81. The Struggle

00:44 Lars Peter Nissen

We talk a lot about change in the humanitarian sector, and we don't always see a lot of it. However, if I was asked to make a list of things that truly have changed for the positive over the past decade, START Network would be on that list. START is a sprawling, creative, funny, entrepreneurial outfit with a great team, and they are making some headways in terms of generating new dynamics with respect to collaboration and localization. So it was very exciting to sit down with the current and the former CEOs of the START Network, Christina Bennett and Sean Lowrie, to have a discussion about leadership accommodation and about leadership in different stages of an organization's life. Being an entrepreneur is a very vulnerable position to be in and that's why I appreciate Christina and Sean so much. It's also why I really understood Sean when he called me after the show and said, “Oh my God, in the midst of everything, I forgot to mention how important Lola Gostelow has been for me in terms of emotional support as a board member and as the interim chair”. So a big shout out to Lola for helping out a risk taker like Sean when he was in trouble. We need more people like that to support the few entrepreneurs we have that are pushing forward to improve the industry we all want to see do better. That was a long introduction to a great episode where I actually say very little. So enjoy it and make some noise on social media.

Christina Bennett and Sean Lowrie, welcome to Trumanitarian.

02:19: Sean Lowrie

Thank you.

02:20 Christine Bennett

Thanks Lars Peter, good to be here.

02:23 Lars Peter Nissen

Sean, you led START from the beginning, from its inception up until when did you leave actually?

02:29 Sean Lowrie

September 2019.

02:31 Lars Peter Nissen

September 2019 and then Christina you took over immediately after Sean.

02:35 Christine Bennett

Yeah, September 2019 exactly.

02:37 Lars Peter Nissen

And we just yesterday had a wonderful evening where we celebrated 10 years of the START Fund, which is an amazing achievement. It's fantastic to see how it's grown over these 10 years. And I thought it would be a great opportunity to talk to the two of you about leadership and about the life of an organization. And what I'd like to explore is how the two of you with your respective leadership styles have given guidance and grown this innovative project in the humanitarian sector. And so I'd like to work backwards actually. Yesterday we told the story from the beginning to the end. Today let's start with where we are today and then try to work backwards and see how you led this organization throughout its life. So it's you, Christina, who gets to start today.

03:15 Christina Bennett

That's really interesting. Really glad that we're going to work backwards this time. When I first started at START Network, it was really clear that we were onto something and that there was enough belief in what we were trying to do from within the membership, from a handful of donors, and from the staff that were still really, really passionate and excited about what they were doing. There was enough there to establish what I would have called the proof of concept phase. So really taking the vision that the members had decided on, which was about a network of networks, a family of funds, and a constituent sort of assembly that runs it all and put it into practice. But we needed that practice and we needed that proof of concept to build trust, to ensure that there was something in there to value, that was of value. And there was something that people could get their heads around and that they could hold in their hands. I think sometimes a vision is really complicated to understand if you're not a conceptual person. And because we're a network of practitioners in a sector that's all about practice, I think sometimes vision really eludes people. And so you need to be able to tell them what it is that they're holding in their hand. So I think our first, my first job was to give it form, you know, the purpose was there, but to give it a set of systems, a set of an end game. Like what were we, what was our goal here? In order to prove the concepts that had been developed, before I started.

05:00 Lars Peter Nissen

And Sean, when you listened to Christina describe the situation today, how is that different from when you led start?

05:07 Sean Lowrie

Uh, well, it's great to see, it's so fascinating to see those hundred people in the room last night and so much energy, so much ownership. It feels like it's safe and going to survive. You know, what it is 20 donors now? And it just, it feels like it's embedded. I'm imagining that your role, Christina, is a lot of repetition, a lot of socializing, a lot of bringing new people into the conversation. You know, there's some things that are familiar that I remember. It's great to see something like START where really the financing mechanism, has come to life. That was a dream for many years. We were speaking conceptually about something as if it was real, but it wasn't really real, and now it is real.

