Social impact in a time of scarcity, and the power of community

Nick (00:00)
I've been a little, disappointed by the public displays of funding that have emerged.

What I have heard is that they are doing more in the shadows to kind of support, but they do not want to draw the public attention of the administration. I hope that's true. I've also heard from a lot of organizations that they don't have as long.

Shubhanan Upadhyay (00:14)
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Nick (00:22)
as they would like to be able to make the pivots and that the work they're doing is mission critical for the people they serve and they don't have a way to deliver on that. Philanthropy as a whole, and there are many exceptions to this, has not moved publicly as fast and as decisively to provide value in the ways that I was hoping.

Nobody wants to fight this administration. So I understand those things, but I also was hopeful that there would be more stepping up, and there hasn't been.

Shubhanan Upadhyay (00:57)
Nick Martin, what a pleasure to have you on the Global Perspectives on Digital Health podcast. Welcome. We are gonna have a really, really great discussion today. I'm really looking forward to getting your wisdom, insights, and some of the things that you've learned along your many years in the development sector. So welcome.

Nick (01:15)
Hey listen, Shubs great to be here, looking forward to getting a chance for us to talk about all things social impact, digital health, and more.

Shubhanan Upadhyay (01:23)
Nick, you're like one of, probably one of most well-connected people in the social impact space that I've seen. tell us about yourself, how you got into this space and the work that you're doing.

Nick (01:34)
Yeah, I don't know where to start. was a modern poetry major in college ⁓ at Swarthmore College and studied peace and conflict as well. And then my father was really set on me becoming a CIA agent. I, you know, got in a big fight with him over an internship that he'd arranged for me with some of his friends and decided I wanted to go and teach English literature. And then from there,

Shubhanan Upadhyay (01:50)
Ha

Nick (02:03)
decided that I wanted to take the education piece, which I love so much, and really look at a more international career. And that's when I found this amazing program in Costa Rica that did ⁓ education, peace and human rights alongside education with a United Nations flavor. I just loved it. I had a great time and came back from that. And I was like, you know what? Technology is disrupting and changing everything that

⁓ we're seeing with education, maybe there's an opportunity to connect some dots specifically for the humanitarian, global health, global development population and bring new kinds of training and learning to them using the power of tech. So that was the kind of origin instinct around TechChange And we were lucky to grow up at a time when a lot of these technologies were just becoming available to do distance learning and online education. And we were able to marry that with

a whole slew of experts and incredible humans, mostly in DC, but all over the world, who were willing and ready to share their expertise and knowledge with students and professionals in cohort-based learning settings. So that was the early days of TechChange, which I'm happy to go deeper on, but a bit of history there.

Shubhanan Upadhyay (03:17)
So when was this? So that you had started this? Like what year,

Nick (03:19)
Yeah.

2006 and then started tech change in 2009. And in that interim, grappling with where and how I wanted to show up for the community and also a financial recession. those of you who working at those times remember, it was tough. I was out there applying for jobs, have a lot of empathy for job seekers as a result of that period in my life.

hundreds of jobs getting rejected trying to find my footing and ultimately landed on this idea to start tech change ⁓ in around 2009.

Shubhanan Upadhyay (03:58)
Yeah, and so I guess like, you know, things are cyclical and kind of we're kind of in this wave right now as well. So we'll come, I think we'll be great to come back to what you learned then and what applies now still. so you started tech change in 2009. You've got quite some years under your belt And

over the last few months, I've talked to a lot of my guests about their perspective from their layer of the ecosystem, what's been the impact of the USAID and other countries' development aid budgets being completely cut and slashed. And I feel like you'll have such a good view on this, and particularly wider than, I guess, like healthcare as well, because you touch other sectors as well. But maybe we could start with before, what was your experience of it?

what were your big successes, challenges, et cetera, and the things, the main things you've learned. And then maybe you can go into then the, okay, what has the last eight months been like from people that you know in the sector and like the impact that you've seen on people either in the last mile in the places affected, but also your colleagues or former colleagues who've like lost jobs, et cetera.

