Purpose-Driven Careers in the Age of AI

Darlene Dam: M the first thing that you can actually do is to just simply learn. So there's this problem that you're passionate about. Go out and read about it. Go out and find out who else is working on it. Go out and reach out to the organizations and the people who are working on it, and meet for coffee with them, um, and learn. And you can do that while you're taking care of other responsibilities in your life or even working a different job to pay your bills.

Jill: Welcome to the Future of Work podcast with Berkeley Extension and Edge and Tech at the University of California. Focused on expanding diversity and gender equity in tech, Edge and Tech is part of the Innovation Hub at Citrus, the center for IT Research in the Interest of Society, and the Banatau Institute. UC Berkeley Extension is the continuing education arm of the University of California at Berkeley. As AI and automation rewrite the rules of work, many professionals are waking up to a sharp disconnect from that they are working harder than ever. But for companies whose missions feel empty, they are asking themselves, how do I start using my expertise to solve the problems I actually care about? In this episode, we explore the growing impact technology revolution that is creating an entirely new generation of careers focused on solving real world challenges. From sustainability and healthcare to education, accessibility and social innovation. We're looking at how purpose driven work is evolving, why human centered skills matter, and how today's learners and professionals can position themselves for careers that combine technology impact and personal fulfillment. To discuss this topic, we're delighted to welcome Darlene Dam, author of youf Dream Job Is the Impact Technology Revolution and the New Jobs Saving the World. Darlene is an impact driven visionary who co founded two of the world's first impact technology companies in aerospace and drone transport. She has taught and mentored thousands of founders and executives who went on to build more impact technology companies across industries. Darlene served in the leadership and strategy roles at Singularity, Ashoka, uh, the World bank, nonprofits in Vietnam and Myanmar, and she has spoken about impact technology at the United nations, the World Food Program, south by Southwest, Google, Salesforce, Intuit, Walmart, Sony, Aramco, and has delivered TED talks in Villanueva and Budapest. Welcome Darlene.

Darlene Dam: Thank you, Jill. It's so wonderful to be here.

Jill: Well, I'd love to start by debunking a lot of those social impact myths that are keeping people from pursuing their dream jobs. Many people are stuck in these sort of five limiting beliefs and I'm hoping you can help us explain why they're no longer true. So the first one is this binary Trap, you can either do good and be poor or do bad and be rich. Is that still true?

Darlene Dam: So this I think was true when I started my career. When I came right out of college, I started working in the nonprofit sector doing work that I thought really mattered and helped a lot of people. And I soon found I would need a second job on the weekends or working at night to be able to, uh, save money or save money for a retirement account or you know, pay for extra expenses because the salaries were too low at that time. Jumping ahead around probably the 2010s, things started to change. And I see a lot of that actually is driven by technology. So new technologies emerged that people started to use to solve social problems, to build companies and startups solving social and environmental problems. And these were also actually successful businesses. And so these new jobs emerged where you could have a normal salary and you could be building something that was solving a problem. And at the same time you also started to see the nonprofit and the for profit sector converge a bit. So nonprofit said, uh, oh, we need business plans, you know, we, we need to be able to make sure our employees have benefits. And then companies said, we're going to start doing uh, corporate social respons responsibility. But over time the two sectors have been merging together and I think technology has been a driver of that.

Jill: Let's talk about how they're merging together because another myth that's out there is that social impact is a charity. It's dependent on donations. Is that model still the only way to do good?

Darlene Dam: Yeah, yeah. So I think that has changed dramatically. In this book I use the term impact technology revolution is because I think there actually is this massive change that is happening. But basically today if you want to go work for a charity, you can do that, but you can also go work for a large corporation, you can work for a startup, you can work for a non profit using advanced, some of the most advanced technologies on the planet in your career. And uh, this also comes back to the question of what is social impact? So is social impact working at like a food bank or you know, volunteering to uh, work helping the neighborhood kids, or is social impact building new technology for an electric boat or an electric car which might, you know, be able to reduce pollution and help people. Right. So we're seeing there's now a wide range of ways to contribute to the world and that the way of doing that looks very, very different.

