The world has never faced so many humanitarian crises at once, and the systems built to respond to them are fraying. Tjada McKenna, CEO of Prosper Global—the organization long known as Mercy Corps—shares what she’s seeing firsthand from Syria to Sudan to Ukraine to Gaza, and why she rebranded a 40-year-old institution in the middle of a funding crisis. She also explains how the Strait of Hormuz conflict is writing next year’s food shortages into fragile countries right now, and why Russia’s playbook of attacking civilian infrastructure has spread to conflicts around the world.
This is an abridged transcript of an interview from Rapid Response, hosted by the former editor-in-chief of Fast Company Bob Safian. From the team behind the Masters of Scale podcast, Rapid Response features candid conversations with today’s top business leaders navigating real-time challenges. Subscribe to Rapid Response wherever you get your podcasts to ensure you never miss an episode.
I am eager to discuss the renaming of Mercy Corps, but first, while I have you, I have to ask about the flooding in Nepal. You’ve been on the show before talking about humanitarian crises in Ukraine, Gaza, and Syria. What’s the situation now in Nepal?
Nepal is a devastating situation. It is a country that, in a matter of months, has gone from crippling heat to this severe catastrophe and flooding. The reality is Nepal is very prone to climate disasters, mainly due to issues that they had no contribution to. Obviously, we’re there helping people immediately with food, hygiene kits, and shelter, but what’s really important for Nepal is helping them build for the future because these kinds of crises are recurrent. This one feels crazy and unexpected, but the reality is these crises keep happening. Some of the longer-term work we’ve been doing in Nepal has been helping to stop riverbank erosion by planting different grasses and helping people with emergency and disaster preparedness. Those are the things people need to be resilient and survive the next one.
And this particular slide that started all this, do we know if it’s related to climate change? Will we ever definitively know?
If it’s related to a melting glacier, I think it’s hard to argue that it’s not climate change-related. The reality is we have this increase in very dramatic, severe weather-related incidents. They’re coming faster, closer together, and more severe than they ever have before. We can call it whatever we want, but we’ve got to meet the needs of people who are being impacted consistently by these kinds of issues.
In the midst of that, Mercy Corps officially launched a rebrand to call itself Prosper Global. You’ve said that you outgrew the old identity. Can you explain that? You’re not about mercy anymore?
Yes. I think organizations outgrow identities just as people do. A lot of people’s classic definition of aid is swooping in to save the day, whether it be food [or other things], and thinking of ourselves as the agents of mercy. The reality is we are there in emergency situations providing people with what they need, but oftentimes that crisis is just the beginning. We’re also there with communities, working with them to provide the conditions for longer-term sustainability and prosperity. When I would talk to potential donors about the kinds of things that we do, I would talk about cash assistance, but also things like seed insurance or the use of blockchain for identity management. One time, a potential donor said to me, “That has nothing to do with your name, Mercy Corps.” These long-term, innovative, market-oriented things weren’t encompassed by Mercy Corps. Our evolution to Prosper Global is really trying to shorten the conversation a bit by stating our values up front. We believe everybody has the ability to prosper, not just survive. Often, it doesn’t take that many resources to do so, and we invite people into that journey with us.
This focus on prosperity in the new name, it’s not changing the focus or strategy behind the organization. It’s better reflecting what you’ve already been doing.
Our mission and values are the source of continuity, not our name, right? Our mission and values have been to help people live their best, full, productive lives, particularly people who are beset by issues caused by poverty, conflict, or climate change. That outward statement of our mission and values has not changed at all. I was having a conversation with someone about the fact that we have a venture capital fund and that we’ve had one for 10 years. I was talking about the businesses we invest in. They’re businesses that serve these types of communities, helping them with financial services products and things like better building materials for climate-related challenges. And someone said, “But you’re Mercy Corps. What are you doing in venture capital? Why do you know about that?” I think Mercy Corps really describes the way that aid started, not what we are doing today, not how we operate, and not where we are going or where we have been.
You published a report recently called “From Hormuz to Hunger,” tracking how the Strait of Hormuz conflict is rippling through six fragile countries, right? Sudan, Somalia, Ethiopia, Pakistan, Myanmar, and Lebanon. So how does oil disruption in the Middle East lead to an empty food plate in Africa?
Yes. I was in Sudan a few months ago. Many of these countries are reliant on the Strait of Hormuz for their basic fuel supplies, and this has affected fertilizer supply heavily. When I was in Sudan, farmers have a two- to three-week window in terms of getting seeds in the ground. The cost of fuel was up 60%, so now the cost of fertilizer is up. As people are making decisions about what to plant and what inputs they have, for some farmers that could be the decision to abandon the land. Not only are people grappling with the issue today, but now we are crippling food supply for the next season.
You’re still active in Ukraine. Prosper Global just joined the U.N. and the Ukrainian Red Cross to launch a grain storage program there. Ukraine’s facing a big shortfall potentially from this year’s harvest also.
We have a very large programming presence in Ukraine. I was in Ukraine in December. The reality is, the nature of that war now is that Russia is increasingly attacking civilian and economic infrastructure. There have been increasing attacks on ports, but also, especially with drones, on grain silos and storage facilities. So there actually was a good harvest this year, but if you’ve bombed out the silos and storage for people to store it, or if you’ve bombed the roads and the ports to move those grains out, then you’ve lost the income from that time period. There are deliberate attacks on this kind of infrastructure.
We have been doing things like providing sleeved grain storage, working with farmers, and helping with demining. Because Ukraine was a breadbasket for a lot of the world, it needs that food to care for itself and its own economy. When we talk about Prosper Global and helping people not only survive the immediate but really build their future, that’s exactly the kind of support we mean. A lot of people have lost farm equipment. It’s about helping people rebuild or figure out alternative paths.
Are there things that you’ve learned about leadership, or otherwise, that others might benefit from, things you maybe wouldn’t have appreciated if you hadn’t had to go through it?
In a time when we had to contract really rapidly, there was a point where you had to say, “Look, it’s not going back to the way it was before,” and accept that the status quo had changed. I’ve seen as a leader that I can take nothing for granted. Even using terms like international humanitarian law, I might as well be speaking Greek to some people, right? So it’s really about breaking things down step-by-step and revisiting everything, because at some point we can’t just mourn what was. We’ve got to rebuild, and we have to make intentional decisions about where that’s happening and where it isn’t happening. That’s where clinging to the mission and the values matters, not the structures, not the trappings. When the aid sector was thrown into crisis, I had laid off a lot of people. There was a moment where, in the midst of layoffs and just a lot of sadness, you ask: Is it OK to make a further investment in changing your name? And I think that was the point where it was like, OK, the investment is in building our future. The investment is in changing the narrative, and this name change is absolutely imperative for us in securing that future. We were not accepting the trajectory as it was. We were saying, “We are going to remake the trajectory here.”
