During my conversation with Priyanka, I was awed by her outlook and approach to life - following one’s passion, and taking that leap of faith to search for what you love.
As individuals, we are always on the lookout for inspiration, be it in our personal or professional lives. Quite often our paths cross with individuals who change your entire world view. Recently, I had the privilege of connecting with Priyanka Dutt, Chief Advisor India, GivingTuesday and in that one hour, we spoke about a wide range of topics that I was curious about.
Priyanka is a seasoned social impact leader, with over two decades of experience in the private and social sectors in India. She is the Chief Advisor India for GivingTuesday and was previously the Country Director at BBC Media Action, India, where she provided strategic and operational leadership to the organisation’s India country programme. Her work has won several awards including two GSMA Global Mobile Awards, a Commonwealth Broadcasting Association Award, and a Global Health award. She is an Ananta Aspen Executive Fellow, and holds a Masters’ degree in Film and Television Studies from the University of Warwick, UK.
During my conversation with Priyanka, I was awed by her outlook and approach to life - following one’s passion, and taking that leap of faith to search for what you love. At the peak of her career with BBC Media Action, after having spent close to two decades with them, it was her curiosity that led her to change tracks in career and join GivingTuesday. Being a true leader, she understood when it was time to hand over the baton and make a shift simply based on values. It is the values that make a good leader who is courageous to acknowledge when it is time to move on.
Here are some excerpts from our conversation:
If we speak about your career trajectory, it has seen a very interesting transition. You started in the media industry and later switched to the social impact sector. How and why did that happen?
I grew up from a very young age wanting to work at the BBC with David Attenborough and swimming with the sharks. (laughs) Neither of those things happened. I’ve never worked with David Attenborough and I have never even seen a shark! I am not sure if I have the guts to swim with sharks (laughs). But what did happen was that very early in my career, I got a chance to start working with the BBC.
I started my career working in television, producing non-fiction entertainment shows, and then had an opportunity early on to join what was then called the BBC World Service Trust. The dreams of 8-year-old Priyanka had come true! I was able to take whatever skills, training, education I had in producing mainstream television, and use them for a very different set of outcomes. The big turning point came when I for the very first time met the audience of the show we were producing.
When I first joined BBC World Service Trust, I joined as a producer on a show called “Haath se Haath Milaa” and this was a part of this big project on raising awareness about HIV. The stars of this show were two buses - a girls’ bus and a boys’ bus - that travelled around North India. I remember we were somewhere in western Uttar Pradesh at a railway crossing, waiting there with these painted buses. And suddenly I see this big crowd of people outside the buses and they are all talking to each other, gesticulating and pointing at the buses. I got off the bus to see what was happening, and I realised that everyone in that group had seen the show. They recognised the buses, they knew about the work we were doing, the names of the presenters. They wanted to know where we were going, and what we were doing. They started to tell stories about what they had seen on television and for me that was the real moment of impact. I thought to myself, “This is what it looks like to touch somebody’s life”. That was a big turning point for me and that, I think, gave me the social impact bug.
I’ve since spent the bulk of my career working in social and behaviour change communication, but went from producing television to working on a whole range of media content - audio, digital, outreach programmes on the ground - and on different issues, including maternal and child health, sanitation, gender, labour rights. By the time I left BBC Media Action as the Country Director in 2022, I had spent over 18 years working there.
And for the first time in my life, I made a career decision based not on my skills and training, but on values. I wanted to contribute to the strengthening of civil society in India, and found that opportunity at GivingTuesday, a global generosity movement that is unlike anything I have ever experienced before.
How does one find the courage to make a career change based on values and not on skills?
That is a hard question. I am not sure whether it was courage or whether it was just time. I had been with BBC Media Action for 18.5 years by the time I left and I think I was ready for something different. At one stage, I found myself seriously considering quitting and going to intern with someone to be able to learn about an entirely new subject area. The moment I recognised that I was having that kind of thought, I realised that I was in danger of stagnation - and that’s not good for me and definitely not good for the organisation. So for me, recognising that my learning is plateauing was a big driver in making the decision to leave. It can be really scary to say that I am going to throw my hat over a wall, I have no idea where it is going to land, but I am going to go searching for it and see what I find.
But what strengthened my decision to make this change was talking to Asha (Curran), the CEO and co-founder of GivingTuesday, who is an extraordinarily inspiring person. And I think that’s what we are all looking for, those moments of inspiration that are going to literally light up that bulb over your head and make you realise that there is a whole world out there!
You mentioned that learning was one of the things that drew you towards GivingTuesday. How much learning and re-learning did it take for you at a personal level?
Every single day is unlearning, even before the learning starts. GivingTuesday is a movement that is not owned by any single person or organisation. It works completely differently than how an organisation works. Most social sector organisations focus on a problem they’re seeking to solve. There may be one or more solutions that the organisation has tested, that has proven to be effective in a certain community, and then it is about replication of that solution at scale. None of those things apply to GivingTuesday. Firstly, there is no central problem that GivingTuesday is here to solve. It is easier to think of this movement as this human infrastructure that exists to amplify the value of generosity. And that takes a real shift to think about not “what problem I am here to solve” but “how do I grow generosity in all its forms and really amplify this value.”
