Leading Business Model Transformation with Sudha Nandagopal: Why Theory of Change Comes Before Structure

How do you transform a global organization's business model while keeping your mission and values intact? In this episode, I sit down with Sudha Nandagopal, founder of Bend the Horizon, to explore her experience leading business model transformation as CEO of Social Venture Partners International, a global philanthropic network with 44 affiliates around the world.

Sudha came into the role knowing that restructuring would be a priority. What she discovered was that before you can shift a business model, you need clarity on your theory of change. This conversation explores the real work of organizational transformation: getting clear on purpose and values, building alignment across the ecosystem, testing multiple approaches, and creating the conditions for sustainable change.

We discuss the challenges of network governance, the question of who defines a network's future, supporting women of color leaders during pivotal transitions, and why business model evolution must be seen as part of ongoing organizational strategy.

Guest Bio: Sudha Nandagopal is the founder of Bend the Horizon, a strategy advising firm that works at the intersection of climate, narrative, philanthropy, and governance. Previously, she served as CEO of Social Venture Partners International, a global philanthropic network. She is currently board chair of the Sunrise Project and a board member at Taproot Earth. Sudha began her career as an organizer in environmental and labor movements and led the development of the City of Seattle's Equity and Environment Initiative before moving into philanthropic leadership. Follow Sudha on Substack.

In This Episode:

• Why you can't shift a business model until you know your theory of change
• The unique challenges of leading federated networks and defining value proposition
• How to navigate affiliate tensions around dues, governance, and direction
• Testing multiple business models through structured experimentation
• Building alignment by starting with the external ecosystem before going internal
• The importance of equity processes in network restructuring
• Why business model work is continuous organizational strategy, not a five-year plan 
• Supporting women of color leaders navigating organizational pivots
• Finding the intersection of joy and impact in leadership
• What funders need to understand about resourcing organizations in transition

Resources Mentioned:

*Unrigged the Game* by Vanessa Daniel

Transcript

Monisha Kapila (00:01.439)
Hello and welcome to the Leadership by Purpose podcast. I'm your host, Monisha Kapila, and I'm really excited today to have our guest, Sudha Nandagopal. She is the founder of Bend the Horizon, a strategy advising firm that works at the intersection of climate, narrative, philanthropy, and governance. Previously, Sudha served as CEO of a global philanthropic network. She is also board chair of the Sunrise Project and a board member at Taproot Earth.

And today we're going to talk about her experience leading business model transformation. So then welcome to the show.

Sudha (00:36.514)
Thank you. Thank you so much for having me, Monisha. It's really a pleasure to be here.

Monisha Kapila (00:40.745)
Yes. Well, can you start by telling us about you and your journey? What led you to take on the role as CEO of a philanthropic network?

Sudha (00:50.136)
Yeah, thank you so much for asking. So I have been in movement work for most of my career. I started out as an organizer. And in that role, as I was organizing in the environmental field and then in labor and then actually built the city of Seattle's Equity and Environment Initiative, one of the things I kept noticing was the power of philanthropy in all of these spaces.

And so as I was looking to move upstream in my work and have more influence on the people who were moving capital and money, I was approached to lead Social Venture Partners International, which is a global philanthropic network with 44 affiliates around the globe and individual donors all over the globe. And so I was really inspired by the idea of getting to take my organizing skills and actually work

with individual donors to unlock resources for movements and for the great challenges of our time. And so that's how I found myself leading a global philanthropic network some years ago.

Monisha Kapila (01:57.373)
Yeah, I love that journey of like being really on the ground as an organizer in community and then really thinking about like, what are the different ways to influence the field and the philanthropic side is such an important one and individual donors that often don't get enough attention, particularly as it relates to some of these issues. And so can you tell us a little bit more about restructuring? When did you realize in this role that restructuring was going to be a priority?

Sudha (02:18.475)
Yeah.

Sudha (02:28.237)
It's really interesting because actually I was really early on in the interview process for this role. It was clear that they were in a transitional moment. They were coming off of having a CEO who had been there, I think maybe 18 months, and they had done all these surveys and gotten all this input from their affiliates. It's a network model.

