Raj Kumar (Pt. 2)
Founder, President & Editor-in-Chief, Devex
Summary
This week, Alan was joined by a prolific leader in the international development reporting space, Raj Kumar. Raj is the Founder, President and Editor-in-Chief of Devex.
Over the course of their second conversation, Raj and Alan dive into the origins of Devex’s tagline “do good, do it well”, the unique offerings of Devex in providing context in the space of international development and some key takeaways from the recent Spring Meetings of the World Bank and International Monetary Fund as well as what to expect at the upcoming United Nations General Assembly.
Mentions & Resources in this Episode
Guest Bio
Raj Kumar is the President and Editor-in-Chief at Devex, the media platform for the global development community. He is a media leader and former humanitarian council chair for the World Economic Forum and a member of the Council on Foreign Relations. His work has led him to more than 50 countries, where he has had the honor to meet many of the aid workers and development professionals who make up the Devex community. He 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.
Episode Transcript
Alan Fleischmann
For the second time on this show, we have an extraordinary leader in the international development and reporting space. My good friend Raj Kumar, and I'm really excited that he's back on the show. Raj is the Founder, President, Editor in Chief of Devex, the world's leading independent news organization covering global development. Raj is also the author of the acclaimed book, The Business of Changing the World: How Billionaires, Tech Disruptors, and Social Entrepreneurs are Transforming the Global Aid Industry. In our previous episode with Raj, we spoke about his upbringing and his past leadership at Devex. In this episode, Raj and I will catch up on the immediate and immense strides Devex is making, to change the international development landscape, while also leveraging partnerships with organizations like the United Nations, the World Economic Forum, and others, to generate engagement and change. I'm excited to have Raj back on the show to discuss his background, but more importantly, what he's doing now on his journey, and the lessons and leadership that he has learned along the way. Raj, welcome to Leadership Matters is such a pleasure to have you back on.
Raj Kumar
Thank you so much, Alan, and I loved our last conversation, I guess it's proof you liked it too, enough to get me back. So thank you, it's really an honor to be with you twice.
Alan Fleischmann
We don't have any back on something we do. And some things, I feel like we didn't finish. And you're one of them. I think there's so much more. But also, frankly, you know, as you've been doing this for a long time, the world was complex as it was the last time you were on, and it was, it feels even more fragile than it ever was. And I feel like some of the issues that you have been spotlighting over so many years, is now either getting the attention it deserves, so we should spotlight even more, or it's still not getting the attention it deserves. And we should spotlight it because the urgency is even more important. So that's kind of like the framework for the conversation. You know, you shared with us a bit of your origin story the last time you were on here. And why you kind of became focused on international development. And, you know, the service of reporting, I would argue the public service of reporting. And so many of your people are literally around the world doing that day in and day out. For all that you have done for the new listeners, before we get into the details of the future. Walk us through real quickly, if you can, what inspired you to pursue a career in this field? And is it an ambition and passion for media? Or is it an ambition and passion for International Development? Or is it because you manage to create something no one else has ever created, which is the combination of both?
Raj Kumar
Yeah, it's a great question. And I'd love to have the chance to reflect on it. Because I don't often get that chance. And the busy news environment we live in, I'm always rushing and racing to the next event, the next story. But yeah, I guess like a lot of people, the seeds of what I ended up working on in my career were planted at a very young age, because I was fortunate enough to spend a lot of time as a kid in India, my dad was from India, he emigrated to the United States, we still have a lot of family back there. So we go back often. And it was just always a stark reminder, right of how different these two lives I was living one in, in rural New Jersey, you know, growing up in many ways, just like a regular American kid. And then I go to India, and you know, I remember playing soccer with the neighborhood kids on the field, which is really almost like a gravel pit. And I was the only kid with sneakers. And you know, those kinds of things definitely sort of wake you up. And so I had this desire, even from when I was really young to sort of understand, why is it that the world is so unequal? And what are the efforts to try to fix that? And is there something I could do in my life and my career to work on it, I really wasn't sure what that would end up being. But I got that bug, I guess at a young age, to care and to think about places, like the parts of India that I would visit as a kid. And that was really lucky because I had this aunt and uncle, who in the end, who ended up going to the UK to get their PhD, came back to India to be development scholars.
So like their job was going to villages and talking to villagers and asking them about their life and their challenges. And, you know, they ended up taking me on some of those visits, and I got to get a sense for sort of what is this idea of global development all about? What are the organizations involved? So even as a kid I had heard of the World Bank, you know, I had heard of the UN and so I had a sense of hey, there's like a whole industry here. There's a career there in some fashion, I could maybe work there and that's what gave me the bug from a young age. So I think that was really the initial drive to answer your question. It was later in life that I got really attracted to politics and policy and ultimately journalism which really fits right in you know, if you care about democracy and you love sort of the political world. You gotta love journalism at some level, right? Because it's so so core to all of that. And, you know, just ended up through a couple of different experiences getting into the space and just learning as I went.
Alan Fleischmann
That's great. Tell us a little bit about the initial vision of Devex. What was the unique role you were hoping to fill? What role you thought it would play? And I'm curious also, whether that's a different mission, a different purpose today than you originally had, as an entrepreneur, starting your own business from scratch? Whether there was a different vision, then, than it is now? Or is it a different mission? Now the same vision, but you're doing it differently than you imagined than when you first started? That would be interesting to hear.
And are there specific systemic issues and development, international development, in either reporting or dialoguing or communicating or convening because you do a lot of convenings that you knew needed to be fulfilled? Or did that happen after the news report, because I think of you not only as a great catalyst for ideals and ideas that you capture through your thought leadership on a daily basis, but also the reporting part. And then I kind of my own version of your verticals, you probably have a very different idea. My third bridge is that you do a convening. So I feel like the catalyst of ideas, the strength of your reporting to tell the news and no one else is telling. And then the third is your convening. And I'm curious if that is right, if not from the outside in? And if so, how did that come to be? And if it's not, right, correct, me. And if there's something more to focus on that I forgot, then let's add that to the list.
