How Next-Gen Project Professionals Deliver Positive Social Impact

The youngest generations in the workforce don’t just want jobs—they want to deliver impact. What skills do project professionals need to ensure their efforts lead to deep social impact? And how do they build support for these initiatives? We discuss this with:  

Martin Irungu, founder and executive director, Empower and Serve Kenya (EmpServe), Nairobi: Irungu’s upbringing inspired him to create an organization focused on positive social impact. He shares how EmpServe Kenya is upskilling the next generation of changemakers, and how his teams engage with communities to build trust and support for projects. 

Nuria Gabriela Soistata Ruiz, innovation and impact programs lead, Makesense Americas, México City: One of her org’s programs helps students build leadership skills while managing positive social impact projects in México City. Soistata Ruiz explains how she and her teams keep partners and program participants engaged and reveals the skills she leans on in her social impact work. Plus, how other project professionals can find opportunities that focus on their passions.  

Key themes

[01:00] Why the next generation wants to deliver positive social impact 

[04:10] Helping young Kenyans upskill to make change in their communities

[07:54] Building buy-in through community ownership and local project champions

[13:32] Measuring success through program alumni 

[15:55] Helping students lead projects to make a difference in México City 

[22:11] Must-have skills for social impact: Adaptability, empathy and assertive communication

[23:39] Finding the right organization to help you deliver positive social impact

Transcript

Transcript

STEVE HENDERSHOT

There’s no shortage of daunting social and environmental challenges in the world—but fortunately, there’s also a large and enthusiastic band of young project leaders itching to tackle them. Today, let’s explore how they turn those social-impact aspirations into reality.

MARTIN IRUNGU

Young people create their own opportunities and also leverage on the challenges that communities are facing to be able to build solutions. This is a generation of change makers.

STEVE HENDERSHOT 

In today’s fast-paced and complex business landscape, project professionals lead the way, delivering value while tackling critical challenges and embracing innovative ways of working. On Projectified®, we bring you insights from the project management community to help you thrive in this evolving world of work through real-world stories and strategies, inspiring you to advance your career and make a positive impact.

This is Projectified. I’m Steve Hendershot. 

Would you rather make a difference or make a living? It’s an age-old question—one that young professionals are rejecting as a false choice. Ninety-two percent of millennials and 89% of Gen Z-ers say having a sense of purpose is important both to their job satisfaction and well-being, according to Deloitte’s global 2025 Gen Z and Millennial Survey. 

That mindset extends to project professionals pushing to deliver initiatives that generate bottom-line benefits and also provide broader societal or environmental impact. Along the way, these project leaders need to make a compelling case for their passion projects, including identifying metrics that will validate the project’s value. They also must develop and deploy an array of skills to ensure that these projects deliver on their promise.  

Today, we’re asking two project leaders what’s needed to effectively lead purpose-driven projects. First up is Martin Irungu, the founder and executive director of Empower and Serve Kenya, or EmpServe Kenya, in Nairobi. The nonprofit trains and equips young leaders for careers in social entrepreneurship—giving the next generation the skills and confidence needed to make a positive impact.

MUSICAL TRANSITION

STEVE HENDERSHOT

All right. Thanks for joining us. Can we start with a little bit on your background? It seems like in your career you have locked in the entire time on social impact types of projects. What motivated you to point your career in this direction?

MARTIN IRUNGU

I did not grow [up] in a well-connected or an advantaged community. I did not have electricity. But my mom believed in me quite a lot and believed in the power of education. I had the opportunity to be admitted to join one of the universities here in Kenya. But I had not been able to interact with computers. My mom told me I need to go to the nearest city to take some courses. 

[At] that time here in Kenya, we had to wait for around two years before you could join the university. And so I took that time to volunteer in our community. I was specifically volunteering as a teacher. I started to think on how the skills I had acquired through my training could be used to also impact a few more community members. And I could also see the opportunities that would come with that transformation and that connection through technology. I was able to mobilize a few young people, and we were able to buy three refurbished desktops. And I was able to open the first digital center in our shopping center, and I was able to train so many people. That was the foundation of my community development and project work.  

I could already see that the community that I was living in had quite a lot of untapped potential. I started to formulate the idea of setting up EmpServe Kenya as a platform where young people would be able to lead change. Where young people would be able, especially from the underserved and the remote areas, to support their communities.

STEVE HENDERSHOT

There’s a definite throughline from your experience to your social impact work. So tell us about one of your organization’s projects. How did it help upskill young people?  

