From Inflection to Legacy. Leading with Purpose in a Shifting World
A PurposePhil Career learning session: fireside chat with Sharath Jeevan, OBE | Author of Intrinsic & Inflection | Founder, Intrinsic Labs
What does it mean to lead with purpose when the world keeps shifting beneath your feet? And how do you build a career, and a life, that feels genuinely fulfilling rather than just relentlessly busy?
In this informal fireside chat, I sit down with Sharath Jeevan, one of the most compelling voices on leadership, motivation, and legacy in the social impact space. Over a career spanning strategy consulting, tech, and founding two education organisations that reached over 20 million children, Sharath has lived the questions he now helps others navigate. Expect an honest, wide-ranging conversation, with plenty of room for your questions too.
Together, we'll dig into four themes:
Inflection points and what they ask of us. Drawing on his book Inflection, Sharath explores the crossroads moments that define leadership trajectories: when sector landscapes shift, funding pressures mount, or organisations lose momentum. How do leaders navigate these moments with clarity rather than reactivity? And what do inflection points look like in our own career paths?
The making of a portfolio career. Sharath's own journey, from Booz & Company to eBay, from founding STiR Education to leading Intrinsic Labs, is itself a lesson in intentional reinvention. We'll hear what shaped his choices, what he's learned about following meaning over convention, and what genuinely fulfils him about how he works today.
Reigniting intrinsic motivation. His book Intrinsic argues that most of us have drifted from what genuinely drives us, and that this has real consequences for how we lead, perform, and feel. For many in our community, this resonates deeply. Is it values misalignment? Is it exhaustion from years of giving without replenishing? Is it simply that we've never been taught to pay attention to what moves us from the inside? Sharath offers both a diagnosis and a practical way forward.
Legacy: making it intentional, not accidental. Sharath is now writing his third book, focused on legacy and the inter-generational promise of positive progress. For leaders in education, philanthropy, and social impact, legacy is itself the work, nothing abstract to put on a paper. We'll explore what it means to build something that outlasts you, and why the next generation needs to be part of that conversation now.
This session is for you if you recognise yourself in one of these three places:
you're a leader in role sensing an inflection point and asking bigger questions about direction and motivation;
you're in career transition, wanting your next chapter to be genuinely aligned with your values;
or you're already building a portfolio career and looking for frameworks around coherence, legacy, and sustaining what drives you.
What unites all three is a desire to lead and work from the inside out. Pull up a chair, this is exactly the kind of conversation we all need more of.