Daniel Emmerson 00:02

Welcome to Foundational Impact, a podcast series that focuses on education and artificial intelligence from a non-profit perspective. My name is Daniel Emmerson and I'm the Executive Director of Good Future Foundation, a nonprofit whose mission is to equip educators to confidently prepare all students, regardless of their background, to benefit from and succeed in an AI infused world. Today we have the privilege of chatting with Lori van Dam, who serves as the Chief Executive officer for the Hult Prize, which is an annual global student social entrepreneurship competition with a $1 million prize. Prior to joining the organization, Lori spent six years as an executive leader for Susan G. Komen, the largest private funder of breast cancer research in the United States. Lori also served as Executive Director of the One Fund Boston, which was created by the Mayor of Boston and the Governor of Massachusetts to provide support for the 2013 Boston Marathon bombing victims while bringing the community together in the aftermath of that tragedy. Lori also worked for 20 years for EF Education First, the global education company founded by the Hult Prize's namesake and benefactor. Lori speaks five languages and has traveled to many countries around the world. She currently lives in Massachusetts with her husband and her unruly rescue dog. She has two grown children. Lori, it's wonderful to have you with us today on Foundational Impact.

So yeah, Lori, I guess the context for the podcast series is that we are a non-profit that is offering professional development predominantly to teachers around best practices when it comes to artificial intelligence in the classroom and beyond. So we're working with non-fee-paying schools in giving them almost the capacity to research and also come up with ideas with regards to implementation for best practice AI use in the K-12 space. So that's the nonprofit. The podcast is a little bit more experimental in that we're speaking with folks from different sectors and different walks of life who have an interest in technology and education, perhaps also the nonprofit world. And I loved the Hult Prize event. I thought it was phenomenal. My background is in global education and so I've spent 14 years of my career working with young people to encourage opportunities for cross cultural collaboration. And that's what I saw in the flesh happening before my eyes when I attended the event there. So I think let's just launch into this, Lori. First of all.

Lori van Dam 03:01

I mean, the other piece I'll give you just for context, my dad is a professor of computer science, has been since the 60s. So AI in the classroom is something that he is obviously very engaged with. And he's also a person who his field is computer graphics. And like in the 80s he was teaching a joint English and computers class trying to help people understand how computers were not just like this thing that sat over here and was for people who cared about numbers or electronics. It was actually something that you would integrate into the everyday process of teaching and learning. So, this is independent of my Health Prize experience. This is also a topic of personal interest.

Daniel Emmerson 03:53

So is that something that came about regularly in conversation?

Lori van Dam 03:57

I mean, of course the dinner table conversation was very important and a lot of it was around his work. So yeah, that's just something that I was steeped in as a kid.

Daniel Emmerson 04:10

Well, let's maybe focus a little bit on the Hult Prize itself and then I'm sure we'll be able to bring that in as we go along. But just for listeners who might not be aware of what the Hult Prize is, could you give us a bit of a rundown and sort of explain the reason that it exists, why it's important and what it involves?

Lori van Dam 04:33

Sure. Well, first of all, thank you for having me. It's a pleasure to speak with you on one of my favorite topics. The Hult Prize was started about 15 years ago by a group of students at the Hult International Business School here in Boston who were inspired by a conversation with a guest speaker about challenges he was facing in his non-profit to do a competition to try to see who could come up with a great idea. And from that sort of very grassroots beginning, we were first on the five Hult International Business School campuses and then in about 2013. So we started in 2009, we expanded out to universities around the world. So today we are in over 110 countries. We operate in about 2,000 universities worldwide. And what the Hult Prize is, is a year long program that teaches students through experiential learning how to build a socially responsible business. In so doing, they acquire all of those vital skills for the future like problem solving and teamwork and resilience and cross-cultural communication for the vast majority of our participants. And we have about 40,000 student entrepreneurs who participate in the Hult Prize, that's kind of the end of the story. But then for some of the participants who are really dedicated to creating or in fact may already be running a socially responsible business, they then are able to progress through levels of the competition. And we have about 20 who will come to an in person accelerator outside of London next August. And traditionally six teams pitch at the global finals. We're actually looking at expanding that number a little bit this year, so stay tuned. But the team that is selected on the day receives a million dollars in funding to really bring their idea to the next level.