And so the affiliates had a lot of opinions about how things had been going and what they wanted to see happening. The organization had already undertaken a major transformation without sort of a focus necessarily or thinking it would cause such a cultural transformation in that they had expanded internationally. India was the fastest growing affiliate at the time of my becoming CEO. And it was one of the major reasons that I was really interested in the role.

because the opportunity to shape and be part of the emerging philanthropic sector in India was very exciting to me. But it was clear from the outset that there was a challenge afoot. The business model was really around affiliates, like many federated networks, like many networks, was affiliates paying dues, and then the network separately also raising money from individual donors and

some small amount of money from foundations at the time in order to do the work. And like many donor networks, it was a hard thing to answer the question of what's the value proposition of the network and why would you give to the network as opposed to just giving to your local affiliate?

Monisha Kapila (04:10.187)
Mmm.

Monisha Kapila (04:15.667)
Yes. So you kind of came in knowing that this was going to be a priority for you. And how was the openness among staff to the changes that you were being brought in to address?

Sudha (04:31.713)
You know, I think the staff and board of the network itself really brought me in as a change leader with the expectation and the call to action that I would help figure out and lead the charge, frankly, on figuring out how to shift the business model and also to really strengthen the network as an entity. And what I found, I think the

Monisha Kapila (04:39.06)
Hmm.

Sudha (05:01.665)
The reality though is, you know, people diagnose a problem at one level. And when you get into an organization and even during the process of me getting to know the organization on the outset, what I found myself saying over and over was we can't shift a business model until we know our theory of change. And so,

Monisha Kapila (05:24.043)
Mmm.

Sudha (05:27.069)
even before we could really get into shifting the business model and really figure out how to reinvigorate the funding for this organization, reinvigorate who saw themselves as part of the organization, it required us to get really clear about what was the purpose, what was the true value purpose of having a network entity. You know, on paper, the value of having a network entity in this model

Monisha Kapila (05:44.062)
Yeah.

Sudha (05:55.254)
was to be in charge of the brand and to make sure that we continued to innovate and that we continued to be an organization that was leading edge in terms of what individual donors and philanthropy would do. And so bringing in best practices, being an organization that was convening folks, connecting people together across the network. But none of those things are by themselves.

enough of a value proposition for networks. And I think I'm not the only network leader who has sat with this problem, frankly. Yeah.

Monisha Kapila (06:27.89)
Mmm.

Monisha Kapila (06:33.131)
Well, and I sit on a board, I sit on the board of the National Human Services Assembly, which is a network of networks. And so this has been a real big question for more than a decade for many of even the largest federated organizations of, know, what is the value proposition? How do they shift the way that they're holding their role as there's so many more ways for smaller entities to get information?

Sudha (07:01.195)
Yes. And I think one of the real challenges for so many networks is the question of who defines the future of the network. And, you know, partly because I think for so many networks, it's easy to say, like, we should have those who are already in this network lead on the definition of what comes next. And yet, if the people who are already in the network are

Monisha Kapila (07:10.027)
you

Monisha Kapila (07:23.37)
Yeah.

Sudha (07:28.877)
struggling to pay dues, don't want to pay dues, if there's already some of that tension afoot, which there very much was in my case. When I came on board, several of the affiliates were unable to pay dues because of their local business models weren't working out, or there was just disagreement about the dues. There wasn't a clear process for how people could request.

forgiveness of their dues in a given year. And so, for instance, one of the early things I had to do was create an equity process where you had to actually apply to have your dues reduced. And you had to prove that there was a budgetary reason for that reduction, right? And that request. And it came with certain conversations and questions about like, what's the work you're doing locally and how can we support that?

Monisha Kapila (08:07.275)
Hmm

Sudha (08:25.173)
But I think a lot of times in networks, we're so focused on that aspect of the work and those stakeholders. When the opportunity is often for change and for business model innovation, I think this is a scary thing for a lot of folks. And the opportunity is with stakeholders who are not yet in the.

