Kiva.org's Premal Shah on Careers and Feeling Alive

by Nathaniel Whittemore

category: Entrepreneurial Careers

Published April 24, 2009 @ 10:58AM PT

At the Global Engagement Summit a few weeks ago, Kiva.org President Premal Shah spoke about passion, careers, and what it means to feel alive. Premal has had a diverse career track, including working as a mangement consultant, helping a pre-eBay PayPal launch, and now running micro-lending site Kiva.org.

His talk was an important reminder that when it comes to finding meaning, it's not about for profit or nonprofit, but about being able to work towards goals you care deeply about with teams of similarly-passionate believers.

He used one of the most epic Power Point slides of all time to make his point:

As someone who works with passion aspiring social entrepreneurs all the time, I think there are a few important take aways:

There isn't one single path to "success." Imagine, looking back, what an undergraduate career counselor would have said to Premal. "Well Shah, nice GPA and way to care about stuff. What I'd recommend is you do some management consulting. Then we're your sick as hell of that, I'd make sure to ignore all advice about risk and join a startup which will sell for a billion dollars, k? Oh and then when that's done, found a social change tech startup, get Bill Clinton to love on ya, and get the Nobel Prize committee to bring light to your issue, yea?" Right.

"Success" is an intensely personal metric. Success can mean financial success, working on your own terms, working with a group of other passionate people, addressing a social ill, or any number of other things. The one thing that's for sure is that success necessarily involves feeling alert, alive, and passionate. Figure out what you care about, share that with others, and help them with what they care about.

Look for the right opportunity, and don't be afraid to take a leap. One thing that's clear is that sometimes, finding fulfillment means taking risks and doing the unsafe thing. Keeping your eyes open for an opportunity that just feels right is half the equation; the other is being able and willing to act on that impulse.

Kick ass at whatever you do. The one clearly consistent thing across all of his endeavors is that Premal has given 150% and kicked ass at whatever he did. I haven't been around long, but if I've learned anything, it's that people want to work with and learn from passionate people who leave it all on the field. That's more important than any single stepping stone or qualification, and a great lesson to take away from