Raj Kumar
President and Editor-in-Chief, Devex
Although foreign aid, philanthropy, and charity all sound like it’s all about like good intentions … Actually, it’s a big industry. That’s not a knock on it; it’s actually a really valuable way to look at it. If you look at it as an industry, then you can ask questions like, “Is this industry designed in the right way to get the results you want?”
Summary
On this week’s episode of “Leadership Matters,” Alan is joined by Raj Kumar, a leading media executive and thought leader who sits at the head of one of the most prominent institutions in the global development community.
Though now the world’s leading independent news organization covering global development, Devex began existence as a student project of Raj’s during his time at graduate school. Devex has since grown dramatically, helping to connect millions of develop professionals around the world through its original reporting, jobs board, and regular convenings. Over the course of the episode, Raj tells the story of Devex’s growth, his early career in political campaigns, the origins of his interest in development, and the shift in focus he has observed in the field from good intentions to good results.
In Raj’s view, the global development community currently sits at a crossroads. Rising geopolitical tensions around the world today run the risk of undermining the community’s focus on efficacy if state aid budgets are deployed as tools of soft power instead of as investments in the globe’s long-term prosperity. Conversely, the rise of major non-state donors has dramatically increased the amount of capital available for aid projects and resulted in substantial increases in global well-being. Even in a more fragmented global age, Raj maintains that we must continue to focus aid funding on projects that will do the most good, leveraging the power of scale in order to invest in the health and education of communities that are most in need.
Mentions & Resources in this Episode
Nomad Century: How Climate Migration Will Reshape Our World, by Gaia Vince
“From the editor-in-chief: 3 ways 2023 may define a new development era,” by Raj Kumar
Guest Bio
Raj Kumar is the founding President & Editor-in-Chief of Devex, the media platform for the global development community. Devex was born in 2000 when Raj was a graduate student at the Harvard Kennedy School. Today, it is an independent news organization and social enterprise with over 100+ Devexers around the world serving a global audience of more than one million aid workers and development professionals. Beginning as a kid in Kerala, India, Raj has witnessed firsthand determined and courageous development work in over 50 countries — it’s what drives the Devex mission to “Do Good. Do It Well.” He is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations, the Save the Children Board of Trustees, a media leader and former humanitarian council chair for the World Economic Forum, and has interviewed on-camera and on-stage hundreds of global luminaries on the most important challenges of our time.
Raj is the author of the book The Business of Changing the World, a go-to primer on the ideas, people, and technology disrupting the aid industry.
Clips from this Episode
Episode Transcription
Alan Fleischmann
My guest today is an entrepreneur, media executive, development expert, and thought leader who has spent the last few decades building one of the leading institutions of the global development community.
Raj Kumar is the founding president and editor-in-chief of Devex, the world’s leading independent news organization covering global development. A social enterprise and media platform, Devex helps to connect and inform professionals in the international development community through its original reporting, online community, and global convenings. Initially a student project started by Raj in graduate school, Devex has grown into a global institution with more than a million active users and hundreds of staff located in offices around the world. The company is an official media partner for events at the World Economic Forum, the International Monetary Fund, World Bank, OECD, and the United Nations, among many other prominent institutions.
Raj is a pioneering leader, a dear friend of mine, and a thoughtful voice on issues of international engagement and development. He is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations; he also serves on the board of trustees of Save the Children and is the former Humanitarian Council chair for the World Economic Forum. I’m thrilled to have him with us today to discuss his life journey, his remarkable career as a founder, and his thoughts on the future of the international development field and beyond.
Raj, you are a great friend, as I mentioned here. I have admired you, personally and professionally, for decades. It is such a pleasure that you’re joining us today on “Leadership Matters.”
Raj Kumar
It’s fantastic to get to spend a little time with you, Alan. I always love our conversations. Great to be here.
Alan Fleischmann
So wonderful to be here.
So let’s start with a little bit about your childhood. Both your parents immigrated to the United States. I know a little bit about your eclectic background. Tell us a little bit about your parents, a little bit about where you were raised, and the Kumar household, I guess.
Raj Kumar
Yeah, I’d love to. So I was born and raised in New Jersey. Like a lot of Americans, I’ve got a complicated family background. My dad immigrated to the United States from India. He came, I guess, in his early 30s. He came and started working at Con Edison, the electric utility in New York City. He was working out in the tunnels, he had an exciting career there, and he met my mom at a dance, which was the kind of thing you did in the late ‘60s — I think it was 1969 or ‘70 when they met. My mom was at Columbia University Teachers College. She was born in the United States, but she her family had fled Europe, they’re Jewish Americans. They’d come in multiple waves, but her dad had been living in France just before World War II. That part of the family had to uproot and get to the United States quickly.
So I grew up in this household where I had different cultures. I got to spend a lot of time as a kid, actually, going to India and visiting relatives there. That’s kind of what gave me the spark, the interest in working on the issues that I work on today. In many ways, my life was normal and ordinary in the rural part of New Jersey where I grew up. But in other ways, I had this kind of other life, where I got to go to villages in India and had relatives who had done really exciting and interesting things around the world, who had a sense for what it meant to be a refugee and all that. So, it was a pretty exciting way to grow up.
Alan Fleischmann
As a first-generation American, I can totally relate. But you went back and visited family, if I’m not mistaken, in Kerala, India, where your aunts and uncles were involved in development issues, right? Is that where the inspiration came from?
Raj Kumar
That is, yeah. My dad was from the state of Kerala in India, so I would go there with my sister pretty often. Ever couple of years, they would deposit us there with an aunt and uncle and we would spend a few months there. And it was fantastic. It was just so exciting as a kid to get to see that and have friends in these small, local communities. I used to play soccer with the kids on the street, and I was literally the only kid with a pair of sneakers. Every other kid was barefoot. It was just a totally different perspective as a kid growing up.
I was really fortunate that one of my aunts and uncles, they were actually professors who studied international development issues. So their big area of focus was studying the dairy cooperative movement in India. India, around the time of independence, was importing milk, and there was an idea there around the independence movement that said, “Hey, why don’t we become more self-sufficient around milk?” Women in villages were given the opportunity to buy cows and to raise them in a way that generated a lot of milk and to sell that milk communally. Today, it’s turned into a massive company. It’s like a $5 billion annual turnover business called Amul Dairy. I think it’s the first example of a major social enterprise in the world. My aunt and uncle, just to my luck, where scholars studying that.