Daniel Emmerson 06:38

There are a few super interesting strands there I want to try and pick up on. So first of all, the nonprofit piece. And I'd picked up on this, I think, prior to attending the Hult Prize this year. And I'd heard you, Lori, speak about the nonprofit space and the challenges and complexities that it faces. I think that'll be quite a helpful starting point for folks in terms of framing, you know, what making a difference in the world looks like and the different approaches that people take to trying to do that. What did that process look like for you in determining where you wanted to work, and how has that led to you coming to your conclusions around what needs to happen as far as nonprofits are concerned?

Lori van Dam 07:22

Well, this, as you know, is a favorite topic of mine. So thank you for giving me this opportunity. So I worked for the broad family of EF Education First companies for 20 years. And in that context I worked in for profit divisions and I worked in participant funded nonprofit sort of sister organizations. I never worked in a donor funded nonprofit until I left EF and I found myself first at the One Fund Boston, which was the compensation fund set up for the survivors of the Boston Marathon bombing and their families who lost their loved ones. And that was pure donor funded. But it was unique in the sense that we did absolutely no donor stewardship or donor solicitation. The mayor of Boston and the governor of Massachusetts who set up the fund were very clear that they did not want anyone to feel obligated to or guilted into funding the survivors and the families who lost loved ones, but that we were a funnel, we were a conduit. So our job was to receive the money and to distribute it the best way that we could. So when I left that role, because we actually closed the One Fund, which is quite a unique thing for a nonprofit to just go out of business. But we felt that our mission had been accomplished and I started looking for roles in the traditional donor funded nonprofit world. I ended up at Susan G. Komen, which is actually, you know, it's a wonderful charity. They do wonderful work that has been very important to my family. They are a typical American healthcare nonprofit that is subject to being reviewed by donors for its efficiency. And the way that American donors look at efficiency is by looking at what they call the expense ratio, which is how much of the money that comes in is allocated to programs versus overhead. And coming from the for profit world, I was sort of shocked by the way that American nonprofits operate, in particular the sort of shoestring budgets that you have for both hiring qualified people, but also infrastructure. And I saw Dan Pallotta's TED Talk and had my eyes just wide open to the challenges of explaining to donors why they should be willing to fund unallocated programming. You know, just fund the organization versus designating their funds to a particular programmatic project. So I did that for about six years and then was fortunate enough to be invited to come and run the Hult Prize, which is a nonprofit, but again, it is not donor funded. It is funded by the family. So the constraints that are put on American nonprofits that have to slavishly defer to the desire to be on these registrations, the registration websites that say, yes, this is a good nonprofit and all they look at is, is the expense ratio instead of looking at impact. And so for me, what Hult Prize is really critically about is impact. And if you can invest a little bit and take a longer term view and really make a difference in people's lives, that's what we're here to do. Rather than spending a lot of time worrying about, oh gosh, can we afford a computer for the new staff member that we're hiring? Which I think a lot of nonprofits really struggle with.

Daniel Emmerson 10:59

This is a bit of a conundrum, right? It's a broken system. And I don't know if this is true of Hult Prize participants and perhaps you can, you can tell us in a moment. But certainly having worked in K-12 education for more than a decade and having worked with so many students from many, many different countries around the world, those who really gravitate towards developing things like the cross cultural communication skills that you mentioned, and, and teamwork and overcoming cultural challenges for a force for good in the world may gravitate towards the nonprofit space. Right. They're passionate about the change that they want to see. They may even think about establishing their own non profit in order to facilitate that change. Is that something you see in the work that you do with students? And how does that reflect perhaps on their, on their life choices beyond the Prize itself?

