Monisha Kapila started the innovative non-profit organization ProInspire with a monumental goal - to help organizations and individuals maximize their social impact. She has achieved her goal and continues to do so, with her work having a multiplier effect on goodness. Along the way, Monisha learned to focus on her strengths and passions, rather than what others wanted her to be.

Advice

• Spend time thinking about your personal mission or career vision 
• Know your strengths; ask what are you passionate about and what does the world need?
• Recommended book – Strengths Finder
• Let your personal mission evolve over time
• Be flexible to what may come; if you have a path don't let this stop you from taking new opportunities

Key messages

• Monisha is the founder of the non-profit start-up ProInspire
• ProInspire is in its 7th year and develops leaders at all levels for non-profit organizations.
• This means recruiting leaders to join non-profits, improving training in the non-profit sector and influencing the sector to invest more in talent and inclusion.
• ProInspire influences the non-profit sector by organizing 4 fellowship programs:
  1. Recruiting young business people and placing them in full time roles at non-profits.
  2. Training people to build skills as they build careers in the sector. 
  3. Leadership development directly for organizations
  4. Influencing leaders of organizations and foundations to think differently about talent and invest in their staff.

• Monisha changed jobs after her mother passed away. She decided to do what she wanted to do, not what everyone was telling her to do.
• Monisha has an MBA from Harvard and did a non-profit fellowship there.
• Her proudest moments are when she realizes the impact her work has had on people and organizations.
• ProInspire was selected by the Chronicle of Philanthropy as 1 of 7 non-profits to watch in 2015
• Monisha makes life manageable by outsourcing as much as possible.
• She also attributes her success to a supportive spouse and family.
• Monisha names childcare as the single most important change she would like to make to help women in the workplace.

Quotes

• I think my whole life has been fighting between what other people tell me i should be doing and what i really want to be doing
• Why not just do what matters to me because who knows how much time we have
• I never wanted to be an entrepreneur
• Tap into your own resources 

Links

http://www.proinspire.org/about-us/our-team/