How to Serve and Make An Impact in Your Community with Carolina Garcia Jayaram [Epiosde 917]

This week’s topic: How to Serve and Make An Impact in Your Community with Carolina Garcia Jayaram

Hi everyone and welcome back to our Monday interview show. I am so excited to have a very special guest on here today. Someone who I have long been a huge fan of who has a new book called Eat to Beat Your Diet, New York Times bestselling author, Dr. William Lee, who is not just an author, he’s a world renowned physician. He’s a scientist. is the president and medical director of the Angiogenesis Foundation. His work has led to more than 40 FDA approved therapeutics and devices for cancers, cardiovascular disease, wound healing and vision loss. What I love about Dr. Lee’s work as well is that he’s looking at food as medicine through molecular nutrition, because sometimes we see scientists that aren’t really paying attention to food or bridging this gap into our everyday life. I could go on and on about Dr. Lee’s accolades, and I can’t say enough how much I love his new book Eat to Beat Your Diet. Burn fat, heal your metabolism and live longer.

About Carolina Garcia Jayaram

Carolina García Jayaram is a true trailblazer in the philanthropy space who is helping to make it more inclusive and diverse, while creating a movement for social good rooted in democracy and activism. She is the President and CEO of the Elevate Prize Foundation which identifies and champions entrepreneurs and activists around the world, providing unrestricted grants totaling over $5M in funding and services to 10 Winners who are driving transformative change around the world. By creating the world’s first fanbase for social good and “Making Good Famous,” EPF believes in motivating more people from all walks of life to do good and create positive change.

Guest Resources

• Elevate Prize Foundation 
• Facebook
• Instagram

Episode Chapters

00:00 Introduction to Carolina Garcia Jayaram and Elevate Prize Foundation
06:24 Finding Purpose and Making an Impact
13:08 The Power of Small Acts of Service
15:35 Integrating Mindfulness in Social Impact
19:16 The Importance of Whole Leadership
23:53 Embracing Well-being in the Pursuit of Social Impact

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OTHER PODCASTS YOU MAY ENJOY!

• Wellness Insights: How to Listen to Your Body for Nutritional Guidance [Episode 878]
• How the Power Foods Diet helps with Weight Loss with Dr. Neal Barnard EP. 877
• How Not to Age with New York Times best-selling author Dr. Michael Greger [Episode #873]
• How to eat to reduce anxiety with Harvard nutritional psychiatrist Dr. Uma Naidoo [Episode #867]

 

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Transcript:

Kimberly Snyder (00:00.89)
Hi everyone and welcome back to our Monday interview show. I am very excited for our very special guest here today. Her name is Carolina Garcia Jayaram. Love the last name. We were just talking about this incredible name, which we’ll share in just a moment. What it means in Indian culture. And she is an amazing woman who is a trailblazer in the space of philanthropy.

Kimberly Snyder (00:29.648)
She is the founding director and CEO of the Elevate Prize Foundation, which identifies and champions entrepreneurs and activists around the world, providing unrestricted grants, totaling over five million in funding and services to 10 winners who are driving transformative change around the world. So thank you so much for being here with us today, Carolina. And I feel like it’s a really timely time for us to have this conversation given the global environment and the collective and just in my work right now centering on the heart with my new book, just bringing it back to practical ways. How do we serve? How do we show up? How can we use our energy for good in the world? So thank you so much for being here with us today.

Carolina Garcia Jayaram (01:17.496)
Thank you so much, Kim, for having me and for, first of all, for creating this platform so that those of us who want to reach more and more people with these messages of doing good in the world and what a purpose -driven life can look like can reach more people who are looking for those kind of avenues and outlets. So I really appreciate you inviting me on.

Kimberly Snyder (01:37.882)
So how did this become, we’ll dive right in, how does it become the focus of your work? You know, this, what you’re doing right now, which is, you know, not specific to one thing, but looking at how activism is going, you know, working across several different, you know, fields and giving your life to this. Was there a life before this? And you mentioned you’re a mother. How did you get to this part of your life where you’re really focusing on this now?

Carolina Garcia Jayaram (01:58.093)
Mm

Carolina Garcia Jayaram (02:08.622)
My whole life, since I can remember being a small child, has always been in service of some kind and very much in service to, I guess what you call the underdog, know, kind of the people in the world who were overlooked and overseen, but who were sort of secretly the bedrock and the blood life of the world, you know? And so for many years, that looked like working with artists. So for over 20 years, I was doing similar kind of work, helping artists realize their greatest potential and…

bring them tools and resources that they could use to become autonomous and more powerful in their own right and bring their beautiful ideas and creations to the world. And it was extremely fulfilling. But as you just kind of made mention of, the world kept getting more complicated and darker and more problematic. And I felt like as much as I love the arts and I love artists, I needed to shift my attention to social impact because it was where I needed to spend this one.

