As a young man, he passed through the world’s most prestigious institutions of higher education. When he graduated, he did what he felt was expected of him, and went to work at a prestigious management consulting firm.
But the more he thought about the world and what it needed, the more he realized his life was pulling him in a different direction. So in 1980 he founded Ashoka, an organization named after an ancient warrior who unified the Indian subcontinent by renouncing violence and dedicating his life to social welfare and economic development.
In that spirit, Drayton said, Ashoka would identify and support social entrepreneurs all over the globe — people who have innovative ideas about how to solve our most intractable problems, and whose lives are a testament to the notion that we are our Brother’s Keeper.
The result, 35 years later? A network of almost 3,000 Fellows, each of them engaged in actively making the world a better place. There are young men and women figuring out how to bring electricity to the most rural pockets of the developing world, and innovators who have dedicated their lives to teaching the homeless children in Rio de Janeiro how to read. There are Fellows who have established a Peace Prize for young people, and others who find ways to use recess to make kids care more about school.
What’s interesting is that when you take them together, and look for the patterns in where they focus their attention and how they choose to live their lives, Ashoka Fellows provide insight not just into our worlds’ challenges, also how we can go about solving them.
And what they’ve showed Drayton, and anyone else who’s willing to look, is that of all the skills a person can have today, no matter what their passion or profession might be, the one that is most vital toward becoming a true social entrepreneur is empathy.
Let me say that another way. The most valuable attribute in the world you are about to enter is not critical thinking, or fluency in another language, or an exhaustive understanding of U.S. history or chemistry or math as important as those skills are.
It’s not about learning how to “play the game,” or even primarily about what — or who — you know; it’s about whether you are capable of truly seeing the world through another’s eyes or willing to walk a mile in their shoes.
“You cannot be a good person simply by following the rules anymore,” Drayton says. “It’s no longer possible. The key factor of success for any society going forward is what percentage of its people are changemakers. It’s the new literacy. And empathy is the foundation of that new way of being.”
I think there’s a lot of truth, a lot of wisdom in that statement. And what gives me hope in celebrations like this is my passionate believe that and the feeling that I’m looking out at 680 changemakers right here, in Durham.
All of you will go on to make a difference.