Monisha Kapila (08:45.693)
Mmm.

Sudha (08:47.849)
And the organizations I think that can really embrace and adopt a new theory of change, a new business model often end up being the ones who can really lean into a blue ocean mindset and say, look, we want to bring along the people we have, but also like we want to build the organization that's going to last into the future.

Monisha Kapila (09:02.123)
Yeah.

Monisha Kapila (09:13.419)
So what was the process that you went through when you came in to start to figure out what a new business model could be?

Sudha (09:21.419)
Yeah, so there was a lot of different pieces that went into play. So I'll keep it fairly brief, which is, you know, I spent the first several months that I was on board getting to know staff, having one-on-one calls with every affiliate leader. I visited our affiliate in India and got to see several of the different entities there in India and the work that they were doing on the ground.

I got to know many of the individual donors across the network and attended events. We had our global summit just two months after I started. So I had the opportunity to meet a ton of people and hear their feedback and hear their questions. You know, what did they want? And then we had these surveys that had already been done that also had a lot of information. And then I had all the information from our staff in terms of what were the conversations that kept coming up.

over the years with affiliates. And then as I started getting into this question of theory of change and value purpose, I was also talking to funders and saying, okay, you know, the inherent dynamic of a donor network is that the expectation is that I am organizing the very people who are supposed to also fund me. And that is a very difficult dynamic from a power structure.

Monisha Kapila (10:20.99)
Okay.

Monisha Kapila (10:45.844)
Yes.

Sudha (10:48.265)
And so I was having conversations with funders in the field and funders in the ecosystem of donor networks to get a sense of like, what are other donor networks doing? And what came up over and over again is that many of the most successful donor networks were getting some substantial operational funds from foundations. Foundations who were interested in helping individual donors unlock resources.

Monisha Kapila (11:11.915)
Okay.

Sudha (11:18.209)
for grassroots work, for racial justice work, and for social change movements. And so building upon the history that this global philanthropic network had of being an organization that really moved individual donors towards better practices in philanthropy, I was really looking at, in the ecosystem, what can be our role? And rather than...

Monisha Kapila (11:39.755)
Mmm.

Sudha (11:43.758)
I'm a visual person and I can't draw this out, but I'll just say very briefly, rather than going from like, if we start with our innermost circle, which is us, and I think where many business model conversations tend to start is the board and the staff and the closest stakeholders. And then you might go to the next level and then you finally go out to the ecosystem. What we really looked at doing was how do we start with the ecosystem? How do we start with where funders?

are shifting their resources right now. How do we start with what's happening in the donor sector writ large? And then let's build the next stages. And so that's really how the first year we ended up creating a new theory of change for the organization that was centered on shifting and sharing power and unlocking inspiring philanthropists to unlock their resources for grassroots efforts and grassroots organizations.

And I would say, you know, that was poised to be a really remarkable success. It does, it did happen to be, you know, three months before the pandemic began. So that's a whole other part of the story.

Monisha Kapila (12:52.521)
Yeah, but I mean, that's quite a shift in the purpose and the narrative. How did you get stakeholders to follow through, follow along in that process?

Sudha (13:08.673)
Yeah, I mean, I think the stakeholder piece was frankly one of the hardest parts of this work because we had planned to, you know, I had had all these pre-conversations with stakeholders and then we brought members of the network to the board meeting. We had a very large board which represented folks all across the network.

And so we had this board meeting when we adopted this new theory of change that felt very well represented in terms of not just people who are closest to the organization. But with the pandemic, there was a lot of both stakeholders who left their roles, so there were shifts in who.

were board members of local affiliates, who were the donors, who were the executives, all of the relationships of year one shifted very dramatically. And frankly, it was almost impossible, you know, for me to be out on the road, having the kind of deep one on one conversations that we would traditionally have in in a situation like this. So in lieu of that, we

Monisha Kapila (14:03.722)
Yeah.