Kimberly Snyder (02:49.808)
Mm.

Kimberly Snyder (03:03.258)
Mm.

Carolina Garcia Jayaram (03:05.846)
wild and beautiful life on trying to leave something better for not just my children, but all of our children. And so around six years ago, I made a really intentional turn from the art world into the impact world. And it wasn’t one that I knew a lot about, quite frankly. And I took almost a year off in between these sectors. And I went embarked on what I called my year of yes. And I did all kinds of things that I never thought I would do. I became a yoga teacher, even though I had practiced.

Kimberly Snyder (03:30.298)
Man.

Kimberly Snyder (03:35.044)
Mmm.

Carolina Garcia Jayaram (03:35.31)
for many, years, I sort of took that to the next level. I did a lot of things that brought me greater clarity about how am I going to go into this new world and where is all the work and experience that I’ve had going to find a place here to make a difference. And so the universe brought me Joe Deitch, who is the founder and the sole funder of the foundation. And he had this.

You know, his background is in finance. He’s a Boston guy, like very different background than my own, except the fact that he too had been on the spiritual journey for a very long time. the itch he couldn’t scratch was that here he was, you this self -made guy, very wealthy, and he wanted to do good in the world. He wanted to put his money and his philanthropy to good work, but he couldn’t find, he literally couldn’t find the entrepreneurs who were really making a difference in the world. And he didn’t know why, because he didn’t come from philanthropy. And he was like,

Kimberly Snyder (04:22.551)
Yes.

Carolina Garcia Jayaram (04:26.008)
The only thing I can get is like CNN heroes. I don’t know where to find these people. And I said, well, there’s a real systemic issue why you can’t find those people. And it’s the way that funding works. Funding does not allow, most of the time, restricted funding does not allow nonprofits to use the money for marketing, branding, PR, all the things that you wouldn’t launch your book, let alone a lipstick, let alone a solution for climate change without a whole marketing strategy behind it.

Kimberly Snyder (04:53.178)
Right.

Carolina Garcia Jayaram (04:55.342)
the nonprofit sector simply doesn’t have those tools. It doesn’t have the resources for them. And as a result, you know, they are really limited in what they can do. So I said to him in that conversation, if you’re willing to put a serious investment into visibility, we can really move the needle because nobody is touching visibility in nonprofit right now and social impact. So lo and behold, you know, within a year, because we’re both such entrepreneurs, we’re like, how quick can we do this thing? We turned it around. We built the first prize was launched six months later.

Right, COVID was launching, by the way. At the same time, we co -launched with the pandemic. that was both kind of, to us was a blessing in some ways, because I think it reoriented the world toward what’s our purpose? You know, what’s our meaning? And what’s the purpose of fame and having a platform if not to do greater good in the world? So it helped us build our brand and then find these incredible leaders who we started investing in and really heavily investing around visibility. So these 10 winners every year,

Kimberly Snyder (05:26.242)
Wow.

Carolina Garcia Jayaram (05:54.478)
receive during this two -year fellowship, A, $300 ,000, which is unrestricted, which was very important to me because I knew how difficult those unrestricted dollars are to come by, and then a two -year academy where they get the best in training around social media, public speaking, media training, branding, everything you could possibly need to take that solution to the next level. So that’s where it started five years ago. It’ll be five years ago in a couple of weeks.

Kimberly Snyder (06:18.605)
Mm. Got it.

So what’s really interesting is you’re talking about it, just talking about what you’re really passionate about. There’s this energy, there’s this vitality that’s just flowing through you. And you and I were talking a little bit about Indian philosophy a little bit earlier. And in my new book, The Hidden Power, The Five Hearts, Carolina, which is about awakening your heart more and more, there’s this fifth heart stage known as the clear heart, which is where we open our heart to the universal heart. And it’s very different.

Carolina Garcia Jayaram (06:33.879)
Mm -hmm.

Carolina Garcia Jayaram (06:49.123)
Mmm.

