The Former Head of USAID on Why Foreign Aid Benefits Everyone

The Next Big Idea

Next Big Idea Club

Self-improvement, Arts, Books, Society & Culture, Education

4.5 • 1.3K Ratings

🗓️ 13 February 2025

⏱️ 51 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

When Rajiv Shah was in his late 20s and didn’t know what to do with his life, he got a job at a fledgling nonprofit, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. Before he knew it, he was a driving force behind a global vaccination program that immunized 900 million children and saved 16 million lives. At 36, he became the administrator of the United States Agency for International Development (USAID), managing a $20 billion budget, overseeing a staff of 10,000, and leading the U.S. response to global humanitarian crises. Today, as president of the Rockefeller Foundation, he’s finding innovative solutions to mitigate climate change and end energy poverty. What connects these experiences? At every step, Raj maintained a big bet mentality. What is a big bet? “A concerted effort to fundamentally solve a single, pressing problem in your community or our world. Big bets require setting profound, seemingly unachievable goals and believing they are achievable.” In this episode, he shares his methodology for creating large-scale change and making the world a better place. (This episode was first broadcast in 2024.) 💿 For more episodes about aid, philanthropy, and how best to solve the world’s problems, check out this playlist 📩 Want to transform your day in just 10 minutes? Sign up for our Book of the Day newsletter, and you’ll get daily, bite‑sized insights from the best new nonfiction books — in audio or text — straight from the authors. Sign up today!

Transcript

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0:00.0	LinkedIn Presents.
0:01.0	I'm Rufus Griskem, and this is the next big idea.
0:09.0	Today, Raj Shaw, the former head of USA February 3rd, Elon Musk tweeted the following.
0:43.3	We spent the weekend feeding USAID to the wood chipper.
0:47.5	Could have gone to some great parties.
0:49.4	Did that instead.
0:50.7	Breaking overnight, workers at the U.S. Agency for International Development, USAID, in Washington,
0:55.7	were told to stay home this morning. The main office closed. They received an email shortly after
1:01.2	midnight telling them, don't come in. This is the latest development on the future of USAID after
1:08.0	both President Trump and maybe more importantly Elon Musk said it needed to be shut down. USAID is both President Trump and maybe more importantly, Elon Musk, said it needed to be shut down.
1:13.7	USAID is the world's largest provider of humanitarian aid. It has a staff of 14,000 and a $40 billion annual budget.
1:23.5	It was founded more than 60 years ago with the belief that if you make life better for people around the world, you'll make it safer for Americans at home.
1:33.0	Supporters of USAID say it has largely fulfilled that mission.
1:36.9	Last year, I spoke with Raj Shaw.
1:39.4	He led the agency from 2010 to 2015.
1:42.9	He justified the agency's existence like this.
1:46.3	We're spending less than 1% of our federal budget. For that, we have largely tamped down
1:53.0	an AIDS crisis that was killing tens of millions of people. We've saved 16, 20 million
1:59.4	children through vaccination efforts.
2:01.7	We beat back an Ebola crisis that was supposed to have hundreds of thousands of cases in the United States and only had two because we took the fight to West Africa and succeeded in a difficult and highly contentious environment.
2:14.7	And we have always been, especially since World War II, the world's
2:19.7	unquestioned humanitarian leader, mostly preventing humanitarian catastrophes that prevent
	...

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