Lori van Dam 11:57

Yes, absolutely. We think we are. Part of our mission is to teach people that social entrepreneurship is a thing that for profit and for good can go together.

Daniel Emmerson 12:07

Right.

Lori van Dam 12:08

Because you're right, most students, including I have to say, my son's girlfriend, they are juniors in college and she said to me, oh, I'm thinking about going into the nonprofit space. And I was like, oh, Lord, okay, we need to have a conversation. I also want to do good in the world. Right? That's what wakes me up. That's what gets me out of bed in the morning. But I want to do it in a context where you're also providing good jobs with livable wages and, you know, having the material that you need in order to be able to do the job and the sustainability that comes with making a profit. So many nonprofits are just buffeted by, you know, whatever changes out there in the world and people's choices in how they are spending their very limited money that they're willing to donate to charity. So, for example, when I was running the One Fund Boston, which didn't exist, and then the bombing happened and then existed and raised an enormous amount of money very, very rapidly. I had friends in the nonprofit world saying, oh, our donations have plummeted this year because everybody tells us they're donating to the One Fund instead. It's a very zero sum game. Whereas the for profit world is a world of plenty of opportunity and to create your own space. So, you know, part of what is so fun about my job is that the founder of EF, Bertil Hult, which is the funder for the Prize, did exactly what we ask our students to do. He was a college student. He had undiagnosed dyslexia. It was the mid-60s. He knew that he could learn, but not the way they were teaching him in a book. And so he thought, if it's true for me, that by going to England, I learned English over the summer instead of sitting in a classroom for six years beating my head against a wall, maybe this will work for other people. And so he got together a little group of students and he made a little program for them, and he sent them over to England. And thus was born EF and now we're in, I don't know how many tens or hundreds of countries and how many hundreds of thousands of participants every year. And he's built a really beautiful business that is in the business of creating experiential learning opportunities for cross-cultural understanding, which in this divided world could not be a more important social good. And he's also made a very nice living for himself and all of us who work here. So that example is one that I hope our students really take with them when they're thinking about, okay, how can I change something in my world that's important to me and also build a life for myself and my family.

Daniel Emmerson 14:54

It's a wonderful story, and of course that resonates with us. At the Good Future foundation, we're very privileged not to be dependent on donations. However, the work that we're doing is predominantly focused on artificial intelligence in the K-12 space. And we're working as hard as we can to not just provide insights, information and conduct research, but also give teachers the confidence to explore responsibly and experiment with artificial intelligence tools. Now, when thinking about this in relation to a lot of the things you've been saying, Lori, about cross cultural collaboration and communication, working with people from different cultural backgrounds and the importance of this in teamwork, is that antithetical in any way, do you think, between what we're trying to achieve or what we're looking to explore with artificial intelligence and the need to be focusing on experiential learning and experiential education.

Lori van Dam 15:54

So I don't know if you would agree, but for me artificial intelligence is a tool, right? Like the goal is to have artificial intelligence do the stuff that is sort of generic, which frees us up as humans to do the stuff that is uniquely human. And in particular I think for our program, which as I said, is held in 110+ countries, therefore equally many languages. But our competition is in English. So one of the big barriers to entry historically has been if your English is not at a high enough standard, then it's very difficult for you to compete. And what artificial intelligence is allowing our teams to do is rapidly translate their materials and help them to refine their answers in English, write a bunch. They have to submit for us a pitch deck and a two pager so they can use these artificial intelligence tools to create these written documents that they need and proof them and make sure the grammar is beautiful and actually make them compelling. So it's a huge tool for our participants to have this. As long as we understand what its place is, right? Artificial intelligence is not going to stand up on stage and deliver a compelling pitch with an avatar. And that's not the goal. The goal is for us to really lean into the work that we can uniquely do and take away. The story of mechanization since the Industrial Revolution is to make machines do the stuff that people find repetitive or boring or painful or difficult and let humans do the stuff that humans should be doing. So I think my hope is that when we look back on this in 50 years, we'll say, oh, that was a time when human productivity skyrocketed because so much more of the kind of drudgery and unproductive work has been taken away. I think my big push in all of this is to remind people that excellence is a thing and not allow the ease of artificial intelligence to allow us to accept or encourage us to accept less than excellent content. So we have to have. You can't just throw it over the AI fence and think it's going to be great without human intervention. It needs to be a partnership.

