Nobel Laureate Maria Ressa: We Need to Take Responsibility for the World We Want

Nobel Laureate Maria Ressa: We Need to Take Responsibility for the World We Want

In this episode of Capital for Good we speak with Maria Ressa, the globally celebrated free speech champion, journalist, entrepreneur, dissident, and winner of the 2021 Nobel Peace Prize for her work "to safeguard freedom of expression, which is a precondition for democracy and lasting peace." Ressa is a co-founder of Rappler, one of the most influential media platforms in the Philippines. For her reporting on the administration of President Rodrigo Duterte, Ressa was threatened, arrested, tried, and convicted of cyberlibel, facing over one hundred years imprisonment. Today Duterte has been arrested by the International Criminal Court and awaits trial in the Hague, Ressa has been cleared of nearly all charges, and her work as a journalist and activist continues as she warns of the very real world challenges of online disinformation. We begin with Ressa's earliest days in the United States, when her family immigrated in 1973 after martial law had been declared in the Philippines. We discuss the importance of her education in those years, in elementary, high school, and at Princeton, and the support of those who "taught her to keep learning," lessons that would inform her pursuit of journalism when she returned to the Philippines. "I fell into journalism," Ressa says, as she found it to be critical "connective tissue between government and the people," and a way to "hold power to account." She and three fellow journalists launched Rappler in 2012; by 2016, when Duterte was elected President, Ressa found herself persecuted by the government — threatened, arrested, tried and sentenced to over one hundred years in prison — for reporting on its corrupt and increasingly authoritarian practices. We discuss Ressa's fight for her rights "as a journalist and a citizen" and her realization that technology could accelerate misinformation, distort truth, and blur the boundaries between the virtual and real world. "A lie told a million times becomes a fact," she says. Ressa chronicles these experiences in her 2022 memoir and call-to-arms How to Stand up to a Dictator: The Fight for our Future. Ressa cautions about the dangers of and linkages between the weaponization of algorithmically driven disinformation — and illiberalism worldwide. "Without facts you can't have truth, and without truth you can't have trust. The only government that exists without trust is a dictatorship: you can't have journalism or democracy." In her own work, she and Rappler are building upon the Matrix protocol, a secure, open-source decentralized platform that has the potential to become a global independent news distribution outlet. Although she is deeply concerned — "I feel like Cassandra and Sisyphus combined," she says – Ressa also maintains her faith in the power of people to come together for change. "It's all about community," she explains. "We are standing on the rubble of the world that was; we need to take responsibility for the world we want. We can build a world that is more just, more equitable, more sustainable; we can do this if we decide to come together, to demand better." Thanks for Listening! Subscribe to Capital for Good on Apple [https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/capital-for-good/id1550324845], Amazon [https://music.amazon.com/podcasts/380e2284-7309-48ed-a396-72c29ba41cbf/Capital-for-Good], Google [https://podcasts.google.com/feed/aHR0cHM6Ly90YW1lcmNlbnRlci5saWJzeW4uY29tL3Jzcw==], Spotify [https://open.spotify.com/show/3imobYTcoYcQIPw6hHBeMP], or wherever you get your podcasts. Drop us a line at socialenterprise@gsb.columbia.edu [socaboutialenterprise@gsb.columbia.edu]. Mentioned in this podcast: * Maria Ressa Nobel Prize Lecture [https://www.nobelprize.org/prizes/peace/2021/ressa/lecture/], (2021) * How to Stand up to a Dictator: The Fight for our Future [https://www.harpercollins.com/products/how-to-stand-up-to-a-dictator-maria-ressa?variant=41038093352994], (Harper Collins, 2022) * A Thousand Cuts [https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/frontline/documentary/a-thousand-cuts/], (Frontline, 2021)