So I got to go with them on these visits. I remember going as a kid to Anand, which is where the first Amul dairy was based, and getting to see them process the milk into ice cream, butter, and everything else. It had a real effect on me as a kid, to know about that story and to hear about how there are things you can actually do to improve people’s lives, make the world a better place. That’s kind of what it’s all about.
Alan Fleischmann
And that was what led you to Georgetown, I guess.
Raj Kumar
In a way, yeah.
Alan Fleischmann
One of the people don’t really know a lot about is how you’ve been a serial entrepreneur all your life, even before Devex — though Devex must have been a dream from early in your professional and academic life. But I know you’ve been an entrepreneur, because I’ve seen it. You’ve also been someone who uses a combination of left brain and right brain in your career. Both the analytical side, but also the kind of human development side.
And I’m just curious: did anything entrepreneurial happen to you in high school? Because it sounds like it’s a very smart path to get to Georgetown School of Foreign Service, based on your background, based on your visits in the summer, based on your family interactions. But I bet you there was something else that happened in high school too.
Raj Kumar
Yeah, good guess. It’s true, there’s there are some things, and in fact, I think I go back four generations at least on both sides of my family, they’re entrepreneurs. On my dad’s side, his great-grandfather and his dad were doing coconut oil factories. I remember the first movie theater in the town my dad grew up in was his dad’s setup. On my mom’s side, the first department store in Toledo, Ohio, was founded by her great-grandfather, Jacob LaSalle, a Jewish immigrant who started a volunteer regiment in the Civil War of German Jews fighting on behalf of the Union.
So there was a really exciting, interesting background of entrepreneurship. And of course, I had that in me in some way. What I ended up doing when I was, I guess, nine years old or so is… I lived in this rural part of New Jersey. Kids couldn’t get candies, or soda, or junk food, basically, easily in our area. So I started up a little business selling that stuff. I would buy it in bulk and set up a little stall, basically, in a barn that we have in our property. Kids would come from up and down the street and I would sell them the stuff. I ran that business for several years — it was like the little local convenience store for the kids on the street. So that was part of my entrepreneurial bug before I got more into the policy, politics, and all the rest of it that you’re familiar with. I always did have that bug in me.
Alan Fleischmann
So the entrepreneur, the guy involved in policy, politics, and obviously, development — It all came together with Devex.
So, you went to the Walsh School of Foreign Service. What was your focus there? I’m curious about how you spent your time in college too.
Raj Kumar
Yeah, I was really into politics. I ran for student government, I think I might still hold the record for the most votes in a student council election. My freshman year, I knocked on every single door. I was really inspired by Bill Clinton, who had gone to that school. That’s partly why I intended. So I was really, very into politics at the time and loved being at Georgetown, being in Washington, which is obviously such a political place. I studied international politics. That was my major, my concentration at the School of Foreign Service. I just had a fantastic time being at Georgetown, I’m a huge, huge fan of that university. It really shaped me in many ways.
So that’s kind of what I spent a lot of time doing. Thinking about student politics, thinking about U.S. domestic politics, and thinking even about international politics. I took every class I could that connected all those dots.
Alan Fleischmann
Did Bill Clinton come visit while you were there? I know you joined this campaign when you graduated. Did you have Bill Clinton on your mind while you were there? And did he actually come visit while you were there?
Raj Kumar
You know, he did come. I’m trying to remember now if that was ‘96. Might have been ‘96 when he came. I remember shaking his hand in Healy Circle, right there at the university campus.
He had been a Boy’s Nation senator, you might remember that famous picture with John F. Kennedy. I also was a Boy’s Nation senator, so I really felt like, “Wow.” I went to the School of Foreign Service, I was really following in his footsteps in a lot of ways, and just admired that time and that era. And as you know, I ended up working on his campaign in 1996, which was exciting.
Alan Fleischmann
That’s great. And how long did you work on the campaign?
Raj Kumar
Not that long. I guess maybe nine months or so? It feels like years, you know, because campaign time is like a time warp. But I ended up doing what’s called press advance, so my job was to travel before the president and to figure out things like, “Alright, the President’s gonna come and give a speech from this area. What’s he going to stand on? Is there a stage? Where will the press set up their cameras? Where will their satellite trucks be parked? Is there electricity for that? What kind of picture will they get?” That sort of thing.
It was just sort of logistics, but it was also an incredible learning experience and really fun.
Alan Fleischmann
Yeah, people don’t realize that those moments in life where you get involved in logistics and administrative work — everything from scheduling, to sequencing, to prioritizing both optics and substance when people talk to each other — not only is it a life skill that you never lose, but it actually is the central mechanism that makes something work or fail. So the people who love that and do that are central to some something succeeding or something failing, especially when you’ve got an external voice and external-facing enterprise. Politics being the most important one.
Raj Kumar
Yeah, my wife still will say that I’m going into ‘advance mode’ if we’re at the airport and things aren’t going right. I’m suddenly locked into figuring out our logistics. That’s my advance training coming in handy in life.
Alan Fleischmann
It’s amazing. I always say that scheduling and advance are the greatest skills in the world, because they allow you to figure out priorities. How you communicate with other people, how you sequence things, all the above.
When you went to the campaign, is that when you met Doug Schoen, and then you went to Penn Schoen?
Raj Kumar
I met him afterwards. I worked on the campaign, and then afterwards I wanted to work in more campaigns. I graduated Georgetown and didn’t have a job. All my friends had gone to investment banks and consulting firms, and my parents were very patient with me because I said, “I want to do more political campaign work,” and I basically loaded up my car and I drove back home to Jersey.
