How to Start Changing the World in Your Day Job
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Daianna Karaian, co-founder of Today Do This, shares how she moved from frustrated sustainability consulting to building a business model that empowers employees to drive social and environmental change within their day jobs. Through workshops and strategic engagement, she helps companies move beyond pledges to concrete action by connecting employee skills and passions to organizational impact goals.
Key takeaways
- Employees are more productive and engaged when their daily work aligns with their personal values, making social impact integral to business success rather than separate from it.
- Companies should focus impact efforts on areas where they cause the most harm and where they have the strongest competencies, not on every trending social issue.
- Real behavior change requires more than presentations or policies—it requires bringing people together, asking them to connect their specific skills to impact priorities, and providing simple frameworks to turn intentions into action.
- Employee-led grassroots change efforts are more constructive and aligned with core business practices than top-down corporate social responsibility initiatives.
- Studies show companies with genuine social and environmental focus outperform peers financially, but only when impact strategy is intrinsically tied to how the business operates.
About Daianna KaraianDaianna Karaian is an American-born, British-naturalized entrepreneur and co-founder of Today Do This, an organization helping companies empower employees to create positive social and environmental change through their work. She spent 15 years in sustainability roles across nonprofits, government agencies, and corporations before launching her own ventures.
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Meeting for the week of August 29, 2022 - September 4, 2022
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Program: How to Start Changing the World in Your Day Job
Speaker: Daianna Karaian
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The Windmill, the Coal Plant, and Geothermal Station Formed a Band
The Windmill, the Coal Plant, and Geothermal Station Formed the Band "Earth, Wind, and Fire".
Their songs start off slow but eventually build in Energy. They would have been Electric too if it wasn't for their Dam manager always holding them back. He was Resistant to change and couldn't see the Potential in the Current market.
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powered by TypeformProgram: How to Start Changing the World in Your Day Job
Speaker: Daianna Karaian
Every week we bring to you a new program on innovation, entrepreneurship, and education, and how those contribute to service to others.
The Rotary eClub of Silicon Valley seeks to explore perspectives on service from across the world. The views of the speakers in our programs are their own, and unless stated otherwise, are not necessarily reflective of the views of our eClub nor Rotary International.
If you have an idea for a cool speaker, please feel free to reach out to them directly or submit THIS FORM so our Program Committee can contact them!
This is *not* a talk about how Daianna made changing the world her day job, in the hopes you might learn from her experience. Every career path is unique. This *is* a talk about how anyone, in any role, in any industry, can use their skills, talents and influence to change the world for the better – how *you* specifically can do that.
In this session, Daianna shares the Today Do This method for turning good intentions into action – a framework inspired by Martin Luther King's 'six steps of social change' and supported by behavioral science. You'll also learn how you can multiply your impact by encouraging your work colleagues to do the same.
Our speaker, Daianna, is a social entrepreneur who's spent more than 20 years working to build a fairer, cleaner, more sustainable world. That work has taken her from Ford's engine factory to Prince Charles' palace, and earned her a place as one of the "Top 10 Creative Leaders Working to Change the World." As co-founder of Today Do This, Daianna makes it everybody's business to change the world for the better. She works with companies committed to improving their impact, empowering their employees to connect their day-to-day work with the social and environmental issues the organization needs to address.
Daianna speaks globally about employee activism and the social impact of business. She has appeared in The Economist, The Guardian, Quartz, and Huffington Post, and is currently writing a children's book inspired by Coretta Scott King.
Members and guests, please welcome Daianna Karaian!
To learn more, go to:
https://todaydothis.com/organisations
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