Secondly, the principle of unbranding and co-ownership was a big unlearning. When GivingTuesday was created in 2012, the co-founders decided to do something unusual: they decided to give the idea away to anyone who wanted it. So for people who bring the movement to their countries and communities, they co-own their part of the movement. They decide what it should be called, how it will be branded, who they will work with, and what issues they care most about. And that co-ownership has allowed the movement to grow massively in the last 12 years, to over 100 countries today.
And finally - personally speaking - you spend close to two years thinking, talking, engaging, contemplating, arguing about generosity every single day and my unscientific theory is that it changes your brain chemistry. It changes the way you engage with other people, the way your system responds, your cortisone levels. It changes so much about how you think about the world.
GivingTuesday identifies itself as a movement that re-imagines a world based on shared humanity and radical generosity. What do generosity and gratitude mean to you?
Gratitude is one way of expressing generosity. I think generosity is lots of different things. It is the giving of yourself and what you have. It's the giving of time, talent, treasure, testimony and ties. It is about giving what you can as an expression of mutuality and reciprocity, not just as giving from ‘haves’ to ‘have-nots’. And when you think about generosity like this, you realise that everyone is both a giver and a receiver. When your mindset shifts in this way, you see abundant acts of generosity everywhere around you. You start to see people helping each other out that happens constantly around us - we’ve just become inured and blind to it. Generosity exists all around us in the way we engage with each other. It is not just the giving away of a million dollars. That is incredibly generous, and very welcome, but you can be generous in many ways in your life. Everyone, everywhere has something to give, and every act of generosity counts.
Being an inspiration to many and having led teams across roles, how has your definition of leadership changed over time?
I feel like my definition of leadership has changed over the years. Had you asked me this question ten years ago, I might have said that it is about leading your team through uncertainty and stuff like that. But today, when I think about leadership, I focus on values like trust - about manifesting trust in your teams, partners, stakeholders, yourself. Leadership is about building a culture that comes from values rather than a bottom line. My definition of leadership has shifted from being task-centred to being much more values-centred.
In your career, have there been any life-changing incidents that have shaped your career trajectory?
I don’t think it was an incident, it was a person. This was before I became the Country Director at BBC Media Action, when I was a Project Director of this massive project which we were running in Bihar. It was a large complex project, lots of partners working with a lot of complex, external stakeholders, huge communities and teams. It was a very high stakes project leadership in that sense. The Country Director position was opening up at BBC Media Action. At the BBC, you don’t automatically get promoted, you have to apply for positions that open up. Now that I think about it, it is such a fantastic way of making sure you believe in yourself. That is where I got stuck. This position was opening up and my family was encouraging me to apply but I kept telling them that I am not ready for this and that my hands were full with this project. It was a combination of my family and a colleague at work who was senior to me who clearly saw something in me. She was more than an ally to me, she was a champion. She was doing stuff behind the scenes that I didn’t know about - making sure that I was being seen by the people who needed to see me, that a spotlight was being shone on me. That incident helped me realise that having allies who know me really well, who stand by and for me, is transformative.
What are the three factors that you feel have helped your career journey?
Honestly, privilege. Being born into privilege meant that I had a certain kind of education, certain kinds of opportunities that other people never had. There is no getting around the fact that privilege accounts for so much in people’s leadership journeys. In terms of the factors that I have cultivated for myself, it is about being very people-centred and empathetic. My starting point has been less about what has to be done, and more about the people I am working with. How do you tailor the way you work with people so that you get the best out of each relationship and support people to give their best as well. And curiosity is the third thing - the need to learn constantly or risk being supremely bored. Curiosity really drives who I am and what I do.
Working in the social impact sector, have you ever been disillusioned?
All the time. There is this beautiful story about a monk walking down this beach that was covered in millions of starfish that had all been stranded. As he walked down the beach, tossing starfish one at a time back into the ocean, somebody asked him, "Why are you doing this? It is completely futile. You are never going to be able to help all these starfish.” The monk replies, “But I can help this one.” That is a story I keep going back to on days when I feel ‘what is the point of this all, it is so futile. You can spend your life working on all sorts of things and never actually make a change”. I think the best thing to do when you have those moments is to take a break and start afresh the next day. Basically you need to re-fill your well of resilience.
Which is the one book that has left an impact on you or inspired you?
I am a huge fan of Amitav Ghosh, any book. But I will make a plug for a book that really helps explain why GivingTuesday has grown the way it has. It is a book called New Power: How Power Works in Our Hyperconnected World--and How to Make It Work for You by Henry Timms, co-founder of GivingTuesday, and Jeremy Heimans.