Nick (05:06)
Sure, sure. Yeah, lot to cover there, but I'll do my best to parse it out. So, TechChange, because we were invested in digital training and learning, we grew exponentially during the pandemic. We had enormous demand for all of our services and tools,

We were seeing a lot more investment, not just in development, but in our niche of digital development, digital health we're talking about today. And that growth

was supported by a lot of the policies in the United States with USAID growing and supporting an expanding catalog of digital programs and partnerships. And so coming out of last year, we saw USAID quite large and supporting quite a bit. We saw other funders really starting to understand the importance of digital

I think with the rise of AI, we've seen so many new entrants to thinking about creative solutions for applying technology to development. Some of them great, some of them terrible. We can talk more about that. But I think that the mood and the mindset and the temperature of 2024 was all quite positive. And then turning the corner into the year, I was at a tech salon with Wayan Vota that he'd organized. Even then we were starting to, as a small group,

sort of think about what was Trump one like and how can we position and pivot accordingly to make digital development resonate with a new administration. So there was still, I wouldn't say there was optimism, but there was at least a feeling like, you know what, like we're gonna survive, it's gonna be okay. And I think really in that moment did not anticipate just how

swift, abrupt, and drastic that, for lack of a better word, transition was going to be. So that's the before times. I'll stop there if you have any reflections, then I can talk about the now times.

Shubhanan Upadhyay (07:10)
I guess before you get into the now times, a lot of people saw that it might be coming and thought, okay, well, if it happens in a certain graded way, maybe some aspects of it are a good thing, right? There were some anti-patterns, like some things that were not,

maybe could have been approached in different ways. Do have any reflections on that? Things that you've learned along the way.

Nick (07:27)
Yeah.

Well, at that same tech salon, think we were certainly talking about digital public infrastructure as a subset of projects and as a movement resonating with this group. Certainly in the localization drive to localize projects and partnerships ⁓ had a lot of resonance with the journey to self-reliance for under Trump one. So there were definitely things we thought, you know, they could stick. And, you know, if you'd asked me what

what was maybe not great about the before times, I do think, and this we can talk more about, that there are many amazing projects in humans working at USAID and the agency, but I do think it had gotten quite large and there was ⁓ not a ton of coordination in certain parts. And so I do think that some of those criticisms are warranted that, you it almost gotten too big for it to be valuable at scale, but

I think no one anticipated the swift ⁓ destruction of everything. That was a surprise. So I do think maybe you could make the case that there was not enough coordination and that some projects needed to be reevaluated. And we can think more about health specifically there. But on the whole,

projects were having great impacts, partnerships were doing great. People love the American people for the value and the services they were providing through USAID and their partners. So, I think this really did become quite swiftly a political thing. And then I guess the other thing to mention, which I'm sure has come up in other interviews and in various channels, but we as a sector, we did not do a great job of...

trying to make the case to the American people, the importance, the value, the merit of global aid. And that got very easy to politicize without a strong lobbying infrastructure and without a strong voter base. People tend to vote based on issues. Our very small niche just didn't have that populist support. So I think that made us an easy target and it allowed other

allowed other forces to kind of quickly come in and lock and tie things up in the courts that ultimately made it very hard to win back. anyway, that's a long and messy topic, but I do think those factors, you know, how could we coordinate better across the sector with our various projects and implementations? And how do we build a better political lobbying constituency so that

The American people really understood the value of what we did in the world.

Shubhanan Upadhyay (10:14)
Yeah, I like that. I think that that piece, you know, there's so many parts of this and around like owning the narrative, science comms that this touches on right as well, which is just so topical right now. Definitely in the world, but particularly in the US right now, right. Thanks for sharing the kind of before and also like your really authentic reflection on what could have been done better. Maybe let's go into like, okay, then.

Then the ball drops, right? This swift action comes. Stop work orders, like people losing their jobs left, right and center. How did you experience that in your local sphere?