Daniel Emmerson 18:28

Well, far from it. I think the pitches that I saw the students giving at the Hult Prize, you know, dependent on a lot of these skills, these intercultural skills that they need to master in order to be able to succeed. So it's wonderful to hear that how much of a part that plays in success as far as the Prize itself is concerned. Could you give us a bit more of a flavor, Lori, of the kind of work that's involved in getting to that final, what the students are encouraged to do, how they're encouraged to do it, and what makes a winner as far as the Prize is concerned.

Lori van Dam 19:04

Okay. So it really actually all comes back to our scorecard, because that's really where we sort of establish for the participants what we're looking for in a startup. And so we spend a lot of effort on creating the scorecard, and it's progressive. So depending on what stage in the competition you're in, we will add more criteria to the scorecard as the companies that are being pitched and are more sophisticated. But the number one thing for us is always the team, because anyone who's ever been in a startup knows that your idea is going to pivot. You don't know how, you don't know when. Sometimes it's pivoting, you know, two weeks before it goes on the global final stage. And sometimes, in fact, in many cases, it pivots after the Hult Prize has been won. So if you look at the companies that were pitched on the global final stage, and now five, ten years later, what are those companies actually doing? There are common elements, but they are not the identical businesses that were pitched at the time that the business won. So for us, you know, if we had to pick one single criteria that stands out above the rest, it would be the team. So within that context, we provide a whole series of educational materials up front for students to learn about design thinking, which is something that we think is a super important tool for them to use as they're trying to understand. You know, in particular, I think students have a tendency not to talk to potential customers, so they develop their ideas in a vacuum. And we have to say, like, you got to talk to people who are going to use this thing if you're going to want them to buy it. And that may push you in a different direction than you think you're going in now. So we do a lot of that kind of upfront. And the competition has stages. So the first stage is on the university campus typically, or people who do not have a program on their campus or who can't participate in that program for some reason can do it more or less all online. So we have a whole asynchronous review process that allows people to move through the stages as well and they submit a video and we can get a good sense from that of what their idea is and how they're pitching it. And the sort of top 60 out of that process will come to our incubator, which is all online. And from that we have a group of experts that we work with who have been watching them pitch and talking to them and getting a feel for them. And they're the ones who help us select the 20 who will go to the in person accelerator and have the opportunity to pitch on the final stage.

Daniel Emmerson 21:49

That's the bit that I think I saw in the, in the video in the lead up that really caught my attention. It looked grueling, right?

Lori van Dam 21:58

It was grueling. It is grueling.

Daniel Emmerson 22:00

The work that goes into that from the teams, the emotion, the disappointments, the learning from failure, the resilience, tenacity, all of these things are encapsulated, I think, in the journey that these students are going through. So this isn't just about winning the Prize. Right. That was a little facetious on me. It's about the process and the journey that they go on and the skills, I guess, that they then take with them into the future.

Lori van Dam 22:29

Yes.

Daniel Emmerson 22:30

In spite of what we've been talking about, I'm getting a sense that you would agree these are the skills that we really need to be harnessing in the education space, for sure, to give folks a flavour of the sorts of things that come out of the Hult Prize. Have you got any examples then of things that have emerged either as a consequence of winning or going through that process? Real products or businesses? Perhaps one or two favorites you might have.