Raj Kumar
So yeah, happy to kind of give you a deep dive on Devex, but just starting with what our mission is, because that hasn't changed. You know, you're right about the vision, we had a big shift in vision, halfway through our trajectory as an organization, I guess. But the mission was the same from the beginning, which was basically, look, there's this big industry, right? I mean, some people balk at the idea of even calling it an industry because there's obviously a lot of charitable efforts, humanitarian efforts involved. And a lot of people want to focus on sort of the good intentions behind the development work that exists. But I think of it as an industry. And I think that was kind of our initial inclination, we started Devex to say, look, there's all these nonprofit organizations, philanthropies, government agencies, there's companies, there's contractors, there's all these people in this space, really trying to make the world a better place. Sure. But they're operating like a market, you know, it's a kind of industry. And it's, it's too big to just look at it as sort of like, “Oh, it's just nice people doing nice things like this is a big business.” And give you a sense of the scale, like, today, more than $200 billion a year gets spent on development assistance of some kind, that's about the same revenue as what Apple sells in terms of iPhones every year, right? To give you just a sense of the scale, it's really big. And, in similar ways to the smartphone market, it is a market, you know, it's an industry and people are competing for the money to go do good things in the world. And there's lots of different interests, it's not just good intentions, there's lots of other motivations that drive this kind of work from making profit to foreign policy desires and, and other personal reasons people get in the space.
So we saw it as an industry. And we said, look, this is an industry that's supposed to do some good things in the world. If we could make it like, I don't know, 1% 2% 3% more effective, then it would be like adding another Gates Foundation to the world just given the scale. It's a $200 billion industry, right? Like you're 1% more effective. That's like $2 billion new money to do good things in the world. So that was kind of our thinking. And the more we looked at this industry, the more we thought, it's in need of someone trying to make it more efficient, you know, there is just a lot of waste in this field. And again, not necessarily for bad reasons. But it's a lot of fragmentation, everybody's doing their own thing. And we thought if we could sort of create a platform where everybody could see what everyone else is doing, create more of like an online marketplace where the best ideas bubble up the things that aren't working, get, you know, held accountable. Where if you're a new organization on the block, you know, you're a kid who just graduated in college, you got a great idea, you could go and find some funding, or you're the most qualified person in the world to do some of this work, you go find a job. And so we felt we could get this marketplace going, that might drive this kind of efficiency and effectiveness that we were after that is our mission. That was our mission that will remain our mission.
Alan Fleischmann
Yeah. Yeah. Keep going.
Raj Kumar
And well, I just say this a little bit yet, which is, you know, we started this at Harvard's government school at Harvard's Kennedy School. And it was kind of a student project when I was in grad school there. And I remember going to the Career Center and just asking, how do you get a job in this field? You know, I want to work in global development. When I graduate, how do I do that? And they said, you know, really, there isn't like one place to go, but it would probably be useful to you to go to cocktail parties, go to Washington, DC. Go to cocktail parties and meet people, because this is kind of a club in this industry. That's crazy. So we got to put this online. And so to answer your question of verticals, you know, we've grown in many ways, and we've all different kinds of things. We're doing it but one really key vertical you didn't mention is recruitment. You know, we're the largest job board for service providers now in global development. So we've got this job board that thousands of people go there, you know, they find jobs there, we have our own actual executive search firm, that's part of the Devex that does executive search for the World Food Program and for the African Development Bank and for UNICEF.
Alan Fleischmann
And you know, what was that? Was that a vision, though, at the beginning, or did that become like, all of a sudden, there was no place to go, and you realize that there was no place to go and you found you'd want to be that one stop shop for people who are looking for jobs and the people who were seeking to hire people?
Raj Kumar
You know, it was right there from the start, because one of the things we tried to do was to be really demand driven. So we spent a lot of time as a startup just talking to people who work in global development, and asking them, like, what is it you need? And really, there were three big things. One was jobs, like either organizations need to hire the right people, or people wanted to find the right job. Another big one was funding money, you know, you've got a great philanthropic idea, but you need money for it, or your foundation, you want to fund the best, most innovative initiatives. So that was the other area and we have a whole vertical that's dedicated to tracking all the money in this space. We've got a funding platform, and you can subscribe to it and get access to information about where the money flows and, you know, bid for projects and bid for grants. And then the third, I think, was just information about what's going on, like who's doing what, and that has evolved. And there's a bunch of products underlying that. But, you know, that's where our news would sit, that's where our events would sit, we have a whole database of organizations, some 80,000 organizations that work in this field are profiled in this, in this database, you can go through it and search for you know, I want to find a Kenyan organization that works on climate change, and clean water, you know, you can go in there and find that so. So really, those are the three areas, three kinds of broad verticals that we started right at the beginning, and we just grow each one over time.
And you know, we knew each other a really long time before Devex was founded. But even for you, it might be surprising to know that next year, we are going to celebrate our 25th anniversary. So, you know, we feel like a student project, like a startup, you know, but we actually have been around for a while, we're getting old.
Alan Fleischmann
That's amazing. I remember early on 24 years ago, 23 years ago, probably I described you as the Bloomberg of the international development world, and, you know, kind of this idea of becoming a member, becoming a part of it, subscribe, right? And become part of this ecosystem. And, and what's what you've done, you've created I would argue even more so than Bloomberg or would argue, because they don't do all that a lot of the stuff that you do. And it's specialized. So it's unique, because it really does cater to those who care about, you know, emerging markets and international development. But there is some correlation there. No, there's,
Raj Kumar
I mean, I certainly took a lot of inspiration from Bloomberg, I think the world of them is that what an amazing organization in particular, what amazing news organization, I mean, their news content is so valuable and credible. Obviously, we are way smaller, and we will remain way smaller, because we got this very specific mission, you know, we're really designed just to serve global development as an industry. It's a big industry, it's getting bigger. But we're, you know, we're 150 employees, I don't expect we're gonna get that much larger than what we are now. But we're really just focused on this community on this industry. But we are applying a lot of the same kind of ideas that Bloomberg pioneered, in so many ways of connecting journalism with data, which is, I think, really, really valuable to professionals.