05:55 Lars Peter Nissen

The first thing you said was, it feels like it's going to survive. And so I'm wondering, how vulnerable did you feel? How uncertain were you about whether this thing would actually live when you were still there? Was it still a fight for survival, or what was the situation? When the pilot was stopped.

06:12 Sean Lowrie

When the pilot was stopped, funding was cancelled in 2012 or 2011 actually that stimulated a year of great creative process with the two of us. Well we went around the city of London asking all you know the insurance we're in the loins of London, loan facilities, venture capitalists you know can you help us find a new business model for humanitarian aid? We need a different way of financing this to give us more systemic resilience for the you know the behaviors that we know are needed. So that created a huge amount of creativity. And also, I think sometimes it drove me into transactional behaviors, you know, that START as unique and having big and small organizations and, you know, some want the money and, you know, to get the money, you've got to behave in ways that are transactional that may not deliver the vision. Others want the vision, you know, so you're walking this fine line.

07:13 Christina Bennett

And I think you're still walking this fine line. Like that I think is something too, even listening to you speak and listening to some of the speakers yesterday, you know, it was an act of defiance to start START Network. And I think in this phase that we're in now, which is somewhere in between kind of late startup and scale, you know, I always am mindful of not losing that defiant attitude, that audacity, that ability to still see your purpose through all of the systems and structures that we've been putting in place. Because what we took on, when I took on START Network was something that needed a shape. And so we gave it shape. We gave it a strategy. We gave it a funding framework. We gave it some systems and processes in order to sort of professionalize - not bureaucracy - we didn't want to stifle all that creativity and stifle the kind of innovation that was so alive and well in the organization, but it did need some shape and it did need some processes to actually free up people's minds to be able to be creative.

8:20 Lars Peter Nissen

You're both very strong leaders and I admire a lot the leadership you've given to start over the lifespan of the organization. And it's clear that you can tell stories and you can change the discourse and we can begin to have a different conversation. But of course, the question is that just a discourse? And how much can you as leaders, from where you stand, can you, without changing that underlying fiduciary reality, the checks that comes in, the risk adverse nature of the beast, how much does it mean?

09:01 Sean Lowrie

Oh, so that I mean, I think that Christina was going to come up with a more sophisticated answer. And mine is several years old. But I, you know, I, it's what I was struggling with was trying to create, you know, I was able to create the vision of a long term future that people could buy into and align with. And that tent had to be big enough that big organizations would buy into it. And so I was forced to hunt for large amounts of resources. So I think it's easier to stay, you know, to stay transformative in how you work if you're dealing with small amounts of money. But when you start dealing with large resource flows, then you start triggering different processes. You start getting higher levels of permission required and that brings in other perspectives. So I don't think it's easy. It's almost as if, I don't know, maybe it's a stealth mode that's required, you know, you need to, you need to, I don't know… I don't know what it is. I was gonna… so the deep tech world that I'm in now, it has something called stealth mode, where the inventors will work in secret for, you know, I'm gonna rub ears until they've got their patents, until they've gotten their first customer and then they go in and they emerge into public and it's, it's too late for other competitors to catch up. We had conversations about whether it was the right thing to do to mention such a system change explicitly. No, as soon as you start talking about system change and system will come and white blood cells will emerge and try and try and attack you and. You know, get rid of the cancer. Um, so, uh, you know, I'm so pleased that there's enough support that you can talk about it explicitly now. And I guess the question for me is, from the past to the future, are you able to allocate enough resources to make it happen?

