904: How to Break Into Social Impact & Innovation With Joshua Haynes, Masawa [Espresso Shots]

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Joshua Haynes is the founder of Masawa, a mental wellness social impact fund. After living with mental illness for decades Joshua came to realize that his unhealthy relationship with food was linked to his poor mental health. He began to take serious steps to strengthen his own mental health, but noticed that, despite statistics that showed high rates of mental illness among the American public, many investors were not focused on funding technologies that promote mental wellness. Joshua founded Masawa in 2019 in order to invest in innovative mental wellness technologies that will fill in this gap. Joshua’s career has been anything but linear. He’s worked in international development, in software development and as a senior development technologist in addition to working in 30+ countries.He graduated from Boston University, where he majored in business administration with a concentration in international finance and quantitative methods. 

WHAT YOU’LL LEARN ABOUT IN THIS EPISODE:

• What social impact investing actually is (3:25)
• What entry level jobs, like support services through social media, marketing, writing or research, along with junior positions in design and development, are available (4:11) 
• Why being analytical, having strong number crunching abilities, being vulnerable and humble are all skills that give you more credibility (5:34)
• Why not having studied math, computer science or finance in college isn’t a deal breaker if you want to get into the social impact investing field (7:46)
• Why your experience and the type of learner you are are more important things to Joshua than having graduate school degrees (8:45) 
• Why having a variety of life experiences is important to recruiters in this field (12:46) 
• How not taking the straight path and zigzagging across industries to gain new perspectives before entering your desired field is the best advice Joshua ever received (16:41)
• Why Java Junkies would be surprised to learn that social impact investing is truly about a combination of the ‘hard’ stuff and the ‘heart’ stuff (18:49)
• Why to listen to T4C episode #436 to learn more about what Joshua does at Masawa and how he built his career