A Legacy of Purpose: Conversations with Dina H. Sherif
Join Executive Director of the Legatum Center for Development and Entrepreneurship at MIT, Dina H. Sherif as she brings together the stories of those brave enough to engage in leadership, with a focus on those who are working hard to see entrepreneurs thrive across global growth markets. The podcast will feature individuals who stand strong in their purpose and who are working hard to create change, now and for the future.
A Legacy of Purpose: Conversations with Dina H. Sherif
How Growth Markets are Going from Stuck to Scale: A Conversation with Andrea Kates
In this episode of A Legacy of Purpose: Conversations with Dina H. Sherif, we sit down with Andrea Kates—a globally respected strategist, bestselling author of From Stuck to Scale, and current Entrepreneur-in-Residence at the MIT Kuo Sharper Center (formerly the MIT Legatum Center). Andrea’s work spans tech, healthcare, climate, and finance, and her frameworks have helped thousands of entrepreneurs unlock their next chapter.
Together, we explore how entrepreneurs can shift from uncertainty to momentum, why trust is the true currency of innovation, and why she believes 2025 will be the “year of the leapfrog.” We also dive deep into Andrea’s storytelling approach to business, and how growth markets like Bogota, Nairobi, and Hanoi are leading the future of problem-solving.
From insights on corporate transformation to the power of Chōkensei—Japan’s model of society-inspired innovation—this episode offers a deeply practical and human take on scaling what matters.
Host: Dina Sherif
Produced by Donovan Beck
For Media Inquiries:
Donovan Beck
Communications and Storytelling Coordinator
Legatum Center for Development and Entrepreneurship
Sloan School of Management
Massachusetts Institute of Technology
292 Main St, E38, 5th Floor, Cambridge, MA 02142
don_beck@mit.edu
Andrea,
Dina Sherif:welcome back to a legacy of purpose. I'm thrilled to sit down today with Andrea Cates, author, entrepreneur, global innovation strategist, thought leader, and she spent her entire career unlocking the potential of businesses and visionaries across many industries. So from her time as a startup CEO in San Francisco to her work with entrepreneurs, not just in the United States but across global growth markets, Andrea has dedicated herself to helping companies move from stuck to scale, which also happens to be the title of her book, which we'll talk about more today. I wanted to just say a little bit about Andrea. So I met Andrea back in 2014 and she slotted me into I was doing a fellowship, Eisenhower Fellowship. She slotted me into her schedule for 30 minutes. She said, I only have 30 minutes. You're gonna need to be quick in typical Silicon Valley style. But that 30 minutes ended up turning into about three hours and a great friendship that has spanned many years till today. And so I'm excited to also say that Andrea is accepted to be an entrepreneur in residence here at the Legatum center for development entrepreneurship, where she has expressed her incredible interest and dedication to global growth markets. So welcome Andrea to this podcast. We're happy to have you with us. Great
Unknown:to be here, and I never run out of things to talk about with you. Dina, I
Dina Sherif:know it's great, so you've inspired me a lot over the over the years, and I'm hoping that everyone who's listening to this podcast will be equally as inspired. So we obviously do want to get to the book today at some point, but I really want people to get to know you a little bit better as well. And you are a storytelling champion, and you often talk about the importance of a three beat story. So let's start on beat one. Beginning. Your work has spanned so many sectors, across finance, healthcare, you're now heavily into AI. You were a startup CEO in San Francisco. So help us understand a little bit the beginning of your journey and how you got into this space of entrepreneurship and innovation, and how did your journey lead you up to this book, from stuck to scale.
Unknown:I love three beat stories, as you know, so yeah, I'm gonna do the first beat, because people can only really understand information and learn about what's really important to extract from three beats four at the most. So the first beat of my story was really understanding the opportunities within healthcare when I worked long time ago at the Texas Medical Center a couple years ago, couple years ago, first beat was Texas Medical Center. And then what was happening at the time was a lot of revolutions in business. So one of them was thought leadership, like the TED conference was happening and, you know, sort of a way of people thinking of ideas as some sort of currency. At the same time, I was really lucky to work on health care, which was going through a lot of radical change. There were changes in the payment system in the United States that also led me to opportunities in pharma, because it turned out that pharma was going through a lot of business model change. So this whole first beat of the story was understanding the commonalities between revolutions that happened, that hit us by surprise in one industry like healthcare, and then suddenly around me was also energy. So I had a chance to work with World Dutch Shell and then Enron at understanding the idea of different business models and what happens when decentralized leadership and structures occur. So I got into Telecom, yeah, so it was really interesting. Like there was Williams that became, will tell that became WorldCom, that became MCI. Then it was like energy that became deregulated. And you start saying, oh, deregulation common theme. And that also then led me into from telecom to automotive, where I worked with General Motors and Ford. So I started understanding something that hadn't been taught in business school, because I do have an MBA, which is that the truth is, and this was in my first book, find your next, that the truth is that the ability for us to find what's next is really hard, really hard, and it also doesn't just come from today's customers. So that's the first beat of the story. Do you want the second beat? Or should we wait?
Dina Sherif:I want to. I mean, I'd love to go into the second beat, but I want to go a level deeper, right? Because oftentimes people are obsessed with. Entrepreneurs and the sexiness of what comes with being a very successful entrepreneur, you're a little different, because I feel like you're not obsessed with the entrepreneur, you're obsessed with the belly of the organizations that the entrepreneur represents. And that's very different. What What was it that got you into that, like, what was that moment where you said, You know what? What matters to me is what happens within a company and what, what a company can do if they just kind of shift their mindset just a little bit?
