#114 From ‘shovelling cultural snow’ to scaling a non-profit globally', Ryan Modjeski Executive Director of Empatico

<p>Ryan Modjeski, Executive Director of Empatico, joins Purposely Podcast to share his leadership journey.</p> <p>Californian Ryan Modjeski heads up a non-profit that helps children connect and make friends with their peers globally. Described as an online pen-pal service for primary/K-9 aged children Empatico helps them experience other cultures. The organisation provides new ways of seeing and connecting with the world, all from the safety of the classroom.</p> <p><em>‘We want kids to meet and communicate with people who they think might be different from them. In our experience it shows them that they have a lot more in common than they thought they did. Our mission is to prepare the next generation for this increasingly connected world. Helping them to navigate cross cultural relationships with empathy and what we believe is a core component for success in life and in business.'</em></p> <p>Ryan's path to non-profit leadership is unique, following completion of an Arts degree in creative writing, he ended up designing online games for a living. A good move for Ryan, combining his love for gaming with his creative writing ability.</p> <p>His work involved the 'Gamification' of television programmes, from Beavis and Butt-Head to Criminal Minds and everything in between.</p> <p>Ryan enjoyed his career in ‘gaming’, however he felt unfulfilled and wanted to make more of a positive difference to the world utilising his varied knowledge and skills. He points to<em> </em>Japanese novelist Haruki Murakami who featured a character who wrote articles for travel magazines that were never meant to be read.</p> <p><em>‘He called it shovelling cultural snow and it really resonated with me, in some ways I was shovelling cultural snow for a job. I had learned how to build technology, how to write stories, how to work with artists and engineers and all of that was fantastic. But I also knew that it wasn't really what I wanted to do with my career’.</em></p> <p>Ryan made the decision to start his own business, switching from ma