Social Innovator Will Share Her Experience and Strategies

Nina Vasan, a Stanford Hospital physician and author of the #1 Amazon Best Seller Do Good Well: Your Guide to Leadership, Action, and Social Innovation, will speak at Pepperdine University at 7 p.m. on Thursday, April 9, at the West Los Angeles Graduate Campus, 2nd floor, Room 203. Vasan will address "The Placebo Effect in Social Change: Diagnosis, Treatment, and Prevention." The event is being presented by Pepperdine’s Graduate School of Education and Psychology as part of its Margaret J. Weber Distinguished Lecture Series.

Vasan spent nearly a decade working on the comprehensive 500+ page book that guides readers to maximize their impact in solving social problems. Nobel Peace Prize Laureate Muhammad Yunus praised the book as "the primer for social innovation."

The impetus for writing Do Good Well came from Vasan's experience as a young social entrepreneur and activist working with the American Cancer Society (ACS); she launched a nationwide network of teenage ACS volunteers that had a few years of celebrated success, but ultimately scaled too quickly and was not sustainable. Recognizing that too often good intentions and good ideas do not translate into lasting results, Vasan and co-author Jennifer Przybylo used their background as scientists to create a method for social innovation built around three core principles: Do What Works, Work Together, and Make It Last.

Since its publication, Do Good Well has been adopted by college and graduate classes from Harvard to Hong Kong. The book is being used by one of the world's largest asset management companies to improve corporate social responsibility and philanthropy initiatives.

Vasan and the Do Good Well team are now building the book into an organization that offers mentorship, funding, and space to share best practices to young leaders; they have lectured at schools and led trainings on the Do Good Well method for foundations committed to developing startup entrepreneurs, public servants, and nonprofit leaders, furthering the Do Good Well mission to help turn idealism into impact. They are currently partnering with the Dell Social Innovation Challenge to provide content and tools to the Dell network of 25,000 student social entrepreneurs in over 100 countries.

Emeritus Dean Margaret J. Weber established the first-ever Dean's Distinguished Lecture Series at the Graduate School of Education and Psychology (GSEP) in 2010. To honor her leadership and legacy, GSEP continues this event series in her name. The Margaret J. Weber Distinguished Lecture Series brings leading agents of change to GSEP to discuss the challenges and opportunities in servant-leadership in communities across the world. The lecture series helps support the GSEP mission of educating students to inspire lasting change in their communities and to lead lives of purpose, service, and leadership.

To register, visit the GSEP website, or contact Vanessa Jahn.