Purpose Mindset

Purpose Mindset Plot Summary

Introduction

When Mary Gates urged her son Bill to establish an employee giving program at his fledgling software company in 1983, neither could have imagined the transformative force it would become. That modest payroll deduction effort for United Way, which raised just $17,000 in its first year, has grown into a philanthropic powerhouse that has generated over $2 billion in donations and shaped the lives of countless individuals around the world. At its heart, this remarkable story reveals how a company culture can nurture both innovation and compassion simultaneously. Through intimate portraits of employees and alumni who channeled their technical expertise and business acumen toward solving humanity's most pressing problems, we witness the beautiful alchemy that occurs when personal growth meets genuine purpose. From transforming education in Africa to combating disease in Bangladesh, these changemakers demonstrate how the seeds planted in a corporate environment can blossom into movements that extend the common good far beyond quarterly profits. Their journeys illuminate the path from what the author calls a "growth mindset" to a "purpose mindset" – showing how professional development can evolve into a deeper mission to serve others and address inequities in our world.

Chapter 1: The Great Giving Machine: Structuring Corporate Philanthropy

Bill Neukom arrived at Microsoft in 1985 when the company was still young and hungry, focused almost exclusively on its mission to put "a computer on every desk and in every home." As the company's first general counsel, Neukom made two pivotal decisions that would ultimately impact millions of lives: creating the Community Affairs Department within the legal group to focus on philanthropic efforts, and introducing an employee charitable match program for every full-time employee in the United States. The program's genesis can be traced to Neukom's own background. Growing up in a family where his father led community boards and his mother was active in advocacy organizations, Neukom had witnessed firsthand how the business community could advance important social causes. Prior to Microsoft, he had worked at a law firm focused on civil rights and immigration law, representing minority organizations like the Urban League. This experience shaped his belief that businesses could be powerful agents of positive change. With Bill Gates and then-president Jon Shirley's approval, Neukom established an uncommonly generous matching limit of $10,000 per employee – an extraordinary figure for 1985. This decision created what would become known as "the great giving machine." The program expanded in 1990 to match donations to any registered nonprofit of the employee's choice, not just United Way. This flexibility allowed employees to direct their giving according to their own passions and interests. The Microsoft employee giving program evolved continuously under successive leaders. Pamela Passman, who took over corporate affairs in 2002, made three critical decisions that further fueled the giving machine: shifting the employee giving budget to the human resources department as an employee benefit (ensuring its permanence), eliminating processing fees previously charged by United Way (maximizing donation impact), and extending the match to year-round rather than just during the annual October campaign. October remains the focal point of Microsoft's giving culture – a month of extraordinary energy when employees organize fundraising campaigns, volunteer events, and creative activities from bake sales to auctions. In recent years, senior executives like Bill Gates and Steve Ballmer would offer experiences like dinner at Gates' home or pickup basketball games that would become the top auction items, raising millions. The combination of institutional support, employee leadership through volunteer "VP appointed leads" (VPALs), and genuine fun has created a self-reinforcing cycle of generosity. What makes this program particularly remarkable is how it transcends the typical corporate philanthropy model. By empowering employees to direct their giving, supporting their personal causes, and making philanthropy a central part of the company's culture, Microsoft created something far more sustainable than a top-down charitable program. The giving machine didn't just distribute money – it nurtured a mindset that thousands of employees have carried with them throughout their careers and lives, extending the impact far beyond the company itself.

