About the book

What does the United States look like from the standpoint of the people working to make it better? That is the central guiding question behind this book. It is a book of windows: windows into the minds of some of the most creative social entrepreneurs and movement builders you’ll ever encounter. Windows into the cities and towns and people from across the nation they work with—fishermen and coal miners, gun owners and small-town mayors, Black environmentalists, teachers, small-business owners, Navajo women, high school students and their parents and neighbors. Windows into the dynamism of our country. Changemakers are everywhere. But when they live outside established circles, their perspectives are rarely sought, or at best seen as tangential to policy discussions. Their stories remain unheard or underappreciated. How can that be?

We are living through a period of tremendous upheaval: a devastating global pandemic, an accelerating climate crisis, a racial reckoning, a hobbled democracy, and rising inequities of all kinds. These are public problems. They can feel unrelenting. Yet while we hunger for solutions, we too often turn to the same people and same voices, somehow expecting different outcomes. In these chapters, we listen to innovators for the public. Twenty of them, in fact. At first glance, they are extremely different. They grew up on the coast of Newfoundland and in West Virginia and in Oklahoma. They live in Atlanta and San Jose and in the Mississippi Delta. They are former journalists, former assembly-line workers, former White House staff, former teachers. They come from conservative families, religious families, civil rights activist families. They work in courthouses and on farms, with Black Lives Matter and with police officers, with billionaire philanthropists and former presidents, with people who are incarcerated and with undocumented teenagers. They are White and Black and Brown and Indigenous.

But these changemakers are also similar in important ways. First, they all live in close proximity to the social problems they are trying to solve. Many have experienced those problems personally. It’s one reason why they are so profoundly empathetic, and they use that empathy to shape their ideas, policies, and movements. Their intimate, practical knowledge means what they are doing is more likely to work and more likely to last. It is the difference between cleverness—which is abundant in the world of tech start-ups and social enterprises—and wisdom, which is in short supply.

Their vantage points deepen our understanding of each other. The writer and artist Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie warns about the danger of what she calls the “single story”—a story that, while true, is incomplete and therefore reinforces stereotypes. Adichie is from Nigeria and went to college in the United States. Her first roommate there, probably like most Americans still, knew a single story of Africa: a continent of beautiful animals and of people dying of poverty and AIDS. The problem with the “single story” is it quickly becomes the only story. It strips down a person or a place to one often unflattering dimension and makes it harder to see our shared humanity. We are awash in these simplified stories today: of the heartland or the coastal elites or the blue-collar workers or the winners versus the losers. These changemakers do the opposite: They add dimensions. They invite us to question our stereotypes and define others by their assets and aspirations, rather than their weaknesses and deficits (chapter 5, Trabian Shorters).

They remind us that only a few of us are natives and most of us are descendants of immigrants (chapter 11, Laura Emiko Soltis). They point out that poor people are deeply resourceful and strategic (chapter 6, Mauricio Lim Miller), and that we all need a sense of belonging and meaningful relationships to thrive (chapter 14, Sarah Hemminger). What they are saying, quite simply—to philanthropists, to policy makers, to anyone serious about advancing positive social change—is this: Start by listening. Second, the protagonists of this book are what we call “systems changers.” That’s jargon for what is a pretty straightforward idea: They are driven to address root causes rather than treat symptoms. It’s the difference between pulling plastic waste out of your local river day after day and going to the source of where it enters the river in the first place. It is the difference between building more homeless shelters in your city and eliminating the main causes of chronic homelessness (chapter 19, Rosanne Haggerty). Systems changers will ask: What are the underlying factors that still make it harder for Black Americans to access capital and start businesses (chapter 17, Tim Lampkin)? They dismantle the conditions that allow inequities to persist in the first place because they have witnessed what does not work and they are tired of seeing Band-Aids applied to deep societal failures.

