Our Story

This story began shaping around 2015. I had been studying globalization and its impact on individuals, organizations and societies around the world throughout my academic career. As I traveled, growing levels of inequalities and divisiveness unsettled me more than ever. Further, as a leadership scholar, I was dismayed by the ‘global leadership crisis’, i.e. our inability to develop, select and elect leaders who (broadly speaking) showed little willingness and capability to address the world’s ‘wicked’ problems. I had already worked on the base of the pyramid (BOP) communities, which resulted in co-authoring one paper (and a special issue for South Asian Journal of Business Studies) that promoted the idea of ‘fortune enabling’ (rather than fortune creating and sharing) perspective in 2013. However, I started becoming more interested in individual experiences with inequalities, and the idea of inclusive globalization.

In Fall of 2017, I went on sabbatical. This allowed me a focused opportunity to think, and read. I conceptualized an exploratory study of inequalities. At the same time, I became drawn to the idea of humanistic leadership with its emphasis on promoting human dignity and well-being. I read Julie Nelsen’s “Economics for Humans”, Karl E. Weick’s “Making sense of the organization: the impermanent organization”, Michael Pirson’s “Humanistic Organizations- protecting human dignity and promoting well-being” and Eva Hoffman’s “Time”. I attended HDCA Conference in South Africa, and joined the International Humanistic Organization. I became even more convinced that ‘economic rationality’ hadn’t served us (i.e. organizations and societies) well. In order to make progress, organizations needed to re-evaluate their underlying assumptions to focus more upon creating value through the promotion of human dignity and well-being. 

In 2017, I wrote on my blog, “I believe that we are living through very interesting times in human history. From my perspective, we are faced with wicked problems (to name a few- the rising levels of socio-economic inequalities, growing anger with the current phase of globalization, the widening political ideological gaps, and the rapidly depleting Earth’s resources), that question the essence of ‘who’ we are as people.”  

Upon return from my sabbatical, I developed a course entitled, “Ethical, responsible and humanistic leadership” and offered it as an elective in Spring 2019 at the George Washington University (GW). Students were drawn to the course, because of its title. They stayed because it challenged their assumptions and worldviews. This is where I met Jason Smith. In this course, I also reconnected with Mia Caliendo, who had previously taken a foundational class with me. 

In Spring 2019 I also started working on a new course entitled, “Diversity, equity and inclusion in organizations”, which was offered in fall 2019, as the first DEI focused course at GW. This is where I met Zoe King, who enrolled in the class. The class discussions in the DEI class (particularly) focusing on inequalities infused with humanistic values further stimulated my interest in the topic. I realized I was working on disparate ideas and needed appropriate language to put it all together. 

During the winter break of 2019-2020, as I was finishing up a paper (under review) on humanizing leadership education, I considered the crucial need for humanizing leadership, and developing humanistic leaders. “What can I do?” I wondered. With this, I felt a deep sense of responsibility to contribute to humanizing leadership and organizations. I reached out to Mia (who had since graduated and now worked at Apple), Zoe (who had also graduated and was now a Senior Recruitment Partner at GW), and Jason (who was conducting a research and independent study with me – had relocated and was about to graduate). In Feb 2020, after an initial call, we got together and launched the Humanizing Initiative. 

Our story is of big dreams, and a great sense of responsibility. We want the Humanizing Initiative to be a movement, where we spread ideas that bring us together as a global society, by which we can become more inclusive and humanistic in our approach. We hope to continue to grow in number and influence. Come join our team as participants, learners, thought-leaders, and advocates.