Jill: That broadening of the term social impact I think is a really interesting and key part to this conversation, that there isn't one way to do good?

Darlene Dam: Yes, yes. I mean, at the end of the day, I think it comes back to each of us because one person can feel very strongly that social impact should involve some sort of sacrifice. And that's, I think, legitimate, if that is what matters to you. At the same time, that definition has limited the number of people who can make a career out of that. So someone else might say social impact is working for a satellite company that is going to be able to help cities plan for floods. Right. And they might have a high paying job and they might work at a startup that is giving them equity. So all of these definitions are changing

Jill: right now, and we'll get into more where you can go do these jobs in a little bit. But I wanted to go back to something you just said which was about technology sort of changing the game. This flies in the face of, uh, another stereotype, which is that nonprofits are where technology goes to die. This idea that nonprofits are warm but inefficient, whereas companies are cold but super efficient. How are you seeing technology just rewriting those?

Darlene Dam: I think everyone's using technology right now. And you'll have some nonprofits that, you know will not use technology, and you have others that are using very advanced technologies. A World Food Program, technically they're, you know, a humanitarian organization, part of the un but they have a frontier technology division and they have a whole program for startups using tech. And they, over the last 10 years, they've been using blockchain, they've been building autonomous vehicles that go through war zones. They have one of the most sophisticated logistics systems on our planet. So that's an example of an institution that says we have this massive problem that we have to solve and we need the best technology to do it. And then at the same time, if you look at the corporate side, yes. There are companies that are also using the best technology in the world to build amazing products and services. So I think it's kind of a myth to pigeonhole either sector because it happens across both.

Jill: All right, I got one final myth I want you to debunk, and I think you can do this very well. There's a technical barrier. You can't lead a tech revolution or a tech company without a STEM degree.

Darlene Dam: Yes. I think that is also a big myth. I say that because I spent over 10 years working with startups and it's been super interesting over the last 10 years to see people who you wouldn't think belonged in the tech startup world enter that world and use technology so I'm thinking about back in 2015, I met an actress who formed a company, one of the first edutainment companies that was based in Kenya. And she did this with other female actresses and producers from the the U.S. africa, London. But you know, as an actress, she's not a technologist, but she figured out, well, I can work with technologists. I have the vision and I have the ability to work with others to carry this out. Anyone from any field, I think, can build a tech company today.

Jill: Well, I think you can speak from personal experience. I believe you were a history major and yet you co founded one of the very first drone companies. Tell us about your story.

Darlene Dam: Yes, yes. So, um, so I studied history in my undergraduate degree and I worked for Nonprofits in the U.S. and in southeast Asia, in Vietnam, Myanmar, mainly on, you know, education, cross cultural projects in the field, work running exchange programs. Then in 2011 I realized like technology was starting to play a role in the social sector and, and in particular it was people were starting to use tech to fundraise, so, you know, donate money via text message. Like that was a huge change for the nonprofit sector because there was this new way to fundraise at the same time. I always had a love for space since I was a kid. My grandfather worked on the Apollo mission and I happened to live next door to the assistant of Dr. Robert Goddard and Esther Goddard, who invented the first rockets in the U.S. and so I, uh, heard these stories when I was like 2 or 3 years old. Right, but then at the time you had to choose also you go into social impact or you go into tech and engineering. So in 2011, I saw there was an opportunity at a place called Singularity University, which was running a program to help people understand how to use technology to solve massive social problems. I went to that program and during that summer co founded a company called matternet, which you was the first company to create a commercial drone transport company. So this was back in 2011 and uh, it inspired a whole industry to emerge. So at that point I realized like, I can learn about technology. You work on a company for two years, it's very similar to like getting a degree. And then after being with that company for a few years, I went back to Singularity to teach students, other participants, how to use tech to solve social problems.

