Top 100 Novogratz Quotes
#1. I think we so often equate leadership with being experts - the leader is supposed to come in and fix things. But in this interconnected world we live in now, it's almost impossible for just one person to do that.
Jacqueline Novogratz
#2. What would the world look like if we asked ourselves the following more often; are our actions helping others find a way to feel more freer, more dignified and more beautiful?
Jacqueline Novogratz
#3. I was going to save the world, and I thought I would start with the African continent.
Jacqueline Novogratz
#4. The only way to end poverty, to make it history, is to build viable systems on the ground that deliver critical and affordable goods and services to the poor, in ways that are financially sustainable and scaleable. If we do that, we really can make poverty history.
Jacqueline Novogratz
#6. As is so often the case, the supposedly insignificant understood the psychology of the strong, while the strong didn't have a clue about the other.
Jacqueline Novogratz
#7. May each of you live lives of immersion. They won't necessarily be easy lives. But in the end, it is all that will sustain us.
Jacqueline Novogratz
#8. I think I still have a great sense of adventure and trust, and am surprisingly idealistic given all the horrible things I've seen since I was 25. I think how I have changed is that I have a much deeper understanding of the dark forces in the world, of power.
Jacqueline Novogratz
#11. Acumen Fund is my prayer in response to genocide and what happened in Rwanda.
Jacqueline Novogratz
#13. Wealth today has been created by a world view dominated by fast-moving networks, open information, bottom-up entrepreneurialism.
Jacqueline Novogratz
#14. I'm feeling optimistic about rural Pakistan. Farmers are making good money.
Jacqueline Novogratz
#15. When we deny the poor and the vulnerable their own human dignity and capacity for freedom and choice, it becomes self-denial. It becomes a denial of both our collective and individual dignity, at all levels of society.
Jacqueline Novogratz
#17. As both developed and developing nations search for alternative sources of energy in response to the growing energy crisis, we at Acumen Fund believe that investing in entrepreneurs who provide innovative energy solutions is an increasingly critical part of the solution.
Jacqueline Novogratz
#18. President Kennedy said that those who make peaceful revolution impossible make violent revolution inevitable. I would say that the converse is true.
Jacqueline Novogratz
#19. Honour what is most beautiful about the past and build it into the promise of the future.
Jacqueline Novogratz
#20. My whole life has been spent with people who have taken every knock in the world. No advantages. Yet they greet you with a big smile, they give you what they have, and they keep coming back. They are the fighters.
Jacqueline Novogratz
#21. The older I get, the more determined I feel to do whatever I can to help release that human potential somehow. Not in a fluffy way nor in a hardcore way. But in that middle ground, that marriage of love and power. I'm not afraid of either.
Jacqueline Novogratz
#22. There's a real moral imperative in being an organization that takes the time to sit and listen to the customers and the people they're serving.
Jacqueline Novogratz
#24. We live in a world in which we're seeing an increasing gap between the haves and the have-nots.
Jacqueline Novogratz
#25. The only way we really create change is to enter any situation with the humility to listen and to recognize the world as it is, and then the audacity to dream what it could be.
Jacqueline Novogratz
#26. Leaders can get stuck in groupthink because they're really not listening, or they're listening only to what they want to listen to, or they actually think they're so right that they're not interested in listening. And that leads to a lot of suboptimal solutions in the world.
Jacqueline Novogratz
#27. Not surprisingly, most people feel most beautiful when they are involved in an act of service, or are doing something that makes them feel generous, connected, or seen by others.
Jacqueline Novogratz
#28. The best change that comes to the world is when all parties are seeing each other as equal, and all parties have the opportunity to be transformed. That really goes back to the idea of dignity.
Jacqueline Novogratz
#29. For too much of history, we've viewed the world's precious resources - both environmental and human - as things to extract, to make the most of in order to maximize their potential.
Jacqueline Novogratz
#30. Despite the hundreds of non-governmental organizations and the continued outpouring of foreign aid, East Africa remains as a region overwhelmed by extreme poverty.
Jacqueline Novogratz
#31. People have to understand that unless social enterprise is experimental, it will not succeed in making a difference.
