Leetha Filderman, FRSA, is a strategist and NGO leader intrigued by the power of collaboration as a tool for social progress. She has expertise in the fields of social innovation, public health, nuclear threats and social justice. She currently serves as the president of the PopTech Institute where she oversees a portfolio focused on global health, environment, social justice, nuclear non-proliferation and the future of work. Leetha has a diverse background in strategic development and has advised and served on the boards of numerous organizations and agencies. She is a Fellow at the Royal Society for the Encouragement of Arts, Manufactures and Commerce, based in the U.K. Leetha splits her time between Washington, DC and midcoast Maine where she lives on a small farm with her family.
Would you mind just giving a brief overview of your professional journey and your current role?
LF: So, first going back to the earlier days of my career, I have a background in public health and I spent the first decade well, actually two decades of my career in the AIDS epidemic — from about 1982 onwards — at the very beginning of the epidemic here in the US. And that included an incredible, varied set of experiences and probably one of the most profound learning journeys anybody could have ever gone on.
In the early 2000s, I did a little bit of a pivot because I had three young children. And by then, the AIDS epidemic was, in a sense, not winding down necessarily, but changing course and went from a uniformly fatal condition to one that was amenable to treatment.
So I thought I had accomplished all the things I could have ever dreamed of accomplishing, both individually and as part of a variety of teams over those couple of decades. And I decided I could take all the stuff I learned from the AIDS epidemic, which was an incredibly unique moment in time. As I reflected on that experience, I walked away saying, “the only way we really were able to solve that was by breaking down all the barriers and hurdles between interagency issues, within institutional issues and finding ways to look at unique opportunities to collaborate”. And that was a really unique situation because that wasn’t how business had been done, particularly within big institutions prior to the AIDS epidemic.
So, I really started taking a lot of what I learned and started working, primarily, with nonprofit organizations as they thought about how they could amplify their impact from a variety of strategic points of view. And it was through that work that I was asked to come to PopTech to work with them on how they could take what was a beloved annual forum and expand from this annual conference to something much broader that could actually leverage a lot of the network that had been built and naturally grown around the organization.
The network was full of enormous talent that was coming through, both in terms of speakers and attendees so, in 2006, we embarked on about a year-long ideation process. What value could PopTech bring? What space did want to or should we have been operating in? And this coincided with the dawn of what was referred to as a social innovation movement.
I spent a lot of that first year talking with people like Paul Polak, who many would consider the godfather of the social innovation movement in many ways, and reading papers on the topic. And, I thought, this is exactly where PopTech could play a role. As an organization, we started to look at ways to formalize some of it. I applied for a couple of small grants to support that early work, and out of that, we created the two fellows programs. One is called the Social Innovation Fellows and the other is Science Fellows. Today there are about 180 alumni in those two programs.
We created those programs for two reasons. Number one, to create a really diverse expertise pool that PopTech could tap into to further the reach of projects that were being presented at the conference. And in the second one was to really help working scientists communicate their own work. Scientists’ work was often translated to the broader audiences by other people and we thought, these people should be speaking directly to the public about their work on climate, on global health, on the management, tough emerging potential pandemics, etc.
In addition to everything mentioned, we continue to host our annual conference. And we use the conference for two things. One, to talk about the work that people in our network have been doing, particularly our fellows. And two, all of our work is instigated through what we hear at the conference. PopTech is an action-oriented network. We ask speakers to come and talk about some of the biggest challenges we are confronted with and the biggest opportunities that lay in front of us to better humanity. So I view the speakers as the instigators — they’re there to help people understand what’s needed, what’s possible, and that we all play a role in furthering their work.
What’s been your favorite thing about working in the nonprofit space and what’s been the most challenging thing?
LF: I’ve actually spent my entire career in the nonprofit sector — during my time spent working on the AIDS epidemic I worked in three universities. I directed the AIDS program at Yale University within the medical school for a number of years, I worked with the Los Angeles County USC Medical Center — which was at the time and probably still is the world’s largest teaching hospital — and I worked at Boston City Hospital (now Boston Medical Center). And then and then eventually did my own thing and then came to PopTech.