Brad Lander, New York City Comptroller: the Virtuous Cycle of a Successful City

In this episode of Capital for Good with we speak with Brad Lander, New York City Comptroller and recent Mayoral candidate. As Comptroller, Lander serves as the city's chief financial officer, budget watchdog, auditor, and custodian of the City's five public pension funds, representing the retirement security — $275 billion in assets — of over 750,000 current and retired public sector workers. As fiduciary, Lander has ensured these assets are invested with a prudent, diversified, long-term approach, while also becoming a national leader on responsible investment when it comes to issues of climate change, worker protections, strong governance, and diversity. At the time of this interview, ranked choice voting had just concluded for the Democratic primary for New York mayor, with Zohran Mamdani winning in an upset over both Lander and former Governor Andrew Cuomo. We begin the conversation with Lander's early days working in community and economic development at the Fifth Avenue Committee and the Pratt Center, where he learned how to use "capital for good:" creative financing for affordable housing, including new ownership and equity models for wealth creation for lower income families, small business support and job training. These issues would inform Landers' decade in the City Council, where he co-founded the Progressive Caucus and advanced legislation on workers' rights, tenant protections, affordable housing, education, and public safety. We also explore Lander's work leading the rezoning of the Gowanus neighborhood (and former Superfund site) to create 8,500 new housing units, nearly half affordable, and affordable art studios and community spaces, as a successful model of inclusive development. Lander discusses the Comptroller's "most sacred responsibility:" its role as fiduciary of the city's pension funds, and Lander's work to deliver retirement security — achieve market rate returns — while stewarding resources "in ways that build on the values New Yorkers share." We walk through a number of examples where the Comptroller's engagement as asset owner led to better conditions for workers, greater accountability on corporate net zero commitments, enhanced board oversight, and improved financial returns. His office has also hit its performance targets while expanding the diversity of partner fund managers. "I believe firmly that attending to environmental, social and governance risks, the ESG work, is not just consistent with fiduciary duty, but an essential part of fiduciary duty," Lander says. In recent years he has worked closely on these issues with other comptrollers and state treasurers across the country. We touch on the New York City mayoral race, the twist and turns of ranked choice voting, and the developments just before the June primary that brought additional attention to the election: Lander's arrest escorting a migrant out of immigration court, the Office of the Comptroller's recovery of $80 million illegally removed from a New York City account by DOGE, and Lander and Mamdani's cross-endorsement. Of the latter, Lander notes, "it wound up unlocking a very lovely response I hadn't anticipated," a kind of hopefulness, as voters and young people especially saw that "politics can involve people working together towards shared goals for the city we love." Lander is clear eyed about the very real challenges facing the New York: affordability, government capacity to deliver a well-run city — to keep streets and subways safe and clean — and to manage budgets and growth in the face of significant headwinds from Washington. This means continuing to strengthen the cross-sector coalition he ran on to create what Dan Doctoroff has called "the virtuous cycle of a successful city," one that harnesses and celebrates growth while investing in the public goods that make that growth possible and more inclusive, and make opportunity and prosperity more broadly shared. If we can do that, he says, "I know we can keep that virtuous cycle going." Thanks for Listening! Subscribe to Capital for Good on Apple [https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/capital-for-good/id1550324845], Amazon [https://music.amazon.com/podcasts/380e2284-7309-48ed-a396-72c29ba41cbf/Capital-for-Good], Google [https://podcasts.google.com/feed/aHR0cHM6Ly90YW1lcmNlbnRlci5saWJzeW4uY29tL3Jzcw==], Spotify [https://open.spotify.com/show/3imobYTcoYcQIPw6hHBeMP], or wherever you get your podcasts. Drop us a line at socialenterprise@gsb.columbia.edu [socaboutialenterprise@gsb.columbia.edu]. Mentioned in this podcast: * This Is Brad Lander's New York [https://www.nytimes.com/2025/06/18/opinion/mayor-lander-gowanus-cuomo-mamdani.html], (New York Times, 2025) * For the Long Term [https://www.forthelongterm.org/] * Who Should Lead New York City? [https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2025/06/12/opinion/nyc-mayor-election-candidates.html], (New York Times, 2025)

Emma Bloomberg and Murmuration: Technology, Data, Research, and the Power of Community-driven Civic Engagement