MARTIN IRUNGU

So in 2019, we modeled our inaugural DigiLab project. It’s a small hub at the community level that was intended specifically to bridge the digital divide and also to model more [than] 70% outreach to women and girls, especially on digital inclusion. We were selected to be the SDG Ambassadors [through ActionAid]. [It was] an award that steered us a lot in terms of branding our organization, but also positioning us in terms of outreach and also bridging the gap into those two aspects—in terms of gender, but also in terms of physical outreach. 

The DigiLab project focused on counties here in Kenya, like Kajiado, Narok, Kitui and a few others. These are counties that are not too far from Nairobi, but they have also been characterized with gender violence, early marriage. We talk about key significant challenges that affect women, so our programming with a higher percentage target on women was progressive and also was able to solve significant challenges when it comes to giving the young women and girls an opportunity, especially in regard to digital inclusion.  

That has not changed. We still have a high percentage of programs that we are running currently that are significantly targeting young women. Our main hub in Nairobi is run between us and an organization called Women’s WorldWide Web. It’s a France-based organization that specifically targets digital skills for women across the world. And this is one of the partners that supports most of our digital inclusion programs for women, which also entails STEM for both out-of-school girls and also those that are in school. So there is a progression in terms of outreach and support for women and bridging the gap. But then, as I say, our programs still are mainstreamed to be able to support everyone within the community.

STEVE HENDERSHOT

So how do your projects like DigiLab help empower this next generation? How will these skills help them make a difference? 

MARTIN IRUNGU

The young people that we are dealing with are quite talented. There is a high level of skills. There’s a high level of competence. What is actually needed more is, how do we leverage our programming when it comes to entrepreneurship, ICT (information and communication technology) programs to be more [about] problem solving than just skill acquisition? And this is the bridge that we have been trying to create—that it’s not about understanding ICT but it’s using ICT as a tool to transform communities. It’s the utilization of that skill into improving life, into earning a living. So I see a great potential in terms of the skills when you talk about AI, machine learning, but also a greater understanding of the issues that are affecting communities: climate, food security, responding to crisis, flooding, droughts and all these kind of issues. That awareness is something we can take advantage of. Take advantage of the skills and the capacity. Take advantage of technology and be able to build and harness that innovative mindset to facilitate the young people especially to be the real changemakers. 

STEVE HENDERSHOT

Your projects are deeply rooted in communities, so stakeholder engagement seems to be a given. What are common challenges you and project leaders face when it comes to building buy-in from community members?

MARTIN IRUNGU

When you talk about mobilization of stakeholders, people will view you as this big organization that is coming to a community to consolidate. And then, when you talk about educating the community on ownership, it is a very expensive affair. Building on community ownership, making communities understand that you don’t need to earn today, but you need to support this project so that tomorrow you’ll be able to have your child getting training, getting livelihoods yourself, improving your environment. It’s a very difficult language. 

On the other hand, we also have had a lot of manipulation, and this also has caused community members not to be so welcoming when it comes to especially nonprofit programming. Sometimes we are viewed to be benefiting a lot from the work that we do, but then again, we may not judge the communities that we work with. It’s because some perceptions are also driven by misdoings in the space. So those perceptions are there, and they are affecting how we roll out [the] project. They also affect the speed to which we roll out the project. In terms of the impact, sometimes we spend too much on capacity strengthening. We talk too much on community participation while these resources would be used to build the structures to improve the community, and also to be able to have the impact that we intended when we are designing the project. 

STEVE HENDERSHOT

So how do you go about handling these challenges? 

MARTIN IRUNGU

When it comes to building trust, we have formed a community project committee [and] conducted intensive training. Another important pillar in our project entry is how do we engage the community? It is very paramount for the community to understand the challenges. And because they live in status quo, some of them don’t even understand why is this even a challenge. For instance, we have cultural barriers already, and there is perception that, actually, women should not speak. So when it comes to such a scenario, it takes a lot of time to do local integration, to have the community understanding on why some interventions actually matter. Our programming has also been driven by champions. When we do an agriculture project, we have the agri-socio champions. We have the STEM champions. We have the ICT champions in various communities. These are local people. They function as TOTs—trainers of trainings. Being in this community, they understand the community. They also have more skills. They have also maybe gone to school. They are quicker to understand our project and intervention. Then it becomes easier to be able to mitigate some of the challenges.

We also have to place in some very critical feedback loops. For example, being able to have local language. We have tried to our level best to have local project leaders that are speaking local languages so that you are able to understand. You can go to a community meeting, and they speak their local dialect or their local language. So when you have those local champions, it helps a lot for buy-in. It helps in conflict resolution. It also helps in speeding up the interventions.

STEVE HENDERSHOT

As this has evolved, your skills and expertise is in outreach, forming partnerships and things like that. So what project skills [do] you think are most useful in your current day-to-day work or in achieving success in the projects you’ve got going? What’s needed from you over time?