Nick (10:52)
Well, I had just come back from vacation. I was living in Costa Rica with my family for a couple of months. We'd just come back from a vacation stint and literally that Friday, everything fell apart. it was a mix of being on a number of phone calls. I was on a phone call with Catherine Rayfelsen who leads

Society for International Development on the Friday when everything was falling apart. And obviously she manages a large membership org. And we were both just trying to make sense of these executive orders. And I don't think it had fully set in. And then in the following week, it really got quite real. And my first instinct was to try to get a website up to talk about the effects of the freeze. And it was entitled...

Global Development Freeze or globalaidfreeze.com and got something up and used my LinkedIn platform quickly to try to just provide a way for people to share the stories of how they were being affected, specifically at the project level, but we ended up getting a lot of individual responses as well. And that response was overwhelming. I had a number of journalists contacting me in those early stages to try to just, everyone was just playing catch-up.

trying to figure out what the hell's going on here. And even folks at the agency were in a bit of whiplash. How long would they have, even in those first few weeks, that some of them thought, well, I can still put money into places to protect it for the following year. And every additional day, got more and more bleak. So that was super rough. And then I put up a posts early on that got a lot of traction.

Trying to make the case for USAID, albeit too late, you know, sharing Samantha Power interviews. I put up posts around asks and offers. What do you need and where are you willing to offer on the community level? And those had thousands of comments and responses. you know, I do want to say like, it was great to have that platform. My several hundred thousand followers already available to me, the platform available to

to be able to provide that support, but really it was driven entirely by the community. People wanting to help people, think the resilience and the generosity were so tremendous. if I look back on those early days, that's really what I want to remember is not the cruelty and the, The kind of flippant nature of this decision, but the way that the community

rallied and connected in a time of need. So anyhow, that's my big reflection there.

Shubhanan Upadhyay (13:30)
Yeah.

Yeah, people generally working working in the sector, pretty resourceful, have had to kind of come out and work in some pretty challenging situations, context, environments, et cetera, and then kind of having that kind of pressure thrust on them and kind of having the power of community to kind of come together, right? Yeah.

Nick (13:50)
Yeah, yeah. you imagine? I mean, these are

already humans that work hard in extremely complicated, challenging environments on pretty traumatic and bleak issues. Global health, democracy, peace and conflict. Tough, tough jobs that are hard not to bring home with you. And then on top of that, to have the...

the work itself, the job security itself thrown into question ⁓ in the way that it was just so unnecessarily cruel. that's my hot take for the moment that we found ourselves in in January.

Shubhanan Upadhyay (14:29)
Yeah.

And maybe just kind of one more thing on this. I heard lots of stories from the last mile of healthcare where literally day and night suddenly supply chains were gone, digital infrastructure for surveillance, public health surveillance, gone, ⁓ medications that were like life-saving and needed healthcare workers to administer them. All of that was gone. ⁓

In terms of the stories that you had shared in those posts and the kind of website you'd shared, do you have any examples of those types of stories like just seeing firsthand what was going on?

Nick (15:09)
Yeah, there were quite a few. I think you've touched on a lot of the big, know, life-saving challenges that we were up against. You know, the projects that we ran that I know the best, probably what I can speak to, we ran a project called Digital Health Planning National Systems. And it was a longstanding partnership with the Global Health Bureau at USAID.

We would go into countries, ministry by ministry and train senior officials in how to digitize and bring their health systems up to speed and strengthen their health systems. And this entire program that had a whole year planned of tons of capacity building and partnerships destroyed overnight. And we have a wait list of over a thousand people on this who are just hungry for this kind of training. Why? Because ultimately they do want to

digitize and interoperate their health systems. They want to be more self-sufficient. They want to work thoughtfully with the right partners from other parts of the world. All of those instincts are what this administration seemed to also want. And yet we're in a situation where that work was abruptly cut short. ⁓ again, maybe less sexy than the last mile worker that doesn't get their care, but this is all part of a larger ecosystem.

Shubhanan Upadhyay (16:35)
Yeah.

Nick (16:35)
And we were on a path. We were on a path to doing tremendous good. And that particular project, Gates Foundation, has come in and is hopefully going to support some of the deliveries of that training and working on building an AI module. But this is the slow, prudent, hard, challenging work that is really required in strengthening health systems.