Unknown:So it's, it's so interesting to think deeply. I really haven't reflected on this. So I'm saying this for the first time, when I think about it, every company has structural similarities to the individuals in that company, right? I mean, it's about people serving people, and so first of all, some people are not able to see change as it's happening. They become like turtles, and they hide. They kind of sort of see E commerce happening, and then it's like, maybe that will go away. You know, it didn't? They sort of see AI happening. Maybe that will go away. No. So there's a kind of DNA in an individual to either see it or don't see it. Okay. The second thing that I'm thinking of based on your question is you can either catch up or give up or give up, give up. And there is a mindset. I don't know if companies can have mindsets, but whether it's an entrepreneur or a large company, because I've worked with tons of them, you know, you have that choice, like to either catch up or
Dina Sherif:give up. I mean, companies do have a mindset, right? Because, like you said, companies represent individuals, and individuals represent a way of thinking. And it's interesting that you've always been curious about that in particular. So with that, tell us about your second
Unknown:beat. Okay, so second beat was, after seeing this, I started thinking of this, and this was what led to my first book, find your next. I started seeing it. It was un humble of me, but I thought it's kind of like the Human Genome Project, yeah, you know, like, like, you have these patterns. And deregulation in energy is very similar to deregulation in telecom if you understand the mechanism of change, kind of from first principles, you can accelerate. You can leapfrog. Yeah, and I was lucky enough to work with a company called Embrace in India that was a healthcare company, and at the time it was like SMS and flip phones that were ways of communicating, and that was fine, you didn't need advanced technologies to do advanced, innovative things. So I started realizing that this, this DNA and spark of change, was looking at patterns in adjacent markets, not being limited to the technology that was, you know, supposedly a limitation. And then, as I said a minute ago, like a mindset shift that we're going to catch up. We don't know how, but it's not necessarily only the entrepreneurs that claim that. I mean, I've seen so many inspiring leaders in large companies that are the ones who are the catalyst for change. They're just like, we're going to do this. We're going to figure it out. And those, you know, it can be a 200 year old company like shimisu in Japan. It can be a two week old startup that has the same DNA. But to me, that's why I'm not in love with entrepreneurship, per se. Yeah, that's
Dina Sherif:what I think it's wonderful, because you look at the layers and the layers and the layers that make companies tick, right? So what is your beat three? Or is that still coming now?
Unknown:So beat beat three. So, so there was a little beat two in the middle where I was teaching in business school. So I taught at Stanford, I taught at Berkeley, and I taught at Princeton, the lean startup methodology. And then I also started my own methodology in Copenhagen, at a place called the Copenhagen Business School. And at that moment, I started realizing that that the whole way that we teach business is out of whack. You know, it's not like spreadsheets are going to predict growth. And so I started to just, I decided to apply this lean startup methodology to corporations when I was running the software company. So the second beat of the story is looking at these 13,000 teams at a time that would come through the program, and we would say, Well, you know, certain percentage of them were going to fail, and that was just kind of like the way it was. And that was our, you know, kind of mantra. And I thought, one day, wait a minute, like, a lot of these ideas are really important, and they don't have to fail, they don't have to fail. They could serve millions, if not billions, of people. So why is it that we're just saying? Well, you know, it's a it's a numbers game. So I started studying the outliers, right? Which was, I. Typical of me getting the curiosity, the curiosity, and also, I don't necessarily take conventional wisdom as the final word, yeah. So my observation was, you know, we've got to figure out a way to do something better than telling, you know, innovation initiative within a large company, you know, you might fail. Or we used to say fail fast or learn fast, no. How about fixing it? How about figuring out? Instead of saying you need to pivot, which is kind of like a punishment, people who are subject matter experts don't know how to pivot. They know what they know. They know polymer chemistry. They don't know how to pivot from that. And so I decided to unlock the secrets to how to pivot, where to pivot, what we're optimizing for, so that people with this the juice to really make some change happen, have the wherewithal to not just go in one place and give up or fail, but to actually maneuver out of that? Yeah,
Dina Sherif:I, you know, I've read both your books now, you know, I spent the past four days reading this one big, wonderful, like, wonderful book. And I think, I think for me, if I'm going to summarize, what you do is that you use your methodology to allow to allow new learning to emerge. And in a way, that's like what we teach our fellows around adaptive leadership. We don't know the answer to everything, and that's when we really need to see new leadership arise. But leadership also requires new learning. And I think, I think at the core of what you are bringing through your books is, how do we allow teams to engage in new learning so that they can evolve? And I think that's really, really beautiful. So, and we're going to delve deeper in the book, but my next question is, you know, I think you and I are both entrepreneurs, and if you've been an entrepreneur, you've definitely not just engage in successes, but you've had your fair share of failures and learnings. If you're to think back on your life, what is the moment where you felt really, really stuck, and how did you navigate your way out of being stuck?
Unknown:Where this is, this is deep.
Dina Sherif:This is what this is, go deep here. This is
Unknown:deep. Yeah, there's nothing scripted about this. I would say that stuck for me is a conflict between what I find unacceptable and my courage. To do something about it. And when I see things unacceptable, like, like, business teams that fail, there's a lot of kind of chasing my own tail like a dog trying to find a place. Like, like, I know it's wrong. I'm agitated about it, but I know that it will take courage for me to stand on global stages, for me to take on the technology risks, for me to go, you know, to places I'd never even heard of. I usually have to, like, look on a map and say, Where is this place? Exactly? I have a conflict personally between the curiosity and the sense of things that are completely unacceptable, and my personal courage to take action.
Dina Sherif:So your stuck moment is coming over, your fear of taking action. So how did you overcome that?
