Confessions of an Over-Analyzer

I spent this past weekend in New Haven for my first official weekend as a StartingBloc Fellow. The StartingBloc Institute in Social Innovation is a two-month program anchored by two weekend conferences. The program includes a “social innovation competition,” as well as workshops and lectures on corporate social responsibility, social entrepreneurship, cross sector partnerships, and sustainability from leading academics, innovators, social entrepreneurs, activists and government officials.

This conference came on the tail end of weeks of intense conversation amongst NYU Reynolds Scholars and Fellows about where exactly social justice fits into social entrepreneurship. For those of you who don’t follow my blog religiously, social entrepreneurship is a concept that promotes innovative, sustainable, and scalable solutions for the intractable social problems we face today.

At StartingBloc, we spoke in-depth about the “triple bottom line” company; that is a company that (1) makes a profit, (2) is socially responsible/provides a social good, and (3) is eco-friendly. Most of my education in social entrepreneurship has been based on the idea that the triple bottom line is the best way to make change in this world.

The thing about the definition of social entrepreneurship--or at least the examples of social entrepreneurship I am familiar with--is that it often involves on “lone wolf” (their words, not mine) that develops and implements their idea. I don’t know about you--but that seems pretty top-down to me!

So I am struggling with two essential questions:

Is social entrepreneurship, by nature, oppressive to vulnerable populations?
Can social entrepreneurship be a tool for empowerment?

I became interested in social entrepreneurship because I wanted to make a difference in this world, and I believed that the only way that could happen was through cross-sector partnerships and a meta-professional approach. Yet I wrestle with the fundamental power differential that has been looming over my social entrepreneurship education so far…and I wonder just where the “social” has gone from its definition.

I think it comes down to this--there is a great divide between those who are out to make a profit, while also “doing good,” and those who are out to create meaningful social change by using different (business) strategies. We have to figure out, no matter how many "bottom-lines" we want, what is the most important. For me, promoting social justice has to come first.

So first of all, mad props to Shane for her awesome comment on my last entry. She was wonderfully articulate—I think I will steal her line (“you need to put social into the process as well as the product”) from now on. Amazing!

On to the next topic for me to over-analyze into exhaustion...

Lately, I have really been struggling with the whole micro vs. macro level work argument. When I first matriculated as a social work student four years ago, I had high hopes of totally reforming the healthcare industry. I dreamed of health as a human right…of bringing social epidemiology to the forefront of everyone’s mind…of educating the world on the physical health impacts of mental health and the social-environment.

And I still feel passionately about this…maybe even more so now that I am more educated on a lot of these issues. This drive to create macro-level change led me to social entrepreneurship and social innovation and motivated me to participate in incredibly rewarding and invigorating policy work. I know there are amazing opportunities out there to address the intractable social problems we face, and I feel like I have the potential to play a part in this process.

But for all this enthusiasm, I am equally as infatuated with counseling and psychotherapy. I am proud to call myself a therapist. I love clinical work with individuals. I love the way the mind works. I love the intimacy, the relationships, the amazing ‘ah-ha!’moments. I love analyzing, empathizing, and appreciating the uniqueness of each client. I define myself by this incredible work.

So this is how it feels: if I work on a macro-level, in policy or ‘social entrepreneurship’, I will constantly be longing for the human connections of individual therapy. If I work on a micro-level, as a clinician, I will feel like I am squandering my potential to make major change in this world.

This crisis is really paralyzing me at the moment, so I welcome any advice I can get...