Alan Fleischmann
So I'll show you what I wanted to ask you. They wouldn't ask you this for a long time. Tell us the genesis of your tagline. “Do good. Do it Well,” this did come up. I know this comes up actually, people went behind your back. They asked that question, too. Sometimes it's a great tagline. But I'd love to know a little bit about what you thought of that, because it's awesome.
Raj Kumar
Yeah, thank you. Well, you know, I didn't come up with it myself. It was a colleague of mine. And it was something right. When we were getting started, we said, you know, we had some of these kind of startup sessions you can imagine, you know, sitting around or a beer or a cup of coffee somewhere a bunch of young guys think, “Alright, what do we do? What are we really after?” And we said, ultimately, it's what I described earlier about our mission like we're trying to make this industry really accountable to results.
You know, it's not enough to say, Well, my intention is really good. You know, I tried to do a really good thing. And then you end up creating a lot of trouble in the world, right? Like I told you tell the story in my book. You and I both had a career in politics and, you know, and think the world of President Clinton and his administration. It worked in that administration briefly. But even he kind of came out and apologized years later for America's policy toward Haiti, in that we thought we were doing a good thing, his administration thought we were doing a good thing by buying rice from American farmers and sending it into Haiti and giving it to more hungry people, right, it's felt like a good thing to do. Well, it ended up essentially bankrupting the domestic rice industry in Haiti, putting thousands of farmers out of work, and driving rice prices through the roof, like it actually had really negative effects. And it is one of the many similar stories where you know, good intentions alone can actually lead to some pretty bad results. And so we wanted to create Devex as this idea that look, we're going to, we're going to tell this community, it's not enough, have good intentions, you got to do good, but you have to do it well. You have to, you have to have some sort of rigorous approach to what you're doing that's transparent, that's honest, that's accountable. That's sort of market oriented, you know, you got to think about efficiency, if you're going to donate $1,000, well, the $1,000, donated in the right way, in the most efficient way, get way more impact in the world, than just giving it to something that you think sounds good. And it's kind of whimsical and interesting, but it really isn't rigorous and thought through. So that was originally how we fell. And that's how we still feel when we feel like this industry is punching way below its weight, it can do much more. And it can do much more good. If only it can adopt some of these approaches, we know that you know, there are people out there doing really, really important, impressive evidence-based work. And that's why we try to give them attention, we try to draw attention to that kind of work.
Alan Fleischmann
How big were you when you started? How quickly was it? Was it two people when you started, I can't remember.
Raj Kumar
It was me and a few friends. You know, there are four co-founders. Really, more than that, if you think about it, because I feel like anybody would join a little tiny startup when you're just getting going as a co-founder. But you know, in the very beginning stages, there were four of us living in this two bedroom apartment in DC, and four more people who would come during the day to work at our office. And, you know, we outgrew that and a year or so and went to another apartment and, and another apartment and it probably took like seven or eight years before we were in a proper office. I think we thought we had this great idea and that the development community would embrace it if they want. And actually, that didn't pan out that way. You know, a lot of people would say to us, you know what you're doing is interesting, but I've been working in global development for 30 years, I kind of know everything I need to know, I know everyone I need to be connected to, we don't need an online platform and marketplace and media company. And I think it took several years really to prove out that actually there was real value in this, that sort of the globalization trends that had changed every other industry were coming to global development too. And then this was becoming one big global market. And it wasn't enough to have a small circle of friends in Washington DC, like the insider Club was being broken up. And we really tried to be part of that, that we were, we had sort of a revolutionary zeal about us.
And it was early days and thought, let's break this up. And let's shine some sunlight into space. And it took a while for that to actually catch hold. But eventually, around 2007, 2008, we started to get some traction, and it was right around then your earlier question about our vision, we changed our vision a little bit and said, we're going to do more journalism, you know, like we need to as part of the shining light, we need to provide some context, not just a database of jobs and projects and organizations and people, but we need much more journalism in what we were doing before we set out to hire editors and reporters, we did it slowly and carefully. Because we saw how many newspapers were going out of business. And we thought we don't want to just adopt an old model that's not going to work, but slowly and carefully. We added journalists and we've learned our way, you know, into that part of the business. And now that's, you know, a really big part of maybe the main thing that we do.
Alan Fleischmann
And how many of your most of your people overseas are reporters, I imagine, right.
Raj Kumar
It's a mix, but a lot of them. I mean, we have 150 people, you know, the majority of them in our news division, but we have marketers, and we have salespeople and we have engineers, and we have people doing recruitment services, we got a wide range of roles. But increasingly, you see, we're actually hiring reporters, which is rare, you know, a lot of news organizations are firing reporters, but we're hiring a small number, but we've got a few open jobs right now for journalists. And we have journalists in a couple of few different places in Africa and in Asia and Latin America and of course in Europe and the US so I It's a global newsroom and virtual really, but we've made that work. And we tried to find a business model where we can continue to invest in really high quality credible journalism. But make it work financially to have a full time whether hired journalists, typically, yes, we have a mix, we have some freelancers, and contributors at different times. But typically, we prefer to hire a full time journalist, partly because we're not really hiring a journalist, typically that knows everything about our space, because we are such a niche. So it takes a couple of years to learn the lingo and the acronyms and understand how these crazy agencies in development work and it takes a bit of time. And so we're rather have a full time person who can get a chance to kind of get trained up into into our space,
Alan Fleischmann
I think of Devex as also being pretty instrumental in providing firsthand information, you know, understanding a policy, introduction to what policy should do should be be advocated, but also the experts around them, the decision makers around them, and you've had a growing influence yourself on how mainstream media and other outlets, they report on these issues. But they do it differently, there is a Devex difference in how you report versus them, obviously, partly because you understand the issues deeper than most in the media. And you're consistent about that's your focus. But there's also other ways, I'm sure that you know, that there's a reason why your reporting is better, and why you're seeing differently than maybe even before.