Jill: So what was the social impact problem that you were trying to solve with drones?

Darlene Dam: We were seeing that in low income parts of the world, there were a lot of places where people were walking eight hours a day to go to a Medical clinic, they might, you know, need to do a blood test, or maybe somebody's in a remote location or the road is simply washed out during bad weather and they need blood or they need some medicine that's not there. And so when we started that project, we were calling up people all over the world, from people that worked at large logistics companies to people that drove motorcycles as volunteers to get health supplies, and just trying to find out, is there an opportunity to use these very tiny flying robots that at the time were only toys? There were toys, and people in Hollywood were starting to use them. And then you also had these massive weapons that were dropping bombs, but there wasn't this in between layer. So the inspiration for that actually came from a social problem.

Jill: Yeah, it's absolutely extraordinary how you can take an idea and apply it in different challenge spaces or different issue areas. When you co founded the company, what do you think you brought as somebody from more the humanities side, to balance out what the CTO was bringing to the conversation?

Darlene Dam: Yeah, yeah. I mean, for me, it's really important, whatever you're building, to have a clear problem you're trying to solve. And I had a background in international relations, international development, had, you know, lived around the world, seen problems firsthand. Everyone at the time thought it was a terrible, crazy idea that to, uh, the point where they almost were going to kick us out of the program, they thought it was such a bad idea. I reached out to the former Cambodian ambassador to the United States, and I asked him, what do you think of using, you know, drone? We were still in the idea stage, and he thought that the drone existed and there were these massive floods in Cambodia, and he wanted it that moment. And then he actually got mad at me when I told him that it was still an idea. And to me, that was like this moment of this is actually a really important company to build because someone is telling me that people are dying because it doesn't exist.

Jill: I think you talked about the technology like, this is interesting. It could solve this very real problem. And then you found a customer who really needed it. What are some of the other technologies that we should be thinking about reapplying in the social sector space?

Darlene Dam: I mean, this is a super interesting question because with these new technologies, you look at them and there's actually all these applications. Should a drone. Back in 2011, the industry did not exist at all. No one was building it. Like, should a drone carry medicine? Should a drone work on a farm? Should a drone help with floods? Should a drone. And we realized there's actually like 200 different ways this drone could be used. And then you have to go through the process of, like, what is the best use case, where is the market? And as you go through it, there's actually a lot of good choices. And then you have to think at the end of the day, well, what do I really want to do with this? Jumping forward to today, there's a lot of new technologies that I've been following that I'm super interested in. So one is how we're using artificial intelligence and data to forecast and predict. So you'll hear in the news that we have, you know, these new forecasting companies, these, you know, sort of gambling companies. There's a lot with sports forecasting, right? So prediction markets. In the financial sector, we have technology now that is helping us predict the future, and people are betting on it. But there's actually people in the social sector that are looking at how do you use those same technologies to prevent a social problem or an environmental problem from happening? Because it's easier to prevent it than to solve it after it happens.

Jill: So using prediction and data as a tool to not just solve a problem, but to prevent the problem in the first place.

Darlene Dam: So there's a, uh, nonprofit in San Jose that is using data to predict who might become homeless. And then they intervene actually before that happens, because it's very expensive to help someone after the fact. The World Food Program, you know, they try to predict food shortages, famines before it happens and being able to intervene. So if you think about all the social problems in the world, which ones can we actually prevent? Using data, using AI?

Jill: So what are some of the other, quote, exponential technologies? We're looking at sensors. Obviously, there's been a huge advance in AI. What are some of the other trends you're watching?