Shubhanan Upadhyay (17:01)
Mm.

Nick (17:03)
This is the kind of stuff that US government was funding. There are, I would say, more philanthropies and businesses that fund social enterprise and ⁓ are little more story-driven in how they save lives and provide care ⁓ for populations. ⁓ US government was really trying to think about infrastructure. And this is just one example of a

Shubhanan Upadhyay (17:27)
Mm.

Nick (17:30)
across many that is now gone, unfortunately. And so I think it's only, you we're already feeling the effects of that in lives lost and kids not vaccinated and malnutrition and all of that is coming up. We're getting real data around those stories, but ⁓ the effects of this will carry forward for years.

Shubhanan Upadhyay (17:51)
Yeah, now we're kind of eight or so months in, right? You gave the example of like organizations like Gates stepping in, still important work needs to be done to kind of salvage operations

and lot of the kind of talk around this has been, okay, well, we've had this crisis and now there's this opportunity as well to think differently as well, particularly on how decisions around local infrastructure are made. How do we create local ownership that is self-sustainable and kind of doesn't rely on this kind of like one point, single point of failure that relies on like the geopolitical compass.

what's your read on this kind of hey there's this crisis but there's this opportunity to think differently as well.

Nick (18:34)
Yeah, I have a lot of thoughts here. think the way I've been thinking about it is reckoning and reimagining. I think crisis forces creativity. I think that is a truism that I live by as an entrepreneur.

I do think it's happening across the sector. At the organizational level, I think we are seeing now eight months out more organizations thinking creatively about mergers and partnerships with each other. I think we are seeing, and this is an effort that I've been happy to talk more about, more groups pivoting to

their business models to think about selling their services directly to governments, thinking about their offerings more in terms of products. We at TechChange are launching an accelerator program to help organizations with that transition and journey where they get proper sales training, but also all kinds of resources around what a successful merger might look like. And then there's another camp that are just in a world where they're going to have to wind down.

in a dignified way, how do we help them do that with grace? I think that is a big discussion eight months out. It's just how long is the runway. For those larger orgs that are still around, I think it's a really challenging runway. They have some projects that survived the massive cuts, very few assurances from this government that they will be paid for that work, and a lot of costs that are required to keep those projects running plus overhead.

If you're a large implementer in this environment, it's a really precarious 18-month runway, right? You just don't really know what you're up against. And then for individuals, I think that it is also mixed. I think that many amazing humans lost their jobs and are now trying to make sense of what it might look like to be a consultant, a portfolio career person where they are

Shubhanan Upadhyay (20:16)
Mm-hmm.

Nick (20:36)
providing value to a range of clients without full-time benefits, healthcare, all the things that we as humans in this sector really do care about. So that's hard. I think some are finding real meaning and peace with that, but maybe not the journey they would have chosen for themselves. Others are landing full-time jobs. It is a very complicated and challenging market right now, and I'm happy to talk more about that, but.

You know, tough, those full-time jobs, especially in the techs, meet social impact space are very competitive and challenging to secure. So that's a bit of a high level overview.

Shubhanan Upadhyay (21:13)
Yeah, and maybe zooming into two of those levels, one in terms of if you're a non-profit or you're an entity that's been affected by this funding hole, there's a lot of philanthropy and even private investment that has stepped in, right? You talked about Gates, but there's also, I've had Rowena from Africa Health Ventures.

on the podcast as well, talking about, this is an opportunity as well to, and you talked about business models and actually using the know-how and new sort of VC investors to like, hey, how do we create, like how do we invest in you creating an actual economically viable business out of this, right? So I really liked that you harked towards that. And so there's those options if people are in this situation and at the individual level.

And, you know, yeah, hyper competitive market, both for people kind of going into consulting and also for people who are like pivoting their careers. And I know you post a lot on social media around jobs, impact jobs. So, you know, if you're if you're listening to this and you haven't and you're not already following Nick, please do always lots and lots of interesting resources, but also like actually direct funding opportunities, jobs, etc. in the social impact.

and obviously digital health sector as well. So, and you mentioned someone at the beginning of the podcast, Wayan Vota ⁓ and he's got his career pivot website as well. And so these are really good examples of like how you guys have kind of come together to like really help this community who've felt like, well, like I'm cast away here. Like how do I like ground myself back in like what the hell is going on?

