SILVIA LASERNA
Helping solve society's most pressing needs with rigor, creativity, and passion.
Challenge:
Adapt content created by professionals recognized in their fields for online courses that address the needs of social entrepreneurs. The main course topics are: leadership, communications, marketing, business, finance, social entrepreneurship, creativity and design.
Outcome:
Five video-based courses taught by Debbie Millman, Sarah Robb O'Hagan, Mihir Desai, Prasad Setty and Jonathan Greenblatt, published on Udemy and Teachable and distributed through the +Acumen website.
Acumen is an impact investment fund that invests in early-stage companies whose products and services enable underprivileged people to transform their lives. It also supports these companies with the tools, networks, technical assistance and strategic guidance needed to succeed and scale. Additionally, the Fellows Program builds leaders with the skills, determination and moral imagination to challenge the status quo and drive social change.
+Acumen is Acumen's School for Social Change, offering over 30 free and low-cost online courses that have reached over 350,000 social change-makers from over 190 countries. +Acumen's target audience is people working in social enterprises and nonprofit organizations striving to tackle problems of poverty across the world. These people tend to be lifelong learners who are looking for more innovative ways to approach their work. +Acumen has courses with people like Seth Godin, Chris Anderson, Daniel Pink, Elizabeth Gilbert, Adam Grant and Krista Tippett among others.
Approach:
Define the main needs of social change makers through interviews with Acumen's Fellows and Investees.
Find the best instructors to teach these topics and consolidate a partnership with them.
Develop a thorough outline for the course based on the instructors publications and talks, adapting content to the social change maker audience.
Produce high-quality videos of structured interviews with the instructors.
Design complementary educational content including quizzes, workbooks and complementary readings.
Submit the course for review by a Launch Team of international course takers/educators and incorporate feedback.
Launch the course and manage any barriers experienced by course-takers.
My Role:
Project managed the pre-production, production, post-production and launch of each course.
Conducted media and desk research on course topics, identifying key learning objectives and possible instructors.
Developed course outlines based on publications and talks by each instructor.
Managed relationship with instructors throughout the different stages of course production.
Built courses on two different learning platforms and set-up course site on the +Acumen website.
Replenished Launch Team and managed the relationship with its members.
Created a system for Launch Team feedback on courses.
The Courses:
“This is a really important course. Everyone should take the time to educate themselves around bias, prejudice and hate. It’s complex and hugely damaging to those on the receiving end of it. And we often don’t even realise we’re enabling it. This course helps you to recognise the signs around you and explore different ways you can respond and do something positive.”
“Fascinating information from an experienced leader sharing cutting edge insights gleaned from real life examples used by the Google team to create their ‘one in a kind’ effective culture. Prepare to come away feeling inspired to lead and excited to build dynamic, engaged teams ready to serve the missions and visions fundamental to social enterprise!”
“I loved this course! Dr.Desai has a unique and engaging style of explaining complex financial concepts using stories, which helps to intuitively connect our own experiences and knowledge to topics - in-context. I also enjoyed additional resource materials, questionnaire, and articles provided in the course. I feel much more confident in reading/using finance jargon. I highly recommend this course.”
“This is just the right course for me at the right time, having worked for more than three years in the same organization, I feel a bit less challenged and wanted to do more but I was limited in what to do. This course brings more hope for me and I am fired up to do more for my organization.”
“By learning the fundamentals of branding, and applying these to social brands there might be a higher potential of leveraging the positive impact we want to have with our products, services, and actions.”