Raj Kumar
Yeah, I appreciate that. And I think a couple of things. One, we're reporting for the professionals who do global development work, right. So if you work at the World Bank, or the UN, or USAID, we're reporting for you. And we know that that audience knows a lot, you know, and it's kind of daunting to report for them, because they're experts. And so we can't, we can assume they know some things, which you can't do when you're reporting in the mainstream media. So we can assume our audience has a certain amount of knowledge. But then also, we have to raise the bar on our analysis and our insight, because they know so much we don't want to come across like we don't know, we get out to provide some additional value for them. So. So that's what we try to do. And that means sometimes saying no to stories that others might have said yes to. So we get lots of people coming to us saying, Hey, here's a little example of corruption. You know, we see we know this project is happening, you know, in India or Nigeria or somewhere. And there's, there's a little bit of corruption in that project. And we try to take a pretty hard look to see, is this really a worthwhile story for us? Because the truth is, there's corruption just about everywhere in the world. And if we, if we reported on every, every story, every allegation of minor corruption, like that isn't really going to drive the debate and the conversation around what to do better and differently in space. So we try to really pick our battles.
And so you know, for example, we ended up reporting on the largest foreign aid contract in the world, which is a US government contract for health. And, and we didn't report that there was corruption, we reported that that project just wasn't working very well, you know, that there was a lot of mismanagement, effectively, and you know, inefficiency. And it didn't have to come from anyone's bad intentions, or anyone trying to do anything wrong. But it just came from the reality of a very large scale program, maybe that was poorly designed by the US government. And so we reported on that, that led to congressional hearings, it led to, you know, major changes in the way that the global health contracts are designed by the US government. So you know, had billions of dollars of effect essentially, right, and, and that's the kind of story that we're looking for, that we want to report on. And then those stories, you know, often will get picked up by the mainstream media. And so the New York Times or Reuters, or the Washington Post, or POLITICO, or many others have picked up our stories and, and we'd love to see that and we love when those reporters sometimes cause informally to kind of talk through story and say, you guys know this space better than us, you know, help us think about something we're we've heard. And we see that we have a really complementary role, I think, because we're so niche and narrow and focused on this particular industry, but we can therefore work really well in partnership with other journalists and other publications.
Alan Fleischmann
How do you partner with them? How does that work?
Raj Kumar
I mean, often it's really just informal, but it will be a story we're writing that they then say, this is really a big story. We'd like to pick it up and they're going to report it in a different way. They're going to be a little less wonky, you know, and they're going to talk about it in a way that a broader audience can understand. But that'll happen or sometimes, you know, journalists will just call us and say, can we just talk, you know, give us your insight on something we're hearing and, and we'll do that. So you know, it's an informal partnership, for the most part, occasionally a bit of a more formal one around an event or something but I think You know, we need more, not less to your earlier point like we need more, not less journalism, on these issues and and when there's some big hearing about child survival, and we're the only journalist in the room like that doesn't feel great either. You know, it's nice to say, well, I guess we're here because we have this all to ourselves, but it doesn't feel great. We'd rather see lots of other reporters on this beat.
Alan Fleischmann
And what do you look for in your community of reporters? You know, and your journalists, I mean, the ones you attract to the Devex? You know, obviously, you want a global perspective, I imagine they don't have to be experts on international development, as you said, but adapted a little bit. What are the issues, you want to recover your thinking that they need to have as background traits? Certainly, experience and perspective?
Raj Kumar
Yeah, well, I mean, I'll think about some of our current staff like Helen Murphy who is an editor at Devex, a senior editor, she had 30 years of experience at Bloomberg and Reuters ended up being the bureau chief for Reuters in Colombia, where she's based. And, you know, someone like Helen, who she's reported herself on the ground on the frontlines of stories, you know, she's, she's had to like, really go to places that are tough, and do the kind of journalism that takes courage, and she's done all that. But she also understands what it's like to kind of run a newsroom and to be in a larger scale newsroom. And so we're looking for people like that, because we're small enough, we can't really train somebody into journalism very effectively, you know, we need someone who's got really strong journalistic chops. So we've got people who come from the New York Times, or come from Politico or come from Bloomberg, or you know, from Reuters, et cetera. But then they have to care a lot about our mission. Like, they have to want to cover these stories.
Because these can be frustrating and difficult to narrow and wonky kinds of stories, they need to, they need to get excited by the procurement rules at the Gates Foundation, you know, like, that's got to be interesting to them. And if it is, then then they're probably going to be a good fit for us. Like if they're willing to pound the pavement and really find those insider stories that are just not not going to fall in your lap. They're not coming in through a press release, you got to go out there and really hustle for it. Those are the kinds of reporters we're looking for. And they're the ones I think that can make a real difference in the world. And they feel that when they're here, and they're writing, we did a story last year that ended up leading to the European Union, pausing all of their aid to Somalia, you know, a huge effect on real people's lives. Right. And, and leading to big changes in the way the US government and Europeans handle some of their humanitarian aid. Like that's, that's a real impact. And a lot of journalists want that kind of impact in their work. And they get the opportunity to have that here.
Alan Fleischmann
They also I guess, you're letting them because they're so global, have the firsthand kind of reporting be right on the front lines, which I'm sure other publications do, too. But there's a perspective. I mean, there is definitely something different about debits reporting, and then other reporters. And other reporting. I am curious, what would you define as the Devex difference?