MARTIN IRUNGU

A key skill that is needed is understanding the challenges, the opportunities that are being presented by the communities, by the target groups that we work with. We have specific community engagement methodologies. We also work very closely with local leadership in every project that we have established. However, it doesn’t stop at needs assessment. It’s a participatory process. How do we continue to engage with the people that we are programming for? How can we co-create? How can we work together?

We are now living at a time when international aid is shrinking. How do we engage with the private sector? How do we engage with the government? How do we engage with NGOs? How do we engage with donors?

I’m now seated at a point where I need to combine passion but also multiple skills, including what I’m doing right now. Speaking about what we do, what I do, what I believe in, and potentially what looks to be good for the people, especially the young people that I’m so passionate about. I need to be more knowledgeable by understanding global issues and trends. Now we’re discussing the [United Nations] Sustainable Development Goals. We are discussing the trends in climate change, the trends in AI. I need to understand all these trends—how can the young people, how can the communities that we work with leverage on some of these opportunities?

STEVE HENDERSHOT

Quick, in-the-weeds question about metrics. How do you measure value, both in terms of what the funders are looking for, but also how you consider your own impact?

MARTIN IRUNGU

First of all, for partners, for donors, numbers are important. We have to do stakeholder alignment in terms of what numbers actually make sense and then the impact. But for us, what is more significant is the transformation and the mapping. For example, we are very keen on our alumni and our network. This is a group of professionals. They have gone through our programs in different contexts. They’re doing amazing work. We see them as our impact. The communities that we work with, organizations, especially the grassroots organizations that we work with, the transformation that you see, the numbers that you see they’re able to reach, that really inspires us. So when it comes to what we value more, it is that specific transformation in terms of skills, but then also more importantly in terms of livelihoods, in terms of the transitions. 

Of course, it’s challenging. Data management follow-up can be challenging. We have struggled to be able to do such follow-ups, but we are able to pick on one or two success stories of some people that we work with. And they’re able to get to the end of the tunnel. We hope that we can get more resources and be able to track more, but also be able to have more impact-oriented programming.

STEVE HENDERSHOT

Based on this unique career and some of the surprising turns that it’s taken, what’s your advice for a project professional trying to deliver impact elsewhere in the world?

MARTIN IRUNGU

Start where you are and with what you have. And I would say that impact and impactful work starts with very limited resources, but it also relies on a resolve that you need to work on something. So start small. Be very consistent, but also align very closely when it comes to noting which kind of stakeholders do you need. Consider the communities not just as beneficiaries, but as partners in your work.

MUSICAL TRANSITION

STEVE HENDERSHOT 

Building and maintaining strong and diverse coalitions of stakeholders is central to the success of many purpose-driven ventures, especially those that rely on funding from outside organizations, grants, donations and sponsorships. 

It’s true for our next guest, Nuria Gabriela Soistata Ruiz, innovation and impact programs lead at global nonprofit Makesense Americas in México City. Makesense’s team develops and implements social and environmental impact programs in collaboration with citizens, social entrepreneurs and organizations. This includes everything from teaching teams about design thinking to helping students lead community projects—and encouraging those young leaders to use a STEM approach to create positive socio-environmental impact. 

Nuria spoke to Projectified’s Hannah LaBelle about how Makesense ensures that it meets the needs of its partner organizations, as well as the people it serves.

MUSICAL TRANSITION

HANNAH LABELLE

Nuria, let’s get started by getting to know more about your work. So give me a quick summary of what you do at Makesense Americas.

NURIA GABRIELA SOISTATA RUIZ

We apply innovation methodologies to co-create solutions that respond to the real challenges our partners and communities face. I provide strategic support to our project leaders throughout the execution of their projects, making sure we stay aligned with our partners’ expectations and deliver everything on time. I coordinate and facilitate learning spaces to help build our team’s methodological, creative and leadership skills. And lastly, I continue to design and lead projects directly, while also developing internal tools to streamline how we deliver our projects. 

HANNAH LABELLE

Fantastic. And so, what are some examples of the types of challenges that Makesense’s projects are looking to address?

NURIA GABRIELA SOISTATA RUIZ

I think that I can start talking about the challenges by sharing with you some of the projects that we are involved [in]. And one of the projects I love sharing is Reaction for Impact, a cross-cultural leadership program we co-design with our partners at the Laidlaw Foundation. Every summer, we host students from different parts of the world in México City to work on real challenges faced by local social organizations, mainly focused on environmental issues, and this year, also on gender-based violence. The students are trained in design thinking and collaborate directly with these organizations to co-create innovative and practical solutions. We also involve volunteers in México City who support the students, both in their cultural immersion and in the development of their projects. 