Kimberly Snyder (06:54.813)
concept from the Western typical hero story, which is I wake up to my power. You know, it’s like the diehard movies where, you know, I can save the world. I can save the building like it’s in me versus when we step into this expansion, which is more, there’s an energy and a power moving through me.

Carolina Garcia Jayaram (07:16.814)
Exactly.

Kimberly Snyder (07:16.846)
Right? So we, we open up to something greater. And what’s really inspiring about your story, cause you mentioned, you know, you reiterated, you shifted your mom and now you’re doing something that you found. You use this word purpose. so we can go into that for a moment in my last book, which was called, you are more than you think you are, which was on Yogananda’s teachings. Purpose is something that we talk about. hear about a lot in society. gets tossed around on social media. And sometimes we think.

Carolina Garcia Jayaram (07:30.52)
Mm.

Carolina Garcia Jayaram (07:36.76)
Yep.

Kimberly Snyder (07:46.266)
purpose has to look a certain way, or we start to feel like I don’t have the same, I just can’t define it as a certain person. And you know, this other person has something so clear. How Yogananda talks about it is, first of all, you know, in a greater spiritual level, the purpose of life is to awaken self -realization into who we are, spirit within the energy. And then secondly, to tap into those unique gifts.

Carolina Garcia Jayaram (08:04.813)
Hmm.

Kimberly Snyder (08:10.318)
and how we can serve the greater whole in different ways. Sometimes the linear mind is like, this is bigger, this is better, this may be a bigger organization, whatever it is, just our mind is like, well, I’m not gonna volunteer at the soup kitchen all weekends, I can’t serve. So for anyone listening to this and it was like, Carolina’s got funding, she’s doing all this stuff, she really has a clear purpose. I’m at home and I’m struggling to keep my family with three kids.

just going and we all, know, busy moms, like there’s dishes and there’s the realities of driving my kids back and forth to school. What would you say to them? What would you say to anyone listening about tapping into their unique way to serve and purpose in the middle of their life right now?

Carolina Garcia Jayaram (08:48.226)
Mm

Carolina Garcia Jayaram (08:55.468)
I’m so glad you asked about that because that’s actually the real vision of Elevate. So the reason we are called Elevate, the back, the sort of vision behind everything is that it’s a consciousness awareness practice, right? It’s a calling for us to how do we elevate human consciousness? Well, we elevate human consciousness by feeling we do have purpose in the world. And how do we get people to feel that they have purpose in the world? Well, one of the surest ways that we’ve done for millennia and generations is through storytelling.

Kimberly Snyder (09:16.196)
Hmm.

Carolina Garcia Jayaram (09:24.844)
right, like having somebody who’s giving us this example of purpose. Like you said, people can look to me, well, she has all these things. But I might also inspire someone to do some good in the world, or I might give someone a pathway to do more good in the world. And that’s really the purpose of making good famous or making the winners that we select every year famous or better known isn’t just to scale their solutions, of which they’re incredible, of course, and very worthy in and of themselves. It’s actually to build what we call

Kimberly Snyder (09:34.894)
Mm -hmm.

Carolina Garcia Jayaram (09:52.428)
the first global fan base for good. So the fan base, which would be whether you’re a fan of Waira who does food insecurity work in Kenya or you’re doing climate change and water rise in Bali, those stories reaching new audiences gives more and more more pathways to how somebody could make a difference. And I think what we do in the West a lot especially is

because of sort of the capitalist structure that we’re born and raised in this country is everything has to be big. Everything has to be scaled. If you’re not impacting millions of people, it’s not worth it. And we aren’t able to kind of, yeah, right, right. Unless you’ve created a foundation or it’s, and that’s again, how philanthropy set up too. You know, what’s the impact you’re making? What are, how many lives have you saved? How many, and a lot of that’s really smoke and mirrors anyway. It’s almost impossible to measure. And what I wish people would get back to is,

Kimberly Snyder (10:26.06)
Yeah, or you’re not serving unless you have created a foundation.

Carolina Garcia Jayaram (10:46.164)
One life changed, one life impacted is the most miraculous thing you could ever be a part of in your life. And let’s bring it back to that. Let’s bring it back to what you can do. Can you mentor a child in your neighborhood? Can you do a beach cleanup if you live at the beach? you take your, mean, my God, for those who have kids, bring it into your household in some way. Impact.

Kimberly Snyder (10:53.743)
Mm.