Sudha (14:22.455)
created two things that were really exciting. One is my board members and I reached out to about 200 donors across the network in the first month of the pandemic. And through that, we sort of assessed a series of themes that were coming up. And those themes created a report that we were able to share out to the network, but also sort of helped us inform the next stage of this business model.

development and really be able to say like, look, you know, affiliates are doing all of this amazing work. And there is more that people are asking for that actually is work that the network can hold. That work positioned us really well to then take that report and go to funders and say, this is what donors are asking us to do. Are you able to back us to do that work?

And that work was very centered on racial justice and orienting around a new vision for how donors show up in their communities and really, you know, lifting up the values of impact-driven philanthropy. And so that was sort of year two was really assembling funding behind the vision and seeing what does it take to get

philanthropy backing us, large institutional philanthropy backing this, so that it's not just the individual donors having to be the ones paying for their own change.

Monisha Kapila (15:56.851)
Yeah, I just in what you shared, I hear so much weaving across stakeholders, right? The board that upfront when they brought you in said that business model was going to be a priority and you hearing from staff and affiliates, but then also saying we're going to step outside of our network and hear what's happening in the field and then come back in. And so just some, I think, really powerful about the importance of weaving kind of in and out in that

restructuring process.

Sudha (16:28.363)
Yeah, and I would be remiss if I didn't mention that we also, were fortunate enough to secure some funding from a grant maker that allowed us to go out and have conversations with movement leaders around the globe as well to really hear from them, especially in the face of the pandemic. You know, all of the things that we thought when we have first created that theory of change, we wanted to ground truth some of that. Was it still true in the face of the pandemic? Was it still true as

I took an organization that had mostly centered its work on being in-person with folks to being entirely virtual. That in and of itself was an entire restructure. And so I think the business model piece of it, it was really important that we not just say, like, this is what we think, let's build it, but to keep on...

ground-truthing and validating assumptions and doing little pilot tests. So, you know, we raised money for and piloted a global intermediary fund to see like, okay, does that have some legs to it? Is that something that we could as an organization do to really be a pass-through funder? And that in turn allowed us to go to funders and say, look, we're trying things and it's working.

Monisha Kapila (17:51.104)
Yeah.

Sudha (17:51.745)
Do you wanna come along and help us build these things?

Monisha Kapila (17:55.061)
So it sounds like as part of this restructuring, there was kind of a real like test and learn, and maybe the pandemic made that a requirement because no one really knew what was going to best support leaders and organizations in that time. How did you think about the values through all of this?

Sudha (17:59.853)
Yep.

Sudha (18:16.343)
You know, I think the values through all of this were really for me centered on that where do we place the power of who designs what's next in philanthropy? And so I was very clear with my board and the conversations I was having. And this is the hallmark of my career, which is that I build with and for those who are most impacted.

Monisha Kapila (18:44.469)
Hmm.

Sudha (18:45.429)
And so when it came to questions about, you know, who defines the future of a global philanthropic network, I felt very, and particularly as we were considering building a global fund, for me, it was incredibly important that the stakeholders we were centering and that we were hearing from were the movement leaders. They were the social change leaders. They were the grassroots leaders and to really be able to say, what do you need? And

Now, how do we build that in response and in alignment to what's needed? Now, the other value was really understanding that donors need organizing. Peer-to-peer organizing works when it comes to influencing individual donors to change how they give and to get them to be more community-centered in their giving. And so that was another piece was really anchoring in on this value of we are a donor.

Monisha Kapila (19:27.595)
Yeah.

Sudha (19:44.91)
And we have an opportunity, we have power, like to know our own power as an organization and our sphere of influence. It wasn't to turn ourselves into a grassroots organization all of a sudden, right? But really to turn ourselves into a more powerful, more values aligned donor network. And so that's where we launched what was called Reimagine Giving to really

Monisha Kapila (19:50.856)
you

Sudha (20:13.919)
inspire and influence donors towards that grassroots community-centered giving and to have accountability in their philanthropic relationships. So those, you know, so I think for me the value is being really around being led by and listening to those who are most impacted, which was both direct conversations, but there was a ton happening in the in the ecosystem. Like just reading, we could keep up with that, right?

but then also really being clear about our own power. And then also just having the value of experimentation because I have seen over and over having been through so many different change management processes and stakeholder engagement processes, like you have to test things out. If you just roll out the giant big plan, oftentimes that plan is not ground truth or connected to what is really needed. And so I do.