Jacqueline Novogratz
#33. Poverty is too complex to be answered with a one-size-fits-all approach, and if there is any place that illustrates that complexity, as well as a better way forward, it is Rwanda.
Jacqueline Novogratz
#34. Through the Fellows Program, Acumen Fund prepares future global leaders with the tools necessary to drive significant social change.
Jacqueline Novogratz
#36. We see very, very high rates of C-sections, Cesarean sections, in India. Lots of reasons for it, high levels of malnutrition have meant that women have very small pelvic areas often, so if they have larger babies, it's very hard to deliver.
Jacqueline Novogratz
#37. The poor don't live in functional market economies as the rest of us do, but in political economies where corruption and broken systems extend from local government to moneylenders.
Jacqueline Novogratz
#39. Entrepreneurs are the seekers of solutions, and that they will go into these places where both market and traditional aid has failed or traditional charity has failed.
Jacqueline Novogratz
#40. Sometimes very small investments can release enormous, infinite potential that exists in all of us.
Jacqueline Novogratz
#41. Standing with the poor means walking away from unethical leaders, even when their companies are 'succeeding.'
Jacqueline Novogratz
#42. If there's one value that is immutable, it's integrity or respect, for others and for yourself.
Jacqueline Novogratz
#43. As our world becomes increasingly interconnected, we need to find better solutions that will include everyone in today's opportunities. (197)
Jacqueline Novogratz
#45. Acumen Fund's patient capital investment in Western Seed is intended to enhance the food security and economic independence of Kenya's smallholder farmers.
Jacqueline Novogratz
#46. This idea of universal access to basic healthcare has to be figured out as a world. No country has figured it out in part because it is driven by ideology.
Jacqueline Novogratz
#47. One of the first things that surprised me in a positive, wonderfully positive way, is that this works - patient capital works.
Jacqueline Novogratz
#49. In the case of maternal health care, you look at, well naturally, it's the mother who's the customer, who makes the decisions. But in truth, the mother in many areas, in certain parts of India, the mother has very little decision-making power at all. The real decision-maker is the mother-in-law.
Jacqueline Novogratz
#50. Listening is not only about waiting, but it's also learning how better to ask questions.
Jacqueline Novogratz
#53. We are connected to each other not only as humans, but to every living thing on the planet.
Jacqueline Novogratz
#54. I have seen that traditional approaches to charity and aid don't solve problems of poverty. In fact, too often they create dependence.
Jacqueline Novogratz
#55. My dream is to find individuals who take financial resources and convert them into changing the world in the most positive ways.
Jacqueline Novogratz
#56. Don't let people tell you to do it this way. You are on the verge of figuring out hybrid models
with companies and nonprofits, markets, government, crowd-sourced philanthropy. The capitalist system as we know it is not working.
Jacqueline Novogratz
#60. Where micro-finance focuses on small loans to individual, low-income women, think of Acumen Fund more like a venture capital fund.
Jacqueline Novogratz
#61. I dream a world in no one feels the need for or fear of predatory behavior, in which each of us walks with the knowledge of how beautiful - and valuable - is each human life.
Jacqueline Novogratz
#63. I am an insomniac. Most of my nights include a moment of wakening. Often I will make my way to the kitchen to make tea and read for awhile.
Jacqueline Novogratz
#64. It's about all of us, and the kind of world that we, together, want to live in and share.
Jacqueline Novogratz
#66. We often don't realize what our action & our inaction do to people we think we will never see & never know.
Jacqueline Novogratz
#67. Our lives are so short. And our time on this planet is so precious. All we have is each other.
Jacqueline Novogratz
#69. Though either choice was good, one was truer to myself ... Ultimately, I reflected on Geothe's invocation to 'make a commitment and the forces of the universe will conspire to make it happen' and chose the uncharted path.
Jacqueline Novogratz
#70. You have to learn to ask questions in a way that will elicit more nuanced answers, rather than the answers you would like to get.
Jacqueline Novogratz
#71. If indeed we can create systems that allow individuals to access goods and services like health and housing and energy and water, in a way that they can afford, they'll all have greater choice, greater opportunity, greater dignity.