Darlene Dam: I personally become really fascinated by fusion. We have nuclear reactors that generate electricity and power using fission. We've been doing that for decades. But fusion is also a way to generate nuclear power, but it's much safer. And in the last five, 10 years, advances in computing, AI, exponential technologies, helped researchers control all of the different mirrors and lasers in a really sophisticated way to get to the point where the first, uh, fusion reaction at Lawrence Livermore generated more power coming out than it required putting in. So now we have, I think it's like 26 startups working on fusion technology. And this is super interesting because this is a technology that it'll probably be here in the 2000 and 30s, which isn't far from now. And on the social impact side, it'll be a huge game changer, either helping people access, um, affordable energy, or it might disrupt renewable energies, it might disrupt fossil fuels, it might cause geopolitical problems. Right. So we don't know how it's going to unfold, but I think it's a really important technology to be tracking now. And if you care about social impact, like, why can't a social innovator create their own fusion company? Like now's the time to do it if you're going to do that.

Jill: Well, I'm glad to hear you talk about energy because one of the big concerns a lot of people have is if more and more people are using generative AI, large language models, we're going to have all these data centers that are going to be creating all this heat, they're going to be using all this water. So in your striving to do something good for social impact, you could actually be creating harm. So how do you see, you know, the role of social impact innovators to mitigate some of those harms?

Darlene Dam: I write about this in my book when I'm talking about jobs. So there's jobs that are building these technologies and solutions where ideally the builders will like, identify those harms in advance and do something about them, you know, so that they're not as harmful. But then on the other side, there's also a lot of interesting jobs right now in ethics, in regulation. Like we, we actually have jobs that are, that exist to prevent those harms. So that's an uh, I think a super interesting career path too if you're, you're interested in like regulating that technology.

Jill: Can you share some of the career paths of the innovators that you profile in your book? What can we learn from, uh, some of the people that you told their story?

Darlene Dam: There are people from all different backgrounds from all over the world. Like there are startups that are using, uh, blockchain to create new types of loans. In Nepal there are, there's a startup in Kenya that's building an atmospheric water harvester to pull water out of the air to provide clean water to, um, villages, schools, companies. Right? There are innovators working in the Amazon who are trying to figure out how does artificial intelligence interact with indigenous knowledge. Right. There's startups, um, working here in Oakland building electric boats that don't pollute. They're even, um, groups like Nvidia, they're building a giant digital twin of the planet that looks at climate, that looks to be able to look at things like water at food supply. So I think what I was trying to convey in the book is no matter what country you're from, what your background is, from what you're trained in, there's a job for you in this impact technology revolution.

Jill: And there's not one, there's not one type of person that can do this.

Darlene Dam: Exactly. Like one of the things that the World Food Program shared is that they had a partnership with Google around accounting. So if you think about an accountant, uh, you don't immediately think social impact, right? But what if you're the World Food Program and you're going into hundreds of locations, there's an earthquake, there's a war, and everyone's using a different accounting system in a different language. Maybe one's paper, one's like a, uh, software. How do you close your books? They build an AI system to help reduce the amount of time to close their books. I think it was from several years down to one year. There's a rule. If you're an accountant, if you're a lawyer, if you're an energy expert, if you're an impact expert, there's a lot of jobs out there doing good.

Jill: Let's talk about a couple of the people. So you mentioned Lala Nguyen and she was doing ed tech. Tell us a little bit about her story.

Darlene Dam: Yes, yes. So when I was in grad school back in my 20s, I spent some time in Myanmar working at a school and I met a woman named HLA Nguyen. And uh, she grew up in Myanmar and was training to be a teacher and was very interested in how could she help her country go from a rope based education system into a 21st century like learning paradigm where the education is much more interactive, the kids are, you know, learning to come up with their own ideas versus just memorization. And um, she then went on to found what I believe is the first edtech company in Myanmar, as well as maybe one of the first or second startups in the entire country. So, uh, she realized that there were these really amazing technologies coming out around 2015, 2016, augmented reality that made learning fun if you had a device. And um, so she launched that startup in Myanmar and it was super successful. Like, you know, thousands of kids, teachers, parents, all wanted to learn from her technology. And uh, she also built a successful company. She had to really build from the ground up. She had to teach business leaders how to become startup investors. Right? She had to travel hundreds of miles to find the one person who had the technical talent to help her. So she really just had to not only just build this startup or product, but launch an industry in her, in her country to help solve this education problem. She was also, she is a mother of a young child. And, um, she's also shared that she's dyslexic and she dropped out of school several times while she was growing up. So she, she was very committed to helping fix the education system in her country.