In this episode of Capital for Good we speak with Emma Bloomberg, the founder and CEO of Murmuration, a nonprofit technology company that works with local organizations to amplify the power of civic engagement by providing the data, tools, and research necessary to build healthier and more equitable communities. Bloomberg has been working with communities and leaders for over 20 years to tackle some of our country's most pressing challenges. She founded Murmuration with the belief in the power of community driven civic engagement to affect sustainable systems change. We begin the conversation with some of Bloomberg's formative personal and professional experiences: her childhood "rooted in deep civic engagement," and the belief that we all have "a responsibility to help make our community a better place;" the opportunity, just out of college, to work on her father Mike Bloomberg's first mayoral campaign; an early stint in city government focused on the creation of the 311, New York City's government service information line, and her time at the Robin Hood foundation, New York City's largest poverty fighting nonprofit and philanthropy. Over the years, and through her work with many community-based organizations, Bloomberg observed how access to better tech and data infrastructure could make their work more efficient, effective, and therefore higher impact. Murmuration set out to solve this problem by serving community organizations with tools, data, and, more recently, research and insights — often tailored to a very local context. We explore critical decision points in Murmuration's ten-year evolution, including the choice to understand community organization needs and fit with existing products in the marketplace, curate those off the shelf tools and data, identify gaps, acquire the IP of existing tech companies, and only then begin to create tools in-house with requisite partner knowledge and engineering and product development expertise. Bloomberg also explains what it means to be a truly mission driven technology company, electing to incorporate as a nonprofit (versus a fully commercial entity) to better serve the needs of community-based organizations. We end with a discussion of Murmuration's newest offerings — original research and insights — among them a three-year deep dive into the aspirations, concerns, beliefs and behaviors of Gen Z, including those related to political and civic engagement, and "civic pulse," a continuous tracking survey that collects daily responses from Americans across the country about how they feel and what they care about, providing real time insights into community well-being and local engagement. Despite the many challenges nationally, Bloomberg remains optimistic. "I am hopeful because I believe in the importance of community organizations; I think of them as the engine of sustainable change," she says. "Local organizing, in communities, in neighborhoods, that's where people can feel impact, and that impact is ultimately power." Thanks for Listening! Subscribe to Capital for Good on Apple [https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/capital-for-good/id1550324845], Amazon [https://music.amazon.com/podcasts/380e2284-7309-48ed-a396-72c29ba41cbf/Capital-for-Good], Google [https://podcasts.google.com/feed/aHR0cHM6Ly90YW1lcmNlbnRlci5saWJzeW4uY29tL3Jzcw==], Spotify [https://open.spotify.com/show/3imobYTcoYcQIPw6hHBeMP], or wherever you get your podcasts. Drop us a line at socialenterprise@gsb.columbia.edu [socaboutialenterprise@gsb.columbia.edu]. Mentioned in this podcast: * Murmuration [https://murmuration.org/?gad_source=1&gad_campaignid=22411651671&gbraid=0AAAAA_SADIOvjKVZHhXKj9DTvBaSaRVsl&gclid=Cj0KCQjwjdTCBhCLARIsAEu8bpIOaW7LhHwjG5WOcvgwRCogShga-LRoug1eACbADNTPy6jxuzo0WWoaAhUcEALw_wcB] * The Memphis Lift [https://memphislift.org/] * Insights by Murmuration Substack [https://insightsbymurmuration.substack.com/] * Murmuration Research and Insights [https://murmuration.org/research] (website)

Kevin Ryan, the Godfather of NYC Tech

In this episode of Capital for Good we speak with Kevin Ryan, one of New York's leading internet entrepreneurs and investors, and often called the "Godfather of NYC tech." Ryan is a co-founder of MongoDB, Business Insider, Gilt Groupe, Zola, Pearl Health, and Transcend Therapeutics, and every year founds and invests in new companies through AlleyCorp, the New York based venture fund and incubator. Ryan is also one of New York's driving civic leaders, serving as vice chair of the Partnership for New York City, a founding board member of Tech:NYC, and a gubernatorial appointee to numerous commissions focused on New York's economic and civic health and well-being. We begin with Ryan's early and pioneering days as a 1990s internet entrepreneur. As the president of DoubleClick, he grew the company in two years to 2,000 people across 25 countries, took it public, navigated the dotcom bust and sold it to Google in 2007. We discuss AlleyCorp's unusual model as early-stage investor and incubator, and Ryan describes AlleyCorp's most recent investment vertical, economic infrastructure, focused on the economic mobility of low- or middle-income Americans: "the 80% of families who power our economy." This has meant identifying and backing entrepreneurs pursuing innovations in health equity, fintech, and workforce development with companies like Patch Caregiving, a first of its kind employer sponsored emergency childcare provider for frontline workers. We also explore the growth and vibrancy of New York's tech industry. New York City is one of the world's fastest growing and most valuable technology hubs, and Ryan explains how and why it powers the local and regional economy, and measures the city and state can take to continue to foster the ecosystem and its critical contributions to New York's dynamism and social fabric. Thanks for Listening! Subscribe to Capital for Good on Apple [https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/capital-for-good/id1550324845], Amazon [https://music.amazon.com/podcasts/380e2284-7309-48ed-a396-72c29ba41cbf/Capital-for-Good], Google [https://podcasts.google.com/feed/aHR0cHM6Ly90YW1lcmNlbnRlci5saWJzeW4uY29tL3Jzcw==], Spotify [https://open.spotify.com/show/3imobYTcoYcQIPw6hHBeMP], or wherever you get your podcasts. Drop us a line at socialenterprise@gsb.columbia.edu [socaboutialenterprise@gsb.columbia.edu]. Mentioned in this podcast: * AlleyCorp [https://alleycorp.com/] * Patch Caregiving [https://www.patchcaregiving.com/] * Partnership for New York City [https://pfnyc.org/] * Tech:NYC [https://www.technyc.org/] * "Empire [https://www.governor.ny.gov/news/governor-hochul-launches-first-phase-empire-ai-powering-critical-research-public-good-just-six] AI": New York State AI Consortium [https://www.governor.ny.gov/news/governor-hochul-launches-first-phase-empire-ai-powering-critical-research-public-good-just-six]

