Redesigning Philanthropy: Using Storytelling, Empathy and Tech to Engineer Impact

Our December speaker is Ruth Jean-Marie founder and CEO of the August Project and Consulting Group. Ruth will speak on the current and potential roles of storytelling, virtual reality/tech, and empathy to create substantive impact. We will engage the duality of storytelling as a source of empathy and as a tool for social impact, wondering what sort of impact can be expected, and the moral implications of this work.

Participants will couple the value of storytelling with contemporary approach to connection: virtual reality and technology, exploring how collected stories strengthen intracultural connections and their value in philanthropy work.

Speaker Bio: Ruth Jean-Marie earned her Master’s of Science degree in Human Rights and International Law from New York University. She founded The August Project, a non-profi t that leverages objective storytelling to do good, better. Her opinions on the geopolitical relationship of Haiti and the rest of the world have been published in Ebony, TravelNoire, Blavity, The Haitian Times, America Hates Us and more. She is on the Forbes List Next 1000 Upstart Entrepreneurs and has been named an American Express Founder of Change. Most recently, she completed the Global Social Impact House(GSIH) with Center for Social Impact Strategy (CSIS) at University of Pennsylvania.

From co-creating a sneaker with Nike (that sold out!) to hosting workshops on how giving technically works, The August Project’s goal is to create better do-gooders, an archive of thoughtful narratives and more empowered people on the ground. The Brooklyn-born daughter of Haitian immigrants, Jean-Marie says she wants to reframe how poverty is treated and looked upon.