Raj Kumar
Part of it, we call it the Devex angle. And we often struggle with this when we work with freelancers, because we need them to learn that angle before we can effectively work with them. You know, it's to say, What were these insiders who are inside this organization, like what are they talking about? Not just what are people outside saying and getting inside an institution, a UN agency, for example, it's really hard because these institutions are very cloister, they're very careful. You know, if you talk to them through, officially, they're going to tell you very limited things. But we want to know what's going on inside. And it's not to say that there's something bad that's happened, it's very often we want to know what's going on inside, because we think what they're doing is amazing, you know, what they're doing is fascinating and working. And we want to tell that story of innovation in an unlikely place. And, and so it's just kind of that insight or take that is the Devex angle that institutional take like, well, I'll give you the example of the humanitarian situation in Gaza.
You know, there's so many people covering that. We're small, we don't have a reporter on the ground in Gaza. And obviously, it's a very dangerous place to be a reporter. So there's not a lot we can add about the humanitarian response on the ground in the field. But we can cover what's happening inside agencies like USAID, right, because we know them really well. And so we ended up breaking, you know, a really big story, and getting access to some internal memos about what's going on in the humanitarian situation, and reporting that in a way that I think has driven a lot of the broader reporting on that topic. And, you know, so that's the sort of thing we want our reporters to do is get that inside story.
Alan Fleischmann
And tell the story from in many cases from the perspective of the uncommon stories, I mean, these are the insights that you wouldn't normally get, or normally actually hear about or see.
Raj Kumar
That’s right, and some of the biggest stories in the world. Just don't get the attention they need, right? Like the humanitarian crisis going on in Sudan because of the civil war there. It's the biggest humanitarian crisis in the world, affecting many millions of children. And that's really why this gets about no attention. In the mainstream media, I understand why I know how the media works, you know, I get it. But you know, we're just doing our best where we can to try to shine, shine a light on what we think are really important stories in a way that's hopefully valuable to our colleagues and other media, and certainly to our audience.
Alan Fleischmann
Last time you were on the show, actually, we talked about, or you mentioned that the UN General Assembly and the World Economic Forum are the two vital events for you each year. It's UNGA week, and then Davos, I'm curious that that's changed, if that still exists. And then, you know, they obviously say, but whether it still exists for you, as the number one priority. So a little bit more about how you leverage, you know, those gatherings and why it's so important, and other others that have become equally important?
Raj Kumar
Yeah, great question. I mean, like I said earlier, this can be an insider's club. And part of our mission is to break it open. So what we like to do is go to some of these really important convenings, like UN General Assembly week, which is in September every year in New York, like Davos, the World Economic Forum's Annual Meeting and some of their other events. And now that list has grown. And we'd like to go to those things. And we like to kind of bring our audience along with us, right, because most people can't attend these kinds of events, we can be there, we can be in the room. So we host our own sessions on the sidelines, we livestream a lot of those, we host reporters attending many of the events that are going on during a big week, like the UN General Assembly, we can kind of report that out to our global audience. So that's part of the service we're trying to provide. And that list has grown now includes COP you know, which is the big climate, the annual climate convening. So we attend that, we host side events there, we host you know, a summit, the World Health Assembly, which is going on, you know, here in May and and it's a really critical week during, in Geneva for the world global health community. And so we host a multi day event there, the World Bank has become really important with the new Presidency of Ajay Banga, and, and a whole new mission there the World Bank and across the multilateral development bank. So we have a big presence at the World Bank spring and annual meetings. And so that the number of events we attend and that are important to us has grown, and the mission of opening those events up and bringing them to our audience continues.
Alan Fleischmann
Of that. And are either one of those your Olympics, your number one?
Raj Kumar
I guess the UN General Assembly, probably is I'm gonna be going to that for about a dozen years. And it just keeps becoming a bigger and bigger deal. When I first started going there. It was a pretty sleepy diplomatic convening, and really didn't feel very relevant to people outside of that cloistered un diplomatic community. And now it's just blown wide open and fortune 500 CEOs are there. You've got investors, you've got of course the Clinton Global Initiative was their major convening during that week, many other convenings happened during that week, a lot of philanthropy is present and talking about their issues there. So it's just become like a big week for the sustainable development goals. And for every climate issue you can think of is all over there. So that is probably our, our Super Bowl if I had to name one. But we've got you know, a lot of contenders now that are a close second to that UN General Assembly week.
Alan Fleischmann
And are there some that are emerging right now that you'd love to share that are kind of convenings, that are less known, that you think are very relevant?
Raj Kumar
Well, so we do an annual convening where we're really in the supporting role, it's not our event, but we are the supporting role to MasterCard, the company, and MasterCard hosts an annual event now in Washington DC called the Global Inclusive Growth Summit. I mean, it's super aligned to the issues we focus on. And so they brought us in as a media partner. And now we've done a couple of years in a row, where we've really tried to take an event they already had, but turn it into something much bigger. And so we just finished it, you know, just happened here in DC, several weeks ago. And it's a really big event because it brings together the private sector, with the global development community and the social impact community here in the United States, and tries to kind of connect these unlikely bedfellows and really talk about innovation and solutions. And, you know, just an amazing event. We got a bunch of fortune 500 CEOs on stage, we had Melinda Gates, we had Megan Rapinoe and Rosario Dawson, and, you know, lots of celebrities, activists, leaders from you know, outside the places you might expect. We had Elton John as an example, and thinking about all his activism on global health issues and HIV/AIDS, so you know, it's a really important convening that if it's not on your listeners radar screen, I think is one that's really valuable to pay some attention to.
