One More Question

Adama Sanneh — How the Moleskine Foundation uses creativity for social change

Episode Summary

In Episode #23 of One More Question, Ross is joined by Adama Sanneh. Adama is Co-founder and CEO of the Moleskine Foundation. Under his leadership as CEO, Moleskine Foundation has been focused on building educational tools and experiences that help foster critical thinking, creative doing, and life-long learning, focusing on youth and underserved communities. His mandate continues with a clear mission for the Foundation: becoming the global leader in the creativity for social change field. Ross and Adama speak about how the Moleskine Foundation was created and their unique relationship with Moleskine (the brand), their latest campaign — WikiAfrica Education — which aims to translate vital information around COVID-19 into various African languages, and the impact a company can have when it is invested in its people and its Purpose, regardless of budget.

Episode Notes

Highlights from the conversation:

The foundation itself is a product of this process. This started a long time ago, and now we took the shape of an institution to really push this forward and really think about creativity as a tool to build our collective future
It's important to create initiatives that are able to establish a basic level of knowledge that young people can have access to in order to really build their own creativity and build their own world
When you look at something like that [Wikipedia], you just realise that sometimes an open-source technological tool tends to recreate the power structure of the world.
[We] want to do it by transforming young Africans from passive knowledge consumers to active knowledge producers
In order for that active engagement to really take off, it's rooted in a genuine place that you're coming from. So it's not a big company trying to sort of leverage something, it's this open conversation, which in a sense, encourages people to be active
There could be no room for marketing, no room for greenwashing.

More about Adama

Adama brings a unique hybrid background in management and cultural studies to his work designing and building innovative organizations able to generate social impact.

He grew up in Monza, Italy, and graduated in Linguistic and Cultural Mediation from the University of Milan. He worked for several years in East Africa on rural development and humanitarian emergency programs and in social innovation with the United Nations. He obtained a Master in Public Management (MPM) from the Bocconi School of Management and a Master in Business Administration (MBA) from the University of Geneva.

Adama is also part of the advisory board of Ashoka Italia, Brand Counsel member at BrandAfrica, Advisor at OperaFutura, to pursue his commitment to explore and leverage the intersection of business, education, culture, and social development to create new and meaningful public value.

Find Adama on LinkedIn

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One More Question is a podcast by Nicework a Brand and Service Design Company. One of the things we do best is asking our clients the right questions. This podcast came about because we want to share some of the best answers we have heard over the last 13 years. We talk to significant creators, experts and communicators who we have encountered. To share the useful insights, inspirations and facts that made us stop and take notes as we go about our work. Hosted by our Founder Ross Drakes.

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