Peggy Dulany, Chair and Founder at Synergos
The daughter of late philanthropist David Rockefeller Peggy Dulany is what you call a problem-solver: she knows how to observe and analyze complex situations, determine who will be best positioned to tackle them and follow through. She developed her approach by engaging people to achieve real social impact.
Peggy Dulany is Chair of the Synergos Institute, a global nonprofit organization that brings people together to solve complex problems of poverty and create opportunities for individuals and their communities to thrive. She has also been a member of over thirty nonprofit and corporate boards, including the Rockefeller Brothers Fund and the Africa-America Institute, and she runs two socially responsible businesses.
Rarely had I seen such an incredible energy and sense of commitment to create positive impact around the world, so I was really excited when she took time to talk with me.
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You are a philanthropist in every sense of the word. Besides establishing a highly influential philanthropy nonprofit, Synergos, you are also heavily involved with several other organizations that fight poverty and inequality around the world. Why has working in philanthropy been so important for you and your family over the years?
A lot of it comes from my family. Philanthropy was a dinner-table topic when I was growing up, because both of my parents were very concerned with the well-being of people. And not just in the United States, but around the world. I got to travel with my father, David Rockefeller, so that opened my eyes a lot. But I was also given the opportunity to visit and explore communities less privileged than my own which opened my eyes to the injustices in the world and led to my commitment to dedicate my life to figuring out ways to overcome them.
And though the specifics of how each member of our family approaches philanthropy differs, we all share the same values of trying to create a better and more just world.
“I recognized that poor people had the greatest motivation to overcome their poverty - they had the will and the energy”
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How did your experience in Rio de Janeiro shape the person you were to become?
I got connected with a group of anthropologists and Peace Corps volunteers, and had an opportunity to work in a favela, a squatter settlement, when I was 17 to 19 years old. And that was the first time I recognized that poor people had the greatest motivation to overcome their poverty - they had the will and the energy, but very little access to resources, information, decision-makers - anything that would help them make this.
That inspired me to eventually use my own connections, or to help create connections, between people living in poverty and others with resources who could work with them. It was not a thought-out philosophy at the time, but that was the first seed in the concept of Synergos.
“Our idea was that people have to be at the center of development. At the time, this inclusive approach to development was not generally accepted. It was controversial”
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Synergos was formed in 1986 to create relationships between various nonprofits, government institutions and influential individuals who share common goals in philanthropy. Why is a platform such as this necessary?
I'd call it more than philanthropy. Our focus was on effective means to reduce poverty itself - by all those groups you mentioned: philanthropists but also by governments and intergovernmental organizations, by NGOs and by businesses and investors. Up until then approaches to solving poverty problems were mostly too narrowly focused on outside experts and top-down programs. That meant that not only was no ownership built among people affected by poverty to support the solutions those experts proposed, but often the people were not even being asked about what they wanted. There were so many wasted resources, and some initiatives even undermined local capacity.
Our idea, which was not just from Synergos but emerging from a range of civil society leaders, activists, and thinkers around the world in the 1980s and 1990s, was that people have to be at the center of development, and that collaboration among all stakeholders is essential to solving complex problems. We have to leverage the ideas, wisdom and resources of all stakeholders.
At the time, this inclusive approach to development was not generally accepted. It was controversial, with many people in the international development community deeply skeptical of the importance of listening to people or having governments and foreign aid agencies engage with community groups. And even on the community and civil society side, there was doubt about working with government and business - often for legitimate reasons.
Times have changed, and while skeptics remain, I think more and more leaders of all kinds see the need for collaboration across sectors. In fact, the political turmoil in many parts of the world in these last few years underlines the need for collaboration and inclusion. So I'm hopeful, despite alarming news on many fronts.
We still have to convince some people, but a big part of the challenge now, and the focus at Synergos, is how to actually build collaborative, inclusive approaches. Because even with the best of intentions, collaboration is hard. Differences of power and worldview are big obstacles. Mistrust and even conflict, which are present in many places, makes it even harder.
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How much further do you think we have left until we achieve lasting, large-scale, change in the eradication of poverty?
Well, it's important to recognize that huge progress has been made in the last several decades. The number of people living in extreme poverty around the world has dropped by over 70% in the last 25 years, although the majority of this change occurred in China. But you know that so much more needs to be done.
I think in the last five or ten years we're seeing increasing recognition of the interconnectedness of the biggest global challenges - between persistent poverty and problems of the environment, of peace and security, of democracy and good governance, of health and nutrition. And that multi-dimensional understanding means that so many different groups are working, in different ways, on the problem. So I'm hopeful that we're getting closer.
The political turmoil of the last few years in many places worries me, but to an extent it is a wake-up call about the importance of interconnected, inclusive approaches to our problems.
I guess I haven't answered the question! But I'm hopeful.
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What is an important goal, personal or work related, that you have met throughout your time at Synergos?
It wasn't really a goal, but in the last 10 or 15 years we have connected two concepts in our work - the importance of multi-stakeholder collaboration and also of what we call "inner work" - personal reflection and growth. It turns out that working with individuals to help them connect to purpose, overcome their fears and build trust across divides is a key element in building multi-stakeholder collaborations. By doing this, we're building a more integrated strategy for inner change and outer change.
I've seen this in my life and, in the lives of changemakers we work with around the world. And it's also been vital in several large Synergos initiatives around the world. In India we worked on child malnutrition and this approach contributed to a decline in stunting among children under two in one state falling from 39% to 23% in about six years - a huge change. In Namibia is contributed to infant and maternal mortality dropping by about 14% between 2006 and 2013.
So now I'm focusing on creating what we call "bridging leaders" - people with the personal grounding and skills to build trust who can then use those skills to support collaboration to solve complex problems.
“To make big changes, you have to work systemically.”
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You also run two socially responsible businesses: a grass-fed beef and guest ranch in Montana and an ecotourism operation in Namibia. What sparked your interest to this area of business?
It's another side of a belief we have at Synergos - to make big changes, you have to work systemically. It doesn't make sense to run a business that has negative social or environmental impact, even if you commit the profits to philanthropy. To a certain extent, that's what my grandfather's generation did, creating tremendous wealth and then using some of it for philanthropy. That created a lot of positive change and left a tremendous legacy, but now we know we can do this in a way where the means of making a profit also contribute to the social good.
The approach I take, and which the consulting arm of Synergos takes in working with businesses that want to do better, is that it's possible and desirable to have business or investment goals and social goals aligned at a fundamental level. That's the way to create highest positive impact in the world.
As for the focus of my businesses, I've always loved the outdoors and connecting to nature. Being aware of the seasons, and the endless change of the world around us is so nourishing. The ranch in Montana is also important in my work - it's a venue for retreats to do the personal reflective work I mentioned.
What is the greatest lesson you've learned so far as a philanthropist?
Reducing our own fears and moving from judgment to compassion are both hard difficult and important to being effective in the world. We can release so much energy and creativity through building trust. Then you have the basis for building collaborations that lead to solving complex problems sustainably and at scale.
Finally, do you think that by doing good, you're more successful?
Do you mean more successful in business? Yes, certainly in the long-run. The social side generates so much good will and personal growth, which spills over into the business side. I don't think I could sustain work in business without devoting time to both the social aspects of the business and to my philanthropic work. And if you mean in terms of solving complex problems, I believe we now have proof of concept for the approaches we use. Our next step is to offer the approach to many other organizations and individuals in the world who are not yet satisfied with their results.