Jill: So both having the experience as a teacher, but the passion to change the system, really.

Darlene Dam: Yes, yes. And to do whatever it would take to change that. And then that, uh, that passion got tested, of course, because, you know, a civil war broke out in the country and this was really an incredibly challenging time. You know, not only was the government like shutting down the bank so she couldn't pay her staff or turning off, you know, the electricity and Internet, but there were literally there was like violence in the street right outside her home. And she eventually was actually put it on a wanted list because she was in a powerful position in the country. And, um, at one point thought her entire ed tech company, which I think had 60 staff working for it, serving tens of thousands of kids, she thought the war was going to destroy it. And m. Then she was on this wanted list. And so she went into, uh, to hiding in the jungle, in a temple. And while she was there, she was like, devastated. But she saw in this place where she was hiding that kids were using her technology to keep learning during the middle of this war. And she realized at that point, like she had built a solution. Like, even with this ongoing war, the kids were still learning. And, uh, so she solved this problem. The kids could still learn. Eventually she had to flee the country, rebuild the startup outside and inside the country, but is now serving a million kids remotely impressive.

Jill: So some things we can take away from her experience was this persistence, but also she kind of made her solution portable and she was able to kind of take it to new audiences as well.

Darlene Dam: I don't think someone who hadn't grown up in a country at war could have developed that solution. It was her experience of living through that that she knew, you know, this could happen again. We have to make sure that this technology works offline. Right. So again, going back to innovation, you know, you have a startup and there's a different role. There's the person who understands the problem and the solution. Right. There's people that can build it, there's people who fund it, but it's all a team. And everyone's knowledge and their expertise and their resources, they're all valuable.

Jill: What are some of the other best practices that you've seen successful social impact innovators do.

Darlene Dam: I think it's super important, you know, if you're working on a new technology or a new solution, to really think about the people that you're helping. They're part of your team, they're part of your extended team. They also have ownership, they have a point of view. They can help you develop this technology and the solution. And the innovators, I think who really do that, they succeed both like they're getting the input needed to make a good product, to make a good solution. Right. But they're also, in a way, they're developing their partnerships, their customers, all that process from day one, day zero, actually.

Jill: So really the entrepreneur best practice of co creation, cooperative ownership, kind of getting everybody to build the solution. So it really works for their context.

Darlene Dam: I worked for a while at a nonprofit called Ashoka. They initially supported social entrepreneurs as their mission. And then they transitioned to something called helping create change makers, Building in everyone a change maker world. Because they realized that the social entrepreneurs that they had been supporting for decades, that really solved the problem. They recruited people to also come be innovators, to also lead that become a change maker themselves. So like elevating and lifting other people up and helping them solve the problem with you is the most important ingredient to solving an actual problem.

Jill: Yeah. I think another thing that I took away from these success stories is using technology as this sort of force multiplier that you don't have to get just like a little incremental improvement. You should go for something much bigger.

Darlene Dam: I spoke a little bit about Nvidia and Earth 2. So it's, it's something called a digital twin that is being built. It's like a replica of our Earth. But you can also build a digital twin of a building or of, you know, your heart. Right. Digital twins can be used everywhere. But one of the things they do is they give people insight into a system. So you can see, if I change this one piece of the problem, how will it impact all the other pieces? If I fund this one initiative, how will it change the entire system? Right. So as we get more data, as AI gives us more ability to work with that data, we can approach solving social problems in a very sophisticated way and at scale in a way that we couldn't actually see or operate at that level five or ten years ago.