Carolina Garcia Jayaram (11:10.89)
is made every single incremental moment of your day, you have a moment to have an impact on someone’s life around you, of smiling at a person without a home on the street and making them feel seen. That’s something anyone has the power to do. And these are the things that reverberate, that have an incredible effect way beyond anything you’ll ever know. And I think that’s what we as humans need to feel comfortable with is that we may have an effect we’ll never know about. And that’s

beautiful. We don’t need even know it happened, you know, and if we all can kind of let go of that need of evidence -based philanthropy, I think people would feel a lot more empowered to take on more good.

Kimberly Snyder (11:41.061)
Mm.

Kimberly Snyder (11:52.026)
beautifully said, and I like how you, first of all, like you mentioned the stories and just showing that each of us, we’re all ordinary and we’re all special at the same time, right? So, you know, whatever position we may find ourselves, student, mom of four, or, you know, whatever, just, you know, stay at home mom or lawyer or whatever we are, there’s this choice, this orientation for life towards

Carolina Garcia Jayaram (12:03.499)
Exactly.

Kimberly Snyder (12:20.826)
How can I help? How can I serve? So, you know, with your examples about, you know, funding for some of these organizations, like you said, it could light a fire inside of someone to say, well, maybe I could, you know, be more of a leader at my child’s school, or maybe I could serve in this local community. There’s, and I keep bringing this back to my book, right? I’ll care about it because it’s so in alignment and in the devoted heart.

Carolina Garcia Jayaram (12:41.74)
Yes, yeah.

Kimberly Snyder (12:46.064)
which is the fourth heart stage where we become more devoted to the inner world. There’s a section called Never miss an opportunity to serve, which was something that I read in a translation by one of the monk and how he defined service as you’re saying it’s because life is right here moment to moment, right? It’s like these grandiose things we want to check off a list sometimes, but it’s moment to moment living from your heart. So like you said, when you filter through your heart, what is the

Carolina Garcia Jayaram (13:08.204)
Mm -hmm.

Kimberly Snyder (13:12.812)
most loving, compassionate thing to do. Maybe you notice that person in the coffee, you know, the cafe line is having a hard time. Maybe you let them go in front or maybe you’re extra kind to your child’s teacher or maybe you find a way to introduce a new project at work or exactly what you’re saying. It’s inspiring us to just orient towards service in the first place. It doesn’t have to be these big things.

Carolina Garcia Jayaram (13:20.45)
Thank

Carolina Garcia Jayaram (13:36.696)
That’s right.

Kimberly Snyder (13:38.862)
But if you’re inspired to do some of these things and these projects that could get funding, great. But it’s also right here, right now in everyone’s lives, it’s possible.

Carolina Garcia Jayaram (13:48.876)
That’s right. And I think that’s so much of the suffering now, the human suffering that we feel is people’s feeling of helplessness, that they are not able to make a difference and not understanding that, you know, that’s that same love or appreciation or recognition that you’re giving to someone else. It comes back to you. You know, it comes back into those own feelings of helplessness that you may have. And it’s a lot of the reason, you know, I’ve developed this this theory around whole leader, because after

Kimberly Snyder (13:59.468)
Right.

Carolina Garcia Jayaram (14:18.208)
several years of working with these leaders and they’re just extraordinary. You these are people who are solving the biggest crises in the world, but for the most part, they’re not turning it toward themselves. You know, they’re being of incredible service. They’re giving of themselves entirely and they’re totally depleting themselves and we’re not getting the most out of them as leaders.

And most of them cannot even sustain themselves. A huge report came out of the Center for Effective Philanthropy this past year about the level of burnout in nonprofits and social impact leaders around the world and their teams. I think it was three quarters of the nonprofits that were surveyed said they were not able to really reach their goals because of the level of burnout that they were sensing. And you can imagine that’s getting worse and worse with every new war that’s being waged and pandemic and.

Kimberly Snyder (14:50.735)
Mmm.

Carolina Garcia Jayaram (15:07.372)
you know, climate issue that’s around us. And so the whole leader concept is really about how do we bring some of these tools that are ancient, you know, that are from the wisdom traditions that again have been kind of co -opted and made into this capitalist structure. And so a lot of people eschew them or they don’t think that belongs in social impact because that’s not for us. And yet…

Those are the very tools that are so much needed in this impact sector so that these leaders can stay in the work and they can sustain themselves in the work because they are getting burned out and then their whole teams are getting burned out and then we’re not really able to reach these things. And I think all of that then cycles down. I mean, as a foundation, we live those values in the foundation. I bring those same practices in with my own team around meditation and mindfulness and.

