Gray Matters Capital, a US-based impact investor with a gender lens, which focuses on funding education and skilling enterprises in India as well as sector agnostic enterprises whose products and services benefit women and girls globally, will be conducting the first edition of its 3-day leadership development program in Panaji, Goa from 4th – 6th March, 2019.
Called ‘Tales, We Win’ (TWW), the program will witness the participation of founders of social sector start-ups from India, Colombia and Mexico as well as a global fellowship program for aspiring social enterprise practitioners.
With storytelling as its guiding theme, the program aims to help entrepreneurs in communicating their organization’s vision and story in ways which are compelling and unique, leading to a broader sphere of influence.
“Social entrepreneurs tend to embark on a steeper entrepreneurial journey. With failure rates being a lot higher, it is leadership displayed by the founding team that determines their future. Storytelling makes all the difference as it would help such entrepreneurs to define the organizational goal, influence every stakeholder – be it their teams to deliver or winning interest from investors to get funded”, said Debleena Majumdar, Director – Research and Growth, Gray Matters Capital and Founder – Kahaniya on the choice of the program adopting a storytelling theme. “Across the 3 days, participants of the program will learn to FIND, LIVE and TELL their stories of enhancing personal leadership and organizational effectiveness.”
Outlining Gray Matters Capital’s rationale behind the initiative, Joe Iarocci, Board Member, Gray Matters Capital, said, “At Gray Matters Capital, we invest in people and their ideas that have the potential to create impact by solving social issues at scale. Through TWW, we wish to answer the question of how we as investors can attract, develop and support the very best of the global social enterprise leaders to deliver the best for their organizations so that they can create impact at scale.”
International executive coaches Patrick Solomon and Priya Ramesh Perumbilavil along with Sujatha Rao, Founder & Director, Viridus Social Impact would join Joe and Debleena as the facilitators of this program at the Goa Marriott in Panaji.
The list of participants of the 2019 edition of Tales, We Win are:
Indian Social Enterprise Leaders
| Name | Organization | Success Story |
| Alok Katiyar | MadGuy Labs | Govt exam app in vernacular |
| Anusha Bharadwaj | Voice4Girls | Empowering adolescent girls in India |
| Chitra Ravi | Chrysalis (EZ Vidya) | Developing a child centric education curriculum |
| Manjeet Singh | Buddy4Study | India’s largest scholarship network |
| Nikhil Saraf | Stones2Milestones | Creating a Nation of Readers |
| Soumya Velayudham | Gray Matters India (GMI) | School Assessments |
Latin American Social Enterprise Leaders
| Name | Organization | Success Story |
| Ellie Rose | Salus Holding (Mexico) | Disrupting healthcare and elderly care market | Creating jobs for women as nurses |
| Josele Ordas | Connovo (Mexico) | Replicating successful social businesses to scale their impact |
| Juan Manuel Lopera | Aulas Amigas | TOMi Digital (Colombia) | Technology for Smart Classrooms |
Global Social Accelerator
| Name | Organization | Success Story |
| Sandhya Maliakal | IDEX Accelerator | Hands-on practical work experience in the social sector in India |
Social Sector Investor
| Name | Organization | Success Story |
| Aarthi Ramasubramanian | Gray Matters Capital’s edLABS initiative | Backing visionary education and skilling entrepreneurs with innovative funding |
The program would end with all participants delivering their leadership stories and how they’d use storytelling to bring about a change in their respective organizations.