Unknown:It's interesting. There's a moment that I realized, if not me, who I am, not usually the largest person in a room, as a matter of fact, last week with the fellows, you know, people tower over me physically sometimes, um, I never considered myself to be like the person to write to books and, you know, probably more ahead, but I realized one day, and certainly doing keynotes on major stages, you know, like the TED made it's hard. I
Dina Sherif:have my own fears of, you know, standing on stage,
Unknown:it's hard, and you have to be really great, you know, like, like, you have to really bring it. And so I think one day I just thought, well, you know, I looked around and I thought, someone needs to do something about this. It's just, you know, when I when I think the thought unacceptable, that's my inspiration to say, well, whatever it takes, I'm going to figure out how to write. I'm going to figure out how to tell stories. Going to figure out the spreadsheets. I'm going to figure out the technology. I'm going to figure out the courage to speak my piece. I'm going to basically, a lot of times, have the courage to just be underestimated. I.
Dina Sherif:I think that's what many women feel.
Unknown:So let's just go a little layer deeper. We're gonna go there. We're gonna go a little layer deeper here, because this is
Dina Sherif:gonna be important for many people listening to this podcast. Yeah, you know what? How did you really, truly overcome that fear. And specifically, I'm asking because a lot of women, many of whom you and I know, they're always hesitant to put themselves out there, men too, but women in particular. So you know you you're saying that what drives you is to stand up for what is unacceptable. It's like, for example, just telling teams that they're gonna fail, that's unacceptable. There's a way around that, but that you are stuck at this point of, how do I put myself out there and be that voice that's gonna be bold? So what was it that pushed you through that fear? What did you do?
Unknown:The first thing I did was I was very bad at it in the beginning, honestly. I mean, when I think back, I remember Seth Godin, who's a very well known marketing guru, and I actually think he, I don't even know if it's one person, he might be an avatar, because he's so prolific in his writing. He's so insightful. I've actually taken his online marketing seminar. He's really great. He wrote that. He blurbed my first book, which was wonderful. But I remember being on stage with him when my first book came out, and I thought, this guy charges$100,000 for an hour. Like, How good could he be? You know, like, come on. And then I realized he was really good, really good. He was really good. And although I thought that I was, you know, like, good at it, I realized that I was missing preparation. I didn't even understand I was missing. So it's that thing you said earlier, like I didn't even know what I didn't know. The nice thing was, I had the courage to be kind of bad and do it anyway. Not easy to go on stage after Seth Godin, by the way. But then I took note, and I said, I am now going to do the work to be more like that. And I started on the journey. And you know, it wasn't easy. It's kind of learning like you were saying, and
Dina Sherif:preparation matters so much preparation, and I've seen you because I know that before you speak, you put so much effort into preparing, preparing, preparing, and that allowed you to kind of move beyond that fear.
Unknown:Okay, interestingly, my first agent for my first book, this is like a little aside, but my first agent for my first book, kind of, since I won't tell you who it is, but anyway, they sort of left me on the altar in the middle of my book tour, because they got the Lady Gaga perfume.
Dina Sherif:Oh yeah. So, you know, you know, how do you be with Lady
Unknown:Gaga? I thought that I was up there too, but, you know, definitely wasn't. But what was interesting was they told me a story about her. They said that she does like a set. And then, like, in her early days, a, she writes handwritten thank you, notes. B, she shows up and does a show. And then, like, does the after hours show the amount of preparation that is done behind the scenes by people who look like they're just naturally talented is amazing. And so I just decided about 10 years ago to work my tail off and to be really prepared. Everybody says, Oh, you're so spontaneous on stage for every hour, it takes me 55 zero to be, quote, spontaneous,
Dina Sherif:right? Got it all right. So this is question for Donovan, because, you know he's our in house storyteller, and you know we know that you have taken on also a role of storyteller. And you often talk about the importance of storytelling, specifically within business, and I think a crucial part of being able to articulate your story is really understanding the why behind what you're doing. So where does your love for storytelling come from? I'm
Unknown:gonna start to cry. It's okay. People have cried on this
Dina Sherif:podcast before. So
Unknown:my father, whose name was Phil, he died. Was a psychiatrist, and wait for it, when he retired, he became a stand up comic. I think he told me this before. So what's interesting was, I said, you know, Dad, where'd you get the material from? Like, how did this happen? He said, Well, you know, you have to be able to take the essence of a story and work on its timing and think of the audience and break it down into these beats. So comedy has beats to it, and also you have to read the room, and so it feels like you're repeating the same you know, why did the chicken cross the road to get to the other side? You tell it with. Nuance, depending on how you read the room. And I honestly, the other day, when I was in, where was I, Sao Paulo, with Sao Paulo, yeah. And I'm like, we were just in Sao Paulo, just in Sao Paulo, if we may be that peep, that person. But you know, I remember walking on stage and thinking, okay, read the room. These are people who don't have English as a first language, so even the ability to story tell is it's a relationship. And that reminds me of a line I think it's like Tony Bennett, they're like, how long did it take you to learn how to sing? And I'm sure you know the story. And he says, you know, well, it took me three years to learn how to sing and 10 years to learn how to make an entrance. So for me, storytelling is like that. It has taken me a long time. My first book wasn't as good as storytelling as this book and this book I literally started off with like studying storytelling. I went to the moth I read a bunch of books on storytelling. I studied storytelling because if you don't connect with the reader, then what's the spreadsheet for
Dina Sherif:and connect with your entrepreneurs too. Entrepreneurs
Unknown:are people whose hearts are very come forward, right? They are invested in not to generalize, but entrepreneurs have a passion. Like last night we went to kind of, oh, we'd hope they'd have a passion, yeah? And they have to have a slight amount of insanity, let's be honest, right? It's like, if you can't think of anything else to do, you know, please, please think of anything rather than be an entrepreneur, yeah? And if you can, okay, then we'll let you be an entrepreneur. But I think that story, you know, it's not like, you know, I hate elevator pitches. It's not like one story that you tell to everybody. It's being able to connect with people, whether it's your customers, hearing their stories, understanding the meaning behind the words, which is very different from the words. And the other day, we were with a client, as you know, you know, big company, and they were saying, you know, when, when customers and sales people talk, that's very different from when entrepreneurs and customers talk. You have to listen for the unmet need. And all of those are ways that people reveal themselves through their words, and that, to me, is the essence of story, yeah, and connection and connection, yeah,
Dina Sherif:I love it. So let's get into your book.