Jacqueline Novogratz
#73. As a young woman, I dreamed of changing the world. In my twenties, I went to Africa to try and save the continent, only to learn that Africans neither wanted nor needed saving. Indeed, when I was there, I saw some of the worst that good intentions, traditional charity, and aid can produce ...
Jacqueline Novogratz
#74. Hope is a path on the mountainside. At first there is no path. But then there are people passing that way. And there is a path. - LU XUN
Jacqueline Novogratz
#75. There are cases where government-to-government aid actually has worked. Look at the eradication of smallpox and the near eradication of polio. But these are really top down solutions that require government-to-government support and aid.
Jacqueline Novogratz
#76. I've heard it said that the most dangerous animal on the planet is the adolescent male.
Jacqueline Novogratz
#77. I've been working on issues of poverty for more than 20 years, and so it's ironic that the problem that and question that I most grapple with is how you actually define poverty. What does it mean?
Jacqueline Novogratz
#78. Rockefeller viewed his philanthropy through the lens of his business, and it really mirrored the Industrial Revolution. It was highly centralized, it was top down, it was based on experts, and it was big-picture.
Jacqueline Novogratz
#79. Companies like Husk Power Systems are working to impact positively not only the environment, but to ensure that someday everyone, including the poorest of the poor in rural India, will have access to clean and affordable electricity.
Jacqueline Novogratz
#80. Today, poor people the world over are seeking opportunity and choice to have greater dignity in their lives - and they want to do it themselves, even if they need a little help. Today we have the tools and technologies to bring real opportunities to people all across the world.
Jacqueline Novogratz
#81. I was an accidental banker. To please my parents, I went for an interview with Chase Manhattan Bank in 1983. They promised to send me into their offices in more than 40 countries and essentially audit the practices. It was an extraordinary job.
Jacqueline Novogratz
#82. Just start Don't wait for perfection. Just start and let the work teach you.
Jacqueline Novogratz
#83. We can send people to the Moon; we can see if there's life on Mars - why can't we get $5 [mosquito] nets to 500 million people?
Jacqueline Novogratz
#84. When Jeff Sachs says every poor person should receive a free bed net, I agree - but in reality, many end up not receiving one. And I don't live in a world of shoulds.
Jacqueline Novogratz
#85. In India, we now see many highly qualified professionals ready to work in the rural hinterland and in their own towns and cities to tackle development issues directly without depending much on the government.
Jacqueline Novogratz
#86. Many business leaders are seeing the relationship between long term success and sustainability, and that's very heartening.
Jacqueline Novogratz
#89. What we call people so often distances us from them, and makes them little.
Jacqueline Novogratz
#90. The poor also are willing to make, and do make, smart decisions, if you give them that opportunity.
Jacqueline Novogratz
#92. So many low income people have seen so many failed promises broken and seen so many quacks and sporadic medicines offered to them that building trust takes a lot of time, takes a lot of patience.
Jacqueline Novogratz
#93. Even when early innovations start to succeed, it is not uncommon to see growing businesses sabotaged for threatening the status quo.
Jacqueline Novogratz
#94. Sproxil will help combat the multi-billion dollar counterfeit drug market, empower customers, and give them the resources to make informed pharmaceutical purchasing decisions.
Jacqueline Novogratz
#96. If you're looking at distributing alternative energy in Nigeria, for instance, what gets in your way is not people's ability to pay, not people's desire for a clean solar lamps or biomass opportunities. But there is a strong status quo that really depends on selling diesel.
Jacqueline Novogratz
#97. As a 25-year-old banker, I decided to leave my career and change the world. This sounds like a move that a 25-year-old banker might make today - to escape the chaos.
Jacqueline Novogratz
#98. People need to believe that they can participate fully in the decisions that affect their lives and have a stake in the societies in which they live
Jacqueline Novogratz
#99. If we have learned anything, it is the horror that can happen when people don't think for themselves, but instead follow authority blindly.
Jacqueline Novogratz
#100. Freedom ultimately is dignity. And dignity, not income, is the opposite of poverty.
Jacqueline Novogratz
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