Impact Tuesdays
The latest from humanitarian and early-careers coach Daniel Higgins
Hey Everyone!
Welcome to your weekly dose of Impact Tuesdays, your go-to roundup for students and recent grads ready to launch a career that matters.
Each edition, I’ll share 4 quick wins, fresh tools, and real-world lessons to help you move from “just thinking about it” to actually building your impact career. Expect practical tips, honest reflections, and a few shortcuts I wish I’d known when I started out.
Something new with me
The 3-month Accelerator Cohort is coming along nicely.
The frameworks and worksheets are ready, and we’re ready to blast off.
Made for those who want to advance their early impact careers quickly and are not interested in waiting around. We'll start the end of July.
If you’re interested in hearing about it feel free to Book a Free 15 minute 1-1.
Something cool for you
The Credibility Scorecard V1 is ready!
Getting ahead of the job-search pack of wolves comes down to a few simple, but difficult to accomplish, things. One of which is establishing yourself and building credibility.
Think of winning a Nobel Prize for Economics. Win that and your credibility as an economist goes through the roof!
While we won’t be aiming for those heights, we can brainstorm and target our efforts towards credibility builders in our reach.
Be my guinea-pigs and check out this cool tool. See where you currently lack credibility. Get some direction on where to focus.
Try it out for yourself - here.
Something useful you might not know
USAID practically shut its door earlier this year (at least temporarily), leaving the sector in disarray and severely underfunded. I guess you knew that.
But what you might not know…
This was supposed to be the kick up the arse that the sector needed, and honestly it did need it. Pushing for reform is not a bad thing when a system is not functioning as well as it should be. THE ISSUE IS that there is little to no reform.
Right now the sector is seeing trends of downsizing, but instead of the level-headedness that you might expect from industry veterans, we are seeing backstabbing, cliques and cohorts of higher ups saving their own asses.
AKA no strategic reform, no thoughtful leadership, no ownership and purposeful redirection.
Where does that leave us?
We can see a top heavy industry with the lower-level unprotected staff (likely the future you) taking the brunt of the force. Despite it taking the salary of (generally) 3-5 junior employees to cover the salary of a senior management staff.
The worst thing is, there is not much strategy involved in these decisions. At the moment, it seems like those in power are just firing from the hip and hoping that their cash cow keeps on mooing.
Organisations are basically just jumbling up their jig-saw pieces and trying to make the same image with a few key parts missing, when they should be learning how to paint.
Quote from the sector
Nelson Mandela (Former President of South Africa and anti-apartheid activist):
“Overcoming poverty is not a task of charity, it is an act of justice. Like Slavery and Apartheid, poverty is not natural. It is man-made and can be overcome and eradicated by the actions of human beings. Sometimes it falls on a generation to be great. YOU can be that great generation. Let your greatness blossom.”
Chills, I know.
Interested in hearing more?
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