Gates Foundation 2025 Initiative.
A multi-year relationship with the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation encompassing several engagements. The headline project was Gates 2025, an initiative that built a sense of shared purpose and coordinated grantmaking decisions across the foundation's 28 funding priorities and ~$6 billion annual portfolio.
The Chief Strategy Officer for the Office of the CEO, alongside stakeholders from multiple departments and funding priorities across the Gates Foundation.
I led the client engagement and key design sprints across the two-year engagement, while also assembling and leading a rotating team of multi-disciplinary IDEO designers. One of our core learnings was that in a culture of highly rational people set on making the case for why their particular focus area was the Foundation's most important priority (and there were 1,500 of these people), it was impossible to "out framework the Gates Foundation" with some logical argument that would carry the day. Instead we relied upon the power of human-centered design to inspire hearts and minds, alongside a powerful storytelling approach that built empathy, knowledge exchange, and a shared sense of purpose in a manner that was pretty revolutionary at the Gates Foundation.
A shared sense of purpose across the Gates Foundation, united around three core stakeholders – aid recipients, grant recipients, and fellow funders.