Kimberly Snyder (15:35.929)
Yes.

Carolina Garcia Jayaram (15:55.214)
Pranayama I do with them. I’ve taught them all around breathwork on the team, not just so that we can benefit as a team, but we’re modeling this to the organizations that win our prizes. And this is not typically how philanthropy has operated in the past, to have these deep connections and relationships with the grantees of a foundation is not typically how it’s worked historically. And I think more than ever, it’s so important because this beautiful idea of your book of these heart.

the opening of the heart, that’s where everybody sort of starts to feel more vulnerable and more seen and more able to connect and then come up with the solutions that are going to help us all out of this really difficult time.

Kimberly Snyder (16:39.684)
Well, what you’re describing to Carolina with a burnout and always on what it shows is that these characteristics, what we would call the second heart stage, the propelled heart, like always in motion, always doing very goal oriented. can permeate into any, anywhere, right? It can permeate into how we mother, family life. It can permeate into the nonprofit world. We can have these really pure, beautiful goals, but it’s like, like we said, the moment to moment living and just.

Carolina Garcia Jayaram (16:50.904)
Mmm.

Kimberly Snyder (17:08.878)
you know, coming in, connecting, centering, coming from the heart, this really regenerative place of energy instead of always just like our approach to things. So I love that you’re, you know, you’re talking about this more holistic way of being and the breath work and coming into these, because I see it too, where people start off and they have these, wonderful ideas, whether it’s teachers or certain organizations and they sort of, there’s like a shift that happens along the way where

Carolina Garcia Jayaram (17:37.24)
Mm -hmm.

Kimberly Snyder (17:38.906)
Their vitality goes down and there is a different way of being as you and I know there’s a softer, loving, self -compassionate way of being. And there’s a lot of lessons in there.

Carolina Garcia Jayaram (17:53.388)
Yeah, and it’s not a nice to have, you it’s not a luxury. And I think that’s where we’ve kind of done a disservice to ourselves as a society that, you know, we kind of hide that we’re going to yoga or we kind of hide that, you know, like, no, this should be a part of the wellness program of any company. You know, it should all be integrated in a way and not separated. And I think that’s where, again, you know, I was practicing all these things in my private life. And as I was

you know, this organization was growing and getting bigger and I was understanding more and more about what was holding these leaders back. And just like around visibility, this was another big wide open space that nobody was really investing in, in the impact world. know, this was, there’s tons of data. You’re amazing at citing so much data about the evidence of these practices and what they can do for our bodies and our longevity and our mental and spiritual health. But you don’t hear those conversations in the impact space.

Kimberly Snyder (18:49.39)
Right.

Carolina Garcia Jayaram (18:49.41)
That’s why coming onto this and have this conversation with you is so powerful and so important because I think we need to normalize this in the space of change making where you’re right, everyone’s sort of just expected to just run themselves dry and it’s almost like a badge of honor to say, I’ve just been killing myself, I’ve not taken a day off in three months and.

And when what’s on the line is literally someone’s life, right? These are leaders who are representing refugees in camps. These are leaders who are, mean, like, they don’t think they can take five minutes. Five minutes means this group of people isn’t gonna make it, right? And so getting them to be in the present moment, which again is antithetical to a lot of how our sector works, is so much like goals and what’s your strategic plan and where are you gonna be in five years? And it’s like, let go of all of that.

Kimberly Snyder (19:16.623)
Yeah.

Kimberly Snyder (19:25.38)
Right.

Carolina Garcia Jayaram (19:39.052)
You know, like, it doesn’t matter. None of that, you’re not even gonna get there if you can’t learn to be here, you know? And that is been, to me, the greatest gift of this work is to be able to bring those teachings, the ones that you and I have been studying for so long into this world and say, not only is this not, you know, some luxury that we have to…

ask for and beg for, it is your human right to have access to these tools because especially for those of you who are out there saving the world, you more than anyone deserves to have this. that deserving, that shift of mindset is, I think, one of the biggest challenges for people in this work, that they don’t feel they deserve it for themselves, even though they’re making space for everyone else.

Kimberly Snyder (20:15.514)
you

Kimberly Snyder (20:27.962)
Well, if we take that a step back about, you know, deserving, I’m making the change, this leap to say, I have worth to make a change or I can make a difference. There’s a, there’s a confidence that flows through this power and energy starts to come through, you know, when we are in service, but surely there were moments of self doubt or, you know, questioning like, you know, will I be able to do this? Can I really make this happen?