It was a governor’s race that was happening that year, in ’97. I stopped at the first governor’s campaign, which was in south Jersey. The candidate was Rob Andrews, who was a congressman. I just literally showed up at the campaign office and said, “What can I do?” They had me stuffing envelopes for a few days. Then they said, “Wait a second. This campaign could actually use someone who’s done some White House advance work. We didn’t realize you were here.” They suddenly threw me into doing some advance work, but it was just a week before the election, the primary. Rob lost to kind of an underdog, this guy named Jim McGreevey. Jim was from northern New Jersey. The campaign manager called his campaign manager and said, “Hey, we got this young kid who just graduated Georgetown. He seems pretty good, maybe should give him a job.” And they gave me one.
So I ended up becoming the head of advance and traveling around with Jim McGreevey when he was running for governor in 1997. On that campaign, Doug Schoen was the strategist, that’s how I met him. And that’s how I ended up working at Penn and Schoen.
Alan Fleischmann
How long were you at Penn and Schoen?
Raj Kumar
I was there two stints. One stint was about three years, and the next was around two and a half years or so, broken up in the middle by going to grad school and starting Devex.
Alan Fleischmann
Now I remember, I met you when you were in your first stint, I think that’s when I first met you.
Raj Kumar
That’s right.
Alan Fleischmann
That’s cool. So you went and you left. When you left, was that when you dreamed up Devex? Or did you go to graduate school because of the dream of Devex?
Raj Kumar
Basically, when I was at Georgetown I really wanted to do something in international development. So I was taking a lot of classes about it, I was dreaming up business ideas. None of them were very good. I had a good friend who was also interested in these topics, and he would say, “No, that’s not great idea.” And he was right. I had all of these bad business ideas, but I was trying to find something to do in international development.
Then hit this point where I said, “I could stay doing politics. I could keep working as political director Penn and Schoen.” At 23 years old or something, it was sort of a dream job. But I decided, if I do this, I’m gonna feel a bit like a mercenary. I’m just going to the highest bidder and working on campaigns, not necessarily the ones I believe in. And I always had this desire to do something in the world around global development, to do something positive. I’ve got to make a break. And that’s when I said, “I’m going to grad school. I need to do this and use it as a moment to make the shift.”
As soon as I got there, I started thinking, “What is that idea?” That’s kind of how Devex was born when I was there, probably within the first few months of being at the Harvard Kennedy School. I dreamed this up with a couple of good friends.
Alan Fleischmann
And the MPP program that you went to, was that a one-year or two-year program?
Raj Kumar
It’s a two-year program. I just did one year and I dropped out.
So, the story there is that I created Devex as an idea and I thought, “Well, of course I’ve got to finish my degree.” So I went out and found somebody who was willing to be the CEO. He was a man in his 50s with great experience, and I found someone willing to be the COO who had been, essentially, the COO USAID. They agreed to do it. And these were both you know, amazing people, but they were in their 50s….
Alan Fleischmann
And was that Brian Atwood, if I recall?
Raj Kumar
Brian Atwood was the chairman of our advisory board.
Alan Fleischmann
I remember now, thinking back, that he was involved.
Raj Kumar
Yeah, he was fantastic and so essential to our success, being able to get off the ground. But yeah, he was the chair of our advisory board.
So I brought these two people in, and it was pretty clear, pretty quick that they were the wrong people for this. We were a little startup out of my apartment. I remember the look on their face when they came into my apartment and saw that this was headquarters. So I met with the dean of the Kennedy School, who was Joe Nye at the time. And Joe said to me, “Well, what did you come here to the Kennedy School to do?” And I said, “Well, to do something like this. I want to I want to start something in international development.” And he said, “So why don’t you go leave and do it?” It never had occurred to me.
He said, “Look, you’re welcome back anytime. But go. Leave.” When the Dean encouraged you to drop out, it’s a sign. So I said, “Okay.” I did that first year at the Kennedy School, I dropped out, and I moved to DC. That’s how we got Devex going.
Alan Fleischmann
That’s amazing. And you went back to Penn Schoen?
Raj Kumar
I did. So 2003, Devex was still just a really tiny little startup, again, out of my apartment. We had very little money. We had a little bit of traction, but not much. So I thought, maybe I need to do something else too. Penn and Schoen kept calling me, so I end up going back and I was a principal in their New York office.
So for pretty much three years, I went back and forth every week between DC and New York, on the shuttle. I had both jobs; I did Devex at night and on the weekends, and I did Penn and Schoen during the week. They knew about, Penn and Schoen, they supported it, but I was burning myself on both ends of the candle, as you can do in your 20s.
Then I kind of had to reach this moment and decide, “Well, what does I really want to do?” And I decided, really, it’s Devex. What I want to do is international development, I want to have an impact on the world in this way. That’s why in 2006 I finally left Penn and Schoen for good.
Alan Fleischmann
Any regrets from dropping out?
Raj Kumar
No, not really. My wife works a lot in politics, I get to live vicariously through her in that.
Alan Fleischmann
No, I had meant dropping out from graduate school.
Raj Kumar
Honestly, no, not at all. Even though I was worried about it at the time, it turned out to be a fantastic decision. It was definitely the right thing to do.
And yet, I still have a close connection with the Kennedy School. I go back there a lot and really appreciate everything that that one year gave me. But, no regrets.
Alan Fleischmann
Awesome. Because I’m sure your family must have been thinking you were crazy at that point. Why did you go? Why did you leave?
Raj Kumar
Yeah, exactly. They were really proud that I’d gotten into Harvard for graduate school, they told all the relatives, the cousins, and everybody. Then suddenly, the news is I’m dropping out. That didn’t go over so well.
Alan Fleischmann
Probably gave them a little bit of pause. What is he up to? What is he doing?
Now, did you meet your wife at that point?
Raj Kumar
I did. That was maybe the biggest upside for my family, that I met my wife. She was in the same cohort, they call it, the same class at the Kennedy School with me. So my parents got to go to a Kennedy School graduation they went to hers. So that softened the blow a little bit.
But yeah, that’s where we met. So that was the best thing I got out at the Kennedy School.
Alan Fleischmann
And she was gonna go back to DC?
Raj Kumar
Well actually, at the time — she’s from California — she ended up going back to California for a while. Then she came to DC for a while.
Alan Fleischmann
She’s pretty extraordinary in her own right, tell us a bit about her.
