Office Hours for November, Next on On November 13

We have office hours (for full Career Campus Members only) on November 13 (sorry we had to change it) and November 25 from 8:30 am to 9:30 am EST.

This is a great time to check in, network with other members, get customized career support and more.

This week, Jimmy Kimmel delivered an extraordinary tribute to his best friend and bandleader, Cleto Escobedo III.

Their story: two kids from Las Vegas in the 1970s who grew up together, supported wild dreams, and spent 23 years side by side on late-night television. Kimmel didn't just bring a colleague onstage—he built a professional life where friendship and work were inseparable. Cleto's unwavering pride, zero jealousy, and boundless support set a standard few achieve in any career, let alone in the demanding world of media and entertainment.

The tribute carries lessons that resonate far beyond Hollywood. In social impact organizations across the globe—from NGOs in Nairobi to social enterprises in São Paulo, from climate nonprofits in Copenhagen to development agencies in Jakarta—the work can be lonely and emotionally demanding.

A changemaker fighting for climate action might be the lone voice championing sustainability in a corporation. A consultant in international development might face overwhelming complexity on solo assignments in fragile states. An educator building equitable systems might carry the weight of systemic injustice daily.

Exhaustion, burnout, and self-doubt often follow.

But the right friendship—one built on respect, shared values, and genuine care—becomes a lifeline and creative spark that transforms how the work feels and what becomes possible.

Recent research points to a clear truth that crosses borders and sectors. Close friendships at work lead to higher engagement in daily tasks, more innovation and creative problem-solving, genuine happiness and fulfillment at work, and greater resilience during crisis and setback.

In high-churn fields like social impact—where professionals burn out at alarming rates—connection and camaraderie become the difference between lasting in the work and leaving it behind.

One of the most comprehensive studies on human flourishing comes from Harvard's 75-year Adult Development Study. The research tracked hundreds of individuals across their entire lives, monitoring their relationships, career choices, and overall well-being.

The finding was striking: the single strongest predictor of a long, healthy, and meaningful life is the quality of relationships. Not wealth. Not fame. Not career achievement. But deep, genuine connections with others.

The research showed that people embedded in strong communities and friendships lived longer, experienced less depression and anxiety, reported significantly greater life satisfaction, and showed better cognitive function as they aged. In the context of impact work, this translates to a crucial insight: professionals who prioritize friendship and community don't just feel better—they sustain longer careers, make better decisions, and create more meaningful change.

The international development and social impact communities are inherently collaborative. Yet practitioners often remain siloed, working in isolation within their organizations or geographic regions.

A social entrepreneur in Latin America rarely connects deeply with peers in Southeast Asia. A human rights advocate in West Africa might not know activists doing similar work in Eastern Europe. A climate scientist in India might work alone at an organization without others who share their urgency.

This fragmentation weakens movements and deepens burnout.

Platforms like Boardy.ai and PCDN Global emerged specifically to address this gap, bringing together changemakers across continents to share opportunities, learn together, and build careers of impact. These communities recognize that friendship and meaningful connection aren't luxuries—they're infrastructure for sustained, effective change work.

The most powerful global networks bridge not just geographic distance but also differences in approach, sector, and perspective. A nonprofit leader in Kenya partners with a social entrepreneur in Peru. A government official in Malaysia collaborates with an independent consultant in Colombia. A foundation program officer in New York mentors a grassroots organizer in Lagos. These unlikely friendships often spark the most innovative solutions.

Envy and comparison run rampant in professional worlds—and social media amplifies this globally.

A peer gets featured in a prestigious publication. A colleague launches a viral campaign. Someone lands a major grant or speaking slot at a global conference. Another person's impact work gets scaled while someone else's remains hyperlocal.

In fields where success is often measured by metrics like reach, funding, or visibility, these comparisons cut deep.

Cleto's example asks a better question: When a peer gets the fellowship, the award, the global spotlight, can genuine pride emerge instead of resentment?

Real friendship means celebrating others' milestones as much as one's own. This becomes especially powerful in the impact space, where the goal theoretically isn't individual success but collective progress on shared challenges like poverty, climate change, or human rights.

Curiosity sits at the root of meaningful relationships—the kind that transcend transactional networking.

Empathetic curiosity—genuine interest in the person across from you, beyond a title, organization, or work history—forms bonds that endure across years and continents.

When people ask real questions, listen deeply to answers, and offer help without keeping score, networks transform into something far more powerful than professional connections. In the global impact sector, this kind of curiosity becomes especially vital. Understanding how a colleague in a different context approaches the same problem, learning from their failures and successes, seeing how solutions in one region might adapt to another—this is how movements strengthen.