HANNAH LABELLE

How does this program help these students as well as the organizations you partner with?

NURIA GABRIELA SOISTATA RUIZ

So Reaction for Impact is a six-week experience in which university students will exercise their leadership, community development and project management skills. We collaborate with local organizations in order to build concrete actions to address a challenge of that organization. At the same time, we mobilize a local community of citizens to implement them—the volunteers are the community we mobilize.

I can share with you one example that is with Rennueva, a plastic waste collection company. And the project was to train its employees in the use of a new digital platform for plastic waste collection control, understanding and simplifying each part of the collection process and sections of the digital platform. So the team designed an operational manual that includes the step-by-step implementation of the digital platform in the collection process and the role of each Rennueva department in its use. They also conducted face-to-face trainings for each Rennueva department, stressing the importance of the transition to the platform and solving doubts about the step-by-step process. For me, it’s pretty inspiring to be part of these kinds of projects—ones specifically focused on students. But also, when we work with collaborators of some organizations, we are actually getting to see this direct and indirect impact.

HANNAH LABELLE

You’re working with other organizations on these positive social impact initiatives. Have you ever had any issue gaining buy-in from either organizational leaders, stakeholders, or community members, and if so, what’s been the biggest challenge to building that buy-in?

NURIA GABRIELA SOISTATA RUIZ

Generally, our partners come in with a strong understanding of their overall goals. One of our roles is to help them define more specific priorities based on scope, timeline and available resources. One of the most common challenges, I will say, is aligning expectations, especially when there are different views on timing, desired outcomes, or how involved each actor should be. That’s where clear, consistent communication becomes essential, along with close coordination with our sales team to make sure we are staying aligned with the original proposal.

On the participant side, we sometimes face challenges keeping people engaged throughout every phase of a project. That’s when our participatory methodologies really come into play—things like experiential workshops, collaborative challenges, community building strategies or gamification. These help us maintain engagement and deepen commitment over time.

HANNAH LABELLE

Tell us a little bit about the metrics that you’re using to measure the progress. Is there an example of maybe pivoting if some of the metrics are showing the project isn’t delivering the value that you were originally thinking it was going to? 

NURIA GABRIELA SOISTATA RUIZ

Well, we use both quantitative and qualitative indicators depending on the project. Some examples include the level of skill development among participants, how well proposed solutions are implemented, and shifts in participants’ perceptions around key issues. We also design custom evaluation tools for each project. And when things aren’t going as expected, we pause, reassess with our partners and make adjustments. 

HANNAH LABELLE

What skills do you find yourself leaning on the most in your work?  

NURIA GABRIELA SOISTATA RUIZ

One of the most critical skills is adaptability to change. Just a few weeks ago, we kicked off a project with Kia México to spark students’ interest in STEM careers and help develop local talent. And despite our detailed risk mapping, there are always things beyond our control. In this case, unexpected weather conditions disrupted our transportation logistics, completely throwing off the event agenda. So my team and I had to stay in close communication with the client and stakeholders while also protecting the students’ experience and keeping the core goals and impact metrics intact. The real challenge isn’t the unexpected itself. It’s how project leaders navigate uncertainty and emotions with agility and calm. As we joked afterward, what would have been surprising is if everything had gone exactly according to plan. 

Another crucial skill is empathy. It’s key not only in building strong relationships with partners, but also in designing user-centered solutions. Systems thinking is equally essential. It helps us understand problems not as isolated incidents but as interconnected challenges that need holistic, structural responses. Then there’s assertive communication, which is vital for setting expectations, giving and receiving feedback, and fostering trust within teams and with partners. 

HANNAH LABELLE

Say others are looking for project management positions that are also focused on delivering that positive social impact. What steps did you take to find a company or initiatives that matched your goals, and how can other project professionals take them and follow them in their own search? 

NURIA GABRIELA SOISTATA RUIZ

Well, the first step for me was to reflect on the kind of impact I wanted to have and the causes that truly moved me. That clarity helped me identify organizations that resonated with my purpose and where I could contribute authentically. From there, I started researching organizations that work in those areas and had a clear impact focus. I paid special attention to their internal culture. For me, it wasn’t just about what they did or how, but about why they did it. 

And definitely one of the most powerful catalysts in my career has been building a strong support network—leaders, colleagues and friends who knew about my interest, ambition for growth, and who connected me with opportunities, gave me feedback or simply believed in me. It’s incredibly inspiring. Knowing that my work is driven by a bigger purpose gives me so much energy and motivation. And seeing how young people, communities and colleagues come together to organize, face challenges and drive meaningful change, it reminds me every day that transformation is possible, and that is always worth showing up for.

STEVE HENDERSHOT 

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