Raj Kumar
Yeah, she’s amazing. The thing that she kind of started soon after the Kennedy School… Not right away, but she co-founded a group called Voto Latino, which has now grown into the largest voter registration organization in the country, I think, for young people, for Latinos certainly. They’ve registered… I’m gonna mess up the numbers, but something like 1.3, 1.4 million Americans now have been registered to vote through Voto Latino, and they’ve mobilized many millions more. Really, just getting a whole new generation of voters engaged in the democratic process.
It’s had caused really consequential impacts on elections, of course, that many new voters. She’s a big believer in voting rights and in the idea that this democracy belongs to all Americans. She has really tried to get people engaged in it, and she does a lot of television and media work as well with MSNBC. She’s been on the air for 12 or 13 years now with them.
So yeah, she’s a real leader in her community and on these issues, a real inspiration.
Alan Fleischmann
I love that.
So, back to Devex now: explain that. You went back and said, “I’m gonna be all in.” You started out being this scrappy, eat-pizza-in-the-garage organization with just a few people. How did you start making it become the transformational organization that it’s become? There must have been a change in the way he ran things. Obviously, now you’re the founder and CEO. What was the move you made that made a difference? And what made you realize it was happening?
Raj Kumar
So, we had two phases in organization. In the first one, which basically lasted until about 2008, we wanted to be kind of like a LinkedIn. We started before LinkedIn was even around, actually, but we thought, “Alright, we’ll be this platform where professionals who work at the World Bank, or the UN, or Save the Children, or CARE, or somewhere can create a profile. They can look for jobs, they can find funding for their nonprofit initiatives. It’s kind of like this marketplace, this clearing house.
So we did that. It actually took a while, but it started to get traction, it started to work. We had like 90,000 users, we were generating some revenue, and it was starting to work. But then we realized, this is never gonna really take off if that’s all it is, this clearinghouse of jobs and funding. That’s really important, but that can’t be the whole story. What’s missing is the context around that.
Really, the light bulb that went off for me — and part of this was my experience from things I’d studied, from working on campaigns and politics — was that what was missing was journalism. That was what was missing was news and the context you get from what journalists do. So what we ended up doing right around 2008 was start to very slowly, very carefully, hire one editor. Then one reporter. Then slowly, build out a newsroom. And that’s really become the forefront. That’s kind of the second phase of Devex, is becoming a leading independent news organization that covers global development issues.
We grew it slowly, carefully, organically. We didn’t want to replicate so many of the failed business models that you see in the news media. In 2008, when we started this, there were still many newspapers going out of business, a lot of people being laid off from journalism careers. So we could see that we needed to be careful and do it differently. I think by just really zooming in on a topic area that was underreported on, we’ve been able to really grow and become a credible newsroom covering these kinds of issues.
Alan Fleischmann
I often describe you behind your back as the Bloomberg News of the development world. Is that fair to say? I mean, no one wants to be compared to somebody else, but…
Raj Kumar
No, I’m honored to be compared to Bloomberg, they’re an incredible news organization. And yeah, it is fair in that… We’re much smaller team, of course. Our whole organization is about 150 people, maybe around 40 or so of whom are journalists. And we’re just very focused on this really narrow, niche set of issues that we think are the most important issues in the world that often just get underreported.
So yeah, it is fair to say that we’re similar in that kind of in-depth reporting, the wall-to-wall coverage of these sets of issues. There’ll be a hearing on Capitol Hill, let’s say about global hunger, and often, the only reporter in the room will be from Devex. These, to us, are just the most critical issues, but they don’t get a lot of news coverage.
That’s changing. Тhey’re becoming more front center. Тhe pandemic certainly helped to make people care a lot more about global health. So, those are the issues we cover.
Alan Fleischmann
I imagine — I follow you, so I know the answer, to this — but you also put a face to a lot of the issues that are going out there. A lot of times, those who are only focused on policy don’t get to see the light of day because they’re almost too academic. And then, there are those out there that will talk about the trials and tribulations of individuals who are involved in policy, but not necessarily get into the substance. I think of you as bringing both together.
Right now, there’s a World Bank vacancy soon to come — you’re gonna get into the personalities that are being considered and weigh who’s likely and who’s not. At the same time, you’re going to talk about the issues I mentioned that are going to be at stake, that need to be forefront. Because it’s an opportunity, and there’s risk if it’s not a priority or if these issues aren’t front and center. That’s the kind of stuff I think of you as doing — getting to the policy, the personalities, and the politics of development.
Raj Kumar
Yeah, you absolutely hit it right on the head. It sounds like you’re sitting in our news meetings.
We want to make sure we’re always writing in plain English, that we’re not using lingo and jargon. We want to write for anybody to read what we’re talking about and have it make sense to them. We also want to write in a way that’s interesting and exciting. Great journalism starts with stories. People want to hear about the actual people behind these institutions and behind these big decisions.
So, yeah, we certainly try to bring all of that together. We don’t always get there. But that’s what we aim to do.
Alan Fleischmann
Also, you’re trying to make it so that people understand the ramifications and the consequences that this is all about as well. That matters. It’s not that these are light issues that can be dismissed, but these are front and center issues that matter every day.
Raj Kumar
Absolutely. In the World Bank example you mentioned, it’s absolutely key to how the world comes together on the climate issue, for example.
When I was born 1975, basically 40% of the world, four out of ten people in the world, were living in extreme poverty. We’re now down to one in ten. So, incredible human progress. When people look back on this period, they’ll say it’s amazing that this huge shift happened. But to get from where we are now, to get like the next billion or so people out of extreme poverty and on some kind of ladder to prosperity and growth, getting kids basic nutrition, and all the rest of it, something else has to give. We’re in a different moment, something else needs to be done. Institutions like the World Bank are right at the front in front of that.
These issues really matter. Who’s running it really matters. How it’s organized really matters.
Alan Fleischmann
That’s really important. I think you personalize things in a way,
How do you actually get the word out? I mean, I know that in the world of development, you’re the go-to. I mean, there’s really no competition for you, right?
Raj Kumar
I mean, not really direct. I mean, there’s tons of competition in that, often there’s a story I’ll read in Bloomberg, or the FT, or the Washington Post, or anywhere that I’ll say, “I wish we had that first.” So in a way, there’s lots of competition.