11:00 Christine Bennett

So I think something like stealth mode would be really, it works in the corporate world. It would work if the type of disruption that we were engaged in at START Network was a revolutionary one, was blowing things up, creating new, and then putting it out there for everybody to either poke holes in or join. But, you know, START Network was set up by incumbents, right? And it was sort of set up as an insider-outsider play. It was changed from within. And I think it's harder. It's a lot harder to do than to blow something up and create, you know, something from ground zero. That's a lot easier to reimagine. But I think because of the insider-outsider status of START Network, I think we had to go into changing the system. We had to go into disruption with, yeah, I guess a different, flying a different flag. And that flag to me is transparency and not stealth. I think the way that we've been able to make, to bring people on is by being really blunt and open about what we're doing and hoping and demonstrating that transparency leads to trust. And it's the trust that ends up supporting the new initiatives, giving you the space to innovate, allowing you to make the mistakes to fail safely, as you describe, without people getting all concerned about the money they're losing and the investments they're making that are lost. So I think the way that we have always seen change, or I guess the way I see change is as a complex system, the humanitarian system is a complex system, right? If you're going to change it from within, you have to disrupt the equilibrium that it's found. You have to disrupt that kind of way of working that it's always known, it's always done, we've always done it this way. Our systems work well enough, so let's just keep doing it. You have to throw oil in that water and create, you have to create something new. You have to demonstrate that you can throw that equilibrium into disarray by just playing a different game. Instead of playing game on that one football pitch, you the player, you go out and you play on a different pitch. You play in the corner of the field that no one's on. And you play that game and you demonstrate that the game that you're playing is successful and you demonstrate it by telling everybody about what you're doing, evidencing the success, but also evidencing where it's totally falling on its face. And then through that transparency, by playing that other game, that equilibrium reforms around the game that you're playing and doesn't… it leaves that the old game behind. And I think that's what we're banking on. Our theory of the success of this organization or this network right now is about replicability. If we can demonstrate, if we can model the change that we wanna see and put all the evidence out, good and bad, about what we've been able to do and not able to do, and export that knowledge to others, the replicability, the scale comes in that replication by our members, by our donors, by people in the system that can then see the potential and take it to scale.

14:43 Sean Lowrie

So it makes me think of the oil and gas industry and climate change. You could argue that the evidence is unambiguous that we need to stop emitting fossil fuels. We need to stop pumping oil. But there is so much money and there are so many incumbent interests around this that the oil and gas industry will fight the evidence and will obfuscate and invest in disinformation in greenwash until something else happens, until something that's stronger than their financial interests come into play. And I, and I love everything that you're saying. And, and I hope that it works. And I think that it will work when the demonstrated game is resourced.

15:30 Lars Peter Nissen

But you're also saying that there's a danger for aid washing?

15:38 Sean Lowrie

Well, that's yeah. I mean… I first started in 1990, there's lots of circular conversations.

15:44 Christina Bennett

But just like the oil and gas industry, what's compelling them to change, whether it's greenwashing or no, what's compelling them to change? Some of it is taxation, some of it is real financial pain that they're feeling because they're being now taxed or there's talk of taxing them in different ways because of the emissions that they're creating. And so that financial pain may be that oil in the water or maybe that disruptor that will require them to change what they're doing and is, you could argue, on some scale. But it's also, I think, a new generation of people in those organizations that don't see the future in the same way the current managers, the current leaders of those organizations see it. And what I do see in START Network, both in the organization but also in the membership, where I see the most potential for INGOs to give up power or to think differently about their business models and their purpose is really coming from the new generation of humanitarians. It's not coming from all of us, me included, that has grown up in this sector for the last 25 years that thinks of their purpose much more differently. But new humanitarians, they see this power ship, they see working through local organizations, they see anticipatory action, they see anti-racism and anti-colonial ways of working as so embedded in everything that they already do, or they see that in the sector that they want to be a part of. But to draw a parallel to climate change, those people are everywhere, but they're not electing governments with a mandate to regulate the oil and gas industry, to apply those taxations.

17:34 Sean Lowrie

They need to engage in the current system in order to, you know, elect the right leaders. Not they, or we need to. We all need to. This carbon dioxide removal industry has 2050 as a planning figure. So we need to be at 16 billion tons of removals per year by 2050. That's causing us to cast backwards. And I guess my question for humanitarian agents is what do we need to look like by 2050? What's the world going to be like by 2050? You need to make some assumptions, you need to do some scenario planning, but what will disasters be like? What's the case that it will be like? What scale quantum of human migration will be required? And what sort of system would be needed to respond to that?