Chapter 2: Origin Stories: Purpose-Driven Leaders at Microsoft

Tricia McGinnis was employee number seventy-five when she joined Microsoft in July 1981, tasked with building the marketing and communication function for the young company. Jeff Raikes arrived a few months later in November. The couple, who would eventually become known as "Microsoft's first couple" after marrying, brought deep-rooted values of community service with them. Tricia had grown up watching her mother walk door-to-door collecting donations for various causes, while Jeff's farming family in Nebraska had instilled in him the importance of helping neighbors in need. "I was probably twelve or thirteen years old," Jeff recalls. "There was a blizzard in Nebraska, and we heard a knock on the door. A couple whose car had gotten stuck in the snowdrift was asking for help. My father was quick to volunteer me. He asked me to get the tractor and chain." When the grateful couple tried to pay his father for the assistance, the elder Raikes declined, saying he hoped if one of his children were ever in need, someone would step up to help them. "That was my first lesson about paying it forward," Jeff says. At Microsoft, both Tricia and Jeff found themselves in a young company whose co-founder, Bill Gates, came from a family deeply committed to community service. Mary Gates, Bill's mother, took Tricia under her wing and connected her with her first board opportunity at the Kirkland and Redmond Boys and Girls Club, even before the formal employee giving campaign began. This mentorship launched Tricia on a trajectory of deep community engagement that would eventually lead to the establishment of the Raikes Foundation. As Microsoft went public in 1986, the Raikes' financial situation changed dramatically. Warren Buffett, who had become a mentor to them, offered perspective that would guide their philanthropy: "You want your kids to have enough money so they can do anything but not so much that they choose to do nothing." With this wisdom and guidance from role models like Mary Gates, Bill Gates Sr., and the Buffetts, the Raikes embarked on their philanthropic journey with humility and a commitment to learning. Jean-Philippe Courtois (JPC), who joined Microsoft in France in 1984, brought a different perspective shaped by growing up in Nice after his family relocated from Algeria. Though employee giving wasn't an established norm in France, JPC saw an opportunity for employees to volunteer and support youth by introducing them to computers and software. Without forcing participation, he created programs where employees would volunteer their time to train young people and help them develop job skills. This approach was embraced by both the community and Microsoft employees, who found meaningful ways to contribute beyond their day jobs. What connects these leaders' stories is how they each found ways to blend professional success with deeper purpose. When Nadella became CEO in 2014, he accelerated this integration by emphasizing empathy alongside technical excellence. "Culture is what allows you to live your sense of purpose and mission," Nadella explains. This evolution from a growth mindset to a purpose mindset became central to Microsoft's identity, and these early pioneers laid the foundation for thousands of employees to find similar meaning in their work and their giving.

Chapter 3: The Great Escape: Education as a Transformation Tool

Trish Millines Dziko has fought against inequality her whole life. As an African American woman who found success in the tech industry, she witnessed firsthand how the lack of diversity in STEM fields perpetuated cycles of inequity. Growing up in Belmar, New Jersey, in the 1950s and 60s, she experienced segregation and was initially tracked into lower-level classes despite her aptitude for math and science. It took one observant teacher recognizing her talents to move her into the math honors track. After graduating from Monmouth College with a degree in computer science, Millines Dziko faced both racism and sexism in the workplace. She joined Microsoft in 1988 and became one of the first members of Blacks at Microsoft when it formed in 1989. Eventually, she became the senior diversity administrator, working to recruit and retain candidates of color. But she realized that increasing diversity in the software industry required changing the pipeline much earlier – at the K-12 education level. In 1996, Millines Dziko made the bold decision to leave Microsoft's financial security behind and founded the Technology Access Foundation (TAF). She recalls the moment of clarity that came when watching middle school students from Seattle Public Schools visit Microsoft: "I saw the kids' reactions when they saw older kids working on computers. One of the kids said she wanted to be an engineer." That's when Millines Dziko had her epiphany – she needed to create opportunities for students of color to engage with technology from an early age. TAF began as an after-school program introducing students to math, science, and computers, as well as internship opportunities. But Millines Dziko's vision expanded. In 2008, after years of planning and navigating bureaucratic challenges, TAF Academy opened as a sixth-through-twelfth-grade STEM-focused project-based curriculum school within the Federal Way School District. As the first school in Washington State to be co-managed by a nonprofit and a school district, TAF Academy created a model where students from underrepresented backgrounds could thrive in a rigorous learning environment focused on using STEM as a tool for positive social change. Kevin Wang's story offers another perspective on educational transformation. After studying electrical engineering and computer science at UC Berkeley, Wang discovered his passion for teaching and became a high school computer science teacher. When he later joined Microsoft as an engineer, he missed education. In 2009, he started teaching computer science at a local private school while maintaining his full-time job. Word spread about the "Microsoft guy" teaching computer science, and school districts began approaching him about starting programs in their schools. This led Wang to found TEALS (Technology Education and Literacy in Schools), which pairs tech industry volunteers with classroom teachers to build sustainable computer science programs. When Wang was considering leaving Microsoft to grow TEALS as an independent nonprofit, Satya Nadella, then head of the server and tools division, saw the bigger picture. Instead of letting Wang go, Nadella suggested incubating the program within Microsoft, providing resources and support that allowed TEALS to thrive. These stories highlight how education serves as the "great equalizer" – a term coined by Horace Mann in the nineteenth century. By creating opportunities for students to develop technical skills regardless of background, these Microsoft employees and alumni have helped thousands escape cycles of poverty and exclusion. Their work embodies the extension of the growth mindset to a purpose mindset – using their own success and expertise to create pathways for others to reach their full potential and contribute to society in meaningful ways.