But in a sense, there’s no one trying to do what we do. There’s no one with our mission. So in a way, if you’re a global developer professional, we’re the place you go.
Alan Fleischmann
What’s your business model?
Raj Kumar
So, it’s like a lot of other news organizations. It’s a combination of advertising; we do events, and we have event sponsors; and then subscriptions. So people can sign up for Devex Pro, that’s our premium subscription. We have everybody from the Senate Foreign Relations Committee to the British House of Commons, they all have subscriptions to it because they want that kind of insider journalism, that reporting on what’s happening in these spaces. That’s one part of the way we fund funding our work.
One thing people don’t always know is, we also have a whole recruitment division, we do lots of recruitment. So when the crisis in Ukraine happens, the World Food Program comes to us to look for experts, because we’ve got this big global community now of over a million development professionals. We can tap into that to find the best experts to help them staff these key positions,
Alan Fleischmann
It’s kind of a variation of the LinkedIn idea, continued.
So you’ve got the reporting, you’ve got the convening. and then you’ve got the expertise, your own search engine to help people find talent.
Raj Kumar
That’s it, exactly. We kept that original DNA from the original idea. When I was in grad school, I myself was thinking, “How do I find a job in this space? How does it work? It’s not that straightforward.” So we kept that kernel of an idea and we now have this big database of experts and professionals. We have the biggest job board in our space, and we have lots of articles about how somebody coming out of college can break into the space, or how a professional working in the private sector who decided they want to use their skills to do some real good in the world can join this industry. So we have lots of content, events, and career fairs, and people really find that valuable.
Alan Fleischmann
That’s amazing.
In 2019, before the pandemic, you published a really extraordinary book, titled The Business of Changing the World about the transformation of aid over the last two decades. It was it was a really wonderful way of intersecting between public, private, and civil society, the way you kind of approached international development and foreign aid.
Tell us a little bit the book and what you were trying to do with the book. If you had to write a new version of the book today, would it be different, just four years later on the other side of the pandemic? Are there insights the book had that prepared those of us who read the book better, because of what you what you’d written there? I’m just curious about the evolution of the thoughts that went into the book and the evolution that’s come from the book.
Raj Kumar
Sure, yeah.
I think the big insight that I had back in the year 2000, when we started Devex, was that although foreign aid, philanthropy, and charity all sound like they’re all about like good intentions and it’s all not-for-profit, actually, it’s a big industry. That’s not a knock on it; it’s actually a really valuable way to look at it. If you look at it as an industry, then you can ask questions like, well, is this industry designed in the right way to get the results you want? If it’s more kids not going to bed hungry at night, are we set up to help make that happen?
When I looked around at other industries, especially in that era — the Internet was booming in the early 2000s — it was clear that like other industries were going through this huge disruption. They were fundamentally changing. If you were in the newspaper or the media business, everything was turning upside down. If you were in the in the car business or the transportation business, you had companies like Uber and Tesla just completely transforming entire industries. But then, if you looked at this space of charity, philanthropy, and foreign aid, it was like nothing had changed. It was all kind of moving along in the same way I always had.
The reason I ended up writing that book is because my view began to change after a couple of decades studying the space. The industry disruption that I was looking for in the year 2000 didn’t come then, but it’s coming right now. The way we even think about this work is fundamentally transforming right before our eyes. I think it’s largely a really healthy thing.
Just as one example, take the Gates Foundation, which is now funding at the level of major countries. It’s on track to be giving away around $9 billion a year, getting close to the level of the UK. It’s getting up there in the scale of competing with governments. The second-largest funder is the World Health Organization, for example. So, you have these huge flows of private money. Although the data is a little bit hard to pin down, it seems like, clearly, more than half of international aid is from private sources and only half is coming from public sources. So things have really started to shift.
I think the biggest shift is that we’re moving away from industry that just focused on good intentions and showing your good intentions… You know, “We’re trying to do a good thing here, so therefore, you should applaud us and give us funds to do it.” We’re moving much more to focusing on results, and saying, “Okay, what were the actual results you created? What’s the return on investment of your charity dollar.” It creates some real competition in the market, and I think that’s really healthy. We saw a lot of that during the pandemic, in that a lot of the investments that had been made around, for example, HIV during the Bush administration, and afterwards, the PEPFAR program — a lot of those investments turned into really effective pandemic response mechanisms. Because we were thinking about development in this results-oriented way, in this data-driven way, not just “Oh, let’s do good things,” but “Okay, let’s go to the countries that have these challenges and make sure they have the right laboratory testing equipment, they have the train healthcare workforce, and they have distribution and supply.” All of those things that were used for HIV became really relevant for fighting COVID.
So I think this mindset shift has been absolutely critical. It calls all of us. Even if you’re just an ordinary person who just likes to write a check to certain charities, I think it changes for all of us our expectation. It shouldn’t just be, “I got a nice glossy calendar in the mail, this charity does some good work, I’ll write them a check.” Instead, everybody needs to be asking tougher questions and saying, “Alright, but what did you achieve with my donation? What are not just your basic overheads, but what are the return on results?” That mindset shift is pretty big, it’s a pretty fundamental change. As you have more and more private money, billionaire philanthropists, and ordinary people with that mindset, and it’s starting to drive a very different approach to what has historically been this kind of global charity, global aid space.
Alan Fleischmann
As for the book itself, would you recommend people buy the book today? I would, I think it’s evergreen. Also, is there another book in you, a sequel to that book? I’m curious.
Raj Kumar
Yeah, I think I think the basic themes I explore in it — this industry disruption, how it’s happening, and what it means — I think is still really relevant. I think it’s especially relevant to students. It’s a book I wish I had when I was in grad school or an undergrad studying this space. They teach you about the issues, but they don’t teach about the industry and how it actually all works. Where does the money come from? What does it actually mean? That’s what this book, I think, does a pretty good job of laying out.
So I think, especially for people who are trying to understand the space, it’s still really relevant. What it probably could use in terms of an update… I don’t know if I’ll ever have the energy to write another version of this, but if I did, Alan, I probably I’d probably want to update focused around how this new focus on results shifts the work, and the epicenter of the work, from places like Washington, DC, and London and closer to the least developed countries in the world. So much of getting that return on investment is about making sure that people who are living in in these communities around the world are in the driver’s seat.
