What Grows?

Scaling Deep with Nadia Kist

Nadia Kist runs Blood:Water from Nairobi, partnering withcommunity-based organizations across Africa to end health disparities tied to HIV/AIDS and the water crisis. She's also Egyptian-American, a classically trained singer of German and Latin arias, and a photographer. So she pays close attention. We get into the part of the funder-doer conversation thatnobody quite says out loud: that the architecture of international development funding was never really built for community autonomy, and that our obsession with scale, replicability, and ROI is the language of mass production. "Why are we trying to do that with people?" she asks. We also talk about scaling deep instead of scaling wide, andwhy her longest-tenured supporters supported the shift toward locally-led work almost immediately. And then there's the rest of our conversation: Nadia received a cancer diagnosis in 2023, and she calls that season one of thegreatest gifts she's been given. Not because the experience was good, but because limitation became a kind of freedom: a daily liturgy of "I bring what I can, and I trust I'll be met with the rest." Her Fight Club support group still holds her to it. This is a conversation about what gets clarified when youstop trying to carry it all — as a person, as a leader, and as a sector.

Nervous System First Fundraising with Kim van Niekerk

After 15 years teaching fundraisers communication skills, she watched someone look up from a training session and say, "I wish you worked for us because you've got the words." That moment broke something open: She realized people weren't missing technique, they were missing access to their own capacity when fear took over. We talk about the donor who wouldn't give until one fundraiser asked him why he wanted to know about a fourth project, and about noticing your nervous system state with kindness instead of frustration. Kim reminds us that 95% of what we experience as "smallness" is just the volume of fear, and underneath it is the quiet capacity to meet people exactly as they are. Also: why your dad texting instead of calling your aunt might say something about all of us right now. Find Kim at: https://www.theviewlooksgood.com/

The Obstacle Is The Way with Ellen Donelly

The social impact sector is in the middle of a massive "What now?" moment. With USAID funding being gutted and long-standing international development structures shifting, many talented people I know are suddenly facing an identity crisis. You’ve spent decades building deep expertise, but as the institutional floor moves beneath you, you’re left wondering how to package that value on your own terms. The problem? Most experts are stuck in what business coach Ellen Donnelly calls the "Expert Trap." Because you live inside your expertise every day, it feels "obvious" to you. You focus on the gap between your current work and perfection, while the market is simply looking for someone to solve a problem. I sat down with Ellen for the latest episode of What Grows? to discuss how to turn that expertise into authority—especially when the world feels uncertain. We talked about why she abandoned a fully-equipped YouTube studio to go back to her "natural wiring," and why the first $100K you earn as a solopreneur is actually about a massive psychological shift, not just a business model. If you’ve been waiting to "feel confident" before you pitch that first independent project, this conversation is for you. Ellen's website: https://the-ask.uk/

Before You Can Change the Game, You Have to Play the Game - with Ineza Mutimura

How are funding decisions actually made? Ineza shares what makes entrepreneurs fundraising-ready, why you need to study your audience as rigorously as your solution, and how your subconscious intelligence guides you toward the right moment to speak up.  We also discuss her journey from working with African startups to building Funders of African Descent (FoAD), why she believes in working within systems before trying to change them, and the conviction that drives her: We're not going to save the world, but if we step up, we're going to do way more than we imagined. For more on Ineza's work, visit https://www.foadgroup.com/

Following the Nudge with Karen Runde

Karen Runde [https://www.linkedin.com/in/karen-sumie-runde-7324483/] received a vision of a water filter during meditation, and two months later, saw that design on a business plan that landed on her desk. After a decade supporting social entrepreneurs through the Miller Center for Global Impact, Karen followed the nudge to step into the arena herself, launching CoShun [http://coshunwater.com/], a sustainable water initiative now serving students across two schools in Kenya. It's one thing to guide others through uncertainty. It's another to feel it in your bones: the self-doubt, the 5 a.m. calls across time zones, the weight of wondering if you're enough to do what you've been called to do. In this conversation, Karen shares how meditation unlocked parts of herself she didn't know existed, why she's studying Reiki alongside scaling a social enterprise, and what it means to let go of the death grip on the steering wheel. We talk about navigating power dynamics as an American woman working in Kenya, why finding your people saves you years of mistakes, and the difference between work-life balance and finding flow. Plus: crystals, Gen Z changemakers, and why doing something (even imperfectly) matters more than doing nothing at all.