Third, there’s an underlying insight beneath the critiques and solutions offered in this book: Successful social change works when the changemaking energy of those closest to the problem gets unleashed. When community members participate, have agency, and a say. When people from all walks of life play a role in shaping a better way forward. While in this book we highlight individual leaders, they will be the first to tell you that their real power comes from the people and communities they partner with.

Successful social change works when the change making energy of those closest to the problem gets unleashed. When community members participate, have agency, and a say. When people from all walks of life play a role in shaping a better way forward.

It’s an important distinction, the difference between solving problems for others and solving them with others—in fact, letting “others” lead. This is the hidden magic of social entrepreneurs: demonstrating time and time again not just how to merge entrepreneurial creativity with social change, but how to recruit citizens across the world to step in and shape their communities for the better.

What does this look like in practice? It comes in the form of family members and neighbors participating in the legal defense of a loved one accused of a crime to change case outcomes and reduce thousands of years of cumulative prison time (chapter 9, Raj Jayadev). It shows up in the fishermen who are reinventing themselves as restorative ocean farmers who feed us while slowing climate change (chapter 1, Bren Smith). And in the millions of Black women walking in neighborhoods across America to reclaim their health and fight for a better world for their daughters and granddaughters (chapter 2, T. Morgan Dixon). You see it in the application of Indigenous wisdom passed down through generations to address modern health challenges (chapter 8, Denisa Livingston). And in the way young people living in the child welfare system are leading efforts to improve that system (chapter 13, Sixto Cancel).

When that happens—when everyone becomes a changemaker—people come together and the barriers that divide us begin to dissolve. The commitment is to the problem in front of them. And as people work on solving it in pluralist teams, they build shared experience and empathy with those they might otherwise assume they have little in common with. That includes listening to those who are fearful of new immigrants and inviting them into conversation with refugees to explore how to make their towns more welcoming (chapter 3, David Lubell). It means cutting past red/blue divides and working to boost civic participation and spirit at the local level as partisans for democracy (chapter 20, Eric Liu). It means recognizing our common interest in reducing gun violence and gun suicides, and bringing together gun owners and those vehemently opposed to guns to collaborate (chapter 4, Casey Woods). These approaches help us spot, and then build from, a place of agreement, and a spirit of mutuality.

The last thing the group of twenty innovators we spoke to for this book have in common is that they are all Ashoka Fellows—selected into our organization’s global network precisely because of these shared attributes and because of their commitment to equity and the common good. When they become Fellows, they benefit from participation in a lifelong peer learning community that spans every continent of the globe, and that is designed to help their ideas go farther faster.

It’s an important distinction, the difference between solving problems for others and solving them with others—in fact, letting “others” lead. This is the hidden magic of social entrepreneurs: demonstrating time and time again not just how to merge entrepreneurial creativity with social change, but how to recruit citizens across the world to step in and shape their communities for the better.

The curators and editors of this book work at Ashoka, the world’s largest network of social entrepreneurs. One of us is a recent immigrant; one has lived in the U.S. most of his life. We both talk about how lucky we feel to see this country through the lens of what is possible—and what is working.

We put this book together because we believe the insights and voices portrayed in these pages are what we should learn from and turn to in a world of unprecedented change and upheaval. Many of the answers are out there. And they are working. American renewal is happening all around us, behind the decentralized leadership and wisdom of changemakers like those we spoke to in this book. Their road map starts to emerge in the pages that follow. It’s up to us to follow their lead.

One more thing to note: This is a book of conversations. Each chapter is an interview, lightly edited for length and clarity. We could have asked our contributors to write short essays or op-eds, but we preferred the informality and the spontaneity of an interview. No prepared questions, no talking points. Just honest reflection about what they are seeing and where we need to go.

We would like to thank our partners at Unfinished, including Frank McCourt and Paula Recart, who invited and supported Ashoka to write this book. Thank you also to our many Ashoka colleagues for enabling this work, and of course to the twenty featured Ashoka Fellows for their insights and honesty. We are deeply appreciative for the role they play in moving us all toward a better future.

Konstanze Frischen and Michael Zakaras
Ashoka