101: How to Break Into Philanthropy & the Aid World w/ Dennis Whittle, Feedback Labs [Espresso Shots]

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Dennis Whittle has worked for the past 30 years in philanthropy and aid. He is currently the co-founder and CEO at Feedback Labs a consortium which aims to change the norms in development, aid, and philanthropic policy to be more responsive to the people that those policies aim to help.  Dennis also co-founded and was the CEO of GlobalGiving, a global crowdfunding platform for grassroots charitable projects. Forbes magazine called GlobalGiving “one of the 10 startups changing the world.”  Before those ventures, Dennis worked for 14 years at the World Bank where he worked in Indonesia, Russia, Papua New Guinea, and Niger on projects and issues including: agriculture housing reform, structural adjustments, innovation, and energy efficiency.  Dennis Whittle has an incredible breadth of experience within the world of nonprofits, philanthropies, as well as the startup world. He hopes to encourage Java Junkies to push themselves outside their comfort zones and learn how to embrace failures as the key to unlocking their true potentials.

WHAT YOU’LL LEARN ABOUT IN THIS EPISODE:

• What are the entry-level positions which include:  Program Officer and Program Assistant positions
• Why you should go into the Peace Corps overseas or work domestically and volunteer at a soup kitchen and establish your “street cred”
• Why skills like initiative and attention to detail are so important
• How it doesn’t matter what you study in college
• How a graduate school degree can help you think about things you’ve experienced in  a more systematic way
• How a Public Policy degree is a combination of Economics, Statistics and Politics
• Why more service-oriented jobs like being a waiter/waitress or a painter are great experiences to seek out
• Why hearing the words:  “what would make the most sense” was the best career advice Dennis ever got
• If you want to learn more about what Dennis does as CEO at Feedback Labs listen to T4C episode #62