6 Inspiring Women Committed To Change The World For The Better
This article was published in The Beam #8 — Subscribe now for more on the topic.
Sandra Capponi, Meike van Ginneken, Servane Mouazan, Joyce Msuya, Sheila Oparaocha, and Ajaita Shah are working all over the world to encourage sustainable behaviors, advocate for gender equality and climate justice, raise awareness towards climate change, support environmental activism, and contribute to improve people’s quality of life.
Sandra Capponi, Good on You
Sandra Capponi is the Co-Founder and Head of Business Development at Melbourne-based Good On You , a company on a mission to transform the way we shop by giving us tools to enable buying decisions aligned with our values.
Despite the challenges, Sandra remains optimistic that business can be a powerful catalyst for positive social and environmental change.
“Recognise the power that you have to stand up for the issues that matter to you through the purchasing decisions you make. It’s easy to pass on responsibility to others, or to think that individual actions don’t matter, but they do. Everything starts with you.” — Read more in The Beam #8
Meike van Ginneken, SNV
Meike van Ginneken started her career at Médecins Sans Frontières (Doctors Without Borders) in 1994, and has been contributing to the fight against poverty ever since.
Today, Meike is the CEO of the SNV, a not-for-profit international development organization that works on agriculture, water, sanitation, hygiene, and energy. In 2017, SNV’s projects directly improved the lives of 6.4 million people. I talked to Meike about gender inequality, the role of the private sector in bringing sustainable change, and the main benefit of working with local stakeholders, among other things.
“Working with local actors is the only way to get sustainable results.” — Read more in The Beam #8
Servane Mouazan, Ogunte
Empowering women and achieving gender equality are not only moral imperatives, they are crucial to creating inclusive, open, and prosperous societies. Yet the barriers to doing so are daunting.
In this conversation with Servane Mouazan, CEO of Ogunte, I came to the understanding that supporting females in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) was very much linked to fighting against stereotypes, false expectations and erroneous beliefs about women.
“Change is sometimes about losing power and making space for others.” — Read more in The Beam #8
Joyce Msuya, UN Environment
Joyce Msuya is the Active Executive Director of the United Nations Environment Programme, which works with governments, the private sector, the civil society, and with other UN entities and international organizations across the world to provide leadership and encourage partnership in caring for the environment.
Joyce brings more than 20 years of extensive experience in the field of international development, international finance, and partnerships. During our conversation, we talked about the emergency nature of the situation and the utmost importance for governments and the private sector to act now towards environmental issues.
“The science on climate change is settled. Anyone who tells you otherwise is peddling false promises, and they are doomed to disappoint.” — Read more in The Beam #8
Sheila Oparaocha, ENERGIA
Once she obtained her Bachelor’s Degree in Veterinary Medicine, Sheila Oparaocha decided to change route and went for a Master’s Degree in Gender and Development Planning. She started her career working as a research associate at the Asian Institute of Technology on gender and development before joining ENERGIA in 1999.
With 19 years of experience working in the gender and energy sector, the International Coordinator and Programme Manager of the ENERGIA International Network on Gender and Sustainable Energy is seen as one of the pioneers working on mainstreaming gender into energy policy and practice.
“We are beginning to see women presidents, women prime ministers, women in parliament, etc. Women are driving economies in developing countries. We really have to cherish what we have achieved, we have to fight for it and we need to pay attention to not set this back.”— Read more in The Beam #8
Ajaita Shah, Frontier Markets
Ajaita Shah is the Founder and CEO of Frontier Markets, a rural marketing, sales, and service distribution company providing access to affordable and quality clean energy solutions and appliances to low-income households in India by building a network of rural entrepreneurs.
An advocate for women-led, transformational leadership and rethinking how market based approaches and social innovation organizations can better design for scalable impact, Ajaita has been a leader in driving socially conscious business models through partnerships, and pushing ‘bottom up leadership’, keeping the rural consumer in mind. We talked to Ajaita about the challenges of bringing clean electricity to rural India, why it is essential to work with the local population, and the importance of investing in women as a key to poverty alleviation and change.
“Those who used to be voiceless, who now step up in meetings and demand to be heard; now they have the same power to negotiate.”— Read more in The Beam #8
Article and Interviews by Anne-Sophie Garrigou, Editor-in-Chief, The Beam
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