18:22 Christina Bennett

Yeah, I mean, I think it's this whole idea that some of our colleagues had a while ago, which is planning from the future, not planning for the future. And so it's planning backwards from 2050 or from the world that you see in the future. And that's what futurists do, right? Is they imagine that world and then plan backwards. And I think what I see, but I think what many of us see is a future of geopolitical shifts where the power is already shifting away from the traditional kind of colonialists, the traditional power holders, the economies that once had a lot of money to spend that don't anymore, that are losing the world's attention because they don't have the political courage to make the decisions that their constituencies, that their people, that the world needs right now, whether it's on climate or conflict. I mean, you see what's going on in places like Ukraine and Gaza in particular, like the lack of courage around some of these decisions is appalling and citizen sort of... citizen activism is telling them, ‘we don't want this world that you're creating for us’. The youth are telling us, ‘we cannot live in this world that you're creating for us’. So I think, I guess I have hope in that, that people will hold their governments to account and hold their leaders to some degree of courage. But climate change just in and of itself for our sector is already the primary driver of emergencies. The START Fund, I think it's like close to 80% of our allocations are for climate related hazards. It's expected to increase 10 times by 2030 and 50 times by 2050. So humanitarianism 1.0 is about institutions and there's like 1948 institutions that were born at that time. And maybe humanitarianism 2.0 was about enterprise and big business and all of these aid organizations that had started off as either religious movements or you know people getting together to do good, all of a sudden turned into big businesses. And now I would say that humanitarianism 3.0 needs to be about networks. And I know that sounds really self-serving from where I'm sitting right now, but I thought about that way before I joined Start Network. I just think a distributed model where the power sits, the power at the center is actually the power that sits elsewhere. It has to be. And the money has to come from not, you know, a few big sources, but it has to come from lots of people and their sort of collective responsibility toward alleviating suffering of the climate crisis.

21:05: Lars Peter Nissen

So let's say that we had $10 million for each of you. We managed to pull you out of the carbon, capture a business shown and you come back here into the humanitarian space. You leave the start fund. You have a big bag of the beautiful gold money that's not tied down, it's flexible, you can do whatever you want. Are you going to spend it in the humanitarian sector if you want to make the world a better place and what are you going to spend it on?

21:40 Sean Lowrie

To get the most from that $10 million, I would try and create initiatives that exist to create change. There's a great, there's a book out in Canada written by Naomi Klein's brother who looks back at the Canadian government response to World War II. And the question is, how did the entire economy of Canada get retooled for the war effort? And the answer was that they created 22 crown corporations that essentially was a parallel civil service. And these corporations existed to address certain elements that was necessary for the war effort. And it makes me think of institutions that exist to create change. The Start Network is a great example of something that exists to create change. So I would use that money to seed other ventures that create change.

22:44 Christina Bennett

Really hard question to answer. I guess the first thing, in listening to you, Sean, the first thing I'm coming up with is to create almost like a humanitarian social economy. So I wouldn't put it in the humanitarian sector, but I would direct it toward the types of problems we're trying to solve. But I wouldn't solve it to the humanitarian aid system. I would solve it by creating seeding ideas at community level, whether it was supporting local government initiatives around supporting local economies or supporting risk modeling for disasters or seeding local businesses, small enterprise, social enterprises, but at micro levels. And creating kind of a, I don't know, a symbiotic relationship between different social economies in different places. So that creating almost like a platform for peer exchange or exchange so that countries and communities that are suffering from the same ills, societal, you know, economic problems or climate-related problems or environmental degradation, whatever it is, these big chunky problems have, can learn from each other and can learn from their own experiences in their own countries and communities, which may be vastly different, but I think there's so many commonalities about what humans want and need and aspire to. And I think just by seeding those ideas, fueling local enterprise and community solidarity that can then lead to some kind of peer exchange would be the way I would go. That's kind of a fuzzy idea. I don't know how you would do it, but.

