LinkedIn News.

We face enormous challenges as a species. Fifteen thousand kids die from easily preventable diseases every day. We've got the next pandemic around the corner. We've got the threat of nuclear war, climate change. The list goes on and on and on. And we need our smartest, our most ambitious, our most privileged people to be working in those challenges.

There's something liberating about the idea that you don't need to find the answers inside yourself,

but that you can just ask the world the question, okay, here I am, what can I do?

Like, where am I needed?

How can I contribute the most?

From the news team at LinkedIn, I'm Jesse Hempel, and this is Hello Monday.

It's our show about work on our own terms. I have a new term for you today. It's called

moral ambition, and I have a feeling you're going to want to adopt it

immediately to describe yourself. It's what transpires when we put our skills and our drive to work

in service of our conscience, to do work that matters. And maybe you're feeling like that's you.

You get to work every day on things that matter to you.

Well, you're lucky.

More likely, you are like most people, beaten down by the system, occasionally tired to the point of feeling burnt out.

Because here's the thing, our current work culture, our system, doesn't reward this way of thinking.

It doesn't reward moral ambition.

We're taught to pursue personal success, right?

To optimize for our title, our paycheck, to climb and climb and climb.

That's why the two most popular careers for students coming out of Harvard these days are finance, you know, banking, and consulting.

Now look, there is nothing wrong with those paths. Maybe that's your heart's desire.

But our guest today introduces a different way of thinking about the choices you're making.

This idea of moral ambition is the answer to the larger question of why.

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