I explore some of that in the book, but there’s been a lot happening in that space since then. I think that’s where a lot of this has to shift. We used to have a sector that was well-intentioned people getting together in a conference room in Washington, DC, talking about a problem on the other side of the world, about how we’re going to send them a lot of money and how we’re going to send American contractors, American NGOs, and American experts. We’re really shifting now to a very different approach, of first asking the people in a community, “What do you need? What ideas do you have for your own community? What’s the business model? How do we fund this in a way that’s going to be sustainable over time?” That’s a very different mindset. So I think there’s more and more to cover on that to write about on that. You’re pushing me to think about another book, which I don’t think I’m going to do just yet, but I appreciate it. That’s probably what I’d write about.
Alan Fleischmann
Are there other thought leaders and authors right now that you would recommend to listeners here who are interested in diving in? I would encourage them to buy your book; are there other books that are out there that you would recommend them to read?
Raj Kumar
I’ve got a little book club going, and in my book club, the book I’m reading right now is by Gaia Vince. It’s called Nomad Century, I think is the title. It’s a really provocative book, because so much of what is going on in my space now is driven by migration. The climate is shifting, there’s war and conflict — obviously, Ukraine is very front center, but many other wars and conflicts. So we have a historically high number of people on the move, it’s now 100 million people who are on the move.
So this is maybe one of the biggest stories affecting the planet today, that people are feeling the need to flee their own homes, their own communities, and go somewhere else. This book is basically saying, when we look at the climate science, it’s likely that a lot more people are going to need to move. That this is just the beginning, and we’re going to need to think of migration in a totally different way, because it’s going to affect everybody, rich and poor. We could be looking at a billion or two billion people on the move in this coming century.
So it’s a pretty radical and interesting take. I like to kind of look ahead at what’s coming, so I’d recommend that as a place to start. I’ll be doing an interview with her in just a couple of days, with the author. So look out for that, and that’ll maybe give you some insight into what the book is about.
Alan Fleischmann
The book is actually, in some ways, a sequel of your book a little bit. When you think about some of the things that we were talking about, it fits very much in the queue of what your book’s about.
You say there’s no other book in you right now, but I have a funny feeling based on your responses now that there might be one.
Raj Kumar
You might. A book is a bit like a baby, it takes a lot. I’ve got two actual kids at home, so that’s part of it, just figuring out when to have the time to dedicate to it.
Alan Fleischmann
How much are you traveling in your life right now?
Raj Kumar
A lot. More than I want to, especially having a young family. With so much of what I do, you’ve got to get on the ground, you’ve got to see things. You’ve got to go to the places where communities are meeting and talking about these issues and hear from them directly.
I try to do at least one or two reporting trips a year, going to where the work is meant to happen in low- and middle-income countries. I end up doing a lot of conferences, doing a lot of public speaking, and a lot of these are in places like Geneva, or London, or New York. So it’s a combination of those two kinds of travel, and I’m on the move quite a bit.
Alan Fleischmann
I think of you when I when I go to Davos for the World Economic Forum’s Annual Meeting. I know you’re very present during UNGA, the United Nations General Assembly meetings. You’ve been your own convener, as well as being there with your teams to make sure that you’re at the front lines reporting. Obviously, it’s a huge value for the greater development community that you’re a convener, because you’re trusted. You’re seen as neutral… Well, maybe I wouldn’t say you’re neutral, you have very strong opinions on the editorial side. But you are trusted, and seen as being genuine and authentic in how you approach the news and how you approach the uncommon tables that you create.
Tell us a little bit about those convenings that you do and how much of the Devex world are your convenings.
Raj Kumar
It’s a big part of what we do. There are so many conferences and convenings in our space, but the challenge with them is that they tend to be official in nature. You get the UN putting together a summit, and when you have these official summits, people are hesitant to speak truth. They tend to speak in a very careful political language or careful diplomatic language.
So what we bring to all of these, which is a little bit unique, is we have journalists onstage asking the questions. We don’t care so much about the protocol, so we’ll have an ambassador, or a UN official, or the head of some international agency on stage. But we’ll also have, on the same stage, some young social entrepreneur who’s doing some exciting work, and we’ll have a journalist asking them all tough questions. So that changes the dynamic a lot, and I think you get to some more interesting insights as a result.
I feel like our events are events people really want to attend. They enjoy being there, they enjoy listening, and they’re very interactive. So what we’ve done is, essentially, around the COP meetings, the climate meetings around the UN General Assembly, around the World Health Assembly, around Davos, we just have our own side events that are driven by journalists that kind of add something to what is happening at the official events. People are kind of voting with their feet, they seem to really like it. So we’re doing more and more of it.
Alan Fleischmann
I love that. And you do them globally, so it’s not just here in the US, obviously.
Raj Kumar
Yeah, we’re doing them all over the world. They tend to be on the sidelines of these really big convenings, so depending on where those are. We were at COP in Egypt and will be at the COP in the UAE. We’ve got a journalist today, or soon, at the Munich Security Forum. So we’re trying to go where people are convening and add some journalistic value to it.
Alan Fleischmann
How do you decide? Are you always in Munich during the Munich Security Conference, or is that something that you starting this year that’s different from before?
Raj Kumar
It’s new, yeah. We’re not always there, and we only have the presence of one journalist there at this point, so it’s not a big convening for us.
But increasingly, the issues that we cover, which used to be really niche, are becoming very broad and touching everything. So in the past, you might have talked about global health as this nice thing to care about for a small subset of people. But now, national security people and the Pentagon care about it, because we’re seeing with COVID what pandemics can mean. We’re in an era of pandemics now. So these issues are starting to become much more cross cutting.
When you think about Davos, there was a time when it was very much just businesses talking about business. But you know this better than anybody — business has now become front and center in terms of social issues and environmental issues. Companies and executives are doing a lot of the leading on this now. Those things are all converging, and that means the places that are relevant for us to go are broadening out. It’s just more and more of these global meetings where we need to make sure global development is on the agenda. And as a result, we’re there.
