Connect deeply with others. Our humanity is the one thing that we all have in common.

We start with an economic approach. We look at what are the greatest causes of death in the developing world, and what causes the largest amount of disability, which would prevent you from getting a job. A lot of those deaths start with diseases, diseases we don't get in such a great number in the United States.

Any social or cultural change has to be made openly and with people agreeing. You don't get there by just pushing an outsider's point of view.

Even in decision-making, we work in self-help groups. That is women coming together in small groups of 10 to sometimes 15 women, where they start to get education about their rights, about clean water and sanitation, about how to have a healthy birth. You can bring in all kinds of education to them that way.

In different places you run into myths around vaccination or around family planning. In the United States, one of the myths that existed for a long time, that has been completely debunked, was that autism was linked to a vaccine.

In the developing world, they don't have smartphones yet. They have the older plastic phones, but women are saving money on those, because they don't have access to banks. Having that access to digital money changes everything for her because she actually doesn't have to negotiate with her husband, which she will tell you is very hard in these circumstances, especially when the means are meager. She's expected to have money to pay for the kids' health or to help with the school fees.

Human-centered design. Meeting people where they are and really taking their needs and feedback into account. When you let people participate in the design process, you find that they often have ingenious ideas about what would really help them. And it’s not a onetime thing; it’s an iterative process.