I am.
And this is choosing leadership.
A podcast for high performers, with big dreams at work and life.
This is a podcast for people who know deep inside that there is more.
Have you achieved a great deal of success?
But on the inside, you still feel empty and like an imposter.
Do other people see you as a strong leader?
And you wonder why it still feels so lonely and suffocating.
The aim of this podcast is not to provide you more content, but instead shift
the context under which you operate.
I dare to speak to the tremendous power, which you already have
rather than what you believe.
Are your strengths and limitations.
This podcast is called choosing leadership because that is
what leadership is a choice.
And this is the leadership journey, CDs.
I am interviewing leaders with an interesting story to learn how
they got where they are today.
We all have a lot to learn from each other's stories.
Of Viet.
We started very veer now.
And over successes and struggles on the V.
With this series of interviews, my attempt.
Is to give leaders an opportunity to share their stories and for all of us
to learn from their genders sharing
Nina founded.
Shosha.
pink week for breast cancer awareness in 2013.
At only the age of 16.
Our campaign has since raised over half a million us dollar.
Including $48,000 in the first hour.
And as a result of that, she was named a future hundred by a Barclay's.
He's currently leading social impact CSR and give back for lemonade.
Which is an insurance company driven by social good.
In the interview in our shares, how losing her mother inspired
her to start pink week.
She opens up and talks about how bad things hurt her heart.
And how knowing that has shaped her career.
She also talks about the importance of working in a company.
Where you feel comfortable expressing your voice which i think is one of the main
tasks of any leader in any organization
Welcome Nina to the show.
Thank you so much for having me.
I'm excited to be here.
Wonderful.
It's my pleasure to have you.
Can you begin with sharing a little bit about yourself and what you do?
Yeah, of course.
So my name is Nina I'm based out of Tel-Aviv and I lead social
impact for lemonade, which is a B Corp a public benefit corporation.
But more than that, it's also an insurance company.
But because of how we've structured all product, it means that we have
purpose is really built into what we do.
We have all main, purpose driven and kind of impact program, which is all
give back, which happens once a year.
That's when we donate up to 40% of unclaimed, premiums at
the end of the year to causes that our policy holders choose.
Aside from that, we also, throughout the year, just continually focused
on making sure that lemonade is the most ethical and best, product
that it can be for our policy.
Thank you.
And I've got quite curious to know how these two things tie together
with social impact and insurance.
And I think normally when people look at insurance, there's a lot of
thoughts which, which come to mind.
So I'm quite curious, but before that, like before that, I want to
hear your backstory and how you got.
Where you are today.
And if, for our listeners, can you share one or two events from
your life, which has shaped you into the person and the leader who.
Yeah, of course.
When I was 16, I founded a nonprofit it's called pink week.
It was later incorporated into a much larger charitable organization
called breast cancer now.
And basically what pink week did was raise awareness of breast
cancer amongst younger generations.
So my peers, which has an age group, that's so often overlooked because
we're not seen as traditional donors and therefore we're not really.
Charities target market, but I tried to flip that on its head and say,
let's put the donation element aside.
We can still benefit from micro donations, but let's really push forward awareness.
So it began when I was 16.
And then it began, it spread, I brought it to university with me.
Cambridge, university of Cambridge in the UK and it spread to different campuses
and it just really started to pick up on, it just seemed that, people really
engaged with the idea of giving back also as a millennial and not just as somebody
who has decided to donate part of their salary as they've got older or part of
more established career, but actually as a younger person, being able to make
a dent, really resonated with people.
Yeah, that's a, that's very unique because I at 16, I'm sure a lot of
people have other things on their mind.
I'm intrigued and can you share.
What inspired you to do this?
Yeah, of course.
So I was really inspired by my mother.
She passed away when I was young.
Gosh, she had breast cancer for around three years.
And she was a huge advocate for the awareness movement.
She campaigned, she raised nearly a hundred thousand pounds for a
specific type of machinery at the hospital that she was treated.
And she wrote and was very vocal about what she was going through for the
guardian, which is, a super well-known newspaper circulating throughout that
you can the U S so she really showed me what it was to stand up for a cause.
And that inspired.
To then see if I could mirror that passion and that breast cancer awareness movement
and bring it down to my generation because the way I think about it, and I continue
to think about it is that if I, as somebody who grew up in a household, where
breast cancer were spoken about so openly.
Still need to remember to check myself every single month, then how much more.
So my peers or people I went to school with, especially at an all
girls school, we would have already spoken to about breast cancer.
People really need to remember that the audio that you catch.
The higher rate of survival.
And therefore it was really important to me to just say, why don't we just bring
that awareness level a few years earlier?