I really value experimentation and to your point, you know, the pandemic required it to some degree, but I think there were a lot of leaders who found themselves unable to experiment even though the times required it. And for me, it's the only way I know how to make change.

Monisha Kapila (21:27.211)
Well, and I hear really in how you kind of built that value and the values of those most impacted and so forth into the business model. And so then it really becomes ingrained.

Sudha (21:41.504)
Yeah. And no, I was just going to say, I mean, think that was when we, when I look back at when the board hired me, that's what they had. That's the initial vision and desire that they had put forward. And it was about ground truthing all of those pieces, right? And making sure that that actually was the right direction. Cause I think a lot of times

We've all seen the organizations who say that they're restructuring to center more on racial justice, but really what they're doing is changing their brand. And I will say as someone who comes from doing racial justice work that I believe that brand follows brand and business model follow the work. And I think when we try to flip the direction of that and flip

so that we are doing brand and business model and then thinking about impact second, we get in our own way. And often we miss the very things that we need to do to advance racial justice.

Monisha Kapila (22:47.913)
Yes. So as you look back on this process, what was the hardest part of leading through the change?

Sudha (23:00.568)
I mean, I told you a full story here, but it was possibly some of the hardest work I've done in my career. It was hard on several different layers, you know, the pandemic being obviously a major player in what made this really hard. But I think when I look back, one of the things,

Early on, I had hoped that we would be able to hire a communications director to really lead some of that internal stakeholder engagement conversations, particularly when it became clear that I wouldn't be able to travel to visit with all the affiliates and to really have the one-on-one conversations about the new theory of change. And I, despite the fact we did the really incredible

know, board led conversations with donors, turned that into a report. We had these really cool virtual house parties that fall so we could talk to lots of people. So, you know, I was sort of doing my best as CEO to also lead an engagement strategy. But the reality is that we needed someone who I found many years later, a really excellent firm. But we needed that firm in the beginning.

to help really run communications. And I come from a communications background. I often said, I believe in communications as a mechanism for advancing change. And it was just really difficult in the times that we were in and particularly with the resources that we had. Because I think it's, yeah, I mean, it's often the challenge, right?

You find yourself needing to do a business model pivot because you are struggling to bring in resources, which is the situation I found myself in when I inherited this organization. And also you need resources to do business model innovation. And so everything felt like we were bootstrapping it, but we were bootstrapping an organization that was already global and 20 years old. And so.

Monisha Kapila (25:13.661)
Hmm.

Monisha Kapila (25:19.709)
and that people assumed was very established.

Sudha (25:21.737)
Right, right. And so we would have stakeholders saying like, why aren't you having a global call? And I was sitting there with my staff in the early days of the pandemic being like, we're just figuring out zoom. Like, we've never used this technology before, let alone hosting a global call. And I'm fortunate that I and several other folks on staff and contract were really fast learners. But

It was just, was a hard time to get through the noise and you do have to do a lot of stakeholder engagement. And I think, we just, we didn't have the resources to do it at the level that I would typically have done.

Monisha Kapila (26:02.941)
Yeah, it's interesting because so many of the conversations I've had this season with leaders who have navigated restructuring, the pandemic was kind of a forcing mechanism for some of that because it upended all ways of working.

Sudha (26:19.317)
Yeah, yeah, I mean, I think that's right. Like all of us went through a business model restructure.

Monisha Kapila (26:25.737)
Yes. As you look back, what are some things that worked well that you're really proud of?