Jill: Yeah. It allows you to play out different scenarios before actually investing a lot of resources to do something. I love that aspect. Okay. We've convinced people that there is a path Forward, you can get into impact, but really the first question starts with, what problem should you work on? How do you help people kind of identify where to turn to if they want to have social impact?

Darlene Dam: One way is, what problem have you struggled with? Or what problem has your family members or your community or your country struggled with? Because having that firsthand knowledge of a problem, it's priceless. Like, you're an Expert, you're a PhD in the problem, right? And you didn't even have to go to school for it. So, like, one is asking yourself, what problems matter to you? Or maybe is there something you just care a lot about? You know, like, I care a lot about nature. Uh, it's just something that awakens me, and I feel passionate about.

Jill: So instead of what do I want to do? It's more like, what am I worried about? Or what problem do I want to solve?

Darlene Dam: Yeah. What keeps me up at night?

Jill: Say you've identified that interesting intersection between your skills and what the world needs. Kind of that icky guy. E model. What would be the path forward? Let's take a scenario. If you wanted to be a founder, what would be your first steps?

Darlene Dam: This is something that I write about in my book because I think it's often left out of the career conversation. But I think there's an important step to asking yourself, how much risk can I take in my life right now? Right? So if you are, you know, barely getting by, maybe financially, you're struggling, maybe you have some other. There's a health problem or there's a family problem in your life, right? I think it's important to take that into account because there's sort of this myth in the startup world of, like, you have to risk everything, go out there, start your startup, put it all on your credit card. That's what people do. It's the only way. And I was like, actually, that's not what I've seen. I can't tell you how many founders I know who had second jobs, right. Or who have someone else who's providing their income for them. I think that's actually a pretty destructive myth that's out there. And so the way that I try to approach it is, like, think about how much risk you can take in your life and where you are. So if you're at a place where you actually can take a lot of risk, you can jump in and start a company, right? You can go on LegalZoom and incorporate it in a couple days. But if you're at a place where it feels like too Much to carry that. Then you can actually create a plan to getting there. I have three different approaches for taking that. The first thing that you can actually do is to just simply learn. So there's this problem that you're passionate about. Go out and read about it, go out and find out who else is working on it. Go out and reach out to the organizations and the people who are working on it and meet for coffee with them and learn. And you can do that while you're taking care of other responsibilities in your life or even working a different job to pay your bills. The second piece is like experimenting and engage. Maybe there's a way that your existing job, you have skills that you can help solve, uh, a problem that an existing organization is using. You can become an advisor to a startup, or you could be a volunteer for a weekend, or you could come up with a project or a collaboration between your two companies or organizations. And then the third is like, what if you actually do want to start your own startup? There's a lot of resources now for people who want to do that. Incubators, accelerators, educational programs where if you join one of those programs, you'll have sort of a group of people that walk you through what is the process like. You know, you need to create a business plan, a pitch deck, you need to go out and fundraise, you need to build a team. So there's actually institutions that can help you do that.

Jill: So if that is too much risk for me, if I'm like, I can't take that jump right now. You talked earlier about the accountant. What if you just want to help a founder, you want to be founder adjacent.

Darlene Dam: Imagine if you're an accountant and there's a nonprofit or a startup that's working about a problem you're passionate about. Reach out to them and say, hey, I'd love to help you with this, I'm passionate about this topic. Can we meet up and let me see how I can help you. Right, so it's, I think more and more it's those initial conversations that collaborating that builds trust, that then leads to a more full time role, either independently or with that organization.

Jill: So rather like you, rather than bringing the technology skills, you're bringing your expertise and applying it to a company that's doing something you care about.

Darlene Dam: Yes, yes, exactly.

Jill: What about the people who are technologists and a lot of them are working for companies that maybe they're a little disillusioned with nowadays? How might they take their technology to new places?