Alan Fleischmann
That’s great.
Is there anyone, any great get, that you’re hoping to get at any of your conferences or gatherings, that you’re looking for but you haven’t quite gotten? And are there people who have been participating at some of your gatherings that you want to share, because they’re just extraordinary and they add so much to the world?
Raj Kumar
I mean, there are so many. On the extraordinary ones, there’s a woman by the name of Hindou Ibrahim that I love talking with. She has this incredible life story. She’s a nomad herself, she comes from the country of Chad. Her community is nomadic, they travel around the Lake Chad region. Depending on the seasons, they fish in the lake. That lake is 90%, smaller than it was just a couple of decades ago because of the changing climate. There’s a lot more desert, and it’s really hard to live there.
She, kind of by luck, was able to go to school. Girls in her community typically don’t. She was able to go to school as a kid, go to a town and cease the nomadic lifestyle for a little while to get an education. Now, she is a leader of the indigenous people of that part of the Lake Chad region. She spends much of her life there — nomadic, traveling around — and then part of her life coming to events like the ones we host and other people host, speaking and giving kind of like a sense of what life is really like and what might be coming for many more people as the climate shifts. So she’s an amazing example, and there’s many more like that.
We’re working right now with the Aspen Institute and with MasterCard Center for Inclusive Growth on a summit during the World Bank spring meetings. Just give you a sense that it’s not all local indigenous leaders, we’re trying to get Trevor Noah to come and speak at that event. We’ll see if he is able to do it, I think he might actually be able to make it.
So we try to mix it up. We try to have people who you’ve heard of that you’re excited to hear more from that cut across boundaries, and then people you may have never heard of, but that are going to turn out to be so inspiring that they spark something in you to go on and do something new.
Alan Fleischmann
They’re also great validators, actually, for the work that’s being done. Because obviously, Trevor Noah talks about the world, he comes from South Africa and has a global perspective. He’s seen the U.S. and understands the role of the U.S. both politically and having had many years of being in the US now. So he has many perspectives, I’m sure. And then, the global perspectives added to it would be fabulous, I imagine.
Raj Kumar
Yeah, absolutely.
Alan Fleischmann
In your annual letter from the editor this January, you wrote that the world may be headed for a new cold war for foreign aid. How are rising international tension set to change the world of international development? Do you see it differently than the way it was before, when there was a real Cold War for resources, dollars, and where they were allocated? Do you see it different from the way it was, or do you see it almost like déjà vu, “Oh, here we go again”?
Raj Kumar
There’s parts of their déjà vu and there’s some new elements. If you think about the history of foreign aid, it was used as a foreign policy tool, certainly. During the Cold War between the U.S. and the Soviet Union, we essentially divided up the world. We’d go in with our aid and say, “Hey, be our friends, we’ll give you more money to do your projects.” Some of that ended up in people’s pockets, and a lot of it ended up in projects that were boondoggles that didn’t really work and didn’t go anywhere.
So in a way, it was a fantastic fresh breath of fresh air when the Cold War ended. We ended up with a 20-year period of kind of a golden era in foreign aid. From the late ’90s until pretty recently, maybe the early Trump administration, we saw foreign aid levels in the U.S. basically triple, more than triple even, and around the world, more than double. Even adversarial countries sort of came together with a common agenda. So we had the Sustainable Development Goals, and before that, the Millennium Development Goals. It sort of felt like we were all working together toward a common mission. Of course, there were foreign policy interests. But increasingly, it was long-term development that was seen as its own set of objectives and not just your short-term dealmaking between a prime minister and a president.
I think we’re kind of snapping back to what it was. The conflict, the growing competition between the U.S. and the West, on one hand, and China and Russia on the other is leading to foreign aid being seen, once again, as a tool. Not about long-term prosperity for people, but more like, “How do we today win over this country or its leader?” That’s pretty important. China’s going around and saying, “Hey, we’ll build you a port.” And a leader might say, “We need that port right now. China is willing to build it, so okay.” Then of course, that gives China access to that country, access to that port, a different relationship with that government. So the U.S., European allies, and others are saying, “Hang on a second. We’ve got to snap into a similar mode here. We need to be thinking about foreign aid as a tool.”
There’s real danger in that. There’s real danger that we go back to an era when foreign aid was pretty ineffective, because it’s more about making these short-term deals and not thinking about the long-term investments in people, in their health, and their education. So I think that’s a big shift.
We’re also looking at the fact that we’ve had a couple of decades of low interest rates, of easy money, fast economic growth. Things are getting harder. It’s very likely that this high-interest-rate period might last for a while. And it’s all connected to things like the energy transition. We’re gonna have to make trillions of investments in electric vehicles, in electrifying the grid, in everything surrounding the climate transition. That’s gonna be really expensive, so we may see more inflation and higher interest rates for a longer period, maybe slower economic growth in a lot of the advanced economies that are typically the ones that give away the foreign aid.
So there’s gonna be a lot of constraints. Of course, there’s an aging demographic in the U.S. and Europe. Social Security is a priority, so the thing that gets squeezed maybe is foreign aid. It might not shrink a lot, but it’s probably not going to go up. We’re already seeing that; it’s plateauing in most donor countries and it’s going down in some.
So when the amount is restricted, and you have these foreign policy, cold-war goals on top of it, it just makes it all the more important that we make sure whatever money there is for foreign aid actually works. That it’s spent really well and it goes to things that are approved, that have evidence behind them, and that ultimately do help improve people’s lives.
So I think we’re in a different moment, a different era. Those of us who’ve been working in this space and got used to the last couple of decades are in for a little bit of a wake-up call in how things are going to work for the next decade.
Alan Fleischmann
Are you finding that this is something that you’re educating people about this through your letter, or is it something that people are actually coming to you and saying, “This is a big worry.”
Raj Kumar
I think most people still aren’t fully grasping it. Maybe I’m wrong, but they’re at least not fully grasping the way I see it. Because I think there’s a hope that things will go back to how they were, that it will be easier to get governments to increase their foreign aid budgets and that there will be more of a focus on the results. I think people in our space are slowly coming around to the fact that it’s actually a pretty different era.