I was probably not the person that was ever cut out for what I would call corporate America. I came from a family of public servants and activists, so I suppose that gets ingrained in you to a certain degree. I never really saw myself doing anything other than being a public servant, so to speak. And, you know, I’ve loved that! I think the opportunities that have been provided to me through my career have been unbelievable. I’ve had an opportunity to meet some of the most amazing people in the world, and I’ve had the opportunity to work with and mentor some absolutely remarkable people.
The more challenging side of the nonprofit sector — and I think if you ask this to a hundred people in the nonprofit sector they will probably list this at the top — is the extraordinary financial vulnerability within the sector. I think it is extremely unfortunate that the sector is in that spot and particularly right now when you look at just the [coronavirus] crisis we’re in, the nonprofit sector provides so many services and yet it’s going to be the most vulnerable to economic realities of this.
Many people that lead organizations take pretty big risks and make a lot of sacrifices personally to keep organizations stable — to be there for their employees and staff and volunteers. And I really do think there needs to be some deeper, profound reflection on how nonprofits are going to be able to become more sustainable from a financial perspective.
What advice would you give to someone who is currently in the nonprofit world or might be looking to start a career or pivot their career and move into the space?
LF: You know, I think that’s a tough one because everybody comes into the nonprofit space for different reasons and has different aspirations. I think the reality is, you may end up working 10 times harder than you would anywhere else. But I think there are positives. Almost all of my closest colleagues work in the nonprofit sector, and have for many years, and we will share the stresses and strains and frustrations but at the end of the day, most of us feel extremely honored and excited. We’re honored by the opportunities we have and we’re excited about the successes.
And sometimes the successes are tiny. We [Poptech] do a lot of work with the nuclear threats community where getting a win takes years. And having the win taken away is kind of common. So I think you have to have this kind of resiliency about you if you’re going to survive in the space and big wins are probably rare. And if you have a big win you should celebrate it. In the nonprofit space, you have to be a person who’s resilient and can take the rough times and put them in perspective — use them as learnings and move forward. It’s the little steps that you should always keep in mind and set your sights on.
So at this point in your career what are you looking to learn from your peers?
LF: I think what I’m mostly looking forward to at this point in my career in terms of my peers is how do we keep working to strengthen networks? The Room is a unique network, so I don’t know what I’m going to learn, but I know I’m going to learn a lot. I know many of the people that are affiliated with The Room are people I can’t wait to interact with on some level.
I do think the way we’re going to solve these kinds of huge world problems is never going to be up to one organization or one government or one unbelievable leader. It will actually take the ability to build and nurture and then leverage networks. And so I’m more and more intrigued by this notion of “how do you create a solid network that actually is getting something done”, not just a listserv with a thousand people. Having a network that is actually looking out for one another and is there to help one another.
What are some things that you’re most looking forward to?
LF: I think what I’m excited about and looking forward to is how do we continue to look at the biggest problems we’re facing (like the coronavirus pandemic) in the most creative ways. You know, I don’t think we need to be dependent on our governments to help us out of this — they’re inevitably going to play a big part because of the infrastructure — but I do think we need to realize that everybody, each of us as individuals, has the capacity to act on the situation now.
And that may simply be following the very tough rules right now for the next several weeks to stop this, and then it’s going to be about how we support people who are way less fortunate than us, those who are quite vulnerable. I’ve been thinking a lot about that right now — how do I help my local restaurants? How do I support people that may be unemployed for months? What can I do as an individual and what can PopTech do as an organization to catalyze some help for everybody?
The big thing I’m looking forward to at Poptech to is creating a new class of fellows. It’s of an exciting thing. We’re excited about the forum in October although we may need to be creative about what shape the forum takes — but I’m up for a new challenge!
I think when things are tough it forces you out of your comfort zone and your business as usual mode. And you have to look at the landscape and say, “what are we going to do? and what are the opportunities here?” And I’m kind of excited about that.
