How would you describe yourself? Who is Cheryl?
My business card says writer, thinker, maverick. My passion, the core
of what I do is writing, and I use this as a tool to make a stand for
what I believe in.
What are you working on now?
I'm a freelance journalist, and my main project right now is Fast
Company's
Annual Social Capitalist Awards. It's something we started last
year (see later in the story), and this year we have 118 non-profit
organisations and social enterprises being evaluated in 5 categories:
entrepreneurship, innovation, social impact, ambition and
sustainability. We want to bring out organisations that have a systems
thinking and leveraged approach to change.
What has been your journey to what you are doing now?
Well, I went to journalism school at Northwestern University, because
I wanted to make a difference in the world. Whilst there, I worked
with an amazing professor on a project dealing with wrongful
convictions. His work caused the State of Illinois to supend the death
penalty and review all its Death Row convictions.
My case was a young man who was wrongfully accused of murder and in
jail for life in southern Illinois. We published a series of stories
about how the forensic evidence had been botched in the investigation
and mispresented in the trial, but because of process bureaucracy,
nothing came out of it, and he remained in jail. I felt that I had
personally failed and that my failure had cost that man his freedom.
I crawled into a shell and went into business reporting. At first,
I worked for an alumni magazine, but after a while I knew I wanted
something different, I wanted out, so I got a job working for a
technology publication in Boston called
CIO. I thought it would be a good place to work on improving my
skills as a writer and editor for a few years. I felt hollow inside,
but I also didn't dare try and go make a difference somewhere, because
I feared I'd fail again.
After I'd had some time to hibernate there, I stumbled into a new
magazine called
Fast Company that was hiring. I got a job there as a writer in
1997. Moving to FC created a big shift in the issues I wrote about. It
was a business magazine that I wanted to read; it covered the
sociology of work, women in business, things I was passionate about.
They also covered social entrepreneurship, a concept I hadn't heard
about before.
But I really bought into it, and I found myself passionately
pitching to cover this story about
Freeplay , a company in South Africa providing wind-up radios to
remote villages without electricity. I pitched the story for 4-5
months before my editor finally let me do it. It changed my life.
I went to South Africa, and visited the factories in Capetown. And
then I went to London, where I met some of their Board members and
investors, like Terry Waite and Gordon Roddick (Body Shop Anita's
husband) - fascinating business people - people, who were using
business to make a difference.
This is when I got a real sense of clarity of my responsibility as
a journalist: to pick stories that mattered. I realised how much power
I had in making a difference, and I wanted to use it.
There are so many voices that don't get a platform - I wanted to
extend out there to get to these voices that needed to be heard. So I
started pitching as many stories on social entrepreneurship as I could
- it became the bulk of my work and my interest.
Fast Company relocated me to San Francisco in 2000 and the magazine
was sold to a big publisher. Around the same time, I'd put a proposal
in for a bigger feature issue on social entrepeneurship, but the new
owners weren't having it. They didn't understand what it was all
about, the economy was going down and they wanted hardcore business
news.
I got frustrated over how the magazine had turned and left for a
year to co-author a book about the first two women to cross Antarctica
by foot. They'd also founded a company called
yourexpeditio n, and their main message was if two 40- something
women can tow 250 lb sleds across Antarctica, you can do anything! It
took about one year to write the book and another year to edit it.
Meanwhile, there was a new editor at FC, who had a background in
writing about philanthropy at Business Week. My feature proposal was
still around and he asked me to come in to talk about it. He was an
expert on creating lists, and had been the creator of Business Week's
Top Schools list, and he was excited about seeing what we could do
with social enterprises.
We got the okay to go ahead with the story in August 2003 and had
12 weeks to find partners, identify good organisations and write the
story. We found a great partner, Monitor Group, to help us devise the
methodology and criteria. I think the universe was looking out for me
and there was some sort of divine intervention - as despite all odds
it all happened and we published in January 2004.
This time around we have more time. We're redefining the
methodology, but at the same time, we are quite pleased that we
actually got a lot of it right the first time round. We're now
awarding 25 organisations, whereas last year it was 20. The effects on
the awarded organisations have been huge. They have substantially
increased their national press coverage and public standing, and we
estimate that between them they have received a total of 3 million
dollars in funding.
It's the first mainstream project on awarding social enterprise.
And it's the first metrics and ratings to have been defined across all
social sectors (from homelessness to literacy advocacy). The goal is
to contribute not only to the organisations but to the field as a
whole.
So when did the making a difference become something you wanted to
do?
I've always been sensitive to injustice, and I'm one of those crazy
people who's always known what they wanted to do when they grow up -
I've been wanting to be a writer since about the age of 8! So finding
journalism combined these two elements for me and I realised the
advocacy role that being a journalist could give me.
Have you had any voices of doubt throughout your journey?
Oh yes. The main one is: Who do you think you are? For me, it was a
powerful shift in thinking to realize that what I needed to focus on
was my intention, not the outcome. If I got caught up in the success
or failure of my efforts, I'd go crazy. What matters is not the thing
we can't control, but the thing we can.
Every day I bring to my work a sense of commitment to make a
difference, and the reward for that is the meaning it gives my life,
the connections it allows me to make with others. The joy is in the
journey, not the goal. If the universe sees fit for some of my ideas
to take off, wonderful. But getting vested in that is all about ego
and self. By committing to make a difference, my effort is one little
drop of water in a huge wave. I'm not about getting precious about
whether my little droplet gets recognized or singled out - it only
matters to be part of the wave and part of the momentum of moving
things forward.
That attitude was what gave me the patience to wait four years for
my idea for the special issue to become reality. I just stayed focused
on my intention and the universe created an opening.
In the longer term I'd like to see the Social Capitalist Awards
have a corporate sponsor and get even bigger clout. I also am working
on launching a not-for-profit - an incubator for journalists wanting
to cover topics that matter. Journalism is currently skewed towards
'easy sells' - celebrity, sensationalism, etc. And journalists
generally tend to have a bias for negative news. Most of us view our
civic duty as being a watch dog, who polices and points out scandals.
There isn't really a correlary role on the positive side actually
looking at solutions.
On top of that, you don't get a lot of respect writing about
positive news. But I want to show that you can apply rigour and
skepticism to these types of stories as well. I want to create models
and narratives that other journalists can use, and to give more voice
to issues that are of importance.
Surround yourself with other people who play big, it's the only way
to live fully - everyone has bad moments, but you need people who will
support you in your risk-taking and who take risks themselves, and who
will support you and love you no matter what.
Create a web of accountability - talk yourself into being
responsible for something. Dreams that we nurture on the side without
putting a stake on the ground don't get lived... Create momentum, put
that stake on the ground, let people know what you stand for, set some
deadlines and get going - you won't want to disappoint people you've
promised things to!