You asked like how it’s different from the Cold War; it’s even more significant. Although we’re not in something as extreme as the Cold War was between the U.S. and Soviet Union — at least not yet — technology makes it really different now. Now you have the fact that U.S. NGOs have to think about, if they’re getting U.S. government money, are they buying Chinese-made computer chips? Are they using Chinese telecommunications equipment in some of their programs to, let’s say, deliver aid directly to people on their cellphones?
There’s this technological Cold War that is that is coming. It’s here, but it’s going to probably get more and more significant. That’s going to also divide up the way that this work gets done, and which countries, which initiatives, and how aid actually gets delivered. So in some ways, the impact in this cold war can be it’s even more significant than in the last one.
Alan Fleischmann
Let me ask you: after these many years, you’ve build Devex into something extraordinary. You’ve created a category. You lead in this very important area within the international development community. What do you expect to see, or what should we expect to see, from Devex that we have not yet seen? What do you imagine for Devex in the next decade?
Raj Kumar
I feel like we’re gonna do more what we’re doing, do it better on a bigger scale. As the world is converging, as all of these issues I talked a bit about before — about corporates, the private sector, government, and nonprofits all kind of converging, as these issues like the climate transition become more front page for everyone — the kind of coverage we do, that was once really niche, narrow, and only interesting to a small group, is going to become more and more interesting to a larger group. So the thing that you may may see from us going forward is… And you’re already seeing quite a bit of this. Reading a New York Times article, they’ll mention “As Devex reported.” Or reading a Politico or Washington Post article, they’re building on our reporting. A lot of what we’re doing is feeding into the more mainstream news media.
It’s helping those journalists to tell that story. And it’s taking a lot of our work and bring it to a broader audience. I think you’ll see more of that. Not just because of our good work, but because of the issues themselves and how much more relevant they are to a broader group of people.
Alan Fleischmann
Do you imagine you’ll be focusing more on artificial intelligence and cybersecurity? Issues that are definitely keeping private sector CEOs up at night. I imagine those are already huge issues in international development.
Raj Kumar
In some ways, they already are. Just give you one example, there’s about a billion people in the world that don’t have an ID. When they were born, they didn’t get the birth certificate, they don’t have a government-issued ID. That number is going to cut in half in just the next couple of years as governments like Nigeria, the Philippines, and Ethiopia stand up new digital ID systems. With those systems, the key question is, are they safe? Are they secure? Can they be hacked?
Right now, there are UN agencies that help refugees that are sitting on millions of bytes of biometric identification of kids. A kid flees a conflict and crosses a border, a UN agency helps that child and has to figure out who this kid is. It takes fingerprints or iris scans and creates an ID for them. That’s sitting in a computer controlled by the UN. Is that safe?
So these cybersecurity issues are really front and center. I’ve talked to a lot of the chief information officers and others at these agencies and they’re definitely concerned about these issues, because they’re dealing, in many cases very directly with human lives.
Alan Fleischmann
You’re listening to “Leadership Matters” on SiriusXM and at leadershipmattersshow.com. I’m your host, Alan Fleischmann, and I’m here with Raj Kumar, president, founder, and editor-in-chief of Devex. And we’ve been discussing his extraordinary career, and also, the organization that he has built, which has become so indispensable to how we understand, appreciate, and report on the development community.
A last question for you. What advice would you offer to young men and women who are passionate about development, who see their future around development issues? What should they do, where should they go, and how would you advise them to make those first steps?
Raj Kumar
Yeah. I love that question, because we talk a lot at Devex about how there’s a financing gap for the Sustainable Development Goals. It gets a lot of attention, we talk about how a trillion dollars or so is needed every year to try to meet these big goals, like ending poverty and ending hunger. But actually, there’s also a talent gap. It’s not as though we have all the people to solve these problems, there’s actually a talent gap.
We need young people who are looking ahead in their career to say, “Yeah, I’m going to actually dedicate my career to trying to solve some of these really tough, thorny issues.” Maybe cleaning the oceans or helping traditional fishing communities that have relied on fish forever and are now not going to get any as the oceans warm. What happens to them? What does their economic development path look like? We need brilliant young minds with technical skills with social skills, we need them in the space.
So, I love that question for that reason. I think the space is moving really fast, it’s changing a lot. Whereas in the past, like when I was a student, it might have been easy to go to the career center and say, “Oh yeah, I guess I’m gonna go look for a job at the World Bank or at USAID.” Those are still really relevant places to go, but they’re not the only places. You could get a job at Starbucks. If you think about it, when you go in to get your morning coffee, the coffee of the day might be from Rwanda or Guatemala, countries where more than half the population lives in extreme poverty. Starbucks has to make sure that coffee was sourced from a sustainable farm; where the kids are going to school, where they’re not working in the fields; where there’s sustainable water resources so they can keep getting the coffee. It’s got to be good quality, of course, that tastes good. So there’s people working at companies like Starbucks that are kind of doing international development work. They’re working with smallholder farmers, they’re working on education programs. You might do that directly with a company, or you’re doing it with a nonprofit that works with these companies. Maybe you’re doing with a government agency or an initiative.
My point is, there are so many ways now you can engage on these issues. You don’t have to just join some big institution. You can be a little more entrepreneurial. And that’s what the space needs. It needs young, bright minds to come together and find new ways of tackling these old problems.
Alan Fleischmann
You’ve been listening to “Leadership Matters” on SiriusXM and at leadershipmattersshow.com. I’m your host, Alan Fleischmann. We’ve been with Raj Kumar, the president, founder, and editor-in-chief of Devex. We’ve discussed your extraordinary journey, Raj, and the impact that you and your colleagues are having on the world.
It has been such a pleasure — we could have another hour with you, it’d be wonderful we did. We’ll have to have you back. Your insights, your example, your entrepreneurialism, and your ability to actually meet a demand that no one else saw is pretty amazing, pretty inspiring. So thank you.
Raj Kumar
Thank you, Alan. I’ve learned so much getting to work with you, listen to you, and be your friend all these years. It’s just a real pleasure to get to chat.
Alan Fleischmann
I look forward to much more. Thank you my friend.