Lori van Dam 22:55

Sure. No. So one of the things that's been fun is that over the last year or two, we've started incorporating more alumni into those final stages of the competition. So because they've been through the process themselves, I think they're really great examples. One of the teams that sent an alumni to this year's accelerator was a 2022 finalist. They did not win, but they were finalists. They're called Breer, B-R-E-E-R. They make beer out of discarded bread from bakeries in Hong Kong. So it was the. At the time we were doing a specific topic for the year so that the topic that they competed on was an employment challenge. So they were looking to hire folks to. But they also clearly have a big sustainability focus. Right. So they were aware of the fact that all of this bread was being thrown out at the end of the day. They're mostly South Asian participants who were studying in Hong Kong. So this was a phenomenon that they were observing as kind of outsiders in the culture. And they thought, well, what can we do with this stuff? And came up with the idea of brewing beer. And they have done extremely well. They just launched in 7-11s across Hong Kong and they're available in lots of bars and restaurants. And they are really dealing with this real challenge of what do you do with all of this discarded bread and creating a product that people feel really good about. So we're. And they got a lot out of the experience of being part of the Hult Prize. And like I said, they come back and they. They speak at events and they're, you know, very connected, but they didn't win so then. And they've done just fine even without our funding. So they're, I think, a really cool company that people should keep an eye out for. Maybe I'll also talk about our 2019 winners, which are called Rutipia. They are a Mexican team, that one with a proposal for a. They're a touring business, tourism business, but what they specialize in is exposing folks to the indigenous cultures in Mexico. So it's kind of a two way street where they provide money to. In these very impoverished indigenous communities. And in a very sensitive way bring. At the time they were proposing to bring students and individuals on these tour programs to create this kind of mutually beneficial tourism relationship in Mexico. The business that they're running today is group travel and adults. So not individual travel and not students. There's the pivot. They just got another big investment to allow them to expand and they provide funding for communities that otherwise have very, very little opportunity to bring in cash. But they do it in a very sensitive, culturally appropriate way that people really appreciate.

Daniel Emmerson 25:53

Some fantastic examples of real world application of these. These skills and ideas.

Lori van Dam 25:58

Exactly.

Daniel Emmerson 25:59

I guess just to. To wrap up then, Lori, it would be great to know from an education perspective, there's a lot of talk at the moment around the curriculum as it stands and how we're still very much focused on information as a commodity, exams front and center for schools or leaders in education who are in a position to think perhaps a little bit more about experiential learning, cross cultural collaboration and communication. What might you you say to them to perhaps steer the direction of travel?

Lori van Dam 26:35

Gosh, I, you know, I think it's one of those things where if you've experienced it yourself, you're just an evangelist for it. I was lucky enough. My dad's a professor. He went on sabbatical once when I was 7 and once I was 13. So the whole family moved first to Holland for a year and then to Switzerland for a year. And the experience of being just completely dropped into the middle of a culture that you didn't speak the language, didn't have the cultural references and just could reinvent yourself was incredibly liberating and powerful. And does the thing of teaching you that we're actually all the same, like all of these divides that we think are so important, really, when you come right down to it, you know, everybody wants to be in a safe place and everybody wants to have enough food and shelter and love and purpose. And I think, you know, that that is maybe the most important thing that we can teach our children is to, you know, think with an abundance and a growth mindset. And experiential learning is a much better way. I don't know how you teach an abundance and growth mindset from a book. If someone has figured it out, good for them and they should keep on doing that. But until that's sort of widespread, I think being genuinely curious about the world around you is the way to go.

Daniel Emmerson 28:04

Couldn't think of a more perfect place to wrap up. Lori, thank you so very much indeed for being with us today. A real, real pleasure. Thank you again. Soon, I'm sure.

Lori van Dam 28:12

Yes, absolutely. I'll look forward to it.

Voiceover 28:14

That's it for this episode. Don't forget, the next episode is coming out soon, so make sure you click. That option to follow or subscribe. It just means you won't miss it. But in the meantime, thank you for. Being here and we'll see you next time.

‍