Why do we have to wait until we reach an age where we perhaps,
vulnerable to breast cancer?
And why can't we like look at preventative away?
Thank you.
Thank you for sharing that very personal story.
I lost my mom to cancer as well, so I can totally relate to how that can lead
you to, to start something on your own.
Definitely.
So I'm curious to know how that has shaped you as a person.
And how has this journey been since you started being weak?
So I think it shaped me as a person, that kind of goes without saying.
It's not necessarily something I wanted to happen in my life in order
to shape me, but it did happen.
And I think the main thing that it instilled in me is that I really
hate seeing bad things happen.
It really hurts my heart.
And I think that's very much why it ended up in the position and the sector
that I'm in and the nonprofit sector, because I just feel like a real connection
with giving back and facilitating other people, to be able to give back as well.
Yeah, thank you.
What is it that you're passionate about and that, keeps you up at night.
This.
Definitely lemonade.
It keeps me up at night.
It's not something I ever imagined being passionate about.
And I never, if you told me four or five years ago that I would be
working at an insurance company that was perhaps more impactful than every
non-profit that I've worked for.
I would, I wouldn't necessarily believe you, but lemonade really seeks to make
sure that our mission is a force for good.
And that was totally, inspiring to me and really blew me away when I
connected with the organization.
So that really keeps me passionate to see that a full-profit is able to be,
as good and as ethical as a nonprofit.
The evidence of how genuine this is lies in the fact that the.
Really existed from the beginning of the product.
It wasn't an afterthought and it wasn't implemented as we became more successful.
It's really legally, we're committed to this as our double bottom lines.
To me, that is just something that I'm constantly thinking about.
How can we evolve this impactful mission?
How can we make sure that we're getting that message out there for
other for-profits to perhaps emulate that, or copied that, a mission as
well, and ensure that their product also has a social good element.
Yeah, thank you for sharing that.
And I just went through the laminate website before this interview.
So I would advise everybody who is listening to actually go and check it out.
And it's quite unique.
And also for you, as you share in your journey, how do you
see the role of business?
In creating a better future for all of us.
And is that only the responsibility of the nonprofit sector and what can
businesses learn and how can they adapt?
Especially with global challenges like climate change
yeah.
I think that question is in two parts.
The first is that we definitely shouldn't leave it up to the non-profits to be
responsible kind of for giving back.
I really believe the opposite.
I think, the for-profits are the organizations that need to pave
the way for a new kind of giving, engaging a completely new consumer
set, and a target audience that could be interested in giving back
and perhaps becoming dedicated more dedicated to these nonprofits as they.
Become more established in their own career.
So connecting this direct relationship between the donor, the nonprofit
that's facilitated by the for-profit, which is exactly what lemonade does.
If you compare lemonade, giving trends to us, giving trends, I
think it's so fascinating to see the causes that you think are popular.
Are actually neglected, but we're able to rebalance that in our gift back and
restore that kind of unfairness that we might see with these popular causes.
You mentioned the environment and climate change while nearly 15% of all
give back goes to environmental causes.
But if you look at the us giving trends over rule, it sounds around 3%.
So there's quite a disparity between what we might see in the
news is being really popular.
Actually, where the money is getting funneled and where the
money is actually ending up.
So I would say, we really do have a responsibility as for profits to make
sure that the money is getting in the right hands and to the right places.
And I think where our really exciting turning point where full profits, because
of, especially because of the B Corp.
Starting to resemble not necessarily a non-profit because of it's still,
driven by profit and business minded and you can't disentangle that, but
with driven also by social good and have impacted our core, which has,
very much a new form of capitalism.
That's very exciting to be a part of..
Absolutely.
And this reminds me of an interview, which I did a few weeks ago.
And the interviewer said that, they want to see a future where
all corporations are B cops.
Definitely.
I would absolutely love that.
I think all corporations should be B Corps, because I think it's really
the best way to do business nowadays.
Yeah.
So coming back to your day-to-day job, how do you manage pressure and over.
How do I manage pressure?
That's a good question.
I think it's becoming increasingly relevant in a, in this day and age
and COVID, travel is more restricted.
And so I think it's important to be open about the fact that everyone
is feeling more overwhelmed and there's a lot more pressure.
I'm navigating, like a long distance relationship and the time of COVID,
which is not an easy thing to do.
So I would say that just, reminding yourself that everybody is
going through it and it's okay.
It's okay to feel, pressure and overwhelmed, especially.
In periods of unrest and change.
But I think that if you have a job that you're passionate about and that
you're focused on, it really helps to calm the nubs and decrease some of that
intense pressure because that you're going in the right direction and this
role or this sector that you've landed in is actually where you want to be.