24:39 Sean Lowrie

What about the present asking the past, why'd you do it that way? Or the past asking the present, you know. How did you handle that question?

24:45

Yeah, I was. Yeah, it was. I would like to, yeah. Something I would like to ask you, actually. And maybe I know the answer to this because I know how START Network all got started. But if you had to do it over again… would you have started with disruption by incumbents? Would you have started something new or would you have taken the system that we have and started with that? I think the starting point for START Network is a really interesting one. And I feel like it's something that now is its unique sort of selling point. But if you were to go back and do it differently, would you have started with what existed or would you have started at ground zero and built something new?

25:38 Sean Lowrie

If I had the money, if money wasn't an object, then yeah, I would have started something… I would have created that new game that you described first to show how the game can be played differently. But then that would require, you'd need a lot of support in socializing that idea. So working with incumbents, working with deconstructors gives you a natural constituency through which you can disseminate ideas. And of course, working with the incumbent system gives you resources that you can use to play with ideas. The question is how radical can that game be with resources from the incumbent system? And is it radical enough to deliver the change that you... There's a reason for this case study, Paradox in Power. It's paradoxical to work with the incumbent system. I mean, there's a lot of money out there. There are a lot of billionaires out there that are trying to have a legacy.

26:35 Lars Peter Nissen

If you were in Sean's position, ten years ago, when the START Network was first started, would you use that theory of change? Would you work with the incumbents, or would you create a different game independently?

26:45 Christina Bennett

When I was, back when Sean started, I was at ODI, and my research agenda for the time I was there was about change in the humanitarian system. So I was looking at all of these things as you were building the ship, and I was watching you and what you were doing and really thinking about, wow, how amazing it is that theoretically, we're coming up with, at ODI, we're coming up with all of these ideas around decentralization and localization and re-centering the humanitarian system and giving the international system a new purpose. And you were putting it into practice and it was so wonderful or so validating to see that it could be done. So I think probably from where I was sitting back then, it looked like the right way to go. I think also because some of the topics that you were tackling were topics that needed to be discussed but just weren't. And so the fact that you were just pulling them out and getting people and banging their heads together and getting people to talk about them was really the way to just sort of, I don't know, be that immediate kind of cellular level reaction that people needed to have to start talking. Where I sit now and looking, you know, if it were today, I would say, I would start from scratch because, but it's knowing what I know now. It's knowing how hard it is to pull and it, you know, a system that has such built in vested interests in keeping things stable and keeping things the same, that equilibrium that everybody loves so much and the time and the sweat and the blood that it takes to disrupt that and ask people to change the game. It's just exhausting. I mean, and it would be much more exhilarating and much more satisfying, I think, to just start from scratch. But I could understand why you didn't. I fully understand why you didn't.

28:43 Lars Peter Nissen

And of course the danger of starting from scratch is that you end up on your own, right? Nobody comes to your party, even though it is a better party.

28:49 Christina Bennett

Yeah, and the other thing, you know, the other problem with starting from scratch in what we do.is that if you're trying to disrupt a system so much, a system that people depend on for aid, there's a do no harm, there's an ethical conundrum inbuilt to that. So I don't think you can just, you have to start with something, you have to still deliver for people while you're changing the system. And so I think it's important that that ethical component come into this.

29:23 Sean Lowrie

Okay, so the past asking the present. It was hard work. It was bruising. We had fights, we had discussions, we had three hour board meetings every month for five years. And I was held to account by, you know, the super principled people who have come from the union movement and NGOs who, you know, help me to account. And, and it was very tough. It was it was very tough. And so I guess the question from the past to the present is, have you sold out? …That sounds rough. I didn't mean to ask it that way. It's not about selling out. It's like, are you still fighting? I want to see, tell me, are you still fighting? This is a fight. It's a struggle, right? It can never be easy. It can never be finished. It can never be… it's a struggle. Are you still struggling?