Unknown:I can't believe you read it already. It's a big book. Well, I had
Dina Sherif:to do that. I had to prep for the and, you know, you know, you know, we love you around here. So when we got the book, we read it. So this, this, this book here, from stuck to scale, right? I hope that many people go out and buy it. It's an it's an important book to read, but you introduce in this book a very structured framework for moving past roadblocks, or the idea of being stuck to being able to move to a new level of growth. So in it, you describe these five key stages where entrepreneurs get stuck. Walk me through these stages. Why did you feel that this issue needed to be well, we know a little bit of why you need felt this issue needed to be addressed now, because of your background, right? But why did you do this now, in this moment that we're living that is so fast paced, where things are evolving every minute, like we can't keep up with what's happening with AI. Every day we get a new Wow, we didn't see that one coming, right? So walk us through these stages and tell us a little bit about why it's relevant now,
Unknown:well, I'll start with why it's relevant, and then I'll tell you the stages. Okay, there is a world that we will create that is completely different from the revolutions of the past, and we can feel it, and we are lucky to be here, but it's pretty risky if we don't get it right, and it's pretty scary if we don't get people who find things unacceptable to step forward and speak out, Take action and make movements happen around these things. And I think companies basically are movements being able to get a lot of people to coalesce around change, of
Dina Sherif:course, and especially if it's like an innovation driven enterprise that is really trying to transform a system 100% and
Unknown:as you know, in growth economies, it's not just that. I'm quoting you Dina, but it's not just unicorns. It's not just let's just read the room and they're all VCs, and they're all going to have an investment mindset. There are many mindsets that need to be served by this. So first of all, the why is we are on the cusp of this revolution where the people who have had all the answers, as I call it, conventional wisdom, have. No answers. So good luck with that world. Right? I was just judging, I actually realized that, well, they're starting to right. And I was judging a sort of pitch competition with a group that was global, and I ended up picking a 15 year old. I didn't even know how old they were. What anything about them? I picked the concept as the winner. You know, my choice because it was a fabulous idea and it was a 15 year old. So it's a world where anyone has access to the same tools. It's very transparent. So the why is now more than ever, and I'm very pro technology. As you know, we need to figure out ways to harness this technology and turn it into into ways to serve people, period. Okay? Now, the way that I figured out where people were stuck was like, I have this line, everything is obvious in retrospect. Yes,
Dina Sherif:right? Always for pretty much everything in life,
Unknown:right? So it's like looking back like the sad, sad truth. It's the sad truth, and it's not like what would I tell my 20 year old self? But you know, when I looked at the data? Because, as you know, I love to look at data, so I looked at the data and the patterns of how these different people had failed. You know, the six, the 13,000 teams at a time, which was like 60,000 people at a time, and the companies I have worked with, many of which were in automotive and, you know, FinTech and all over the world, I started to sort of realize that there were buckets of similarities, and I didn't know what to call them at first. It was four categories. But then I realized that patterns, patterns, first pattern is the egg. Sort people in large, two categories sometimes. And now I have people hold up like their left hand. Hold up your left hand if where you feel kind of stuck is you don't know what to do. You're just, like, overwhelmed, or you don't understand it, or you haven't learned enough, or you just don't know what to do, or you're paralyzed, or you have this huge portfolio of opportunities and you really don't know where to start. So that's one. The second is a broad category, which is, I know what to do, honestly, I know what to do. I cannot get people to do it. Yeah. So there's like, a left hand, right hand. And actually, this came from my dad too, because when he was a training in medicine, you know, people would come in and they would do, like, triage, you know, like, I feel sick, and he'd say, oh, like, let's fix the broken arm. Yeah, right. It's like, wait a minute, you forgot to ask. Like, what hurts? Right? Oh, it's a headache. Okay, then forget fixing a broken arm. So it's basic triage, all right? But then it got a more refined where I realized that it's sort of the first, you know, when you hold up your left hand, you don't know what to do. There's envisioning it, right? Like, like, you literally can't even you have something in your mind, but you can't put it down on paper. It's kind of like an itchy feeling, like we should probably do something about AI, right? So it's like this in but you can't even get it down on paper. Yeah, you know, but you can't put your finger on it. That's right? So you envision, and you know, we have very simple, do it yourself, tools for this, right? Envision, expand. That's when a lot of times, an expert in something can't see outside of their own industry, can't see an adjacency, can't see a parallel, can't see something that applies technology or business model in a new way. So envision expand, build, and as you know, from the lean startup where I, you know, ran the software company for years. There's a real methodology to using scientific principles to build. So envision, expand, build great. A lot of the world ends there. And so we have a hackathon. And I'm not being sarcastic. See it all the time, so you can build it, and then it's like, what I call science fair project, like, it's really good, but so many of those ideas died on the vine. Literally, no support internally, no external ecosystem, no way of scaling. Okay, so to really scale, you have to have engage and activate. Yes, and I'm going to say something that I've never said before.