So yeah, it might be pressurizing, but it's pressure.
That's why.
Thank you.
This reminds me, I think I read this quote somewhere.
That pressure is a privilege.
And especially when you're doing what you're passionate about.
I think, even if the journey is, pressure, it is all worth it in the.
I would really agree with that.
I think, there's a correlation between, pressure on actually, the
idea of really caring about something.
So I think getting that balance right is really important.
Thank you.
And as you talked about caring about something, is there something
with which you care about and you have dreamed of doing for a long
time, but you haven't done it.
I think there's a few things that I definitely really care about and that I
would love to be able to focus more on.
I haven't really stayed connected to the breast cancer awareness movement
and as I become older and grow closer to the age where it's increasingly
relevant, I would love to be able to.
Touch back in with that movement.
But the beautiful thing about lemonade is that we're able to support such a
diverse range of courses from very small non-profits, to very large organizations
like charity water Eselu direct relief.
So I do feel like I get quite a range of things to be passionate about in my day
to day job, which I'm very grateful for.
Since you talked about being grateful for what else do you have in your life
that you feel the most grateful for?
In a professional sense?
Yeah, I think in the context of leadership or in the context
of, of the work that you do.
I think the thing that I'm most grateful for is definitely the team that I'm
surrounded by because social impact can be quite an isolating space.
Often there's only one person in the team.
And I lead that, part of our product and part of our company.
But because the gift bag is so inbuilt in the organization and what we do,
everyone is passionate about it.
So I feel super grateful that I work somewhere, that everybody
really cares about impact.
And it's not just something that I look after on the side and
people might engage with once a year and see us, tokenistic, CSL.
Rather it's something that everybody in the company feels super excited
about this such a buzz around it.
It's a key reason why people come to work.
Yeah, I would say that I feel super grateful to be surrounded
by that kind of community.
Thank you.
As you have worked in different sectors, can you share, a person or
somebody who has had a big influence on your leadership and is there any
particular event which you can remember and can share with our audience?
I think the person who's probably had the greatest impact on me
would be my, the VP of Combs.
Who's, the current leader of a team at lemonade.
Her name is and the first time that we connected, we spoke about how we
could integrate the impact role, more, more defined more clearly at lemonade.
And I was just super inspired to meet someone who had taken.
Such a leap in their career.
Especially as a woman in tech, I think it was just very inspiring
to me to find that space.
And she continues to be such a source of inspiration for me, the way that she
talks about transparency and ethics, and is constantly thinking and making sure
that lemonade is on the right side of history, for lack of a better cliche.
I would say that too, she really is a source of inspiration
for me in office meeting.
Really what pivoted me away from the nonprofit world and to the
for-profit world, which is, the move I'm most fortunate for.
Is that a particular belief about leadership that you have
come to change your view over?
Yeah, I think one thing that's interesting about the company that I work at now
is that leadership is very much not removed from day to day decisions.
You seem to have a lot of interaction with leadership, not that it's a
flat organization, but there is a lot more kind of back and forth.
And, regardless of your age or your experience, you're still able to
really make an impact in the company.
So I think that's something that I would really take on is to not look at
the stereotypical factors that might define someone's success, but perhaps
look at, that day to day and what really is pushing them forward as a process
and how to draw on that and make them the best employee that they can be.
Thank you.
I think what I take away from that is not just the value of
transparency, but also giving people autonomy over the work that they do.
And.
An openness to express their opinions, even if the challenge
what the leadership thinks it is.
Definitely.
I think that's so important, especially in the last few years.
And we've seen, racial justice movements emerging and unrest, perhaps
across different companies about how leaderships are responding.
I think it's really important to make sure that you work at an organization
where you feel comfortable expressing your voice, and that you actually feel hard.
So I completely agree with that.
Yes.
I think expressing your voice is like a very good synonym for
leadership, which I sometimes use.
Yeah.
Thank you.
So if I zoom out and take you into the future, right?
What does a successful and purposeful future look like?
Right now I envisioned my future very much at lemonade, just continuing to build
on impact program, on what should grow.
The give back pretty grows with lemonade.
All 2021 give back was 104% higher than 2020.
4000% higher than 2017.
We growing, especially in the causes that we align ourselves for.
So it's very clear now to see what we stand for.
Think we've donated nearly $500,000 to climate organizations since
2017, and we've remained committed to platforming racial justice.
I've donated, multiple hundred thousand donations to the ACL, you funding
that criminal justice projects.
And that funding continues.
So I think I would really love to just keep building the impact
program, pushing it forward, making it even clearer, 12 policy holders,
what we stand for as an organization.
