Giving Compass' Take:

• Philanthropy News Digest interviews Jean Case, first female Chairman of the Board of National Geographic, CEO of the Case Foundation, a philanthropist, investor, technology industry pioneer and author of Be Fearless: 5 Principles for a Life of Breakthroughs and Purpose.

• Is the framework laid out in this book translatable to a variety of fields? How can the Be Fearless framework work in an institutional philanthropy context?

• Here's inspiration to be fearless with philanthropy. 

Jean Case is a woman on a mission. As the youngest child of a single mom working to raise a family in the small town of Normal, Illinois, and then in the Fort Lauderdale area, Case studied hard and dreamed big — of becoming a lawyer and maybe having a career in politics. But a few years out of college, something new called the Internet beckoned, and she found herself working at the one of the first pure-play online services. In short order, she took a similar position at General Electric and then, in her late twenties, landed a job at another startup, soon to become America Online (AOL), where over the next decade she and her colleagues helped usher in the Internet revolution.

In 1997, Case left AOL and not long after, with her husband Steve, then the chair and CEO of AOL, started the Case Foundation with an eye to "investing in people and ideas that can change the world." As the organization's founding CEO, Jean has helped guide its investments in online platforms like Network or Good, Causes, and MissionFish, and has spearheaded its forays into the still-nascent impact investing field. She currently serves on the boards of Accelerate Brain Cancer Cure (ABC2) and the White House Historical Association, and on the advisory boards of the Brain Trust Accelerator Fund, the Stanford Center on Philanthropy and Civil Society, and Georgetown University's Beeck Center for Social Impact and Innovation. In 2016, she was named chair of the National Geographic Society’s board of trustees, the first female chair in the society’s history.

Read the full article about principles for a life of breakthroughs and purpose by Mitch Nauffts at Philanthropy News Digest