About Our Guest:

There’s a line I wrote down in all caps when I was talking with my guest, Mohini Bhavsar of Grand Challenges Canada. It’s a sentence she carries from a teacher in her childhood, and it has become a kind of compass for her life.

“Small things can make big differences.”

It’s the perfect doorway into this whole conversation; if you ever feel like the world’s problems are too big, too complex, too far away for anything you do to matter, Mohini’s work is a giant, friendly rebuttal to that feeling. She’s part of a small team in Toronto that has quietly helped 1,500 innovators around the world take tiny sparks of ideas and grow them into life-saving, system-changing solutions. Their work is on track to touch the lives of 750 million people by 2035.

__________________________

First, a Little About Grand Challenges Canada

Grand Challenges Canada sits at the crossroads of hope, science, and human ingenuity — and then actually funds the bold ideas that emerge there. Since 2010, they’ve been backing innovators who are improving lives in ways that are practical, culturally grounded, and built to last—especially in places where traditional funding rarely reaches. 

Their philosophy is simple but radical: big change often starts quietly, at the edges, with people who are closest to the problem.

Instead of relying on splashy headlines or Silicon-Valley-style hype, Grand Challenges Canada takes a “seed-to-scale” approach, helping early-stage ideas grow into sustainable, community-owned solutions that can reach millions. They’re not just investors; they are champions of lived, experience-driven innovation. 

To date, the projects they’ve supported have touched more than tens of millions of lives across 100+ countries, proving what can happen when you start with trust, curiosity, and collaboration, instead of top-down assumptions. That’s why Mohini’s work matters so much: she is part of a team that is redefining what meaningful progress looks like. 

---

Courage, Risk, and the Long Game

I asked Mohini where this kind of courage comes from—after all, the entrepreneurs she works with aren’t just tinkering around the edges of comfort. Many are working in conflict zones and fragile health systems, on politically charged issues, and without certainty of funding, safety, or validation.

Here’s what she has observed, after years of walking alongside these innovators:

1. It’s deeply personal.
   These solutions are rarely just “ideas on a whiteboard.” They come from lived experience, heartbreak, or intimate cultural knowledge.
   
2. They’re thinking in decades, not quarters.
   They know change takes time, partnership, and stubborn love.
   
3. They are building something bigger than themselves.
   The goal is not novelty — it’s a new normal.

And all of it requires a tolerance for ambiguity, detours, and yes… failure. Mohini shared a line she first heard from a fellow young changemaker that she still turns to like a lighthouse:

“Don’t let what makes you wake up in anguish suppress you. Let it inspireyou and embolden you to create social change.”

At the end of the day, innovators make a daily choice between anguish and action—and that’s a choice more of us might have than we think.

---

Why Local Voices Matter

Here’s a truth we all need to internalize—and one of my favorite threads in this conversation about who should lead innovation: 

Transformative innovation rarely comes from boardrooms or distant experts. It comes from the people closest to the problem.

Grand Challenges Canada has learned—sometimes through painful trial and error—that when solutions are not designed with communities, alongside local leaders, and through cultural context, they either

When things do work, it’s because the innovation was co-designed with the people whose lives are affected by it. Some of the most promising solutions have come from youth, community health workers, teachers, midwives, and survivors—people who were not waiting for permission to fix a problem they saw.

---

Three Innovations That Capture This Spirit

Here are just a few examples Mohini shared that stopped me in my tracks:

• Medical Oxygen in East Africa
  A Kenyan physician built an organization that slashed the cost of medical oxygen and expanded access across rural areas, earning him the nickname “The Oxygen Man” —and it all began with one hospital and one unbearable dilemma.
  
• Youth-Led Mental Health Programs in 12 Countries
  Young leaders are now designing the mental-health solutions their peers actually need—including a survivor in Indonesia who turned her trauma into a nationwide school-based awareness movement.
  
• Lucky Iron Fish / Lucky Iron Leaf
  A palm-sized piece of iron added to a cooking pot can reverse iron deficiency in entire communities. (In places where fish symbolism didn’t resonate, the design was changed to a leaf, and that tiny cultural tweak unlocked huge impact.)
  

Each of these examples began with the same ingredients:

A personal stake + a local lens + a small pilot + patient support.

---

Mohini Bhavsar’s Story: When One ‘Yes’ Changes a Lifetime

Mohini grew up in a hardworking immigrant family where stability, savings, and prudence were the main priorities. Risk was something you avoided, not embraced. Everything changed when she received the TD Scholarship for Community Leadership — the very scholarship championed by former podcast guest Jane Thompson.

That scholarship didn’t just pay for school; it removed fear as the central decision-maker in her future, and it gave her the freedom to take a $300-a-month job with a social enterprise in India—the kind of choice that most young people never get to make when burdened by debt or expectations.

That “yes” cracked open doors she didn’t yet know existed, and now she spends her days helping others find their door. THAT’S the power of rewarding young people who show innate leadership skills with opportunity.

________________________________________________________________

From Beneficiary to Leader: A Full-Circle Story

One of the most beautiful parts of Mohini’s story is that she didn’t begin her connection to Grand Challenges Canada as an employee at all: she began as a funded innovator herself.