30:17 Christina Bennett

We are still struggling, but I think it does play on my mind every day, this question of selling out. And we're struggling with different things now. As I was saying earlier, I think what we've decided to do is to sort of play… Meet the system where it is, play a different game, and then pull them in the direction. Make them want to join us. Give them that fear of, that sense of fear of missing out, that there's something better. There's a better way of doing this, and they're missing out on it, so come join us. But in doing so, we're running almost parallel systems. We're meeting the system where it is, because we need to pay for things that we're doing. And at the same time, saying to them, okay, yes, we'll take some of your funding, but can you change the conditions under which we're taking that money and help us play this different game? And it's more, it's been successful to different degrees, but, you know, it's very, very clear that we cannot lose that sense of purpose, that sense of, that desire to change the system in our pragmatism. But at times we are very pragmatic. And at times we do need to resource something in a way we're not entirely comfortable with in order to cross-subsidize, in order to generate something new on the other side. So it's a huge question. And when I listen to you and when I listen to some of your kind of START Network founders, I think about are we still being true to that initial mobilizing force that caused you? That gave you the audacity to start this in the first place. Do we have enough audacity in what we're doing? Or are we being too pragmatic? And I don't know, I would ask the members. It plays on my mind, definitely. I wonder what the members think.

32:12 Lars Peter Nissen

Maybe the opposite question is relevant to ask as well. Sean, if you came back today, wouldn't you just blow up the whole place with your fighting? I mean, now it's a bigger ship to drive. You can't just act like you could when you were three, four people, right? It's a big organization. Can you be as brutal as you sometimes are in a ship that size?

32:35 Sean Lowrie

You know, it requires a different leadership style. It's a much bigger beast now. 20 donors, 100 staff, 10 hubs, 600 disbursements. You know, proving that small amounts of money can actually be very catalytic, you know, not needing big donations. So it requires a different leadership style. And so, no, I wouldn't blow it up. It'd be a great privilege to inherit the work that you've done, Christina, and to try and continue to contribute in this way. I guess the question to my mind is, can you still be activist and lead something of this size?

33:18 Christina Bennett

Or maybe the question isn't, can we still be activist? Because look, I'm like CEO, chief enabling officer, really. I mean, I can direct things that happen in my organization, but I can't direct the network at all, right? I'm an enabler. So maybe the question is that activism may not be able to come from what we are starting to call the start secretariat. Because that's all we are, a secretariat, we shouldn't have a lot of power. We shouldn't be able to direct things so intentionally. But that activism then needs to come from the membership and the growing local membership that asks for things and demands things and that activism, the activism needs to come from there. While we perhaps adopt a more pragmatic approach to just make sure that the network itself has the… has the vision and the fuel it needs and the sort of emotional space and the mental space and that creativity to be able to be that activist network. But I think it can't, it's probably too, the network is big enough and diverse enough at this point that that activism, that sense of purpose and… I don't know, the passion for change should start to come much more from the membership.

34:45 Sean Lowrie

So another question from the past and the present. That all sounds amazing. Do you have the resources that you need in order to amplify those local messages for change or to divert resources to support the local NGO that's providing the leadership that other countries could benefit from?

35:02 Christina Bennett

Well, there never enough resources, right? Because how long is a piece of string? But I think we have enough resources to mobilize our hubs, for example. They are mobilized and they're vocal and they're demanding and they show up everywhere now. So I would say it's less a question of resources, it's more a question of time. Time because, you know, like all of us, local leaders, they're leaders of their own organizations. They are engaging in humanitarian response where they live every day. And they don't have time to be catalysts and systems changers and change makers and speakers. And they don't have the time. So there's time in that sense, but there's also time, this needs, it will take time for the network to mature and marinate and evolve and emerge. And I think we just need to give it time. So I think it is a question of resources, right? Resources always help. It's also a question of vision and strategy and passion, and I think that's there. But it's probably mostly a question of time. And that is the resource that we have the least of.

