Sarah Bouchie on Business of Giving Podcast: 'Compassion, Courage, Integrity, and Rigor Ground All Our Decisions'

Helen Keller Intl’s President and CEO Sarah Bouchie joined The Business of Giving Podcast for an in-depth interview.

The conversation with host Denver Frederick covered our organization’s history and mission, the challenges of the past year, Sarah’s leadership approach, our recent fundraising success, and our Leading Locally, Fortifying Futures strategy.

Last year, the abrupt closure of USAID caused Helen Keller to lose a third of our organization’s operating budget. Sarah says those challenges provided us with an opportunity for reflection.

“Sometimes those opportunities, those inflection points are also opportunities for growth and improving and tweaking your model in ways that help you to grow,” says Sarah.

The funding crisis reaffirmed the importance of our cost-effective health interventions and our work with partner governments to strengthen national health systems.

“We really pride ourselves on being able to see innovations that work and then take them to scale in collaboration with governments,” says Sarah.

“How can we add value to something that already exists?… and how can we multiply [our impact] in a way where we’re helping partners gain the skills, or strengthen the delivery system, or build the real technical know-how to do something a little bit better.”

And regardless of the challenge, we continue to be guided by our founder’s legacy, says Sarah.

“Our tagline at Helen Keller is ‘Continuing Her Work’ and that starts with our values: Compassion, courage, integrity, and rigor. Those really embody who I think Helen Keller was in the world, and it grounds all of our decisions… It’s a unifying force when you’ve got that persona of what good looks like and what we’re trying to aspire to as an organization.” 

Listen to the full conversation here: A 111-Year-Old Organization Lost a Third of Its Revenue Overnight: How Helen Keller Intl’s CEO Turned Crisis Into Reinvention