How Social Innovators are Evolving for the Next Phase of the Field
Hosted by Echoing Green
With international foreign aid backsliding and philanthropy becoming increasingly risk-averse, social innovators are forced to explore new models for sustainable impact. As an organization that supports nearly 1000 social innovators across geographies and issue areas, Echoing Green has spotted four increasingly common pathways that leaders are using to evolve their organizations:
Building earned revenue models
Forming strategic partnerships or merging organizations to sharing infrastructure
Blending nonprofit and for-profit models
Sunsetting organizations or leadership transitions while preserving community impact
For organizational leaders, infrastructure shifts are never easy, they involve tradeoffs about mission, sustainability, leadership, and community accountability. For the sector, these changes signal a quiet shift in the sector and an important conversation about how we think about organizational growth, sustainability, and impact.
This isn’t another conversation about resilience and grit. It’s an opportunity to learn adaptation strategies shaping the next generation of impact organization from proximate leaders around the world:
Liza Mueller | Vice President of Knowledge of Echoing Green
Esther Wang | 2012 Echoing Green Fellow, Management Advisor of Elevate Prize Foundation, Co-founder of IDinsight
Ifeoma Uddoh | 2024 Echoing Green Fellow, Founder and CEO of Shecluded
Designed for ecosystem partners and funders interested in evolving business models, social innovators rethinking their organizational structures, strategic organizations providing capacity support to social entrepreneurs.
Liza Mueller is the Vice President of Knowledge at Echoing Green. Over the last decade, she has transformed the organization’s systems architecture, guided its strategic planning, and launched its knowledge function to creatively leverage data and insights to deepen Echoing Green’s impact. During her tenure at Echoing Green, Liza has previously overseen its operations and programs teams and now regularly plays an advisory role in aligning team strategies across the organization.
Liza believes that transformational social change can happen only when deep trust, respect, and community voice are centered across the board — from sharing resources, to program design and implementation, to research and thought leadership. In 2020, Echoing Green and The Bridgespan Group published Racial Equity and Philanthropy: Disparities in Funding for Leaders of Color Leave Impact on the Table, which was the product of nearly nine years of patient data collection and research by Liza, her team, and Echoing Green’s programs staff. Her team also produces annual reports on trends in the social entrepreneurship field and contributes to research across the sector. Liza is an active Echoing Green representative on cross-sector alliances, including Catalyst 2030 and the World Economic Forum COVID Response Alliance for Social Entrepreneurs. She is a dynamic public speaker who has presented on topics ranging from theory of change development, impact management, inequity in access to capital, and Sustainable Development Goals in social enterprise.
Smitha Das is deeply committed to demonstrating a total portfolio approach for impact, with an eye towards reimagining the broader capital markets. As Senior Director of Investments at World Education Services (WES) – a global social enterprise – Smitha leads WES’ investment practice, stewarding all of WES’ resources to be 100% mission-aligned.
Her passion to create meaningful impact sparked at a young age when she founded a water nonprofit in middle school. She has since worked in government, private equity, venture philanthropy, and impact investing.
Smitha has a MBA from Harvard Business School and AB with Honors from Harvard College, where she co-founded the HBS Impact Investing Club and Harvard College Social Enterprise Club. She is a Just Economy Institute Fellow and serves as a Board and Investment Committee member to several organizations, including Mission Driven Finance, Echoing Green, Unlock Ownership Fund, and New Power Labs.
Esther Wang is a founder, social entrepreneur, and strategy consultant, currently serving as a Management Advisor at the Elevate Prize Foundation, supporting winners in growing and strengthening their ventures.
Previously, Esther co-founded IDinsight, a global non-profit that brings data to decisions in global development, also serving as COO and head of fundraising. Esther also worked at The Bridgespan Group as a Partner and began her career with Bain & Company. Her first foray into social entrepreneurship involved chasing yaks on the Tibetan Plateau. She has lived in Africa for a decade.
Esther serves on the non-profit Boards of StrongMinds and Govuka, advises philanthropies Imago Dei Fund and The Agency Fund, and serves on the Alumni Council at Harvard’s Center for Public Leadership. She is also the Global Mentorship Chair for One League. She has been a Presidential Leadership Scholar, Echoing Green Fellow, PopTech Fellow, and at Harvard, a Catherine B. Reynolds Fellow in Social Entrepreneurship and a George Leadership Fellow.
Based in Nairobi with her husband and 3 kids, Esther never says no to a concert or performance. She loves a new adventure or challenge- she’s currently trying to improve her game of padel, keep various pets and houseplants alive, and exploring the beautiful corners of East Africa.
Ifeoma Uddoh is the founder and chief executive officer of Shecluded. She is driven by a passion for improving the lives of women. With extensive experience in strategy consulting, operations, product development, and financial inclusion across emerging markets, Ifeoma has built an innovative financial service company that is bridging the funding gap for women-owned businesses.
Ifeoma’s accolades include being a 2021 Google for Startups Black Founders Fund recipient, the 2022 SelectUSA Tech Nigeria Pitch Competition winner, and a 2022 Halcyon Fellow. She holds a bachelor’s degree in industrial mathematics from the Federal University of Technology, Owerri and a master’s degree in management science from Lancaster University.
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