Dina Sherif:I just want to say these are my two favorite stages. Oh, thank
Unknown:you. Well, it turns out 80% 80% of the projects that we had fail were because of engage and activate failures. Now I will say that, as a woman, I used to feel that spreadsheets were more important than stories, because you get a lot of credibility by being able to do the numbers, do the math, right? So that's where you get the credibility. It took until this stage in my career to feel confident enough to realize that it's the Engage and activate where people fall short. Yeah. And so. Engaging global audiences. It's in It's engaging. It's not just like, having relationships. It's literally drawing ecosystems differently, drawing ecosystems for profit, yeah, drawing ecosystems for platform. That's technology enablement, and then drawing ecosystems for purpose, which is brave area where you have to just, like, really step out there and say, just like we said earlier, I'm going to lead this, even though I don't know one thing about this solution, it's going to be a large challenge that I'm going to lead, and I'm going to corral others to be part of this. It's that important. And then activate is, you know, like getting to the Engage part and drawing it and getting the ecosystem built, that still doesn't mean that you've gotten people's hearts into it. And so many times, you know, people nod their heads and they don't do anything, yep. So activate is literally the most important thing. How do you get someone to make your priority their priority. Yep, so it's, envision, expand, build,
Dina Sherif:engage, activate. I love it, like I said last two. My two favorite you know Professor Hugh o'derdy, who is a professor of leadership at Harvard and works very closely with us on our the leadership work we do with our foundry fellows, he often says that, you know, if you really want to create change and if you really want to see new learning, you have to find a way to bring people along with you, and the only way to do that is to connect. And connection requires more from the heart, less from the mind. Well,
Unknown:you have to be very secure to say that, because business is taught in a very rational way. Yeah, no,
Dina Sherif:we don't teach how to connect with people at business school. That's not what's taught. We do here at the center, for sure, and that's what I think you know is a part of what makes us special. But if you really want to create change, and you're not bringing people along with you. Change is not going to happen.
Unknown:It's interesting because I don't know how one would teach it. I know how we teach it here at the center now, but if one it's sort of like Spock versus Well, I don't know, let me get that one gone. But there's,
Dina Sherif:you love Spock. We know you love Okay, so, you know, there's sort of this
Unknown:business is Spock, yeah, you know. And it's actually somewhat Kirk as well. You know, there's a bit of, there's a there's a bit of frustration for rational folks like all of us are when logic is sitting right in front of you, like, here's AI. Are we going to do it? You know, catch up or give up, and people literally give up. Or there's a leader that has the perfect answer, but literally can't get other people to see it the way they see it, which happens a lot with expertise. You know, expertise is understood by the the expert, but it's very hard for them to communicate and get other people to play the roles that they need to play, like an orchestra conductor, you know, so that everybody comes on board. I have a lot of, as, you know, in the book, a lot of, a lot of fixes for it. There's actually fixes for it,
Dina Sherif:yeah, that's why people need to get the book. So, you know, when you wrote your first book, find your next you know, that was one endeavor, but you have talked about how writing this book, and I was around when you were writing this book, was a completely different kind of endeavor. And you know now that I've read this book, this book could be spun out into several books, but what was, and I also know that you spent months and you this book was really done in the span of a year, and you were very disciplined, and you were so determined to get this book out and to get it out as quickly as possible. But what was so different about this project and writing this book from when you wrote, find your next what was? What's different inside Andrea,
Unknown:I will use a three letter word like my three beat story, ego. Oh, ego. In the first book, my ego was in a place where I wanted to be acknowledged for my expertise. That's very important at a certain stage in one's career, especially a woman in technology running a company in Silicon Valley. I mean, it's, it's, it's important. This book is about service. I honestly, un humbly once again, but my ego is not in it. Now. I honestly know that these are the secrets that can unlock all of this frustration that is inside of 160 year old companies, corporate leaders, global. Global leaders, government leaders, entrepreneurs, accelerators that are all beating their heads against the wall when they get a science fair project that's so smart and it's not turning into a scalable business. So I know these are the secrets, and I'm at this stage in my career where my ego is like locked in a closet. It's, it's, it's not about that you want to serve. It's all about serving.
Dina Sherif:I get that, and I've seen it because, you know, the Andrea I met back in 2014 is not the Andrea I know now in 2025 because I've heard you over and over again the past month say, you know, Dina, I'm I'm in let's create change. I want to serve. How can you use me? Right? And that's that's just such a beautiful thing. And I wish more people were like that, where in a particular stage of your life, you start thinking about just serving and helping others. And that's a wonderful thing, and I think it gives me a beautiful transition to ask you the next question, which is, and this, and this also happens at MIT too, right? Many people still believe that innovation happens only in Silicon Valley or in this wonderful ecosystem in Kendall Square that we have, or a little bit in Austin, Texas. But nobody thinks, oh, innovation, Nigeria or innovation, Brazil or innovation, my country, Egypt. Emerging markets, or what we call growth markets, are often affiliated with poverty, destitution problems, big problems that we need to fix from here in the West. But this is a very misguided narrative, because you cannot sum one country into one narrative of poverty and destitution. And there, there are many different narratives that come out of the markets like the one I come from, and I think it's always powerful when people like you, who have spent their biggest chunk of their life in Silicon Valley, working from Silicon Valley, very intentionally shift their Focus to growth markets, and you've deliberately set out to engage in service to these markets. What was the turning point for you when you decided to shift your attention from these very kind of traditional innovation hubs to the markets that we serve here in the center.
