Reflections, Priorities, and What Comes Next

Dear World Pulse Community,

It’s been a while since I last shared a story. The first months in my new role as CEO have been quite a journey! To be honest, it has been hard. So many things in motion and lots of learning and adjusting to do.

With the first phase behind us, the leadership team and I are now feeling more rooted, connected, and energized to take bold next steps and continue co-creating!

World Pulse is entering a new chapter. Today, I'm happy to share with you our progress and what comes next. You can expect to see these updates periodically, shared by me, Corine Milano, Moutushi Dey, Kirthi Jayakumar (connect with them on comments!), or other members of World Pulse's team and boards. World Pulse has a critical role to play in shaping the future—and our greatest strength lies in collaborating.

We live in a time of profound transformation. Technology is disrupting our lives and relationships, uncertainty around the world is increasing, inequalities continue to rise, and the need for collective work has never been more clear.

You'll find here three key priorities for our work, separated into sections: Where We Are Going and What Changes To Expect as we implement the strategic work to move each priority forward.

I’d love to get your questions in the comments and your points of view. Always remember that we are all in a continuous learning process!

1. Sustainability: Reimagining Collaboration and Resources

Where we’re going:

We’re moving toward a more diverse and resilient sustainability model—rooted in collective giving, strategic partnerships, and shared global community support.

In the year ahead, we’ll be expanding the community and bringing more opportunities for World Pulse members as well as women and allies from the corporate sector—technologists and specialists—to lead trainings, workshops, and activities across time zones and languages.

We’ve started this work with the Impact Lab and Training Tuesdays. It’s a model built on reciprocity and mutual growth, and we’ll start small and see how it goes.

Ultimately, we want to ensure that activities on World Pulse are inclusive, multilingual, and led by those closest to both the issues and innovations. Everybody will have a role to play in ensuring sustainability.

As we expand this model, every contribution—whether it’s time, knowledge, or funding—helps us go further together.

It’s about deepening trust, building capacity, and unlocking opportunities for all.

The change you can expect to see:

• Community members and guest speakers leading trainings and workshops (both live and recorded) on your topics of interest
• New functionality to be implemented on the World Pulse platform to allow members with specific skills to connect with those who seek their expertise. This includes expertise in areas such as storytelling, use of AI, advocacy and organizing, leadership in social work, data management, social entrepreneurship, and more
• Opportunities to participate in or lead programs— such as taking on the role of facilitators or executive producers on virtual gatherings, leading welcoming activities to support new members during their first weeks, contributing to award nomination processes, and more.

The most valuable resource we have for this movement is each other. We rise together, one collaboration at a time.

2. Internal Governance and Ecosystem Participation

Where we’re going:

We are deepening our participatory leadership model, involving a more active and strategic relationship between the World Pulse Board of Directors, the community-led Powershift Inclusive Excellence board (learn more about PIE here) and its Research and Evaluation Group (learn more about them here!), the World Pulse Leadership team, and our growing Global Advisory Network (learn more about GAN here).

For this model to thrive, we’re investing in more consistent and available channels for voice and feedback. These communication loops will help ensure that ideas, concerns, and insights are not only heard—but relevant and acted on.

And this effort isn’t limited to World Pulse alone.

Your voices influence spaces beyond our platform. Just as we publish reports informed by global campaigns, we’ll be opening up opportunities for partner organizations—including those led by you—to engage the World Pulse community for input on key issues for their own learning and listening processes.

These could be sister organizations, movement partners, or networks exploring new approaches to social change. We will continue to nurture World Pulse as the trusted space where we all come for values-aligned consultation, listening, and learning.

This participatory leadership model has been one of the most complex challenges in our journey so far. Coordinating decision-making across leadership, boards, community voices, long-time funders, and new partners is no small task.

We’re constantly balancing the need to move fast enough to meet this moment—while staying grounded in the values and relationships that define us. There’s no easy formula. Just trust and the willingness to keep learning together.

The change you can expect to see:

• New channels to bring your voice to spaces where challenges or ideas are discussed
• Connections to community members who will be actively gathering feedback and inputs from the community at large to co-design platform functionality and programs
• Spaces to spark conversations around key questions that maybe posed by World Pulse, partners or training & workshop coordinators

3. Measuring Impact: Our Platform as an Engine of Change

Where we’re going:

To talk about measuring impact, we have to start on our Theory of Change (ToC). World Pulse’s ToC is rooted in over a decade of research led by Dr. Jasmine Linabary (connect with her on comments!), and at its core is the proven understanding that when women have Voice, Connections, and Resources, they go on to change their own lives and communities.

That’s why we strive for World Pulse’s digital platform and programs to be designed to do more than host and amplify our stories—they are designed to hatch voices, spark relationships, drive learning, and foster collaboration.

Now, we’re building the tools to measure how that’s working.

We’re exploring new ways to understand:

• How members connect to each other on the platform (comments, posts, messages)
• The kinds of support they offer and receive (emotional, informational, strategic)
• The ripple effects that follow (new voices, new initiatives, collaborations, or leadership opportunities)

This means rethinking impact measurement—not only understanding the voices hatched and the impactful work of leaders on the ground impacting lives, but also how relationships form and flow through the network, and what those connections make possible.

The most important impact of World Pulse is invisible at first: it's how members feel seen, how courage grows through a comment, how one connection sparks a new collaboration or learning.

Our challenge is to build systems that not only measure these effects—but actively foster them. And we’re just getting started!

The change you can expect to see:

• One-question surveys that appear across the platform, asking about confidence shifts, connection outcomes, or actions taken.
• Technology improvements (with support from the WeSkill Program) to strengthen our data infrastructure so we can build functionality in the future that fosters meaningful connections, spotlight emerging voices, surface capacity building and financial resources, and deepen involvement—without compromising community trust or data ethics.
• Open virtual gatherings to discuss findings and methodology together with you all.
• A dedicated Data Management FAQs section that has been co-created with the Research and Evaluation Group to support all questions that may come up on how World Pulse will start to measure involvement and explore platform data.

We’re not trying to reinvent the wheel or position ourselves as tech innovators. We’re fully aware we’re not a tech company, and we know how quickly that space evolves. What we are doing is using tried-and-tested technology to bridge critical knowledge, networks and resource gaps in the social sector—with clarity, purpose, intention, and a commitment to community.

The tools we’re implementing are known—used across platforms such as e-commerce and traditional social networks. What sets us apart is how and why we use them. While others use technology to sell or to profit from attention, we harness it to power women-led social change. And that, in today’s world, is revolutionary.

Let’s continue to lead this revolution—together.