And just continuing to see that incredible growth that we've seen without give back.
Yes.
Thank you.
It looks like you are, what you're doing right now is itself
a very purposeful for you.
And it, to me, it seems like a lot of impacts and a lot of success already.
I hope
I hope so.
Thank you.
Is there something which people misunderstand about you?
Yes.
Understand about me.
That's a really good question.
I think that.
I think it's something I would probably need to think about.
I'm not sure.
I pride myself on being quite clear and open.
But if I'm not, then that's something I should definitely change.
So I hope that there's limited misunderstandings.
But yeah, that's a really good question.
I will think of that.
A good answer for that in the future.
Yeah.
And since you mentioned about change, is there any quality or skill or
ability that you would like to.
Yeah, I think confidence, being more confident and
self-assured, and where I am.
I think when you come to a leadership role at a young age, then everybody struggles
with this kind of imposter syndrome.
And that's something that I definitely feel.
The, so definitely, more confident in my abilities and asking for whatever.
I want and deserve and growing I'm growing.
My role accordingly, I think is, something that everyone
should aspire to and achieve.
Thank you.
Thank you for sharing that.
And it's, it's quite, ironical because I can share my point of view, but I'll when
I look at your LinkedIn profile and when invited you for this interview, I, it, the
profile was like somebody who is already.
There's just success.
Somebody who has started multiple initiatives in the past, somebody
who looks very confident.
And, thank you for opening up, that how that imposter syndrome plays up.
Yeah, definitely.
I think, so many people peer confident, there's really always something
going on behind closed doors.
So I think everyone should be more open about how they're really feeling.
And then.
I live in a much more transparent environment.
Yeah.
And I've worked with a lot of senior leaders and, there's one thing
which I'm discovering is that take them the more successful you get.
The imposter syndrome never goes away.
In fact, it continues to get, stronger.
And, and what I am learning is that, I think it's a good sign that you
are growing as long as you does not.
Let it stop you from moving forward.
It's a good sign that you're doing something which is beyond your
grasp and you're dreaming big.
So for me, it's always a good sign.
The imposter syndrome is there, it's not the truth that it's basically just
a lie, but just having it there tells you that you're dreaming big, you're
living a life that you can be proud
of.
Definitely.
I completely agree with that.
Yeah.
And just another side note on confidences in humans mentioned that I think one thing
which I am I'm realizing, so I started a project to understand confidence and
courage because I have a set to myself that I did not have confidence, and I
did not have courage for a long time.
And that.
In this year, I must have interviewed around a few hundred hundred
leaders around confidence.
And what I'm discovering is that confidence is not a requirement.
It's an outcome of what you do.
And then if you do anything for, for a repeated period of time,
confidence is what you get out of it.
And it's not something which is a prerequisite for doing that.
That's so interesting.
Yeah.
I completely agree with that.
It's does it, chicken in the egg?
Do you need confidence in order to achieve something?
Or can you get confidence from what you've just achieved?
Yes.
Thank you.
So before, before we wrap up, is there a particular advice you would give someone
who has a big dream, and something which they are very passionate about,
but it has been on hold for that.
Just go for it.
I really embarrassed myself, cold emailing, LinkedIn messaging,
looking at my dream job and maybe it was a bit cringey at the time,
but I don't regret it at all.
So I think that definitely, go for it.
I really think it's a good thing to do.
Wonderful.
Such a simple answer yet.
It, I think it packed so much pearls of wisdom, I think, just going for
it and the way you say you, you didn't wait for readiness and you
didn't wait for something to happen.
And, and I think one, one thing which I always remember is that if you don't
ask the answer will always be no.
And what's, what's the worst that you can then.
So anybody who listens to this podcast either now or later, where can they find
out more about you and connect with you?
I'm on LinkedIn.
I'm very open to people reaching out, and definitely check out lemonade
and the lemonade to give back because that's the best reflection I hope of
me and what we stand for as a company.
So yeah, definitely do check us out.
Thank you.
Thank you, Nina for this, for the short, but I think very insightful interview.
And I think the lessons that you have shared from your journey would be
meaningful for other listeners as well.
Thank you for the same course.
Thank you so much for having me.
That's it for this episode of choosing leadership with summit.
I choose leadership every time I record this podcast and I
invite you to do the same.
I invite you to design a life of joy, meaning pride and satisfaction.
Not just for yourself, but also for those around you.
This is what I do most naturally to lovingly and gently provoke you.
To help you see your own light to help you see what you are already capable of.
I say what might be uncomfortable for me to say, or for you to hear.
To show you that all of our dreams which have been on hold are within our grasp.
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Until next time, keep choosing leadership.