Unknown:Well, it was intentional and it was accidental. And I'll give you two beats. First beat, there's a scene that I will never forget. When I was in India working with this company that you know, had low birth weight babies being saved by a very inexpensive, frugal innovation. And, you know, I was there as an advisor to this company. I was a bit arm's length, but I found myself sitting on a floor which was actually kind of a dirt cave where a woman had been ostracized from her community in India because she had a child who had died from low birth weight, and, you know, was ostracized, was also grieving. And I could relate to it on so many levels, including a personal level. And I realized that the ability to change lives doesn't just come from like large corporations. It's it's like this particular frugal innovation had the opportunity to save so many lives and touch so many people. But it was in parentheses at the time I was busy doing other things. It was a, it was a, it was a parenthetical experience within a larger context of being a mentor to a an entrepreneur who came out of Stanford. Okay, but that experience hit me deeply, okay, the second beat is the understanding. Of the numbers of the world right now tell a story that the young people coming up and having opportunities are not necessarily only in my zip code, and even though I live in Oakland, which is an interesting area, and you start to see the importance of leadership and the importance of innovation and the importance of investment in community as a core, a core imperative, yeah. So I would say the second beat is to look at the. World. And then, of course, my, my little minor third beat is my kind of the words to live by for me are, take the trip. Yeah. So, you know, Dana calls
Dina Sherif:you on the phone and says, Can you come to
Unknown:I literally, like, take the trip. And so, like, you can't get off a plane in Cairo, and feel like, oh, the whole world is exactly identical. No, it's not. Or in Sao Paulo, or in Bogota. Bogota, you know this, as you know the story of this company of the whole book, the through line of this whole book is a company in Bogota that had, that's why I mentioned Bogota. I mean, it's really true. Like, I meet this guy randomly. He had just been at a conference. I meet him randomly. We're crossing the street. He's like, what do you do? I help companies that are stuck. And he said, and he says, Well, I've got a company that's stuck. And the next thing you know, I'm like, flying to Bogota, you know, first time. So, so in answer to your question, without, you know, getting into the story of my book, it's like, you can't be a human. Get off an airplane experience these incredible opportunities and brilliance all over the world. And, you know, I'm working with reform in Africa. And you know, it's just incredible when you go to places and see the innovation that's happening in so many levels, you can't just be a one size fits all mindset around innovation. Yeah, I remember, actually, years ago, when I was working with Royal Dutch Shell, I remember going to Kuala Lumpur and getting off the plane and going, wow, like, there's a lot of hustle going on in this place. You know, 18 year old telecom entrepreneurs. You know, the world is full of, yeah,
Dina Sherif:no, I was hoping you were gonna say, and one of my beats was meeting all of your fellows.
Unknown:Oh, well, that's the beat that's coming. So, so there's a there's, I mean, and I'm, you know, that's sort of the third, the third and important beat is meeting fellows like I remember you called me up and, you know, I have this circle of trust, which is people that I'll say yes to. But then there's this circle of must, and Dina is in that circle of must. There might be five people in that circle. So when you called me up and said, you know, can you come and speak to the fellows and meet the fellows? And I'm like, Well, speak. I
Dina Sherif:asked you to keynote the kind of end of year celebration of our fellows,
Unknown:correct? And I thought, as usual, like, Oh, give a keynote at MIT for fellows that I've never met. Sure Dina. Sure Dina, Commissioner, Gordon Batman, yeah. I saw the bat signal, yeah. I'll say yes. And then I had to, like, watch 800,000 speeches from, like, people who had done this before and prepare but
Dina Sherif:it was then that you, you came up with the phrase ecosystems of purpose. That's
Unknown:correct. I met those fellows, and I remember thinking I would sit in for sort of research purposes, and I could not leave the room. The fellows were sitting presenting the final versions of their insights from their entire year's experience. And each of them had had revelations and deep insights about the ecosystems they visited ecosystems. They visited ecosystems that they were committed to running. They had this sense of huge commitment, I would say, commitment to being agents have changed. And it was from countries I hadn't been to at the time. I hadn't even been to Cairo, and there were people from Egypt, there were people from Africa, all over the continent, people from Latin America. And I thought, you know, this is the future.
Dina Sherif:Yeah, I agree with that. I want to talk about this phrase you often say is that intense business is intensely fun. And, you know, collaborating with entrepreneurs and corporate leaders and government officials and those engaged in R and D, that's that creates an energy that fuels innovation, but it's also fun, and that's the spirit we see in many of our markets. People are building creating, and I've seen as people are building ecosystems, and that creating a new community that can also be very fun. But you know, your work also involves dealing with difficult and intense realities of the conditions that many people are under in the markets that we serve, and in the face of all those difficulties, how do you hold on to hope and how do you hold on to fun and. Staying excited.