Darlene Dam: Technologists are in high Demand by the social impact sector. And it's really that, um, many technologists just don't know that these jobs or careers exist. So, you know, I think about the ocean cleanup, right? They're using a lot of technology to track plastics in the ocean and then go out and clean it up, sometimes with different types of robotic or automated systems. They need technologists, right? The World Food Program, they have a frontier technology division. They need people who understand how blockchain works. There's all of these different jobs that are emerging in the social impact sector, where, yes, they are hiring technologists today.

Jill: What if you are working at a, uh, company and you don't want to leave your job, but you want to see the company be more green or more sustainable? What's kind of the intrapreneur route, depending

Darlene Dam: what the company is, There's a super exciting opportunity to propose new innovations, to propose new products. So, you know, I think about drones and the air mobility industry. So, you know, I worked with small drones. But there are several companies right now that are building these big electric vehicles that are giant drones that carry people, right? Those companies exist. It's still sort of the beginning of the industry. But if you think about, well, five years from now when there are a lot of those vehicles, we're going to have to change how architecture works. We're going to have to redesign buildings, we might redesign cities to accommodate these new vehicles. So, like, say you're an architect or say you work in real estate, there's an opportunity right now to propose, let's open up a new division to think about how our industry is going to interact with these future flying vehicles. How do we redesign airports? Right? So looking ahead at the technology, if you're an existing company, can tell you this is how we need to change. This is how we need to launch something new. Um, and by the way, these vehicles are electric, so they're also green. So there's a social impact piece.

Jill: Governments are also very anxious to get technology people to come in. We also have the opportunity to kind of apply your technology skills to help improve education, because education has to reinvent because of all the AI shifts and changes. How do we change our pedagogy to match? So you're not really limited.

Darlene Dam: There's no limits right now. Like all these different technologies are being brought into every single career, every single job.

Jill: So what are some of the questions you might ask yourself? Like, what is a big inefficiency in this problem, that technology hasn't been used to serve? Or what are some questions that people could ask themselves that would help them discover areas they could apply their skills for social impact.

Darlene Dam: Social problems, uh, are really interesting because we kind of accept them with the work, with the drones. The assumption of most of the world was, yes, people have to walk 8 hours per day to get to a clinic and someday their government, maybe 30 years later is going to build a road and that's going to cost billions of dollars. Right? And that was the mindset of the world. And what we said was, well, these like comparatively super cheap flying robots exist, Would it actually be cheaper to build an aerial highway than to put in a real road? Right. I think social problems are interesting to look at because everyone assumes they are the way they are. The bias is embedded into social problems is like a place to find innovation. And I'm thinking about Muhammad Yunus, you know, who invented the field of microfinance because he said poor rural women are actually really good with money. They will repay a loan. The rest of the world just assumed they did not have the ability to repay a loan. That social problem existed because of a bias and because this microfinance industry, it's now massive, right? That came from overcoming a stereotype in our head. I saw recently, it was a post on LinkedIn, there's a startup that is trying to help families better deal with the problem of anorexia. And I thought, that's interesting. It's a new problem, right? And we have different ways to deal with it, but it's still a problem for a lot of people. But someone said, I actually think we can do better. So looking at social problems that we just assume are there and are hard and are impossible to solve, and maybe we'll be lucky if we solve it a little bit. Like those are actually great places to look at. How can we do things better?

Jill: So if we find those spots, those sweet spots, that intersection, what are some of the key takeaways you hope people take from this conversation that will help them transition from just the thinking about this to moving in that direction and aligning, uh, really their work and what they spend so much of their day on with their values, right? With the impact they want to achieve?