Nick (22:47)
Yeah, there's certainly a lot of dissonance that has happened to the humans who have powered this sector and industry over the past eight months. I think there's a settling into a new world order happening. I think there's still lot of frustration with what the medium and long term realities might look like. Will it get worse before it gets better?

These are all open questions, but we're trying where we can to add value. And yes, definitely every Thursday I post 20 jobs that I come across with my colleague Caroline. She helps me curate it. Wayan has just transitioned Career Pivot over to another colleague of ours, Joe, but he's got big, big, big plans for that. And there's a number of amazing resources for folks. so, yeah, look, I think that it's going to take a lot for us to reimagine.

Shubhanan Upadhyay (23:24)
I saw that, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Nick (23:38)
coming to terms with the reality that it may not come back in the way that we expect it to if it comes back at all. And so what does that trajectory look like? Certainly I am seeing some folks leaving the sector entirely, very understandable, others just trying to take some time for themselves. if you can afford to, just hitting pause on the job search is another kind of mental health move I think it may start to get a little better in January. ⁓

a couple of months from now. But at the same time, am seeing colleagues get hired and find new roles and so forth. And I think to your other point about funders, I've been a little, disappointed by the public displays of funding that have emerged. I've had a couple of LinkedIn exchanges with John Palfrey at MacArthur who took the endowment.

MacArthur from 5 % spend a year to 6%, really hoping to see more larger foundations follow suit. What I have heard is that they are doing more in the shadows to kind of support, but they do not want to draw the public attention of the administration. I hope that's true. I've also heard from a lot of entrepreneurs and organizations that they don't have as long.

Shubhanan Upadhyay (24:45)
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Nick (24:54)
as they would like to be able to make the pivots and that the work they're doing is mission critical for the people they serve and they don't have a way to deliver on that. Philanthropy as a whole, and there are many exceptions to this, has not moved publicly as fast and as decisively to provide value in the ways that I was hoping. But there are many reasons for that and you have...

Shubhanan Upadhyay (25:20)
Yeah, it sounds like

it's a bit of a pickle really, it's like a really simple way to put that. It sounds like there are multiple competing externalities, dependencies. organizations are trying to be careful around how they publicize the work that we might be doing. yeah.

Nick (25:27)
Yeah.

Sure, everyone's afraid. Everyone's afraid.

Nobody wants to fight this administration. So I understand those things, but I also was hopeful that there would be more stepping up, and there hasn't been.

Shubhanan Upadhyay (25:49)
Yeah, yeah. Thanks for sharing that. I actually just recorded with someone who had developed a app in Turkey for maternal health and child health for Syrian refugees, specifically for them, using refugee developers who were in the camps to help develop

It was like a really real and frank conversation of how they're Like literally had the rug pulled up from under them and yeah, they've also struggled in a way to readjust, like really cut back their offering and their plans for expansion and impact, et cetera. So yeah, it's really tough out there, like you said. Nick, let's kind of talk about something that

gives you energy, know, painted kind of a kind of maybe a somber picture of what's going on, but there's a lot of good stuff happening that you said as well. I'd love to know about tech change and the work that you've been doing. why did you create this? You kind of touched on it before, but let's get into the story of tech change

Nick (26:42)
Yeah, thanks for that Shubs. You know, look, ⁓ I mentioned a bit of the origin story. A passion of mine for over the last 20 years has been trying to provide education and training to people all over the world through the power of technology, training and learning that saves lives, whether it's global health, whether it's humanitarian aid training. That's been a major theme. And as we've grown up as an organization, we've shifted from doing that training on a kind of one

small cohort based learning model to working directly with organizations. We've partnered with over 300 orgs across a thousand trainings and a couple hundred events in those 20 years. And, you know, really had a chance to, to extend and deepen the amazing work of some of the most phenomenal orgs in our sector. So at the root of it, it's really been, how do we, how do we bring people together? How do we provide them with more skills? How do we help them?

