“Our greatest responsibility is to be good ancestors”- Jonas Salk. This is the message that our Tuesday talk speaker leaves us with, the quote hanging on the screen as he concludes his talk. Many people in the audience take pictures, the message has clearly resonated with a lot of them.
We were gathered in the hall to hear from Dr Peter Drobac, an outgoing Innovation & Entrepreneurship Fellow at Reuben. Dr Drobac is the former Director of the Skoll Centre for Social Entrepreneurship, and the CEO of Crucible Advisors, a start-up focussing on educational access. He has worked extensively in global health, after seeing the AIDS crisis first hand in Tanzania in the 1990s. There he was confronted with the question: how can we have the means to cure a disease, but not give everyone access? This led to medical training and a career in global health, with a focus on equity as an essential component of change.
This felt like a timely seminar. Equity is a hot topic, and there has been a huge push in recent years to integrate equity, diversity and inclusivity into education and other spheres. In fact, Reuben College itself is highly committed to equity, diversity and inclusion. But we are far from consensus on the value of equity. As I write, DEI programs are under threat in the US and similar sentiments are brewing across the globe. Our speaker drew our attention to a speech by the UN secretary general António Guterres in 2021. Addressing the UN general assembly, he painted a stark picture of a world in tumult. And yet, he stated, “Solidarity is missing in action – just when we need it most”. It’s difficult to see that anything has changed in the years since. Recent discourse has presented equity as something that comes at a cost. For many in the room, it therefore felt exciting and refreshing to hear someone discuss equity not just as a moral imperative, but as a force for innovation and positive change.
As a case study, Dr Drobac discussed his previous work in Rwanda. There he worked with Partners in Health, a non-profit organisation specialising in healthcare delivery in a country that was severely impacted in the aftermath of the Rwandan genocide. Dr Drobac explained that post-genocide, equity has been identified and treated as a national security issue. Efforts to transform the healthcare system therefore centred equity. He painted a picture of an integrated healthcare delivery strategy, that started in the most vulnerable communities. He later co-founded the University of Global Health Equity, an educational institution that again centred equity. So did any of this work? Well, the story our speaker told was a success story, he explained that massive progress in healthcare delivery was made in cooperation with local communities. The audience appeared to be largely convinced: in this case, equity did indeed drive innovation.
So how does equity drive innovation? Our speaker had 4 ideas:
- It expands our moral imagination – move from “no” to “how?”
- It unlocks talent
- It opens markets
- It allows us to build trust and creates conditions to implement change
This led us onto the topic of knowledge equity. As Dr Drobac highlighted, some might assume that knowledge exists along the same axes as power and privilege. These issues can feel confronting, when we ourselves are sat in positions of privilege in Oxford. Does this bastion of power and privilege give us greater access to knowledge? Perhaps not always. Both Dr Drobac, and audience members in later discussions, highlighted examples of knowledge equity that exists outside traditional structures of power.
After the talk, the audience had the opportunity to ask questions and to discuss the topic in small groups. This led to a lively debate, as although most people liked the idea of equity leading to innovation, many had practical questions about implementation. It is also clear that innovation in the absence of equity is rampant, so how do we switch to a different way of doing things? Dr Drobac was keen to point out that inequity is everywhere, including our home city of Oxford. Perhaps some of us will be energised to address this further.
Finally, Dr Drobac turned to the future. Our former I & E fellow is turning his focus from health to education. His latest venture is as the CEO of a start-up called Crucible Advisors, aiming to address inequity in access to high quality secondary education. “Talent is equally distributed, opportunity is not”, is how he introduced the new venture to us. I’m sure that we all look forward to hearing more, perhaps at a future Tuesday Talk?