Chapter 4: Extending the Common Good: Alumni as Bridge Builders

When Paul Shoemaker joined Microsoft in 1991, he was struck by how smart his colleagues were and how much he had to learn. "The first year at Microsoft was insanely hard," he recalls. "It was being thrust into major league baseball and facing a fastball from Roger Clemons... what doesn't kill you makes you stronger." Like many employees, Shoemaker initially participated in the giving campaign at a modest level, keeping his head down and focusing on shipping products. But as he grew in his role, he began to look outward. Through a meeting with Barbara Dingfield, director of Community Affairs, Shoemaker found his way to the board of the Seattle Children's Alliance. He approached this new role with humility, spending his first year observing and learning from other board members before determining how he could add value. He realized that while he lacked the deep content expertise of others, he could offer a more horizontal perspective on organizational leadership, strategy, and measuring results in mission-driven organizations. In 1998, after leaving Microsoft, Shoemaker attended the launch of Social Venture Partners (SVP), a new model for collective giving. Intrigued by the concept of bringing people together to invest not just money but also skills and expertise in nonprofits, he met with founder Paul Brainerd, who offered him the job of running this new organization. For the next seventeen years, Shoemaker led SVP Seattle and helped establish SVP International, growing it to more than forty affiliates across eight countries. Tony Mestres' journey reflects a similar evolution. After fifteen successful years at Microsoft in various sales and business development roles, Mestres was ready for a change. His involvement with the giving campaign had introduced him to Kindering Center, a nonprofit serving special needs children. What began as a volunteer role evolved into a deep passion, eventually leading him to become the president and CEO of the Seattle Foundation, a community foundation with a $1 billion asset base. At the Seattle Foundation, Mestres applied lessons from both his corporate experience and his nonprofit board service. He introduced a new approach called "heart and science," finding the balance between empathy and data-driven strategies. "The basic theory is that ineffectiveness was born of one of two things," he explains. "Leaning too much on the heart, which does not necessarily correlate to positive systems change that can affect people's lives at scale; or leaning too much on the purely empirical left-brain attitude that doesn't appreciate deeply human needs." Andrea Taylor, who joined Microsoft in 2006 to lead the North America philanthropy team, brought a unique perspective shaped by her participation in the 1963 March on Washington with Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Growing up in a family with deep roots in civil rights activism, Taylor had witnessed firsthand how ordinary people could create extraordinary change. At Microsoft, she saw how the company's employee giving program democratized philanthropy: "What is unique is that as Microsoft created wealth for its employees, it also provided them an opportunity to become strategic in how they invested and shared that wealth. The idea that you could have a company where not only is the CEO a philanthropist working on a world stage, but there's a program that allows every single employee to be a philanthropist." These alumni exemplify how Microsoft's culture created bridge builders – people who could translate between different worlds and bring resources, skills, and perspectives together for the common good. By extending beyond personal or corporate success to address broader societal challenges, they transformed philanthropy itself, making it more collaborative, strategic, and deeply engaged with the communities it serves.