Alan Fleischmann
How do you also distinguish the kind of events you put on? Because your convenings are known now as well. Tell us a little bit about what inspires you to put people together? Where do you do it? And how important is that? convening power is uncommon bedfellows power, I would argue that you pulled together and it still isn't as relevant. Now, as I imagined it is. It's
Raj Kumar
just more and more relevant. I don't know if you had this experience, Alan, but I feel like during the pandemic, a lot of executives I spoke to said, Well, we're not traveling much now. And we're, you know, we're, we're doing everything by zoom, and it's working. So I guess when this is over, we're not going to ever go back to flying all over the world to attend conferences, are we? And I kind of bought into that too, I sort of thought, well, maybe this virtual thing is here to stay. Boy, was I wrong. I mean, it has come back with a vengeance. And I think people more than ever see the need to gather in person. Of course, with virtual components and hybrid components, which we do a lot of, but it just feels like people want to be together. And that whatever the issue is, it's nowadays, it's so cross cutting, that you're not going to solve it, if you're just talking to your the people, you know, you know, and so that's what convening is so important is you gotta get out there and meet people that you otherwise, you wouldn't have even heard that their organization or that they exist. And so that's, that's what we'd love to do is to get people together that you might not have considered. And to me, it's a big compliment. When I find out, somebody attends one of our events and says, Well, like I didn't know, half the people were working in the space that I'm working in. And that's what we're shooting for.
Alan Fleischmann
So cool. And like with everything else, your vision and your mission, is there a “Devex Way” or a “Raj Kumar Way,” when you're thinking about how you bring people together?
Raj Kumar
Well, I’d say a couple things. So one, you probably know this, but I actually personally moderate something like 150 events a year, which might sound crazy, and it is but I actually do it. So you know, I pay a lot of attention to that role of being a moderator both for my own work in it. And also for my colleagues or, you know, editors and reporters at Devex that moderate events, like we really try to take that role very seriously. And we try to bring some expertise and knowledge to the conversation. And we try to have a real discussion, like not, okay, now this panel is gonna speak and that panel is gonna speak. And then the last ones, we tried to like, have a really dynamic discussion and push people a little bit and really bring the audience into the conversation.
And so we're always looking for ways to do that better. Because we're all busy. And we think it's just a great mark of respect to come and spend your time attending one of our events or listening to one of our panels. And like, if you're gonna do that, we want to make this really valuable for you. And when we get people like you, you know, with all your expertise Alan and you’re willing to spend a little time with us as you have in the past, like, we want to make sure you get full value out of it too, and that we're getting everything that you wanted to say out, sometimes that can be very tough, because in a lot of our big summits, you know, onstage presence, like it might be a 10 minute segment. And we've got this world leader for 10 minutes, you know, we've got to get the most out of them. So that's one thing we pay a lot of attention to that is sort of the Devex thing. And we really try to make sure we get the most out of whatever time we have for the people on stage and the people in the audience.
Alan Fleischmann
That's very cool. I also, you know, I think because obviously you're built on a backbone of technology, how does technology help you mean, you really anatomy theorisation to if you want to pick another filter, because you're promoting and spotlighting the things that matter most and international development, as well as a gathering as well as a place to go to kind of develop your career. But technology, the role of technology, the role of technology for you and your backbone, but the role of technology also in how you think it can transform what you're accomplishing or even advance it or is it a problem?
Raj Kumar
Yeah, I mean, technology is something you have to pay attention to. As a media organization, I would say like, the one of the early things I learned just talking to other people in journalism. And if you remember, we started the year 2000. So that was right, at the time when journalism was being totally disrupted by the advent of the internet and buying new platforms right?
So I think I think, you know, so the news media in general was like, pretty radically transformed by technology. And so one of the early lessons I got talking to people and looking at the space carefully was, if we want to be successful, we can't see ourselves just as like an information provider. We have to see ourselves as both information and technology we have to like. We have to embed that in our DNA.
And so we had to go out there and think about the technology design and investment in the same way we would think about the content design and investment. And that led us to build a whole bunch of technology products that are, you know, custom that really serve a unique purpose. So like, we have this platform that I talked about for funding, where we're gathering all the funding information in the world around global development and putting it in this database. And then you could say, “Well, I'm really only interested in climate issues.” And so you can go in there and get, you know, climate related projects and funding.
And well, I'm only interested in Central America, and you can see just those things, right. So we built that platform, we built a platform for organizations I mentioned, we built up a database of experts who work in global development, and that now has over a million profiles. And so, you know, we've had to invest in technology and really pay a lot of attention to it over the years. It is a challenge, though, because it moves really fast. We're a small organization, you know, like right sizing, that investment is always a tricky decision. And now with AI, you know, thinking about how do we stay ahead of that curve? So we're paying a lot of attention to and we're starting to adopt some AI in some of our internal processes to see like, can we make ourselves more efficient? Can we drive more impact for our audience by using some of these tools?
Alan Fleischmann
And when you want to get into your leadership thinking as well, I do actually convene for others. When you bring such a strong brand, you know, and obviously a strong authentic brand, I would argue, but I imagine if you're a big company, and you wanted to bring people together to have real conversations, real kind of your own Summit, whether it's internal or external. Can you partner with Devex, can you actually become a sponsor of a Devex convening?
Raj Kumar
Yeah. Yeah, we do a lot of that, in fact, so your usual model is, we host our own big summit. And that's editorially independent, we run it, we pick everything, the speakers and the content and the topics, etc. But then alongside it will create space for a company or, you know, whatever, an NGO foundation to partner with us and set up an event that's up their design, that's, it's, you know, it's their topic, it's their speaker. And they'll work with us, and we'll help make sure it's a really successful event. But we're really just clear with the audience that, hey, that's an event that is being sponsored and paid for by this company. And so it's not an editorially independent event, but it's happening maybe in the same venue, as our editorially independent content is happening. And, and so for an audience, it's great, they can go to some of our sessions, they can go to this other session. And so we do that. And we do that in the format of, you know, big public open events. We do private roundtables, dinners. You know, we do all kinds of, you know, workshops. So depending on what the goal of our partner is, we figure out a way to have an event together that can really advance some of the issues they're working on and care about.