Unknown:Okay, so like every single baby all over the world plays Peekaboo, I am not kidding you, like I was wherever I go. I'm just amazed. Like last week in Sao Paulo, I was sitting by myself in a restaurant, watching families and their children, and there was just laughter and sharing. Then I went and saw people who are living in a much less, you know, in the favelas, basically, you know. And guess what? They play peek a boo. There are universals about people loving their kids, wanting tomorrow to be better than today, and feeling that their contribution will somehow matter. I experienced it in every single place. As I said, you know, mostly what we're talking about today is Africa, Latin America. I mean, you see it right now at the same time, there are these huge inequities. So first of all, there's there's the economic issues, there's food scarcity that I believe is an ecosystem of purpose, energy, the very basics. And the reason it's fun is when you start to realize that putting different players together, and I've watched this with you and the fellows so many times, the sparks that fly when someone said, You know what I'm doing and what you're doing, like, one plus one is five. And then they get somebody else on board. Like, last week was electric. Every speaker that came had an amplification, had a way of, like, creating this bigger vision. But it's not until we're together with other people that those sparks start. Yeah, and so to me, that's, that's the only thing we need to do. We can't sit in our offices. We can't sit in our own places of business. It's that feeling of scale coming from amplification. There's a lot of big words, but like, the ecosystems are like, I always say ecosystem is actually a verb. Yeah, we do it. It it is it, it's verbs, it's action. And that's to me. I mean, that's what
Dina Sherif:we say about leadership. Leadership is an activity. It's not a noun. Oh,
Unknown:that's 100% aligned. Yeah, I hadn't heard that, yes, well, and also, if we think about it, like the curiosity and the courage that we were talking about earlier, that I you know, that I experienced, like, I'm curious, or I feel something's unacceptable, but then I have to have a little courage that is actually a team sport. Yeah? You know, you can't do that alone. And actually, I'll quote someone in the book, Frank bonophilia, from the Edison awards, says that, like innovation is a team sport, yeah, so, so that's what to me, in growth economies, the community. In every economic part of any place where you go, you see the community. There are people sharing meals. There are people who care about one another. There are people with family and extended family. It's universal, and, you know, we just have to make it better for
Dina Sherif:people, and that's what keeps you going.
Unknown:No, it's the peekaboo games. The peekaboo games, pretty much, I
Dina Sherif:love it. So in one of your recent talks, you said that 2025, is going to be the year of the Leap Frog for technology and entrepreneurship. What do you mean by that? And I know that, you know, everyone's gonna think, oh, AI, but I'm sure it's deeper than that,
Unknown:much deeper. So I've been through a leapfrog with Telecom, right, like, where I was working with Telmex years ago, and they couldn't do the last mile, you know what that is, yeah, so they would have, like, a phone and a need in a house and the last mile for people who don't know it's like Dina's phone was going to be three years to be connected. So then there's this thing called Mobile, and it leapfrogged, yeah, okay, I feel that that's like on steroids right now, right? Because the young people who and it's not just an AI, it's the capacity for people to accept change, like everybody quotes the same. I think it's trite, like it took x number of months for people to use Facebook, it took x number of months for people to use Amazon, Alibaba, whatever actually like the speed, the speed of adaptation, is so much the norm with young people today, right? So to me, that's the that's, that's the that's the juice. Because in previous generations, it's like the expectation was, oh, there's a car on an assembly line, it's going to be chassis, wheels like that, and then suddenly it's like, LiDAR, oh, like, that's disruptive, right? So I just feel it. I feel like the ability for young people all over the world to not be barred when it comes to access to technology. I mean, that's still an issue in a lot of communities. I'm not trying to be naive about that, but yeah, I think it's leapfrog, because access. Plus comfort with the speed of change means that a lot of people all over the world, from surprising places, are going to come up with phenomenal new platforms. And every single day, I meet people who are kind of in garage equivalents and just coming up with great new ideas. And
Dina Sherif:very likely it's a lot of it is going to come from growth markets, it's
Unknown:the thing that I think is most important, that people miss about growth markets is there is zero complacency. That's right, when there's zero complacency, that is an edge, that is a leg up, because complacency and comfort can sometimes also be a place that keeps us conservative
Dina Sherif:and where innovation dies.
Unknown:Well, I did not say that okay, but I did,
Dina Sherif:that's okay. They can quote Dina on that one, so we know a little bit about why you're doing this, and we spoke about the need to create movements. So I want to ask you who you're doing this for, like, what, who is it that you really want to impact, and what kind of a movement are you trying to build right now, because I hear a movement coming.
Unknown:The reason that I'm, like, so excited to be entrepreneur in residence here at MIT, us too, us too, and because I believe that the and I'm not, once again, it's not my ego that's saying that these tools, but we haven't had the tools to do the LeapFrog thing. You know, we had, like, linear tools to do a leapfrog thing, so that, you know SWOT analysis that's linear ever you know spreadsheets linear. So we haven't had the right tools at the same time that we had these people, like your fellows. I mean, these are the leaders for the next generation. I know some of them are already in government positions.