Curiosity also drives the continuous learning impact work demands. Climate change, gender inequality, food security, education access—these challenges look different in Mumbai than in Mexico City, different in Medellin than in Mogadishu. Professionals who cultivate relationships across geographies, disciplines, and lived experiences are better equipped to understand root causes and identify solutions that actually work in specific contexts.

Professional circles benefit from depth over breadth. A handful of allies—not hundreds of LinkedIn contacts—forms a true support system. Connection needs consistency: showing up regularly to virtual meetups or in-person conferences, checking in when life gets chaotic, being present when things get tough. Giving without expecting direct return creates trust and respect that pays dividends in every direction.

The most creative breakthroughs and lasting partnerships spark between professionals from vastly different backgrounds, sectors, or communities. Crossing boundaries, asking questions, and seeking out unfamiliar perspectives open doors that a narrow career never could. A profit-sector executive partnering with an NGO leader. A government official collaborating with an activist. A researcher working alongside a community organizer. These unlikely friendships often generate the most innovative approaches to entrenched problems.

Here's the real secret: friendship flourishes most naturally in spaces where people do things they love together, away from the pressures of career advancement or professional evaluation.

I'm addicted to pickleball. Every time on the court, playing alongside neighbors, colleagues, and strangers. Pickleball doesn't care about job titles, salaries, or project funding—it levels the playing field. Over time, these casual encounters transform into genuine friendships. People from the pickleball court have become collaborators and mentors who support the work far more meaningfully than formal networking ever could.

Through my son's football team, I've made many of my closest friends. Sidelines become gathering spaces where parents from different backgrounds connect over shared experience.

Some of the strongest networks form not in formal events but in spaces where people show up consistently doing things they love. The Harvard research affirmed this: community isn't just about scheduled meetings. It's about regular, informal presence in shared spaces and activities. When people pursue things they're passionate about—whether sports, arts, games, or causes—they naturally build the trust and familiarity that precedes deep friendship.

The Harvard Adult Development Study revealed something profound: meaning and purpose in life are deeply connected to community and contribution.

Those who reported the highest life satisfaction weren't those who achieved the most individually, but those who felt embedded in communities where they mattered, experienced work that connected to something larger, watched relationships flourish around shared purpose, and contributed meaningfully to collective efforts.

For impact professionals, this research validates what many sense intuitively: building a career of change isn't just about the projects or programs. It's about the relationships formed, the communities built, the collective sense that something meaningful is happening together.

The strongest impact movements aren't led by isolated geniuses. They're sustained by networks of committed people who know, trust, and genuinely care about each other.

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Impact careers span decades. A person might work in climate for 30 years, in education for 25, in international development for a lifetime.

The problems don't get solved quickly. Progress feels incremental. Funding dries up. Policies change. Leaders burn out. Projects fail. The emotional toll accumulates.

In these long careers, friendships become survival. They become the reason to keep going when metrics disappoint, the source of new ideas when old approaches stop working, the evidence that someone cares about the work, the foundation that sustains decades of difficult labor.

Jimmy Kimmel closed his tribute: "Cherish your friends. We're not here forever."

Milestones, grants, presentations, publications—all fade. The people who walked alongside, who challenged, supported, and laughed through absurdity, leave the deepest prints. The friendships formed in conference hallways in Bangkok or Bogotá, the relationships nurtured over years of collaboration on shared problems, the bonds built across sectors and continents among people committed to something bigger than themselves—these are what sustain impact careers.

Build friendship. Celebrate difference. Lift others as high as possible. Check in on peers who are struggling. Show up consistently even when life gets chaotic. Cross boundaries and seek perspectives different from one's own.

Pursue shared passions—whether through sports, games, arts, or activities that bring joy alongside purpose. Pick up a paddle. Show up on the sidelines. Join the community. These casual spaces often become the deepest sources of connection and community.

Impact work depends on these bonds, not just for personal resilience—but for real, lasting change at scale.

Joke of the Day

Idealist is one of the largest social-impact job boards connecting changemakers with opportunities across nonprofits, social enterprises, and purpose-driven companies. The platform features thousands of jobs with filters for location, experience level, issue area, and job function.

Possible with Reid Hoffman and Aria Finger is an award-winning weekly podcast that sketches out the brightest version of the future—and what it will take to get there. Recent episodes feature conversations with visionaries across technology, healthcare, education, and geopolitics, and each episode incorporates AI-generated elements to explore what humanity could possibly get right.

Follow Kavita Nandini Ramdas, a globally recognized advocate for gender equity and justice who currently serves as Activist in Residence at the Global Fund for Women and visiting professor at Princeton's School of Public and International Affairs. Former director of Open Society Foundations' Women's Rights Program and former CEO of Global Fund for Women, she actively posts on feminist philanthropy, social justice movements, and defending democracy globally