Sudha (26:33.421)
really proud of us developing a North Star and being able to say like, we're going to put a flag in the ground around this North Star vision and the theory of change. And then we're going to orient ourselves towards that. And we're going to keep coming back to that. And so I think that matters. think a business model without that kind of values orientation and vision orientation can feel really flat. And

this instead felt like inspiration. You know, we're calling on our network to reimagine giving. And that became a platform and a way of building together. I'm really proud of the experimentation we did along the way, the listening to movement leaders, the conversations we were able to have about how philanthropy can change. And frankly,

As a result of all that, the money we unlocked for grassroots movements, you know, we were able to move for the first time money from the network to leaders of color led organizations that were identified by our affiliates here in the US. We were able to when COVID hit India for like the big second wave, we were able to assemble donors in the United States to move money to India. And those things, you know, are just

really important changes in how the network was showing up and we were able to really support the network in connecting with each other. Affiliate leaders and others began to really like use the listserv, which seems like such a small thing, but actually is really significant when they started to use each other as peers and as people to strategize together and figure out how to strengthen their own

affiliate organizations. And, you know, in all of that, I'm also really proud that, frankly, we've made it through the pandemic, because many organizations did not. And we not only made it through, but we made it through having raised money and pivoted into a new, more impact aligned model.

Monisha Kapila (28:51.187)
Yes. And as you look back now, it's been two years since you left. Do you have a sense of what's been the continuation of some of these changes that you started?

Sudha (29:05.237)
Yeah, you know, when I left, it was really because I had been brought in with the charge around figuring out a new business model. And the last board meeting I had was presenting to the board, sort of the report of all the conversations I had been having and that I had hired consultants to have and really two pathways forward. And I think one of the things because we ended up getting to do

some of that internal stakeholder engagement in the last year. That was frankly the of the delayed stakeholder engagement. We finally had resources to do it. We got to do that work. And because there had been so many changes across the board, there was a whole new opportunity that we saw. And so we presented those, I presented those opportunities to the board as two pathways.

And really said, you know, look, I don't, think both of these are viable pathways. And one of the pathways was to really commit and re-center the affiliates. And based on everything that we had heard and where the organization was, it became really clear that there was a strong opportunity. And because of all the work we had done to, you know, help affiliates see what could be possible.

affiliates were ready, finally, to really help take the reins and steer this network forward. And so the board adopted a model that allowed for that to happen. It changes how the do structure works and it sort of sets in place an entirely new change management process. And it seems, you know, from what I know that they are doing that work with plenty of success. And so yeah, it's

It's a very different model now than what it was when I started the org, you know, started as CEO. And I can see the evolution of exactly how it got there, right? It's really, it's gone through a process, a necessary process of testing out different business models. And I think where they've landed really aligns with the values of that organization and the work that they're.

Sudha (31:28.127)
really able to do in the world and the kind of audience that they're seeking to engage.

Monisha Kapila (31:34.187)
Well, I feel like there's so many takeaways I have for how leaders can navigate restructuring, particularly as it relates to business model. As you said, first you had to start with the why, get clear about theory of change and purpose and values were part of that. And then you got alignment and started kind of from the outside, from the ecosystem to come in internal and then testing and learning to really

identify where the organization should focus. So there's a lot of lessons for leaders who right now are many are navigating questions around business model with so many external challenges. So now, go ahead.

Sudha (32:14.603)
Yeah. And I was just going to reflect one thing that I think is really important too is to see business model work as part and parcel of organizational strategy. And I think we so often separate all these pieces. You we try to write five-year strategic plans that just live in a document somewhere. And the reality is like, we're living in a world where business model

Monisha Kapila (32:30.239)
Yes.

Sudha (32:44.301)
evolution has to happen every year. And I believe, and that's what I felt in the work that I was leading, those kind of creating an environment in which you're getting that constant feedback loop, that you are talking and seeing what's happening in the ecosystem. I that's what we need our leaders doing right now. We need to be supporting leaders to be able to hear what their peers are doing, which is why I love that you're doing this podcast. Like it's so important. don't

talk enough about the kind of brass tacks of it all, the business models, the structures. And you can write the best strategy in the world. And if you don't figure out some of this business model piece and some of the values alignment and the vision, you've constrained yourself to a degree that you won't be able to move when the world is throwing things at you every minute.