Dina Sherif:We have one who just became Minister of Economy, of Gabon. It's a big
Unknown:deal, right? So these, literally are the leaders of the next generation. So the right leaders with the right tools at this moment of revolution and leapfrog, to me, the most important thing is to empower them to go back to their communities and lead their own ecosystem. So it's sort of like wildfires, oh, I shouldn't use that because of what's been going on again, yeah, but, but, you know, it's sort of, it's sort of the ability to ignite other ecosystems and create these flywheels, you know? And once again, what's interesting to me, let's just start with the basics of what's unacceptable, food scarcity, completely unacceptable. Fixable. Yes. Does it need an ecosystem of purpose? Yes, it does. Are people working on it? Yes. Is there redundancy? Yes. Do we need to get rid of the redundancy? Have better leaders use technology to map what's already happening and do better and consolidate. Yes, so, yeah, let's just start with food scarcity. Yeah, you know. And that also then looks at AG tech, and that also looks at technology. I mean, there's each one of these has a ripple effect, but I would say, let's start with food. Let's start with energy. Let's start with water. Let's start with access to health care. I mean, should I go on? These are the leaders, the fellows at MIT, and people that they touch are the leaders that are going to solve these problems that conservative thinking and linear models will not solve. It's
Dina Sherif:interesting because I had a business circle Advisory Board meeting today, and one of them said, you know, one of the incredible superpowers of the center is this is the only center at MIT that is taking So MIT has given birth to an endless number of entrepreneurs, but this is the center that represents the entrepreneurs who are taking MIT global,
Unknown:right? Well, it's interesting, because in the book from stack to scale, there is a profile of Alex De Soto, who's not a fellow, but he's a leader who grew up in Nigeria, went to Silicon Valley, worked at Nvidia, and then decided to work for something called ahura.ai and still works in AI for Africa. So there's this feeling of tether. You know, where you're born matters. Where you go should also serve where you're born. And at the end of the day, there's this feeling in many, many people, but certainly your fellows, that there's an obligation and a commitment. I mean, there's, there's a lot of deep
Dina Sherif:hunger, there's a lot to serve their countries. Yeah, no, 100% even, even in me, right? I'm here at MIT. I'm Egyptian. I still want to continue to help Egypt evolve part. My position here. So it does matter where you're from really matters. So I'm going to ask you a question. And, you know, I think Donovan really liked this question a lot, because I did a podcast with Christopher Schroeder who, you know,
Unknown:yes, Christopher Schroeder, love Chris, who introduced us,
Dina Sherif:yes. Begin
Unknown:with, I was on stage with him in Dubai, well, at Dubai, and then
Dina Sherif:he's the one who introduced us back in 2014 it's crazy. So, you know, I was asking Christopher Schroeder, how do you get through, like, the massive amount of requests and emails and, you know, demands that people have of you? You know, we only have 24 hours in a day, and part of that we need to give to sleep. Well, except for you and him, you don't sleep much. And he then ended up reversing the question on me and saying, Well, how do you do it? And so now I'm posing the question to you with only 24 hours in a day, how do you balance all of the different roles that you play, all of the different you know, people that you're trying to serve because you, I've seen you so many, so many entrepreneurs want to get a little bit of advice from Andrea Cates, and you often do this for free. You do this because you want to serve, but it eats up a lot of time. So how do you balance all these roles, and how do you choose where to invest your energy, and how do you continue to ensure that at the very center of it is meaningful for you.
Unknown:That's deep we try that's a deep one. Thank you. Donovan and Dina. Well, I have a couple of rules. So number one is the rule of radio frequency, which is an RF is, you know, in it's like an a way that somebody operates. And so when someone's on a certain radio frequency, I can feel it, and you're on that. And when I meet people like that, I can feel it right away that these are the people that are going to be true to their word have an impact on many and be responsible enough to learn what they need to to achieve hard things. So that's RF, that's the radio frequency. So that's my top of, like, every single day I start with RF. This is how you select. That's right at the bottom is toxic people who want to get rid of. I mean, honestly, I have, yeah. So you
Dina Sherif:get older, older, you do learn how to 100%
Unknown:so there's kind of, like, you know, when you're sifting sand, like, yeah, all the toxic people are gone. So, so that. So that's easy, because there's a lot of toxic, you know what I mean, people who are not going to really serve well, okay, but that, but then I'm about leverage, and I'm about legacy, and so the book, for me is leverage, because it can be many things. It can be books, it can be podcasts, it can be it repurposed many, many things. It can be a class at MIT, class at MIT, a textbook for every business school. Now should, should be based on this approach. And it's also it ends. The book ends with what's your story? So it's a recursive theme, where my stories and telling of these stories should give birth to other people telling stories in this mode, so that there's a collective resource bank for others to learn from. So that's the other thing. And I think the third is what you said earlier, it's fun. I mean, it is so much fun when you meet people who are just into it, like, like, like, like, literally, you can feel the fierceness of people, yeah, and that's how I live it. And I'm just lucky because I charge a ton of money for some so that I don't have to charge anything for others.
Dina Sherif:And that's the way to do it. So my final question, my final question is about legacy. So you know, we all live our lives, and sometimes we get caught up in the grind, but we only get to do this once, and we need to think about what we want this once to mean. So my question to you is, when your time is up, and all of our time will be up, we don't know when, when that will happen. We don't know how, but we know that there's an expiry date. How do you want to be remembered? What do you want your legacy to be?
Unknown:I goes back to I'm gonna cry again, okay? Goes back to your dad. It does I so my dad had rules for survival, and they were so famous that we read them at his funeral, and he we made a like a little poster, and we handed it out at the fun. Enroll, and then everybody wanted it. And honestly, this is so crazy that you're asking me this because last weekend, I was at my girlfriend's house in Philadelphia, where I grew up, and I looked on the refrigerator and they were my dad's rules for survival, and that's his legacy. So I think I'd love to be have have a legacy of people being able to have guidance for how to be great entrepreneurs and great business leaders with a with things that work with tools that work with a do it yourself system that works so that it can, like keep on giving. I think that that honestly to walk in His rules for survival. Have a picture of a squirrel with a pair of glasses and like, a little hickory stick, and then there's, like, his rules for survival. So I think it would be cool to have like, you know, like, like a squirrel with glasses and a hickory stick and, you know, kind of, Andrea's five stages. Five Stages. I love it. Yeah,
Dina Sherif:I love it. Well, you know, I mean, I want to say that you've deeply impacted my life, and it's an honor to be in your circle of must. I also, you know, as you get older, you start creating these circles, and they really matter. And you are definitely in my circle of must. And I do hope that everyone orders this book from stuck to scale. It's an important book, and I think it's going to matter to a lot of people, and what a beautiful legacy that is for you to leave behind. And I'm, I'm kind of confident that there will be more than this. So I want to thank you for joining us on this episode of legacy of purpose, and I do hope that those listening, like I said at the beginning, are equally as inspired by Andrea Cates as I have been over the years. And I want to thank you for listening or watching if you're on YouTube. And I do want to encourage you all to go out and buy that book. And don't hesitate to reach out to Andrea on LinkedIn. She does answer, she will answer. So if you want to vibrate on her level, do reach out. Thank you all for listening.
Unknown:You.
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