Alan Fleischmann
That's really cool. So let's transition a little bit. But let me first remind people, you're listening to Leadership Matters, on SiriusXM, and on leadership matters show.com. I'm your host, Alan Fletcher. And I'm here with Raj Kumar, the Founder and President and Editor in Chief of Devex. And we're discussing not only his journey, which we did the first time he was on the show, but really the origins and makeup of wide Devex, his company is a media empire. And his convening Empire has become increasingly more relevant every day. I kinda want to get into your thinking about leadership, because I'm sure you have it. First of all, you're a great leader yourself. And it's not easy to be a leader of any organization, you're an entrepreneur who, over almost 25 years, has built something that nobody else has tried to copy. And you may have affected your competition in the mainstream media that doesn't focus on international development, primarily or entirely like you do. And you have, but you haven't really had a great, you know, real competition, which speaks a lot. And maybe I'm wrong, maybe you're going to tell me I'm wrong. There's a lot of competition by the other media, but I think of you as being a pioneer who has managed to kind of create a lane and own it. But I am curious how you have balanced your coverage, how you balance your events, you speak to the private sector, you speak to the philanthropic sector, you speak to policymakers? How do you balance those different stakeholders? How do you prioritize and maybe they're all equal? Or maybe it depends on the issue that you're trying to advance or you're trying to report about, but what role do you play? And what role does leadership play in international development when you look at those different stakeholders?
Raj Kumar
Yeah, that's a great question. I guess. First of all, I'd say we don't get everything right, you know, but we at least try to have a clear Northstar, you know what, where are we? Where are we trying to go? As we make these kinds of decisions about what to cover and what not to cover, you know, how to prioritize issues and topics and our Northstar is we really want to drive the most important debates in this sector, right? Like if this is a community in an industry that's designed to do good things in the world to fight climate change, and, you know, try to eliminate malaria and all the other important issues that are out there, we want to drive the debates that could lead to more and better action. And so we just have to ask ourselves as a relatively small organization, you know, 150 people, you know, with limited resources, like, where do we want to prioritize? Where do we want to focus, like, what are the stories or the issues or the events that are going to move the needle in some way. And, and that's what we try to do. So I think that mission orientation makes it a lot easier to make the kind of tough trade off decisions that you just, you know, alluded to, because otherwise, everything's important, you know. And so we really just have to try to make those decisions, as best we can, knowing that we've got limited resources, and only so many journalists to cover these topics, etc. But the way global development actually works, all of those areas matter, like the policymaker, the member of Congress, is a really important player in this. And so you will know, we do a lot of events where we interview members of Congress, and we have lots and lots of members of Congress who are readers of Devex, right. And, in fact, the Senate Foreign Relations Committee subscribes to Devex, which we're proud of, as does the British Parliament and the European Parliament. So, you know, we feel like we're serving that audience and relaying what they're thinking about what policymakers are thinking about really is important. But of course, policymakers don't like to just come up with a new regulation or a new funding appropriation out of nowhere, you know, we've got to cover the advocacy groups, because they're the ones often driving that. And then, of course, we got to cover business, because business plays such a huge role in how many of these issues that ultimately get addressed so so we have to we don't prioritize one area over another, we do just try to ask ourselves with limited resources, limited time, where can we have the most impact as a news organization? And that's what we try to focus on.
Alan Fleischmann
You're heavily involved as we started before the annual meetings of the IMF and World Bank as well. How did you go at this year's meetings? That just happened just a few weeks ago? And the meetings bring you hope? Or do they make you more discouraged? How do you actually evaluate where things are?
Raj Kumar
So I think this is one of the biggest stories right now in global development, right? So we've had 20 plus years where there was a bipartisan consensus in the United States. And the same thing existed in Europe and elsewhere. Look, we need to spend more money on addressing these kinds of challenges around the world. So more money was spent, and we've seen huge budget increases, doubling tripling of foreign aid around the world. And here in the US with a lot of success, you know, a lot of children's lives have been saved through vaccination, a lot of the work on HIV/AIDS has been really successful. So that happens, but that's starting to stop, that's plateauing. You know, the political, the political kind of consensus is fraying big time. And the humanitarian needs are going way up at the same time. So more and more of what was a traditional global development budget coming out of the US government or coming out of the British government is going toward emergencies, it's going toward an emergency situation around migration refugees, or, or, you know, whatever natural disaster like that's where it's going. So that has meant that the multilateral development bank's like the World Bank have become way more important than they ever were. Everyone is looking to them and saying, you know, they've already been capitalized, they already work and have money and they have a model, can we make them much bigger? Can we sort of supercharge the multilateral development banks? And this is coming from the US government and from the German government and from the British government, it's not coming from some sort of radical activist, it's coming from governments who are saying we need these institutions to become much more aggressive.
And that's partly why President Biden ended up putting forward Ajay Banga to be the President of the World Bank, and he is in very unlikely character, to take on this kind of quasi governmental institution. He's a private sector guy through and through, who was the CEO of MasterCard, and he has come in, and and he's a little bit of a bull in a china shop, you know, he's there to say, We're shaking this place up, and we're going to really change it and he's growing it dramatically and changing the business model. And so that story for us is huge. And it's huge for us, because it's huge for the world. You know, it might not work but if the World Bank can actually change and become bigger and more effective and if the other its sister institutions, you know, the Inter American Development Bank with you know, Elon gold fan who's also another radical leader taking charge there. If the Asian Development Bank and many of these other banks can, can shift and change, you might see real progress against the climate and health and development goals that we're talking about. And if they don't, if they don't, it's going to be a very challenging moment for the world because the money is drying up and donor capitals like Washington, DC, and the needs are just getting bigger and bigger. elsewhere.
Alan Fleischmann
I'm curious now a little bit about the leadership stuff here? Who has been your great, most influential mentor? And have there been places to envy I guess, in your career? Has it really been you the entrepreneur that keeps going, focusing on what you got and keep building?
