsa classes. I learned to dance samba in Rio and Salvador when I lived in Brazil.
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We spend billions on international aid annually, but we don't find ways to connect people to dignified work. I realized that if we don't think about ways to harness private capital to solve problems, we're leaving large amounts of money on the table and doing ourselves a disservice.
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The more time I spent in developing countries, and the more time I spent talking to poor people, I realized what they want more than anything is a good job.
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I think what travelling has done for me and for many generations of my family - my grandmother was a great example - it's really highlighted for me how similar we all are and how many values we all share as people on this planet.
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I think in general, people who aren't themselves entrepreneurs are often more risk averse. And I think you see this dynamic a lot with entrepreneurial people who lead a company, which is that they hire people who complement them.
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My mom was a big feminist, and when I was growing up, I wasn't allowed to have typical girl toys: she did not let me have dolls. Barbies were banned in our household. She read feminist books to me; my mom was a major feminist.
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Like so many first generation children of Indian immigrants, I learned to believe in a dream that is as much American as it is universal: a dream of equal opportunity for all based on merit, of power concentrated not in the hands of a few at the top, but fanning across a large, educated, and civically engaged middle class.
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I think people are hungry for new ideas and leadership in the world of poverty alleviation. Most development programs are started and led by people with Ph.Ds in economics or policy. Samasource is part of a cadre of younger organizations headed by entrepreneurs from non-traditional backgrounds.
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I think part of the problem with charity is that it tends to make us view people as helpless victims. I think in the future, we'll look back on charity in the same way that we look back on colonialism today: as a very paternalistic system that doesn't fully recognise the full spectrum of humanity.
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We think the way out of poverty is to view the poor as producers, and the Internet is probably the most efficient tool we have for tapping this capacity. Because you don't need roads. You don't need customs officials who are friendly. You don't need to manage shipping and delivery schedules. You don't have to worry about tariffs.
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At Samasource, a company I founded in 2008, we train people living in poverty from Kenya to California to develop and market 21st century digital skills to adapt to new economic realities.
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We have people from places like Oracle, Microsoft, Intuit. Sama plays a huge role in why people leave lucrative careers to join a social enterprise.
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Using the Internet to secure employment is as vital to a construction worker as it is to a software engineer.