I think we so often equate leadership with being experts - the leader is supposed to come in and fix things. But in this interconnected world we live in now, it's almost impossible for just one person to do that.

There are 60 million generators in Nigeria. The generator owners and distributors have a strong incentive to not encourage the distribution of solar and other alternative energies, even though it's better for the country, it's better for people. As a world, we've got to get more serious about confronting those obstacles. This knows no culture, no race, no ethnicity.

I still feel that the kind of leader I want to be is one that spends time understanding our work in a way that allows me to translate it for policymakers and people who have real access to resources.

When I first went to Africa, I thought that I was personally going to save the continent, if not the world.

Philanthropy is no longer about writing a check for $10,000 to the opera.

I have seen that traditional approaches to charity and aid don't solve problems of poverty. In fact, too often they create dependence.

On the one hand, I loved being a banker. I loved how numbers could tell a story and how you can invest in ideas and see them translate into products and services and create jobs. What I didn't like, particularly where I was working in Brazil during the debt crisis of the early '80s, was how the poor were excluded from the banking system. I made the decision to try and experiment with whether we could use the tools of banking to extend the benefits of the economy to the poor.