Raj Kumar
Well, you talked about Bloomberg earlier. So I will mention Bloomberg certainly, because, you know, I've just been in awe of what Mike Bloomberg and his whole team there have built and, and obviously, we will never reach that kind of scale, but just seeing what they built the culture and, and the focus on data journalism, like that has been really important. Another organization, I mean, you know, David Bradley, really well. And, you know, he created along with Jeff Hussites, the Advisory Board and the Corporate Executive Board. And we learned a lot from that too and their model of membership and kind of seeing instead of saying, Hey, these are our customers, or clients looking at them, that people that they serve as members. And we made that right from the beginning because that's part of our focus. So we don't typically talk about subscribers the way a lot of news organizations do about members. And it's partly like a mark of respect for our reader and, and the sense that, like, they have a lot of expertise, and maybe more than we do on the topics we're reporting on. So we need to serve them as we would serve a member in a membership organization. So anyway, those are a couple of places I've learned a lot from, you know, you and I both worked in politics earlier in our career. And so I learned from working in politics a lot about urgency. Like, it's helpful in the world of politics, you have an election day. And that election day kind of causes you to race up against this moment in time. And what I realized is like, if you don't have that in, in a business or social enterprise like that, you kind of have to create that urgency. And that's really important to have a culture of urgency, I think. So you have something you're driving against always, and you don't just sort of get complacent say, well, we've been around 25 years, like, we can take it easy. You can't you know, in the world of business, as you will know, like there's always competition. There is always even whether it's competition externally, or it's like about the missed opportunity of not growing fast enough to serve the need in the market that you can, whatever it is, you gotta have that sense of urgency. And so I learned a lot of that from my work.
Alan Fleischmann
I've been in Nairobi twice in the last month or month and a half. And, you know, when I was there, I was with Bridgewater investment firm, I was there with Global Citizen, which is a great engineering organization that fights to be caused against poverty. And with Ajay Banga, who mentioned, of the World Bank in about 23, heads of state focusing on Africa. And it was amazing to watch the eagerness to create partnerships and to bring your best self to what it is that you have to bring, but there was definitely a very all Africa kind of focus. Are you feeling that's also bringing momentum to your work that there's this thrust of, you know, we understand you and we want to work with you because though the issues of any of the issues actually have no borders?
Raj Kumar
Yeah, they don't. And I think there's also just a really big focus on the geopolitical competition between the US and China. And, China and Russia, really, and Africa is sort of a place where that is playing out. And so there's a real desire to say, and obviously, Kenya's president, President Ruto is here in Washington for a state visit, for a lot of these reasons where the US government and allies of the US government need to really show that they have an offering, when it comes to the opportunity in Africa not to see Africa is sort of a basket case. A charity case in Africa, as you saw in Nairobi, has incredible entrepreneurship. It is a technology center, Nairobi is. There's just amazing energy across the continent of Africa. There's incredible critical mineral deposits and a lot of countries. So it's a big business opportunity too and I think that is, you know, causing a lot of the development community to look at Africa a little bit differently and to say, you know, there's a huge need no doubt there humanitarian issues, no doubt, but there's a lot more than just that.
Alan Fleischmann
Right. I mean, and I have a couple minutes left, I'm realizing here. So I wanted to make sure I capture what would you what would you say to a younger, not that you're not young, to a younger Raj Kumar, a young entrepreneur, a young CEO, and aspiring CEO, a journalist or future change maker on the global level, all of whom really are your eco system in orbit. You know, what would you say to them? If they're interested in following your force footsteps or imagine being one of your stakeholders within your orbit or your ecosystem. What would you say to them?
Raj Kumar
I guess one thought that comes to mind is, things change really fast, you know, like 25 years is a long time. And it feels like a long time. And I look back and think how much things have evolved in that time. And so it would have been easy for me to make the mistake of thinking like, I want to have a more traditional career, because, you know, that's the kind of thing my parents might have looked at and said, Well, that makes sense, he joined that company, or that would have just gotten a lot of social approval, because people would have heard of it. Right. For years and years we were toiling at Devex be what's next, and heard of that, right. So I think what I would say to younger people who are trying to find their way is that things change really quickly. Don't think that the jobs that have a lot of status, and prestige, are the only things out there for you to chase, like, think about where you wanna have an impact in the world. And it might, it might just turn out that if you found a real problem in the real world, and you think you could do something to help solve it that one day, that will have been a great career and a great job, and you'll look back on it and feel good about it, even if it isn't the usual path that everyone else is taking. And I think, you know, it's understood I've got kids you got kids is really understandable. As parents, you sort of want your kid to do the tried and true thing, right? Because it feels safe, and you're worried that they're going to do something that isn't, but in some ways, I think the
Alan Fleischmann
Which parents haven't here? So it's kind of, you know, you want them to do the tried and true, but you haven't tried it.
Raj Kumar
That's all I'm saying. Right, like, so I just think we need to like culturally, as as a country, we need to really celebrate. And we do and a lot of ways people who go out there and try something different. And you might fail, right? It might not work. And there were moments at Devex when I thought we were gonna fail, definitely, there were some moments early on, it did not feel like we had a real chance of making it. And this has not been an easy journey. No doubt about it. But but you know, if you're doing something you believe in, and I think he's having a real impact. I think that's what matters most whether you succeed or you fail. And that's what I guess I would say, that's
Alan Fleischmann
Definitely more of a very entrepreneurial culture when you celebrate when you failed, in order to get to where you went. You know, that's actually very true. Well, this has been such an amazing pleasure again, it's our second time doing an hour together. And I feel like we need more time, said we're gonna have your third time.
Raj Kumar
I feel the same way. And I wish I wasn't gonna ask them the questions. I mean, I would love to hear your take on so many of these. So we'll have to do that as well.
Alan Fleischmann
I would love that. You have been listening to Leadership Matters. I'm your host, Alan Fleischmann. We've had an extraordinary hour with a very good friend and a great inspirational CEO, founder and leader globally. Raj Kumar, who's really the inspiration and co-founder or just founder, actually of Devex. And what you've been building Raj is so profoundly important. I don't think it's ever been more important than it is now. We need to find the truths of the world. And I look to you to know that you will find them. And I'm really grateful for what you do to make society both here in this country and perhaps most importantly, around the world better because of the great reporting and the convening that you do. So thank you so much. Thank you.