connect with each other so that they can solve what are really challenging and attractive problems. so, when the pandemic happened and all the conferences were canceled, we raised our hand and said, we will build a virtual global digital development forum, bring everybody together. We had 6,000 people together on a platform that we had basically repurposed in seven weeks.

to which was not a VED platform, but there was nothing that existed technologically. And ⁓ just enormous credit to our team and our partners in that moment for really trying to provide value and meaning and connectivity to a community that was hurting. And that's really been our thesis throughout. I would say now the challenges have changed in 2025. The pain is really one resulting from funding.

Shubhanan Upadhyay (28:03)
Yeah.

Nick (28:26)
and these programs being cut, but here we are trying to kind of accelerators and trainings and learnings to help people pivot and also to bring folks together for the Global Digital Health Forum, which is a conference that we were working on during pandemic times as the virtual partner and then took over the in-person production of the last three years. And so that is still full steam ahead in December in Nairobi and

I'm really excited to be bringing this community together, digital health professionals and champions around the world. Just an amazing subset of humans. And I gotta say, despite everything, we are seeing strong momentum and excitement around sponsors and tickets, people wanting to be there. And I think even beyond excitement,

We gotta get together as humans. We gotta connect. We got to figure out how to reckon with and reimagine this new world order. And so we see this event in Nairobi as a big opportunity to do that and a hopeful one, a really quite positive and optimistic one.

Shubhanan Upadhyay (29:40)
I remember when I started this podcast about a year and a year and a half ago now, ⁓ and the first couple of, first couple of people that I kind of interviewed on this podcast kind of said to me after, after the episodes, Hey man, you should like try and go to the global digital health forum, which is going to be in Nairobi in December. And it just wasn't possible for me. And, I remember kind of following it and it's like having like deep FOMO basically thinking, wow, like there's a lot of, I knew a few people who were there.

It was really like, seemed like, wow, like that's such an awesome group of people to just like have densely packed into a conference space, right? And learning from each other, et cetera. And I kind of was like, I really, really want to make sure I go the next year. And then USAID kind of funding cuts happened and I was like, after all that energy, is it going to continue? And like, so I'm so glad to hear that.

You've managed to continue the energy to have it this year. Can you talk a little bit about how you're focusing? it sounds like a big focus is gonna be like, hey, given everything being on fire, basically, how do we come together? really, I guess, we've had this volcano erupt. There's lava everywhere. The village of Pompeii is decimated.

With that, there's like this fertile soil now for like new, something like thinking about things new. That's what like the mental model I have of like this and like maybe what you're trying to do there as well.

Nick (31:10)
I think you've nailed it. So I'll just say a little bit of history on this conference. It's been going since 2009 for the vast majority of that stretch. It was an in-person conference in Washington, DC. We helped to bring the conference virtual and there was a year where we just did it fully virtually. And then we brought it back to DC and then the community really to their credit was like, look, we got to move this thing out of Washington. This is too...

Shubhanan Upadhyay (31:16)
Yeah.

Nick (31:37)
exclusive, it's too hard to get to for the vast majority of our community members. Let's get this thing. It doesn't have to be in the same place every year, but it should not be in Washington. so 2024 was the first year, if you can believe it, 15 years in that we moved this conference successfully to the African continent and to Nairobi. And the

Attendance was incredible. The energy was infectious. Everything about it was really, really dynamic and, uh, and awe-inspiring. And, and so, you know, I think had we kept it in DC, it would have been a lot harder to, think, uh, to fully kind of feel the, the power and the self-sufficiency of this community beyond the support of USAID. But now that we've done that,

Obviously, it will be a challenge, but we're seeing a lot of companies and non-traditional foundations and funders come along and looking at this event to sponsor, to convene their smaller subset community, to take advantage of the energy, as you say, that's there. ⁓ So I think that's really encouraging. And then to your point, yeah, I do think this is a great opportunity to reimagine and to start to develop

some really powerful cross pollination. It is the conference where you get Ministry of Health officials with social entrepreneurs, with implementers and clinicians and IT professionals. It's such ⁓ an incredible cross section of humans all focused on digital health in a really collaborative and communal way.