Darlene Dam: Caring about a social problem and having knowledge of that problem, even experience that problem yourself, is, it's, uh, a tremendous resource. It's very valuable. Other people don't have that knowledge. So, you know, use that to help solve that problem. Turn that around. Right? I think the second piece is, yes, there are some skills you need to work with certain types of technologies, but you can learn A lot. And you just gotta go in there and start learning about it and trying it. As I found as adults, I've learned about new technologies not from like a formal education program, but by talking to my peers, by actually asking someone, oh, so how does this work? You know, going to events, learning. And, uh, then I think the other piece is I would love to see a world where, when you think about very powerful technologies that are on the planet, that are impacting billions of people's lives, that are maybe causing a lot of problems, I think people who care about social impact need to say, I'm going to found the next company. I'm going to be the one who's in charge, and I'm going to be doing it in a different way based on how I know how to help people, not just make money off this problem. Right. Because no one is in charge of who becomes the founder of these companies. Yes, there are investors, yes. There are programs that let you in or out. But like, it also comes back to us and we have to say, I'm going to take responsibility for this problem, why not me? Right.

Jill: I really like the drive toward initiative. If you're going to wait for someone else to do it, they may not do it, but you can actually lead. I think another couple things I took away from your conversation was that you don't need to necessarily learn a new skill. You can apply your old skills or your expertise to a new problem. And you can also be learning new technologies. It's a crash course when you work at one of these startups or you work at a ngo.

Darlene Dam: Yes, yes. And you can do it with other people. You don't have to be the expert in everything. Right. Other people are the experts in their thing and you work together.

Jill: Yeah. So the last thing I'd love to get your thoughts on as we close out is how do you do this in a way that's responsible and ethical? Because if you want to have social impact, you don't want to have social harm.

Darlene Dam: So one is to actually sit down and think through, if I create this, how might this technology be misused, either maybe intentionally or accidentally? So you can sit down and you can write all this stuff down and. And you can say, well, what can I do about that? So that's like just. It's a very simple thing to do, is to actually think through the consequences. The second part is to include a lot of different people from different backgrounds and different experiences in, you know, those conversations, in the work itself. Because even if you don't catch Something they might catch, something that they can alert you about. And then at a gut level too, I think a lot of it is just about empathy, you know, thinking if I build this and something happens to somebody, but I want that to happen to me, right? Would I want that to happen to my kids, to my brother, my sister, my parents? So there's programs out there that can help you think through these things. There's ethics programs, regulatory programs, all of that. But I think also it's like you've got to be the one who's leading that work.

Jill: So sort of a full circle. Why the humanities still matter in an AI advancing world?

Darlene Dam: Yes, yes, yes, yes, absolutely. I think I used to think that AI and the way AI treats me, like it will have a consequence, it will determine my humanity. Like if I'm in this AI world, I'm going to lose my humanity. And then I realized, you know, it might change my job, it might change my economy, but my humanity is based not on how someone treats me, it's always based on how I treat other people. And that was a light bulb for me. How we treat others is where our humanity comes from. It's not how the world treats us.

Jill: So is that what makes you optimistic that our listeners will go out and make some social impact change?

Darlene Dam: I hope so. I mean, it's a self fulfilling prophecy, right? Like if we want to live in a world where people are making the world a better place, we need people to go out and do it. If they don't do it, it won't happen.

Jill: Well, thank you for, you know, giving them a little bit of a guidebook and a, uh, look into others who have done this and really giving them the challenge to go out and do this themselves.

Darlene Dam: Yes, yes. If you don't do it, someone else is going to do it and they're going to do it their way. So it's up to all of us.

Jill: And with that, I hope you enjoyed this latest in a long series of podcasts that we'll be sending your way every month. Please share with friends and colleagues who may be interested in taking this Future of Work journey with us. And make sure to check out Extension Berkeley EU to find a variety of courses and certificates to help you thrive in this new working landscape. And to see what's coming up next at Edge and Tech, go ahead and visit edge.com berkeley edu. Thanks so much for listening and I'll be back next month to continue our Future of Work journey. The Future of Work podcast is hosted by Joel Finlayson Produced by Sarah Benzulli and edited by Matt DiPiet.