As a part of our series about women who are shaking things up in their industry, I had the pleasure of interviewing Dr. Jackie Bouvier Copeland.

A social and environmental justice leader, Dr. Jackie Bouvier Copeland is Founder and CEO of The Women Invested to Save Earth (WISE) Fund, an innovation enterprise, supporting grassroots Black and Indigenous women climate change innovators in Africa, Brazil, Australia and the USA. She is the Founder of Black Philanthropy Month, a global campaign to document, celebrate and promote African-descent giving and funding in all its forms that has reached 17 million people and is recognized by 30 governments, including the UN’s International Decade for People of African Descent.

Can you tell our readers what it is about the work you’re doing that’s disruptive?

I have been doing my best in collaboration with others to disrupt the world for several decades now. Today, my disruption is through Black Philanthropy Month, a global celebration and promotion of Black giving in all its forms that I founded going on 10 years ago. Most people do not know that giving to help others is hardwired in African-descent cultures. The stereotype is that we do not give, although the data over 30 years now proves that we not only give; in the US we give the highest proportion of our income in philanthropy. Giving from relatively modest to larger donations of time, talent and treasure is a fundamental feature of Black culture.

I think my disruption was in helping to look at diversity within Black Philanthropy. Collaborating with others, I was among the first scholars to document Black Diaspora Giving in the US and Africa. Always an advocate-scholar, I used what I was learning to mobilize and to address the challenges facing our community in many places, eventually advising Black Philanthropists in the US, Africa, and the Caribbean since the 1990s.

Read the full article about Black philanthropy by Jason Hartman at Thrive Global.