Monisha Kapila (33:40.547)
And it's one of the things that I think we do a disservice to CEOs and executive directors of not being clear about the business model work as a big focus. And so oftentimes they come into that and are thrown for a loop that it's a major time for them to be spent.

Sudha (33:59.522)
Yeah, I mean, I think it was frankly one of the hard things, even though my board knew that that was something that they had charged me with figuring out. My affiliate leaders did not understand necessarily. Some of them did, but many of them, I think, had their own challenges to navigate. And they were sort of looking at it like, hey, network, what about us?

Monisha Kapila (34:22.539)
Yes.

Sudha (34:23.925)
like, why aren't you out helping us? And I was in this place where I was saying to my board, like, we can't help others until we've solved our problem. Like, we can't be a leader of the network if we don't have our own house in order, right? But I think that's a really hard conversation, right? And that's, that's where we need funders and others to really step up their resourcing when organizations are going through these kinds of pivots, and particularly supporting

You know, we know so many women of color, I think, who were in the kind of position I was in, where you have the big vision, you know how to get there, but assembling the resources is incredibly difficult because so many funders say to you, you know, come back to us when you figured out the business model, come back to us when you figured out that five-year strategic plan.

And I think what we need to shift to is understanding there's no more five-year strategic plans. We are on strategic pathways. We're innovating and we're pivoting. And that takes more resourcing, not less.

Monisha Kapila (35:32.383)
Yes, absolutely. Well, I want to ask you our signature rapid fire questions. First, what's one book, podcast or resource that's been valuable to you as a leader?

Sudha (35:45.378)
Well, my most recommended book this year is Unrigged the Game by Vanessa Daniel. I so desperately wish this book had existed in 2020, but it exists now. And how fortunate are we to be in a timeline when, you know, we have Vanessa's brilliance about how women of color are particularly set up for glass cliffs and

challenging opportunities and nevertheless are also leading our movements for change. And I think it's brilliant. Every board member should read it. Every leader of color should read it.

Monisha Kapila (36:21.471)
That's great. And it's on my list to read. So thank you for suggesting it. What's one piece of advice you'd give to your younger self when stepping into a major transition?

Sudha (36:32.535)
Oof. I had two different answers for this, I'll see if I can just, let me give you the short one, which is, I would say center my joy more. I think one of the things I didn't learn until several years in was that leadership takes a ton off of you.

requires a huge amount of self-sacrifice. I I gave my blood, sweat and tears to this organization. I was living and breathing it for all of 2020. And I came up for air sometime in 2022 and realized like, I don't know the last time I felt joy. And what I have learned and I've seen so truly amongst folks is like when we can find that intersection of joy and impact, like that's where when leaders can center that work.

It's when they thrive. And I think often what I found myself doing was delegating the things that would have given me joy. And so I would go back and tell myself like, no, no, hold that work close. That's you. That's your work. Find other people to do the other things.

Monisha Kapila (37:40.938)
Yeah.

Monisha Kapila (37:46.147)
That intersection of joy and impact is great. And the last question, what's one thing on your personal bucket list?

Sudha (37:54.989)
I have a very long personal bucket list. It keeps expanding every year, but I think the current thing that is like most in my brain is wanting to go trekking to see gorillas in the wild.

Monisha Kapila (38:09.929)
And I know you have had some great travels this past year. I look forward to hearing if that's something that could happen in 2026.

Sudha (38:12.937)
Yes. Yes, well, you know, I'm always a wildlife nerd. So anything that gets me out would be the wildlife I'm excited for.

Monisha Kapila (38:25.907)
Well, so then thank you so much for being here, for sharing your experience, the many lessons you have around leading change, restructuring and business models, and for telling us more about the work that you're doing. Thank you.

Sudha (38:41.493)
My pleasure. And this was such a great conversation. Thank you for having it. And I'm really excited to see the impact that we can have with opening up this conversation that I think is often hidden.

Monisha Kapila (38:54.901)
Thank you.