This Girl’s Got It: An Interview with Tara Suri
Tara Suri is hard to pin down. She lives and breaths public service; she runs her own non-profit; and, she is applying for colleges. I finally tracked her down for a short phone interview last week to ask her about her organization, Turn the World Around, and her career as a young change-maker and entrepreneur.
She sees herself as a socially conscious entrepreneur and thinks she is engaging in socially conscious capitalism by combining different forces to effect change. She sees this brand of socially conscious capitalism as defining a problem and seeking to overcome that problem by utilizing all the resources that you can find while engaging as many people as possible. Its about engagement and inclusiveness and innovativeness—synergy to effect change.
Everyone , she argues, can become engaged—- yet, the amount of change you affect isn’t as important as your attitude. We all have to be positive about making an impact, even if that impact is small. Her endeavors have overcome a lot of challenges, the largest of which has often been negative adult opinion. When asked why she is doing this by people who think she is too young, she is quick to quip “why not”? This is the attitude she advocates for all small entrepreneurs and she believes that if you start fighting this image, eventually adults will recognize that you are capable and it will engender greater respect and encouragement. She truly believes that her generation has a unique viewpoint on global issues and are innovative; they “spark and desire to affect change”.
Turn the World around is like the middle man between great engaged people and great social causes. The organization finds venues for people to volunteer their time and energy based on their area of interest. Suri believes that there is a problem between implementation and great ideas and her organization feels this gap. So she is doing work a bit like Global Entrepreneurship Week and helping great ideas come to fruition. For more info on her organization, click here. I’m impressed, inspired and motivated. Aren’t you?
Tags: H.O.P.E., Tara Suri, Turn the World Around