Chapter 5: Building a Purpose Mindset: Key Principles and Practices

Ravi Venkatesan, the former chairman of Microsoft India, stood at a crossroads after leaving the company. Rather than pursuing another CEO position, he decided to focus his talents on addressing major societal challenges in India. Inspired by sociologist Dipankar Gupta's book "Revolution from Above: India's Future and the Citizen Elite," Venkatesan recognized that India needed visionary leaders willing to invest in long-term change rather than short-term gains. This realization led Venkatesan to launch two ambitious initiatives. First, the Global Alliance for Mass Entrepreneurship (GAME) aims to enable ten million young people in India to start businesses rather than seeking increasingly scarce formal-sector jobs. With India needing to create 18-20 million jobs annually, and the formal sector creating almost zero net new jobs despite growth, Venkatesan saw entrepreneurship as the key to addressing this massive challenge. The second initiative, his work with UNICEF on Generation Unlimited, focuses on preparing youth ages 10-24 for successful transitions to work and citizenship. "When you look at climate change, the environment, issues around mass migration, the plastic crisis, the water crisis, and a growing list of them, the future truly rests on getting many, many more people to become problem solvers," Venkatesan explains. His approach embodies the purpose mindset – using one's influence and expertise not just for personal gain but to develop others' capabilities to address systemic challenges. Hadi Partovi's journey to founding Code.org offers another perspective on building purpose. Growing up during the Iran-Iraq war, Partovi found escape through coding on a Commodore 64 computer his parents had brought home. "For anybody who has the least amount of hope, computer programming is an escape, and it lets you realize one's dreams in a virtual world even if the physical world you live in is not going well," he says. After success as a Microsoft executive and later as an entrepreneur and investor, Partovi recognized a fundamental mismatch in education: despite computing careers offering tremendous opportunities, computer science education remained inaccessible to most students. What began as a casual conversation around a firepit with tech leaders like Jack Dorsey and Drew Houston evolved into Code.org and the Hour of Code, a global movement that has reached over 50 million students with nearly equal participation between girls and boys. While professional expertise provided the foundation for these initiatives, the purpose mindset required additional principles to create lasting impact. These principles include: 1. Discovering Strengths – Rather than focusing on fixing weaknesses, purpose-driven leaders identify and build on existing strengths in themselves and others. 2. Working from Abundance – Moving beyond scarcity thinking to recognize and creatively leverage available resources. 3. Extending the Common Good – Looking beyond efficiency to consider broader community impact and well-being. 4. Igniting Movements – Building distributed networks rather than centralized organizations to achieve scale. 5. Embracing Empathy and Compassion – Shifting focus from "me" to "we" by deeply understanding others' needs and experiences. These principles don't emerge overnight but develop through practice and reflection. As Claire Bonilla, who left Microsoft to lead SightLife's work on eradicating corneal blindness, notes: "There's a big difference between a purposeful mission-driven culture and an intentional one." The purpose mindset combines heart and head, passion and strategy, to create sustainable change that benefits all stakeholders.