Carolina Garcia Jayaram (20:44.44)
Yes.

Kimberly Snyder (20:56.408)
And how were you able to, you know, back to the stories inspiring all of us, how were you able to overcome that self doubt, that critic in your head to say, I can create this organization and I can make change because a lot of people before feeling worthy to, you know, do, you know, take care of themselves once they’re in it. Some of us don’t even feel like going forward in the first place.

Carolina Garcia Jayaram (21:20.974)
Yeah, yeah, I think that’s That’s such a that’s so true. My method and you know, I’ll be 50 next month. So, you know, I feel like I’m entering this new really exciting chapter of my life. A lot of it has to do with something you said earlier, which really resonated with me, which what is that innate, you know, talent that I have, that gift that I was born with that nobody else has in the world and really lean into that, you know, really like water that nurture that.

cultivate that and not be afraid anymore that it’s not enough, know, that it’s that or that it needs to have this or you know, I’m a Latina leader of a global foundation. I’m like a unicorn. There’s very few of me in the world. And so if I was if I was given this chance to do this thing, if I owe it to myself to do whatever I have to do to silent those voices that all of us have, first of all, recognizing all of us have it because I think that’s part of it is that we all think that

it’s only us, know, again, like we’re special and we’re not special. Like, no, everybody, you know, has this self doubt, not just me. And the older you get, I think the more you recognize that having kids, you see that in your kids, all of these things sort of mirror back to you that you’re not alone in this struggle. And so for me, it’s really trying to stick with those practices that work for me, you know, that help ground me and bring me back to.

Kimberly Snyder (22:21.92)
Okay.

Kimberly Snyder (22:41.412)
Mm -hmm.

Carolina Garcia Jayaram (22:43.662)
some sense of clarity, but it’s not easy, especially now that I’m undergoing a big shift in my life, with menopause, with all of these things, I have to kind of reorient. And I find that that’s another thing in life, is that what worked for you 10 years ago isn’t gonna work for you now. You sort of have to recalibrate your life and what matters to you and what works for you. some years need to be quieter and some years are gonna be louder.

Kimberly Snyder (23:04.536)
Yes, flow.

Carolina Garcia Jayaram (23:11.278)
and just be okay with that, with the seasonality of life. And even now, I feel like I’m in this part of my life where I have a big life. It’s loud, I’m public, I’m out there a lot. But the awareness that I may not want this in a few years, that kind of fuels me now. But it’s in a way, fuels me now. Because I’m like, okay, knowing I don’t have to do this forever kind of gives me a little extra energy for now, because I…

Kimberly Snyder (23:25.993)
Yeah, going to a different phase. Yeah.

Carolina Garcia Jayaram (23:37.996)
then when I’m onto the next thing, it’ll be beautiful too. And it gives me like, so I can give it all now. But yeah, the self doubt is real. It’s every day, you know? And I think that’s healthy to a degree if you can not grasp onto it too much.

Kimberly Snyder (23:41.57)
Yes.

Kimberly Snyder (23:53.228)
So much there goes back to being present, know, being aware of the thoughts right now, breathing down, coming into this moment, coming into our center, our hearts, our power in this moment. And that reminds me, Carolina, of a story that I read, another monk describing when we’re present, we’re just in that river of life and we’re flowing. But when we’re trying to hold on to different phases or different things, it’s like trying to hold on to the banks of the river.

Carolina Garcia Jayaram (23:59.618)
This is it.

Kimberly Snyder (24:19.414)
creates that resistance and that’s where we start to get into you know a bit of suffering or depletion or low energy.

Carolina Garcia Jayaram (24:19.534)
That’s right.

Carolina Garcia Jayaram (24:26.924)
Yes, and not, know, also this idea of like the more concept. I think that more concept really hurts a lot of people. You know, this idea that this beautiful parable that I heard recently that has really stuck with me of this fisherman who’s sitting on the beach and he’s, you he’s done for the morning. He’s done his fishing and he’s just sitting on the beach quietly enjoying the morning. And this man starts and he’s running, he’s doing his jogging down the beach. And every morning he sees the fisherman and finally one day he stops and speaks.

fisherman. He says, me a little bit about what you do and he says well every morning I fish and then I take the fish to the market and then I’m done for the day and the guy goes well but imagine if you went out a second time and got more fish you could go back to the market and you could double the amount of money you make and then eventually you could have a second boat and then that boat and then they would have a fleet of boats and then in five years you’re gonna have 25 boats and you’re gonna have three of it and he goes on and on and on and the fisherman’s just quietly listening to him and then finally he says and what am I doing?

