My Plea to Action: From Business Nerds to PTA Moms – Let’s Use Our Energy for Good

Over two years ago, I wrote something late at night that poured out of me—part reflection, part challenge. At the time, it felt bold—maybe even too bold. When I shared it with my boss, he dismissed it, saying I was too certain and didn’t know enough to make such statements. I thought I needed his approval, so I tucked it away, forgotten. But now, with all I’ve experienced and learned, I see it differently. That piece wasn’t just an outpouring of thoughts—it was the foundation of the work I’ve committed my life to.

It’s a reflection of everything that has shaped me: my upbringing as the daughter of an Air Force family, moving across five countries, attending twelve schools, and living in 29 homes; my roots now firmly planted in Petaluma, California, where I’m raising my children; and my deep belief that humans everywhere—regardless of their circumstances—want the same things: to be seen, to be heard, and to be treated with dignity and respect.

Petaluma, with its focus on equity, sustainability, and community, has taught me the power of neighbors coming together to support one another. It was the first town in the world to ban the construction of new gas stations, it pilots bold initiatives like reusable cup programs and e-bikes, and it serves as a hub for wildfire evacuation efforts. It is where I hosted spaces for moms through the Petaluma Mother’s Club, creating opportunities for women to connect beyond motherhood. It’s also where my kids attend a school that teaches through project-based learning, performing arts, and environmental science, meeting each child where they are and nurturing them as whole beings. This school has taught me as much as it has taught them—about real history, courage, and what it means to think outside the box.

These experiences have deeply influenced my work. My plea for action two years ago was about aligning people who share these values and creating a framework for how to achieve it. What I didn’t know then was that the person I was searching for already existed: Akinyi Awora .

Akinyi didn’t just share this vision; she had been living it for years. She brought the framework, the model, and the communities ready to work in this way. All it took was for us to meet, and for Kadana and Align with Africa to come together to catalyze this movement.

The following is what I wrote two years ago. It’s raw, honest, and entirely reflective of the person I was then and the vision I continue to build today.

My Plea to Action for Business Graduate Nerds and PTA Moms

Use that brain and energy for good.

By. Ria Pullin

August 26, 2022

It feels like every day the news just brings more stories of atrocities happening in my backyard and across the globe. The world feels very divided with the literal wars and culture wars. I’ve been increasingly frustrated with the current state of constant bickering. The fighting has just become a distraction from the real world problems of extreme inequity and inequality. I’ve been racking my brain on something apolitical that could explain WHY humanity can’t just progress without having to further increase the inequities. Instead of reading about why others have constantly failed to eradicate poverty, I took a look at my own choices and my journey.

I’ll begin with my choice to major in Business. I could’ve chosen anything. I was, and am, a nerd. My fellow nerds in elementary through high school all chose different paths. We all did well in college and have pursued a variety of careers. We all make choices in life and I support that whatever choice you made fit your vision at the time. The nerds who decided to major in Business made the choice to use their years in higher education to find jobs with big paychecks, ping pong tables, fancy cafeterias, and laundry service. Absolutely no judgment to those who did. There are a lot of different types of people in this world with different motivations and we need all types of people to make this world function. Honestly, what is the only other educational focus that results in a choice to help this world, not make a big difference in this world, or to completely harm this world? Those who study biology end up becoming doctors, nurses, epidemiologists, or some other type of scientist that furthers human kind. They create life-saving antibiotics, vaccines that can do something with MRNA (I don’t really know–remember, I’m a nerd that went into Business), they become frontline workers who didn’t realize they went to school to become a COVID nurse, or they literally alter fate by saving lives through surgery. There are those who go to school to become educators. They go to school to be able to mold our future generations. They figure out how to conduct special ed preschool classes over Zoom during a global pandemic and they cry at night thinking how they are failing these children who need physical touch and the expertise that they learned in school. Just those two majors alone only result in careers that HELP people.

Now, Business majors. We have a choice. I was a Marketing major for undergrad and I have my MBA in Marketing and International Management and Leadership. In Business, you can choose how you use your education and that expensive degree. Did you know if you choose Marketing as your major, you are required to take psychology courses? We are literally trained on how to affect the human psyche to then create content and material that will elicit a response to convince you to spend your money! That is actually something we learn to do and we can then use that knowledge to CHANGE HUMAN BEHAVIOR. (I have actually taken a Business course called Human Behavior). You can even make one choice for a long time and gain a whole lot of knowledge, make a lot of money, maybe question if that was the best choice, and then completely switch focus and use that degree and experience to do good.