Chapter 6: COVID-19 Response: Crisis as a Catalyst for Purpose

When the COVID-19 pandemic struck in early 2020, it presented an unprecedented global challenge that tested both individual and institutional responses. In Seattle, where the first U.S. cases appeared, Microsoft employees and alumni quickly mobilized. The company announced it would continue paying all support staff while the campus was closed and implemented a comprehensive remote work policy that became a model for other organizations. Kate Behncken, the head of Microsoft Philanthropies, observed an extraordinary outpouring of generosity: "There is nothing quite as unifying as a global pandemic. We have already surpassed the fundraising efforts for Hurricanes Harvey and Maria. I continue to be surprised as people are reaching out to me and other leaders in the company as to what more they can do." Microsoft launched a multi-pronged response that exemplified the purpose mindset in action. The company donated $1 million to the Seattle Foundation's COVID-19 response fund and implemented a special two-month global giving program that matched employee donations up to $10,000 – beyond their regular annual match benefits. In just three months, this campaign raised over $42.8 million for more than 10,000 nonprofits across 69 countries. Beyond financial contributions, Microsoft deployed its technology and expertise to address the crisis. The company partnered with UNICEF to accelerate the launch of Learning Passport, a global learning platform to help children continue their education at home. Microsoft stores pivoted to delivering emergency remote operations support, and the company's healthcare bots were repurposed to help screen patients for potential COVID-19 symptoms. Microsoft alumni were equally active in their responses. Samir Bodas, co-founder and CEO of Icertis and a Microsoft alumnus, contributed $50,000 to provide 20-25,000 meals to schoolchildren who had lost access to school breakfast and lunch programs. His decision came after one of his employees, whose wife was a schoolteacher, highlighted this urgent need. "We did not have a lot, but my mom always encouraged us to give back," said Jim Urbaitis, another Microsoft employee who had grown employee participation in giving from 38% to over 80% in his group. Tony Mestres, as CEO of the Seattle Foundation, helped coordinate the COVID-19 Response Fund, a coalition of philanthropy, government, and business partners that rapidly deployed resources to community organizations. Within weeks, the fund had raised over $23 million and distributed $10.1 million to 120 nonprofits. The pandemic revealed how the purpose mindset manifests in times of crisis – through rapid mobilization, creative problem-solving, and deep empathy for those most affected. As Hubert Joly, the executive chairman of Best Buy, wrote in the Harvard Business Review during this period: "This is a time when performance will be judged by how a company and its leadership serve everyone and fulfill a higher purpose – and specifically how they have shown up and met the requirements and expectations of its multiple stakeholders." What made Microsoft's response particularly effective was not just the resources deployed but the agility and humanity with which they were delivered. The company's longstanding culture of purpose enabled a swift pivot from business priorities to community needs, demonstrating how organizational values translate into action when they matter most. This crisis response showed that purpose isn't just an aspiration for good times but a critical foundation for resilience and relevance in challenging ones.

Summary

The journey from growth mindset to purpose mindset represents one of the most significant evolutions in both personal development and organizational culture. As we've seen through the stories of Microsoft employees and alumni, this shift doesn't happen overnight or through grand proclamations. It emerges through consistent actions, institutional support, and a culture that values impact beyond financial success. The principles that have guided these changemakers offer valuable lessons for anyone seeking to infuse greater purpose into their life and work. First, start where you are with what you have – whether that's technical expertise like Kevin Wang, leadership skills like Ravi Venkatesan, or simply the courage to step beyond comfort zones like Trish Millines Dziko. Second, recognize that purpose flourishes in community, not isolation. The Microsoft giving campaign succeeded precisely because it created structures for collective action while honoring individual passions. Finally, understand that purpose evolves through practice and reflection. Each person profiled discovered deeper meaning through engagement with real challenges, not through abstract contemplation. As Satya Nadella articulated, the question that drives truly purpose-driven organizations isn't just "Are we successful?" but "Who else is doing well because we are doing well?" This perspective transforms how we measure value and impact, extending our vision beyond quarterly results to generational change. In these uncertain times, cultivating such a purpose mindset may be our greatest resource for building a world where technology serves humanity, where business drives positive change, and where each of us finds fulfillment in contributing to something greater than ourselves.

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Akhtar Badshah

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