36:21 Lars Peter Nissen

Any more future to the past questions?

36:24 Christina Bennett

When I was at ODI and I was looking at what START Network was doing, it was so compelling and appealing because it was like a bright light in this morass of malaise that the sector was going through. And the fact that you were able to have an entrepreneur, that you were able to start something that felt exciting and entrepreneurial in a system that was so staid and so indulgent in its own ways of doing things was just amazing and also rare. I think what this sector could use if we were planning from the future with all the things that are going to go on by 2050, we need more, not only activism, we need more entrepreneurship, we need more innovation, but not the kind of innovation, not necessarily tech innovation or not a project of innovation or all the innovation we do now. We need like true visionaries that are willing to think big and take risks and take a chance on something that may work, but may not. And it's a rare commodity in our sector. How do we foster, you know, now that you're an entrepreneur in the corporate world, and you see what that could look like, whether good or bad, how do we foster that kind of, that kind of audacity and entrepreneurship in a sector that needs it so, so desperately right now?

37:47 Sean Lowrie

That's a great question. I think, so I felt supported. You know, there are many people around me that supported me that gave me space to do this. You know Gareth Owen in Save the Children - my line manager for you know… until we spun off had my back every day I felt that. I felt that he had my back. You know Irish aid giving us funding when no one else would to say look this is a good idea you're gonna get there. We've got your back. This is a symbolic small amount, but it shows that governments will come to the table when you figure this out. Matthew Carter and Nick Goodman, the first and second chairs of the START Network, keeping the members in the same direction, giving me space to keep exploring. Randolph Kent in the Humanitarian Futures Program, being a thinking partner and chairing the CEO meetings. Those are specific examples of people who did things to give me the space to experiment and explore. As I said last night, I think that there's an entrepreneur in every humanitarian. You've got to be entrepreneurial to even want to do this crazy thing. And then to get something done when society is falling apart, you've got to be creative and entrepreneurial. Maybe what the system doesn't do for entrepreneurs is provide them with the space and support for them to bring out what's naturally in there.

39:23 Christina Bennett

And importantly the support and the support and structure or whatever around the entrepreneurship that exists already outside the UK or outside of Washington or outside of even like Nairobi. There's so much ingenuity and there's so many ideas out there. There are entrepreneurs like we meet them all the time. But they don't have that kind of support. They don't even have the money to run their own organizations, let alone support a new idea. And so it's about recreating what you found here in the UK when you started CBHA and then Start Network, but really finding that support structure and resourcing that support structure in other places or finding the communities in those places that will support entrepreneurship out there.

40:13 Sean Lowrie

There's another ingredient. It's also about the emotional support that I got from friends and colleagues in the sector. So there are entrepreneurs everywhere, in local organizations. It's not just about creating political space for entrepreneurs to try new things. It's also providing emotional support to give them the courage and the tenacity to keep going. Giving them the courage to take the risks to begin with and the tenacity and support to keep going when the inevitable problems and crises will arise. And I recognize that the risks taken by someone in a local organization or in a disaster zone are much greater than the risks that I have to take. My career risks, whereas someone who's on the poverty line or in a developing country where disasters are occurring, has other risks to take into consideration too.

41:16 Lars Peter Nissen

I'd like to thank both of you for coming and having this discussion and for actually interviewing each other. It was an easy job for me. I just had to sit here and listen to the brilliant questions and answers flying back from the past to the future and back again. So, congratulations on what you have achieved together, the two of you. It's amazing to see such a clean idea, a small clean idea grow into this amazing network that has become today. And the leadership that you have provided has obviously been a key ingredient in getting that done. So, thank you for that leadership and congratulations.

41:55 Sean Lowrie

Thanks, Lars Peter. Well done, Christina, keep going.

41:58 Christina Bennett

Thanks, Sean. Well done for getting us all started and creating that initial combustion that is now turned into a really big idea and something that has a lot of promise and a lot of passion around it. So it's really a privilege for me to be leading such an amazing, amazing initiative.