Mark Horoszowski is the CEO and cofounder of MovingWorlds.org, a social enterprise that helps global social impact leaders and doers behind grassroots, world-changing ideas to connect and build their skills. They have two signature programs: The MovingWorlds Institute, which helps professionals grow their careers through skills-based service; and corporate partnerships, which allows companies to use their platform to pilot and scale their own professional development programs, like Microsoft’s MySkills4Afrika and Kering’s Solidarity Leave.
Mark Horoszowski is the CEO and cofounder of MovingWorlds.org.
“A lot of what I do seems like a dream job, and it is incredibly satisfying work,” says Horoszowski. Once a quarter, he travels to a new city to kick-off MovingWorlds’ Global Fellowship program, which helps professionals find more meaning in their work and make a bigger impact with their careers. In between, he works with corporate social responsibility (CSR) leaders at huge brands to help them scale up social impact programs. In the process, he gets to meet with innovative social entrepreneurs to help them make a bigger impact by connecting them to MovingWorlds’ global network.
But it’s not all fun and games, Horoszowski emphasizes. He also attends web meetings that start early and run late, manages a diverse team across three continents, and deals with the employment and tax issues that come with that. Many new programs he pitches to strategic partners get sidelined or delayed. Nevertheless, he is happy to work in service of a mission he truly believes in. “If we want to build a more just and sustainable planet free from inequalities, we need to invest in people behind the world-changing ideas,” he says.
The MovingWorlds team helps people advance careers in social impact, and helps companies build CSR ... [+]
Here are Horoszowski’s top seven tips for advancing your social impact career:
Step 1: Find an “accountabilibuddy”
Don’t go at this alone. As humans, we are way more likely to achieve goals if we have accountability from a buddy or spouse.
Step 2: Set goals and write them down
Take the time to write down 2-3 goals related to your career and put them in a visible place. Your fridge, taped to your laptop, stuck on the back of your phone… any place you will see them consistently. Make sure they are SMART goals. Start with one small and achievable goal you can do next week to get the ball rolling, such as sending five networking emails asking for a coffee chat. Also have a more audacious goal for three, and then 12 months, down the line.
Step 3. Get out of the building
Want to grow your career? You need experience. No amount of school, online learning, or podcasting will help you achieve your goals. You need to get out of the building and grow your skills, ability, and confidence by doing things, like working on social impact projects in your free time.
Step 4. Network like your career depends on it (it does)
Go to coffee chats. Request informational interviews. Ask someone to be your mentor. Networking does more than just help you learn about new career opportunities. It also helps you validate if you’re heading in the right direction. Startups use “lean startup thinking” to validate business models, and you can use this same thinking for your next steps. Networking is a way to test assumptions you might have about if you will like a new job, and what you need to showcase on your resume and interview to get it.
Step 5. Find stretch experiences
Volunteering your skills on a project that builds on your strengths but stretches you to grow is a great way to make a positive impact while also building your network and resume. But don’t jump at the first project that comes your way. Make sure to find a project that will help you fill in a gap in your resume and will help you tell a story about delivering real results. Here are some more tips on how to find such a project.
Step 6. Take time to reflect
Conducting all these steps without reflecting is like eating without digesting. Take the time to reflect by journaling, or using a reflecting framework like thinking back, thinking through, and thinking forward. Talking with your accountabilibuddy is also great way to reflect!
Step 7. Keep practicing – and improving – your professional story
Networking, learning, and volunteering will slowly build your abilities in a way that deserves to be listed on your resume. But don’t just slap experiences on your resume. Make sure to be thoughtful in how you architect your resume and professional story/pitch. Here are a couple of tips on how to make things like volunteer experience stand out on your resume.
A MovingWorlds Institute class celebrates their graduation.
When Horoszowski started his accounting career, he was labeled as “high potential” – not because he graduated at the top of his Master’s program, but because he was the youngest member on the American Cancer Society’s Voluntary Leadership Training Team. Volunteering had made him effective at collaborating, operating in ambiguity, leading through change, and much more. As such, he was shocked to learn from his manager that volunteering, even on weekends and evenings, was no longer an option during certain seasons. Knowing this wouldn’t change, Horoszowski quit and went in search of another opportunity. He worked in digital marketing for a time, but that didn’t resonate either.
Eventually, he decided to plan his own adventure by founding MovingWorlds. Says Horoszowski, “As I reflect back on this, there was a lot of trial and error – setting goals for what to do next, trying to achieve them, and then having really open and honest reflections on whether these things were really fulfilling me or not. I realized that I love helping others use their time and talents to contribute to solving the major challenges of our time.”
“Trust the process,” Horoszowski counsels others looking to align their career with their life purpose. “Too often, people think there is that ONE thing or that ONE moment. That one meeting… that one project… that one interview. But, it’s never a single event that makes a career. It’s a process that involves setting hypotheses about what will give you fulfillment, learning new skills, testing the hypotheses in the real-world, reflecting on your progress, refining those hypotheses, and then repeating the cycle. And remember: when it gets hard, you’re not alone. The world needs you to persevere, and we’re all rooting for you (and standing by to help if we can).”
