Start Making a Difference Wherever You Are, Right Now
Today, meet my friend Maya Appiah, our first New Happy exemplar! She teaches us how to get started on making a social impact in your community. This interview will be really interesting for those of you who yearn to find more purpose in your life, but aren’t looking to change your full-time job.
Here are the top three things I learned from Maya:
Be courageous in trying new things. Just show up!
Don’t fixate on the finding ‘right’ place; make the most of where you are, right now.
Figuring out what you’re best at is a critical key step to meaning and happiness.
Maya Appiah believes that the secret to New Happiness is finding the activities and people that bring you energy.
A bit about Maya: She began her career at Vital Voices, a nonprofit that is devoted to empowering female leaders, then moved to LinkedIn and to Microsoft, where she drives talent strategy. She’s a Leadership Council member at Upwardly Global, a nonprofit that has helped more than 6,000 refugees find their place in the U.S. workforce, and is the co-chair of the Immigrant and Refugee Commission of the City of Seattle. The key thread of Maya’s work is empowerment of others.
In this interview, she talks about her experiences driving major social impact while working a corporate day job, shares her tips for getting involved with your community, and offers her advice for bringing New Happiness to your own life.
Hi Maya! Let’s start with a big, broad question. What does happiness mean to you?
Happiness and impact, for me, are intertwined, and they come from the things that bring me energy. I feel happiest when I’m able to leverage my strengths and am really using myself in an optimal way. It’s also amplified by what I’m working on, and whether or not it’s connected to my purpose. If I have to work on a spreadsheet all day, I can get it done because I have that skill, but it isn’t going to energize me.
On the other hand, my passion for refugee and immigrant communities transforms even the most mundane tasks into something that gives me energy. We’re in the middle of recruiting additional board members for Upwardly Global in Seattle. I don’t love planning events for work, but because this event connects to my why, I’m so excited to do it. I feel as though I am uniquely capable of contributing, that my work really matters because of what I know about this cause and what I can give. Finding the intersection of the why and the what is a place I love to be.
What was a recent New Happy moment in your life?
One moment of joy, fulfillment and gratitude was learning that LinkedIn would be providing a grant to Upwardly Global for the following year, because of a proposal I had worked on.
Another was at the recent Upwardly Global gala where we more than doubled our goal of raising $15k, while surrounded by the energy of the people in the room, who were all so moved by the same cause.
I feel such a great deal of satisfaction and fulfillment in leveraging my skills and capabilities towards something important and helpful. That’s New Happy to me.
We all feel so busy with our full-time careers, but still want to contribute to society. What would you advise us?
I don’t think you want to aim for just any old impactful thing. It has to be personally impactful for you. Plenty of companies have some great big mission statement about how they’re changing the world, but if that doesn’t resonate with you, it’s probably not the right fit in the long-term. If it doesn’t get you going, even the coolest job with the coolest perks is not going to be your thing.
I think you have to figure out how to apply your strengths and activate them towards a purpose that is somehow bigger for you. A powerful question that has guided me over the years has been “From what space can I most effectively create change?”
I started my career in the nonprofit sector because I thought that nonprofits were changing the world, it was amazing work, it was selfless, and so on. Over time, I realized that nonprofits have their own limitations from structural, resource, and talent perspectives; and I learned that they aren’t the only way to effect change.
That’s when I looked across the country at tech, where companies were getting millions of dollars in funding for apps that say “Yo!”, and thought to myself, this is just ridiculous! What a waste. I wondered if there was an opportunity to take the talent and resources in the tech world, and leverage them differently. So I decided to try maximizing my potential in a new space and moved to LinkedIn in San Francisco. Even though LinkedIn is a very socially-conscious and impactful company, my day job didn’t always feel like I was contributing directly to that purpose. I had to find other ways to give. That led me to Upwardly Global, which gave me an opportunity to bridge the nonprofit and tech worlds.
I was in conversation with a nonprofit leader recently, and I asked him what the best sector and organization was to make an impact. And he said something so wise: “There’s no right answer to that - you just have to maximize it wherever you are at. In whatever space you’re in, maximize it; when you think you’ve hit a limit of what you can contribute or impact, move! Then maximize that new space. There won’t ever be ‘the right job’ or the ‘right company’ or ‘the right organization’.”
How can someone get started on making an impact?
I’ll share a few tips that have served me really well.
Say yes to opportunities, even if you don’t know what you’re going to get out of it. Just show up. You never know who will be there, or who you will talk to. Something magical might happen. It’s okay to feel nervous or uncomfortable - I certainly do each time I step outside my comfort zone. [Note from Stephanie: One study found that the luckiest people are those who do things that are out of the ordinary of their routine!]
Reach out to people who you find inspiring! If you come across someone’s profile on LinkedIn, send them a message. You will be amazed at who you can connect with just by being brave enough to feel a little awkward.
To get engaged with community work or nonprofit work, just start by asking, “What do you need help with?”
At the same time, develop a list for your back pocket of all your skills that you could contribute - sometimes, people don’t know what they need until you offer! Many of us do tons of great work on a daily basis in our day-jobs that could be massively impactful to a community or nonprofit organization, but we take those skills for granted. Take some time to write out the things that you could do, and start at a very basic level. For me, one easy skill is helping people with their LinkedIn profiles, which adds so much value to organizations! Prepare your list of offerings in the back of your mind and have it ready when you engage with people.
What would be one piece of advice you would give to someone who is looking to cultivate New Happy in their life?
Lean into things - big or small - that create moments of joy. I’ve recently discovered that I love decorating my house, so I allowed myself the indulgence of preparing my tablescape for a dinner party recently. I decided to lean in to it, not tell myself I’m silly for spending time on this and just own it and accept it and embrace it. And it brought me so much joy!
If you could ask the people of the world to do one thing, what would it be?
There is no formula to making the world a better place. People need to figure out what is meaningful to them in their “work” (and I use that in quotations as it doesn’t have to be your full-time job)! I think each person needs to figure out what the path is for them that makes them feel that they are contributing uniquely.
Happiness and impact on the world are intertwined. Making your unique contribution will make you happy, and that contribution will serve others. But the route isn’t the same for everyone. If we can ask ourselves, ‘Who am I, at my very best?’ and then find a venue to practice it - be it a full-time job, a side hustle, community contribution, or something else. That will make an enormous difference in the world. There’s no one answer. That’s what makes it a wonderful journey for each of us!
Want to put Maya’s wisdom into action?
Sign up to volunteer with Upwardly Global to help refugees integrate into the U.S. workforce, or explore 12 other ways to help through the International Rescue Committee
Spend ~5 minutes making your ‘Back Pocket’ list of all of the skills you can offer a nonprofit or your community.
Look up someone you admire on LinkedIn and send them a message to ask how you can help them! Here is a template you can customize. Pro tip: Make sure you look at their company’s website first so you are informed about any ongoing opportunities. Show you’ve done your work!