I was in Business school at the bottom of the recession in 2008. No one was hiring me or even entertaining me with an interview and I graduated summa cum laude and had an amazing resume of internships. Not one of those companies offered me a position after I graduated, so I decided to stay in school. I took MBA courses on nights and weekends and worked full time answering phones and working for temp agencies to pay those student loans from my Bachelor’s Degree. I also lived in a one hour radius of some of the most successful tech companies in the world. I was submitting resume after resume to all those big names daily. I have never NOT gotten the job when I’ve had an interview, whether it was for bagging groceries, three different Blockbusters, being a live DJ for Radio Disney, a receptionist at an accounting and financial planning firm, to one of top acting and modeling agencies in the Bay Area, to my current job that has me up at night needing to write this down because I finally figured out my calling. My calling is to get those top of the class nerds who decided to choose Business as their degree in higher education and DO SOMETHING GOOD with that fancy degree and/or wealth of knowledge. The other nerds are ALREADY doing something to further humanity to become more equitable.

I’m a top of the class, goody two shoes, clarinet playing, choir singing, drama geek, math competition winning, 4.5 high school GPA, MBA in multiple concentrations with a 4.0 GPA, business school failure, commercial actress, on-camera training host, mom of two elementary school kids, wife of a merchant marine, and, most recently, the Director of Marketing and Communications for Global Partners for Development. I did all the things. I checked all the boxes, I did things in all the “right” order by capitalistic, western ideals of success. And then, I went to East Africa.

Transitioning from only using my Business degree in the for-profit sector to then using all of my training and knowledge for the non-profit sector has been completely eye-opening. I have seen both extreme wealth and extreme poverty. Do you know what common thread there is that I don’t think gets enough attention? Good people. There are so many good people in this world. There are so many compassionate, kind, respectful people. These good people can’t stomach the fact that there are people in the world where money is no object to them. They can buy literally anything they want, when they want. These good people can’t stomach the fact that there are people like them and then there are people who don’t have the basic necessities to live. They don’t have clean water. They don’t have a safe place to go to school. I am over here complaining about the “Petaluma Potholes” and how “bad” our roads are… and then I am in Kenya wearing motion sickness bracelets sitting in a replica of my silver RAV4 on the left side of the road driving through what wouldn’t even be called “the backroads” in any part of the developed world. I’m looking out the window and see a girl who couldn’t be more than seven or eight years old with an infant tied to her back carrying fish and vegetables home from the market. Meanwhile, I’m over here preparing frozen fish sticks from Whole Foods in an air fryer and serving these spoiled American kids who have absolutely no clue how kids live in other parts of the world.

I started hosting a podcast called “What Do You Understand” with my colleague and we talk to experts in their field about what they know particularly well. These guests all know what would work to make this world a better place. They know what needs to be done, they just don’t have the right BUSINESS PEOPLE to wrap it in a pretty bow and market the hell out of it so that the people with wealth would be compelled to spend their dollars on constructing a new classroom with $10,000 instead of buying their fifth fancy purse. Don’t worry fancy purse companies, they will still buy more purses. If we nerdy Business majors just listened to these experts who know how to mitigate war by making sure people have the needs to survive and then the resources to thrive. If we listened to the experts who know the best way to increase the wealth in developing worlds WITHOUT exploitation and giving the local people full agency to decide how they want to better their own communities without pressure from the west to force their ideals upon them. If we listened to the experts on how to tackle homelessness by dealing with the root problem as opposed to throwing money into bandages that don’t actually fix the problem. If we listened to those experts and nerds who did NOT choose Business as their major because they felt so passionate about that work, then we can then help them package up their ideas just like we do the newest Air Jordan, video game, sugary cereal, and next blockbuster hit.

Here is a secret to those Business major nerds. Trying to sell good feels so much better than trying to sell harm. It’s fine if you can sleep at night marketing flavored tobacco to teenagers. It’s fine if you can hide the harmful effects of social media and still kiss your kids at night because that’s when you see them because you just spent 80 hours at work that week trying to make that next pitch deadline. The right people with the right intentions don’t go into the business side of nonprofits to get rich. Yes, I could go use my MBA and probably get a really high paying job for a tech company since the job market is much different than in 2010, or I can use my skills to market something that will help make this world a more equitable place.