Kimberly Snyder (25:08.161)
Mmm.

Carolina Garcia Jayaram (25:23.968)
at this point, like when I’ve gotten all these boats and all this success, and what am I doing? And the guy goes, then you can sit on the beach and just relax. And he’s like, yeah, that’s what I’m doing right now.

Kimberly Snyder (25:36.174)
Isn’t that incredible? Isn’t that the method, like isn’t that the delusion that’s so woven into the fabric of our society about more is more is this is the burnout. This is the constant anxiety. This is why honestly anxiety is, you even in children is at such all time highs. It’s just the mind and the ego going bananas.

Carolina Garcia Jayaram (25:45.004)
So much better.

Carolina Garcia Jayaram (25:54.402)
Yes. Yes.

Carolina Garcia Jayaram (25:59.746)
Like it’s not enough. And so with our leaders, it’s the same. It’s telling them what you’re doing is not only enough, it’s everything. It’s everything. it’s not going to be, don’t compare yourself to somebody else doing something else. Again, this is your unique gift and your unique circumstances. And yeah, it’s just the great privilege of my life, honestly, to work with these incredible people. They’re so inspiring. And just to be able to humbly offer some of the tools that we think

can make a big difference to them. But in the end, it’s like, what is our life really for? And so having any chance to be of purpose to others and connection with others is the most, it’s really the biggest privilege we can have. And that’s why, again, like this message is that that’s available to anyone, you know, no matter what your job is or your circumstances. you know, some people turn to religion for that, but you don’t need to. It’s really how you build that sangha, that community, that

Kimberly Snyder (26:34.903)
Yeah.

Kimberly Snyder (26:47.236)
Mm -hmm.

Carolina Garcia Jayaram (26:58.136)
will give you that nurturing that you need. And I think purpose and doing good in the world is a shortcut to that feeling, right? You can get that rush.

Kimberly Snyder (27:06.969)
Yes.

I believe that you did some work with Mother Teresa, who I am connected to all different spiritual traditions, but I wanted to read this quick story that I have in the book and then reflect back to you with your experience with her. And this is in the clear heart, like we were saying, Carolina, this is where service can help us awaken the heart more because we’re expanding beyond the little me into the greater and the greater.

Carolina Garcia Jayaram (27:13.741)
Mm.

Kimberly Snyder (27:37.872)
And so after accepting the Nobel Peace Prize, Mother Teresa stopped in Rome on her way back to India from Stockholm. A reporter challenged her about the seeming futility of her efforts. Mother, you are 70 now, the reporter said. When you die, the world will be as it was before. What has changed after so much effort? Mother Teresa responded with a smile. You know, I never wanted to change the world. I have only tried to be a drop of pure water.

in which God’s love can be reflected. Does that seem like a small thing to you?

Carolina Garcia Jayaram (28:11.182)
you

Carolina Garcia Jayaram (28:17.656)
What an

Kimberly Snyder (28:17.944)
It’s just this moment to moment living, moment to moment, how can we help? How can we serve the smaller things that add up to the bigger things? So it’s so incredible, your organization, Carolina, and what you’re doing. Is there anything else you want to share, how people can get involved with Elevate or anything and where people can find out? But just…

Carolina Garcia Jayaram (28:41.564)
yes, and…

Kimberly Snyder (28:45.42)
Yeah, some last messages that you want to leave people with.

Carolina Garcia Jayaram (28:49.07)
Well, with Mother Teresa, I mean, did have this chance to work with her in Calcutta in 95. That was the first time I was in India. was very young. And I went to work with her in Calcutta in the House of the Dying. was volunteering there for some time. what really impacted me, everything about that trip impacted me. I spent a whole year there, and I was doing a study abroad. But that time with Mother Teresa, I felt

changed everything in terms of my perspective, like what she was just describing, that drop, that you contain multitudes, like everything in the world is inside of you as one human being. And what one human being can do in, you I was in this hospital working with these women who were dying. I mean, that was, they were there to have a comfortable and dignified end of life. And we were there to try to make that transition as peaceful as possible. And every morning, Mother Teresa would hold

a mass and everybody, all the volunteers, all the nuns would come and hold this mass. And she was a small, very diminutive, I’m small, but she was even smaller than me. And she was just this force, this kind of everybody would come and that’s, I was 20 years old and I remember feeling like I never really understood the power of energy until I met her. And I never saw it again like that until I met Malala many years later, but that kind of

Kimberly Snyder (30:08.996)
Wow.