Maria Teresa Kumar: We Market Democracy Every Single Day

In this episode of Capital for Good we speak with Maria Teresa Kumar, the nationally celebrated social entrepreneur, civic and political operative, journalist, commentator and co-founder and CEO of Voto Latino, the nation's largest Latino voter registration organization. We begin by discussing some of the formative experiences that shaped Kumar's passion for politics and civic engagement, including her childhood in a bicultural family and community in Northern California, where she learned how to navigate and bridge difference, real and perceived, to find common cause. In these years and environment, shaped in part by Prop 187 and anti-immigrant sentiment and policy, Kumar learned first-hand how young people in Latino and other immigrant households were critical to mobilizing their families and communities — to become citizens and voters — and in the process dramatically shift electoral outcomes to better reflect community needs. In 2004, with the recognition that Latinos were the second largest demographic group in the country, Kumar and Rosario Dawson founded Voto Latino, centering voter mobilization efforts on young people, and using technology and other pop culture and media tools "to market democracy every single day." In the twenty years since, Voto Latino has registered over two million voters and played a central role in flipping a number of swing states in various elections. We cover the 2024 election, and the widely held interpretation that Latino voters' shift to the right contributed to the election of Donald Trump. Kumar notes that while some Latino voters did shift right, many more stayed home in 2024 (38 percent) than in 2020 (27 percent). She believes this reflects broader anxiety and frustration; Latinos, who disproportionately bore the economic toll of the pandemic, and have continued to struggle with persistent affordability challenges and unresolved immigration reform, did not see their needs adequately addressed by either party. Today, Kumar suggests that most Latinos, even those who voted for Trump, believe the President has gone too far, a sentiment reflected in recent survey data from Voto Latino and the Latino Community Foundation. Looking ahead, Kumar argues that it is critical to re-engage voters, and to use "culture at scale" — thoughtful conversations, podcasts, influencers, other creative engagement tools, to address needs and "remind people that when they participate government does work, government can be kind, and it's the will of the people." She also notes that at this moment it is critical for citizens to hold government accountable. "2024 was really painful," Kumar says. "We're feeling what happens when we don't participate. But 2026 is right around the corner… We have the ability to inspire, aspire, and to imagine getting to that more perfect union. And that takes all of us." Thanks for Listening! Subscribe to Capital for Good on Apple [https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/capital-for-good/id1550324845], Amazon [https://music.amazon.com/podcasts/380e2284-7309-48ed-a396-72c29ba41cbf/Capital-for-Good], Google [https://podcasts.google.com/feed/aHR0cHM6Ly90YW1lcmNlbnRlci5saWJzeW4uY29tL3Jzcw==], Spotify [https://open.spotify.com/show/3imobYTcoYcQIPw6hHBeMP], or wherever you get your podcasts. Drop us a line at socialenterprise@gsb.columbia.edu [socaboutialenterprise@gsb.columbia.edu]. Mentioned in this podcast: * Voto Latino [https://votolatino.org/] * Survey Data and Report [https://latinocf.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/FULL-RESULTS_LCF_VL_Poll-Results-1.pdf], (Voto Latino and Latino Community Foundation, 2025)