Business majors who are fed up with trying to climb that corporate ladder, go find what speaks to you. Is it the environment? Go find a non-profit that will accelerate the shift to renewable energy. Me? I’m a mom. I care about the welfare of moms and kids. I don’t want moms worrying if they just killed their baby by giving them water full of diseases. I want kids to be able to go to school and get a higher degree and then come back to their communities with their newly-earned degree and figure out what their community needs by building a consensus of what will further the well-being of all its people.

Yes, I am privileged to be able to accept the lower paycheck because my husband can provide us with a comfortable life. But, guess what? The lower-pressure and just feel-good culture of marketing something good so that the lucky and the wealthy can spread just a portion of their wealth around the globe allows me a schedule that I can pick my kids up from school, make their games and recitals, and keep pursuing my passions. I have a boss that truly values time spent with family and the flexibility to make sure my health and my kids come before the job. He joked at my interview that this job required a PTA mom. He is not kidding. We are good at fundraising. We are capable, multi-tasking super women who can pull off elaborate birthday parties and school galas. Now, I can organize charity golf tournaments and dinners that raise money to build a health center and a school in a pastoralist community in Tanzania. There are a lot of Business nerds who traded in their 60 hour a week jobs to be a stay at home parent and now that the kids are in school and we have too much time on our hands, we need to focus our energies with all of the education and skills we have, but we also need to be there for carpool at 3 pm.

So, Business nerds, PTA moms, and just passionate people who want to live in a better, more just world, let’s take those jobs or create those jobs for the non-profits that are trying to make this world more equitable in the most responsible way. The extremely wealthy people need to travel to so many different parts of this world to see how the majority of the humans on this world live. I met some amazing people when I went to Kenya and Tanzania to see the work Global Partners has been doing in collaboration with communities in rural areas for over forty years. They are smart, capable, incredible people. They are community facilitators who sit with village elders, the women, the young, and sometimes people who had a past disagreement and they hash it out over consensus building meetings on how these resources coming in from the west will be best spent. Will it be to purchase a grinding mill so that women can own it, sell the flour, and use the funds to send the village girls to school? Will it be to build a solar-powered bore hole to create a water kiosk so that the women and girls don’t need to spend hours of their day fetching water from a far-away source that may be contaminated and they can use that time to go to school or start a business? I met so many brilliant individuals in East Africa and the ones wanting to create change and can create change are those PTA-equivalent/Business nerds/top of the class people who just happen to have been born in sub-Saharan Africa without all of the opportunity we have been lucky enough to have been born into by no choice of our own. My journey has led me to not just my call to action, but my plea to action. I have hope in good people who have the skills, passion, training, resources, and education to make sure our neighbors here and around the globe have every opportunity to thrive. This may sound idealistic, but it can happen.

Reflections Two Years Later: The Vision in Action

When I wrote this, I was grappling with the “how.” How do we, as businesspeople, moms, or simply humans, use our skills and resources to create a world that values everyone? Today, through Align with Africa, I’ve found part of that answer.

In partnership with Akinyi (who is that nerd who understands business that I was looking for) and the Kadana Foundation, we’re working alongside communities across Africa to create solutions that are truly community-driven. This work is not about imposing ideas but amplifying voices. It’s about aligning those who share our values with actionable and agile frameworks that respect the agency and dignity of every individual.

The past two years have been a whirlwind of challenges and growth. I’ve seen firsthand the brilliance and determination of artisans, entrepreneurs, and leaders across Africa. They’ve taught me that change isn’t about imposing solutions but amplifying voices and supporting agency.

The journey hasn’t been easy, but it has been deeply rewarding. I’ve learned that the most radical change often starts with the simplest truths: listening, connecting, and acting with purpose. When people feel seen, heard, and respected, their potential to create meaningful change becomes boundless.

To my fellow business nerds, PTA moms, and anyone else searching for purpose: the world needs what you have to offer. Your skills, your energy, and your voice can make a difference. Together, we can create a future where opportunity is not a privilege but a universal right.

I hope this piece resonates with you as much as it does with me, and I invite you to join this movement of aligning people, resources, and purpose for the greater good. Let’s make it happen.