Carolina Garcia Jayaram (30:15.788)
pure energy contained in one person that is so pure and so love. It’s just pure love. I was, it transformed me. And I think, you know, I’m a daughter of refugees, granddaughter of exiles. Like, you know, I was never kind of in a place. I never felt that rooted in any real place. And I can tell you that experience was my root. Like I was like, this is one I want to root into. I’m not.

a patriot. I’m not like, these other things don’t really matter to me. I want to root in this. I want to root in love and in this kind of energy for the rest of my life. I’m looking for how I can do that. And so, you know, building Elevate and that, you know, that led to my entire career being in nonprofit and being of service was really was born in that in that moment and that experience. But now fast forward to Elevate and a lot more experience.

Kimberly Snyder (30:43.982)
Yes.

Carolina Garcia Jayaram (31:06.846)
To me now, it’s about how do we create these pathways for everyone to feel they can be part of something like that and that they have that inside of them. So for us at Elevate, it’s about these winners, but it’s so much about these communities. So a great way to people to find us, we’re really active on social media, but we have a really fun award that we give away every month on Instagram.

Kimberly Snyder (31:16.068)
Beautiful.

Carolina Garcia Jayaram (31:29.358)
it’s for grassroots organizations. So our Elevate Prize winners tend to be a little bit larger organizations, like in that million plus range, up to $15 million. But those grassroots organizations, those little, what my friend who’s a funder used to call two chicks and a calculator kind of organizations, you are just very small, are in the communities, they’re organizing and doing that kind of thing. That’s what this prize is designed for. It’s called Get Loud. And every month,

we have a different issue area and we invite the people who are following us to nominate an organization in that issue area. All they have to do is tag that organization. So that might be period poverty, that might be mental health. This month, it’s open right now, but the month of August, it’s gonna be sports because we’re inspired by the Olympics, but every month, every month it changes. So that’s a really fun way that people can feel they’re part of something.

Kimberly Snyder (32:15.875)
Right.

Beautiful.

Carolina Garcia Jayaram (32:22.286)
And that prize is $25 ,000 unrestricted to that organization, which is a big deal to a small grassroots organization. So it’s Elevate Prize. Elevate Prize, they can find it. It’s Elevate Prize Foundation. And we also do a lot on YouTube and everywhere else, all the other social media platforms. But that Instagram prize is really special. And I think people have a lot of fun being part of

Kimberly Snyder (32:25.029)
Wow.

What? Yeah. What’s, what’s the Instagram handle?

Kimberly Snyder (32:43.002)
That’s amazing.

Well, we will link to that everyone directly in the show notes, as well as all more information and Carolina’s direct website and the Instagram handles. Carolina, thank you so much for coming on here and just sharing your heart and your message and, you know, these inspiring ways in which we can come into, you know, as I would say, our true power is this loving kindness, this authentic expression of how we can really serve and.

Carolina Garcia Jayaram (32:57.666)
Yeah.

Carolina Garcia Jayaram (33:09.762)
Mm.

Kimberly Snyder (33:14.832)
put goodness into the whole energy that affects us all. So thank you so much for being here with us today.

Carolina Garcia Jayaram (33:19.5)
Yes. And thank you for all of your work. I’ve been following you for a long time, and I’m such a fan of your health journey. And you’ve given me so many good tips myself. But I think it’s incredible what you do and how much you put yourself out there in service of others. I you really are the make good famous example. So I appreciate that. And really, thank you for having me on, because these are the kind of spaces where we need to be talking about whole leadership.

Kimberly Snyder (33:40.114)
Thank you so much.

Carolina Garcia Jayaram (33:49.25)
the importance of these tools for people who want to make impact in the world because it’s tough work more than ever. It’s really difficult work and we need to support each other and them in this work. So I really appreciate you giving us this platform. Yes. Yeah, thank you. Yeah, you too.

Kimberly Snyder (34:00.282)
beautiful.

Thank you. Thank you so much, Carolina. I appreciate you so much. And again, for everyone listening, the show notes are going to be over at mysalina .com. We’ll be back here Thursday, as always, for our next Q &A show. So till then, sending you much love from our hearts to yours and see you back here very soon.

Carolina Garcia Jayaram (34:23.704)
Thank you so much.

Kimberly Snyder (34:27.106)
Stop.