I'm glad you're coming. I would encourage anybody listening to also get their tickets and join us. It's going to be amazing. We also had a ton of participation from the African continent, which we should shout out, like 25 % from Kenya alone, 45 % from the continent. So almost half of the humans that were there were invested in digital health in the region or on the continent.

Shubhanan Upadhyay (33:26)
Yeah.

I think that's so important and that step you took to kind of move it to somewhere like Nairobi, right? Often people who are actually like there in the field doing the work, right? Whose insights I believe, why I created this podcast as well, should be like the stories that get shared. Often, you know, if that's in, you know, like London or Washington, et cetera, it's hard for those people to kind of be there and kind of take the floor and like share their direct first-hand perspective because of like the way visa schemes and things like.

that are set up. I'm making an assumption here that it's relatively easier to get, to be in Kenya. I think that it seems like a good step that you, you make it more accessible for people who actually doing the work as well. And kind of, you know, we talk about local ownership and making sure you have good representation. So that seems like a great step. One of the things I'm excited about is that you, so you mentioned this person, Wayan

We had done this in Geneva. We had done this thing called a fail festival. I know that you and Wayan are like the OGs of a fail festival in this. Because we're going to be doing a fail festival in Nairobi. And I'm very, very excited about it. Can you tell us about your story with that and you and Wayan working on that?

Nick (34:53)
Yeah. Yeah, happy to and excited that this is coming up. know, the field festival, my experience with it dates back to, I want to say 2010. So really the origins of tech change. There were small, initially quite small gatherings of humans who would get on a stage. I remember the early days there was one at the World Bank. There were a few at an FHI 360 conference hall.

But it was such a great format. The idea was you find humans who are willing to have a more honest, sometimes funny, sometimes sobering, but always raw and unfiltered sharing of experience about what didn't work. so it just became really important for the community to hear these stories because in a way we're always competing with each other to put on a sheen or a veneer to the funder to say, everything went great.

under the hood, everything's on fire and just being able to commiserate and to really understand the realities of execution and just how hard these problems are that we're trying to solve was just really, really connected with people in that message. So we hosted, maybe by 2013, 2014, not only were we hosting, we were also participating in them and I got together some of my colleagues who were musically inclined and we, for I think three years,

wrote a bespoke song for the community and performed it at Failfest and happy to dig up some of those for your comment section. I was basically, the lyrics were hilarious. We were trying to, yeah, just kind of share honestly all the things that didn't go well in our year. And some of it was funny, some of it was educational, some of it was just sad, but.

Shubhanan Upadhyay (36:28)
Amazing.

Nick (36:45)
You know, look, that's part of the experience and can speak to many other creative formats that other colleagues took on in service of this concept. So glad to see it coming back. It's going to be awesome. We're going to do it at Global Digital Health Forum this year. Wayan and Shubs sounds like, going to help make it awesome. So one more reason to come out in Nairobi this December.

Shubhanan Upadhyay (37:09)
I just think it's such a valuable way to talk. It's real, right? Like you said, like, you know, in conferences, yeah, okay, part of it is, we've got this commercial goal always be selling, da da. But actually what people really connect with and engage with is that, like, the relatableness. I just remember, the one experience I might have had of hosting it and telling my own story. Like, people just found that so...

useful and you know like the argument is actually most things even the successes that we have are propped up and on the shoulders of like the things that had gone wrong before you got there and you only shine the light on the thing that went right but actually there's so many there's so many things that we can all learn from the things that have gone wrong and imagine that story you had or that thing that you had in your use case or your context imagine that's

propagated times a thousand other contexts and if you can share that in a structured way people are like I wouldn't have thought of that maybe I'd avoid that can you think about that the impact of that across like hundreds maybe or Thousands of other examples where people have said yeah, we'd better avoid that pitfall, right? So yeah, that's so valuable

Anything else to say? Any last words on that before we move on?