Ten years before she joined their team, she was designing and testing an idea in Senegal, working to improve health service delivery in ways that were more accessible, more equitable, and more sustainable for people in underserved communities. Her organization at the time received support from Grand Challenges Canada in those early, fragile days of experimentation — that stage when you have more questions than answers, more possibility than infrastructure, and no guaranteed runway.

She remembers what it felt like to be the person with the unproven idea, standing on the edge of the cliff between hope and uncertainty—but now, a decade later, she is on the other side of the table, helping to unlock opportunity for others in that same tender phase. 

In other words: She is not just an administrator of support—she is the living proof of what early belief can make possible. That full-circle arc from innovator to supporting other innovators gives her a kind of empathy and credibility you simply cannot manufacture. She speaks with the voice of someone who remembers the weight and knows the stakes.

---

What Mohini Wishes the World Knew

If Mohini Bhavsar could whisper one message into the ear of every person feeling discouraged by the headlines, it would be this:

“Great ideas can come from anywhere, and small actions — repeated, shared, and sustained — can shape the fate of millions.”

From where Mohini sits, she is not witnessing a world in collapse—she is witnessing a world under construction; a world quietly building scaffolding toward dignity, access, and possibility—and you and I are absolutely invited.

If you are searching for meaning, Mohini’s experience with innovators led us to a lovely, simple “recipe” for people wondering where they might contribute:

1. Follow what is personally meaningful to you.
   
2. Allow it to unfold over years, not days.
   
3. Aim it toward something bigger than your own win.
   

Then just take one small step—because that’s how every global miracle begins.

---

What Fuels Hope? Here Are the Books, Podcasts & Blogs We Love

One of the most surprising delights in my conversation with Mohini was discovering how much we share when it comes to fuel sources — the things we read, listen to, and feed our minds with to stay curious, resilient, and open-hearted. 

Neither of us arrived at optimism by accident, and we don’t maintain it passively. We both have a steady diet of ideas, role models, stories, and brain-expanding perspectives that help us stay grounded and hopeful.

So we decided to share some of the best tools, blogs, books, and podcasts that have shaped us with all of you. Think of this section as a little treasure chest of thought-nutrition — the kind of media that encourages you to keep going, keep imagining, and keep expanding what’s possible.

(Show notes below for anyone who wants to explore!)

It is still an amazing world, friends. We just have to widen our aperture—and when we do, we’ll see what Mohini sees every day: A tidal wave of ingenuity and goodness, already in motion.

⭐ Books

• The Art of Possibility — Rosamund Stone Zander & Benjamin Zander
  
• Biography of Indra Nooyi — My Life in Full: Work, Family, and Our Future
  
• Biography of Gloria Steinem — My Life on the Road
  
• The Book of Joy — Dalai Lama, Archbishop Desmond Tutu, Douglas Abrams
  
• Endurance (Shackleton’s Incredible Voyage) — the story of Ernest Shackleton’s fateful Polar Expedition, by Alfred Lansing
  
• An Unfinished Love Story: A Personal History of the 1960s — Doris Kearns Goodwin
  

---

🎧 Podcasts

• 99% Invisible — Roman Mars
  
• How I Built This — Guy Raz (NPR)
  
• Business Wars — Wondery Media
  
• Science Friday (Sci-Fri) — NPR
  
• TED Radio Hour — NPR / TED
  
• Hidden Brain — Shankar Vedantam
  
• Built to Lead — Healthcare leadership podcast by University of Toronto alumni (co-created with Mohini)
  

---

🧠 Blogs & Online Media

• The Marginalian (formerly Brain Pickings) — Maria Popova
  
• Seth Godin’s Daily Blog
  
• The Goodness Exchange — (your platform!)
  
• Grand Challenges Canada — innovation platform where Mohini works
  

---

🧰 Apps & Tools

• Headspace — Meditation & mental well-being app

References Mentioned:

• Hewatele: Expanding Medical Oxygen Access Without U.S. Foreign Aid | Think Global Health
• Friendship Bench: Welcome to The Friendship Bench | raising awareness around youth mental health
  • When you mention grandmothers, you can bring this innovation – Grandmothers saving lives!
• Vitala Global Foundation for women’s reproductive health: Our Mission | Vitala Global 
• Dimagi (the company I used to work for): Digital Solutions for Frontline Work | Dimagi
• Community health impact coalition: Community Health Impact Coalition — Because CHWs work

Chapters:

• 0:00 – Intro & Welcome
• 3:57 – Introducing Grand Challenges Canada
• 7:09 – Mr. Oxygen Man: A Life-Saving Innovation
• 17:41 – Courage, Risk, and the Heart of Innovation
• 26:06 – Mohini’s Personal Journey of Courage and Opportunity
• 33:11 – Understanding the UN Sustainable Development Goals
• 41:24 – Break
• 44:05 – Unexpected Innovators Changing the World
• 57:01 – Lessons From Failure and the Power of Pivoting
• 1:02:01 – Books, Podcasts, and Tools for Positive Thinking
• 1:26:30 – Final Reflections on Small Acts and Global Change