“Indeed, as I look back at the adventurous young woman who left banking to pursue a life focused on a more global, connected vision, I see someone with guts, education, and skills, but also someone who had to learn time and again that those factors alone don’t always lead to success.” - Jacqueline Novogratz, author of The Blue Sweater: Bridging the Gap Between Rich and Poor in an Interconnected World and founder of the innovative Acumen Fund. See …
http://www.ted.com/index.php/speakers/jacqueline_novogratz.html
Jacqueline is an innovative and connected leader in the world of philanthropy. Jacqueline is connecting smart business entrepreneurship to statesmanship to developmental charity causes to eliminate poverty. Why am I writing about her on yourSABBATICAL.com? Because it takes a connected leader to leave a career – like banking – and dive into a passion turn in one’s life. And that turn can become a road that is, without a doubt, the bigger story – the better story. I would describe the moment Jacqueline talks about in the quote above as her dive into a career-change sabbatical. In her book, she talks about how, in the back of her mind, she thought, “ …if this doesn’t work I can always go back.” But the truth is, because she has the gears of connected leadership alive, clicking away, that back-up option never was going to happen – she was going to create momentum.
What are the gears of a Connected Leader? Here we go. We’re going to talk about them in detail in future blogs but get them footed here:
The Gears
inside the Connected Leader…
One more story for you on these gears.
At age 23 Alondra had a mission as a young performer and aspiring conductor and this mission came to life, beautifully. Alondra’s mission was all about placing a spotlight on music from the Americas that has been overlooked and underexposed in the traditional venue of the symphonic world. Age? No matter. She was told time and time again, what she couldn’t achieve. She ignored those words. With shear passion and determination she founded the Philharmonic Orchestra of Americas (POA) with young and talented musicians; they are an innovative performance group cutting through the tradition of typical packaging of classical and contemporary music to bring something new to the world – something needed. Alondra is a Connected Leader. She opened her career taking her own path, bravely. But she had to have enough passion to dig into and create curiosity around her mission, owning the problems, and aligning the right people with right information to bring POA to life.
Another perfect example of how we think as we intertwine a sabbatical mindset into our passion and drive forward in our career and our life as a Connected Leader. Make some decisions – get into gear…
More next time!
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