Nick (38:21)
Yeah,

excited to have everybody come out, looking forward to it. We're going to have an amazing experience. I'm also going to be leading a bird watching tour. I'm a big birder and my wife got me into this hilarious and wonderful hobby. So we're going to get up early one morning and take some folks out. So beyond all the amazing digital health sessions and community building, there's a couple kind of fun subplots that might be interesting for folks. But yeah, looking forward to having people join us.

Shubhanan Upadhyay (38:30)
Nice.

Awesome, there you go, there you go.

Join Nick on Birdwatching. Nick, so maybe before we kind of close out here, it's been so valuable talking to you. You've been in this game, working with a lot of people creating impact in in social impact. I feel like you've learned a thing or two to kind of be able to have a section of

Nick's wise corner, what are your key things that you recommend to people who are building in this space or I'm looking to create impact in the right way. Have you got some recommendations for people who are A, starting out their journey or B, going through some of the challenges post USAID cuts that you've been talking about?

Nick (39:28)
Yeah, look, I think we're entering a period of scarcity. We're already in a period of scarcity as we've talked about at length on this podcast. So I think just if you're in an organization, you know, trying to be really honest with yourself and your colleagues about what the runway looks like, trying to be data driven in that analysis. Can you pivot your business models? Can you develop

new products and tools and services? Does it make sense to merge? Is it better to gracefully wind down? I think that is the period that we're in right now is really trying to think about that adaptability for organizations. For humans, I think it's similar. think it is. My advice for a new grad may be different from a senior, mid or senior year.

career person, think that new grads are really at a tough stretch. Not only do they have to contend with the sector and the funding fallout and the government challenges, but also the rise of technology like AI that is really suited to replace task oriented things and a lot of sort of junior level abilities. So I think the advice I have if you're at beginning of your career is to be on the wavelength that learns these skills. share

often various trainings and resources for how to skill up and how to get ahead of the curve. And a lot of these are specific to AI skills for the nonprofit social impact sector. I really think that blend of having the technical abilities plus the sort of sector sensibilities is a powerful combo. And I would say like when we started TechChange in 2009,

Shubhanan Upadhyay (41:12)
Yep.

Nick (41:19)
Nobody had jobs. We were able to kind of build something beautiful because ⁓ talent was cheap and nobody had alternatives. And I kind of come back to that theme of constraints and chaos breeds creativity. And so again, if you're starting at this career in your earlier phases, what are the opportunities that are available to you? Can you work abroad? Can you start up a small

company with your colleagues. These kinds of things can be really powerful. ⁓ And then I would probably add to that wherever you can, often and always, prioritize learning and community. Like this is, we are in a state of constant reinvention as humans, not just in our sector, but across all sectors. So the more you kind of shift your mindset and orientation to never stop learning,

and build and scaffold that journey with incredible humans and community, the more powerful you will be for any of these shocks and challenges that do arise. And so it's made a huge difference in my journey. I think it's never been easier to do on LinkedIn. And I could spend a whole podcast just talking about that, but at a minimum, spend some time on there, build your virtual community ⁓ and prioritize it in your trajectory.

That's all I got, Shubs. Hopefully that's helpful for a folks that are listening and excited to, yeah.

Shubhanan Upadhyay (42:44)
That sounds awesome. yeah, like your motto on there is always like sharing is caring as well. like, you know, building that community, sharing resources, et cetera, Nick, it's been so, so valuable to talk to you. We've talked about kind of the state of development, particularly in digital health and your experiences on kind of the fallout.

We've talked about the work that TechChange have done. We talked about the exciting bringing together of people at the Global Digital Health Forum in Nairobi as well later this year. And your wisdom to share for people. So yeah, I appreciate you being here in this space to do that.

Nick (43:22)
You bet Shubs and thank you for this platform. So hopefully people check out the conference, check out tech change, find me on LinkedIn. I am available to do what I can to help support others on the journey that they're on.

Shubhanan Upadhyay (43:35)
Thank you so much, Nick.