TED Community » Alanna Shaikh

More About Me

I'm passionate about

Improving global health, smart aid, doing international development better, and helping people make better choices about how to donate their money.

An idea worth spreading

Positive Deviance

Talk to me about

Global health, international development, raising a preschooler, being an expatriate, Alzheimer's disease, Central Asia, blogging, Twitter, and finding a way to start changing the world.

People don't know that I'm good at

I can write a sonnet about anything if you give me about 20 minutes. Not a good sonnet, mind you. But it will be in proper form.

My TED Story

I was a 2009 TED India fellow, and I loved it! Now I am a TED senior fellow, and looking forward to March.

Comments

• TEDCred score: +151 TEDCred reflects your contribution to the TED community.

• A comment on Conversation: Who hasn't spoken at TED who should have?

  Feb 17 2011: And I can add another of my own: development economist Owen Barder.
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  A reply on Conversation: Who hasn't spoken at TED who should have?

  Feb 17 2011: Seriously, Noam Chomsky has never spoken at TED?
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  A comment on Conversation: What were the joys of your childhood you wish you could experience again?

  Feb 17 2011: I used to love swinging on the swingset. Just the simple back and forth and the sense of the world rushing by me.

• A reply on Conversation: Why do so many think that population growth is an important issue for the environment? Don't they know the facts of demographics?

  Feb 17 2011: Janet - that's a good point. Maybe it's hard to shed this sense of impending doom because so many living species do face genuine doom.

• A comment on Conversation: What are concrete ways to overcome the greatest human failing, giving up what we want most for what we want now (hyperbolic discounting)?

  Feb 16 2011: On this topic, I really like Kim Stanley Robinson's essay on valuing the future http://whatmatters.mckinseydigital.com/climate_change/time-to-end-the-multigenerational-ponzi-scheme

• A comment on Conversation: Why are not-for-profits encouraged only to share successes or best practices? Isn't there a lot that can be learnt from failures?

  Feb 16 2011: The problem, I think, is that the ultimate donor is not the government agency but the public community that pays taxes to the agency. And a failure report - for example, the corruption investigation that the GFATM did - can easily catch public attention and make taxpayers demand that their money go somewhere else.
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  A comment on Conversation: Why do so many think that population growth is an important issue for the environment? Don't they know the facts of demographics?

  Feb 14 2011: I think we were so scared, for so long of "the population bomb" that we can't quite believe it has really passed us by. Especially since the global population is still growing; it's hard to emotionally grasp that the growth will peak and fall.
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  A comment on Conversation: What was the most amazing social experience you had and why?

  Feb 12 2011: There have been a couple of times in my life where I had made a friend almost instantly. Across cultures, once across a total language barrier. It's like my heart knows who its friends are. That almost mystical sense of connection meets all my criteria for amazing.

• A comment on Conversation: Why really convinces people to support international aid?

  Feb 12 2011: Thanks Mark - it sounds like you fall into the "would give if it really worked" camp...
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  A comment on Conversation: What's the overlooked gem, the book I haven't read that I must?

  Feb 12 2011: I don't know if it's an overlooked gem, exactly, but A General Theory of Authority by Yves Simon shaped my whole view of how organizations - business, governments, whatever - function. It has also helped me think about my role as an employee, entrepreneur, and a person with a responsibility to the world. It's a dry book, and not to everyone's taste or interest, but it was very valuable to me.