02-04-20 Radical Transformational Leadership: What does this imply? Guest Speaker: Shomita Kundu
Building Responsible Businesses through Sustainability Leadership
We invite you to a discussion with Shomita Kundu. Shomita is a Social Impact Strategy and Sustainability Leadership professional. She is committed to fostering Freedom for All through responsible and prosperous entrepreneurial initiatives – free from disempowering cultural norms around race, caste, class, gender, religion and region.
We will share many examples that are relevant world-wide. Shomita brought in Universal Values-based Design and Measurement to distinguish process-oriented social change from a banking or technology product development life cycle – one that accounts for changes in inequitable behaviours and social norms, in addition to regular financial profits and other ‘numbers only’ reporting, quite prevalent in banking ‘CSR funded projects’. In her engagement with social entrepreneurship education and incubation institutes, she uses the templates (such as the conscious full-spectrum response) and tools from Radical transformational Leadership (RTL) methodologies, looking at what individual’s deeply care about, their Stand and “what’s present” instead of starting to create “solutions” using the “problem-solving” or “fixing what’s not working” approach. She creates spaces to inquire deeper into the root factors of the issue of what’s not working, rather than only fixing immediate apparent causes, thereby, creating informed Conscious Full-Spectrum Responses than partial quick-fix techniques.
Shomita will share examples of organizing donor visits differently. Integrating the Universal Values into the core strategy of a large business and actively practicing it across functions and locations is a tangible method of moving towards making silo’ed business operations Responsible that then move towards Stewardship.
While working in entrepreneurship incubation and sustainability leadership, Shomita held conversations with donors and funders, and recognized a growing need to create spaces and examples of how funding and receiving can be an equitable dignified exchange of experiences and learning. Shomita says “Design tools and templates of RTL that help me make routine events transformational, enables me to address hierarchy in the donor/aid processes and foster Agency amongst the recipients of funds: Conscious Reciprocity”.
These easy to use tools address complex issues and enable diverse individuals and groups to design together and simultaneously keeping in perspective the future they wish to create, the inequitable morns and systems they would change and the immediate strategies of engaging to make it all happen.
It is our choice: we have a set of tools and templates a language, tested across cultures and contexts, that brings people together focusing on what they care about to be able to embrace different social, professional and personality profiles like religion, caste, gender, class, and hierarchy, to work towards common goals. Let’s choose to make the difference we have the potential for!
Bio: Shomita is a Social Impact Strategy and Sustainability Leadership professional. She is committed to fostering Freedom for All through responsible and prosperous entrepreneurial initiatives – free from disempowering cultural norms around race, caste, class, gender, religion and region.
She works with government, corporate social responsibility (CSR) programmes, consulting firms and nonprofits in designing entrepreneurship incubation and capacity building programmes. Through the principles of RTL like Conscious Reciprocity, she is enabling consulting and philanthropic organisations measure differently and thus engage Equitably and with Dignity with their partner and funded organisations. Using the principles of RTL and entrepreneurial education, she works with socially and economically marginalised communities to practise Agency and Equity in setting up their own entrepreneurial ventures using locally available resources. She has trained and coached enterprises in the areas of sustainable agroforestry, renewable energy access, coastal livelihoods, business education, CSR and non-profit management.
As a Sustainability Leadership Professional, she enables individuals and businesses incorporate Human Rights and Ecological Stewardship explicitly into their organisation’s vision, core strategy and financial decision-making. Thus bringing Integrity in action across their internal and external operations.
Apart from these, Shomita also engages with incubators and academic institutions in streamlining social entrepreneurship education to focus on articulating the deep-rooted systemic socio-economic challenges not just the superficially apparent issues, through practical implementable courses and live projects. And then designing effective entrepreneurial ventures based on hands-on doing, insight and incorporating feedback to refine their design and delivery.
She was formally educated in engineering and social entrepreneurship.
Shomitakundu@gmail.com
Learn more about Dr. Monica here: www.radicallytransform.org
