Finding Community During COVID-19 through Inspiring Capital’s Purposeful Growth Fellowship

6 min readMar 16, 2021

Inspiring Capital’s Purposeful Growth Fellowship is a thought-provoking, action-oriented, customizable learning experience for leaders who want to accelerate the movement toward Inclusive and Sustainable Capitalism. The Fellowship provides knowledge, tools, guidance, and community during a fully virtual, 10-week program. Ideal Fellows come from diverse ages, industries, and backgrounds but share the desires to better align their professional work with their personal purpose and uniquely contribute to Inclusive and Sustainable Capitalism.

Today we are interviewing Laura Johnson, a digital marketing specialist who received an MBA at the Carlson Business School in 2018 and was a Fall 2020 Inspiring Capital Purposeful Growth Fellow. Laura talks about the deep sense of community she found through the Fellowship and how activating her purpose prompted her to make a career transition during the program.

Tell us about yourself!

My name is Laura Johnson and I live in Minneapolis, Minnesota. I am a digital marketing specialist, which means I do a lot of blog writing and managing client relationships in the marketing strategy world. After completing my undergraduate degree in journalism, I served as a Peace Corps volunteer in Sub-Saharan Africa where I was a teacher in Lesotho, which was a transformative experience for me. I then came back and lived in New York City for a while working in communications and PR, and ultimately decided I wanted to be in more of a decision-making capacity. I ended up pursuing an MBA at the Carlson Business School in Minnesota where I focused on re-imagining the impact that business can have both in people’s lives and on the planet. I graduated from my MBA in 2018 and have been applying those ideas in entrepreneurship and venture capitalist capacities.

In a 1–2 sentences, how would you describe the Inspiring Capital Purposeful Growth Fellowship?

The Inspiring Capital Purposeful Growth Fellowship was really about devoting time and energy into building a collaborative community where you can explore how to apply insights and ideas in very tangible ways.

What were your favorite seminars/speakers and why did you find them impactful?

I thought that Halla Tómasdóttir was a really wonderful speaker. Watching her talk about her life and the personal mission she has developed for herself was inspiring in many different ways. I think we can all sometimes fall into a bit of a rut when we start focusing on the problems because there are so many in the world. Halla Tómasdóttir did such of good job of saying, “Well I’m going to be the one who steps forward, I’m going to be the one that starts waving the banner and get the conversation going in a productive way.” I thought she had such a graceful, assertive and powerful way of communicating that. I loved the strength of the talk she gave; it really hit home for me.

On the flip side, another speaker I really enjoyed was Jerry Colona. He spoke about the level of success he had achieved working in finance, and how he had reached what most people would define as the pinnacle of his career, but had the courage to recognize his unhappiness and make a change. He decided to redirect his life and re-examine his purpose, so that he could define what success looked like for him as opposed to trying to fit some mold of what society says is “successful.” I thought that was extraordinarily brave because expressing that kind of vulnerability is scary, especially in the financial sector.

What does a week in the life of an Inspiring Capital Purposeful Growth Fellow look like?

The week begins by looking through a variety of articles, videos, book recommendations and other resources Inspiring Capital gives us. There is such a wealth of resources that kick you off as you embark on whatever the week’s topic is. Throughout the course of the week, I would set aside time to actively reflect and engage with the material. The week then ends with a group conversation with your cohort. This is where I think the magic happens because you can express what you’ve been thinking about throughout the week and how it applies to your life, while simultaneously listening to how the material resonated with other people. By allowing you to express your reflections out loud, these conversations help you concretize your intentions.

One of the main reasons why I decided to do the PGF was because I was desperately seeking this kind of community. During my MBA I had a group of people that I would engage in important discussions with on a regular basis, and once I graduated, I missed that so much. Getting those kinds of conversations again especially in the midst of a pandemic through this Fellowship was such a breath of fresh air.

I live by myself and sometimes struggle with loneliness, so having access to the Inspiring Capital community was a real positive highlight of the year. It’s also so valuable that now my professional network stretches from New York City to California.

What is one tip you would give interested candidates on getting the most out of their Purposeful Growth Fellowship experience?

One of the things I did that I think really brought another layer of enrichment to my experience was that I tried to carve out as many one-on-one meetings with people in my cohort as I could. The personal conversations I was able to have with people made the group sessions so much more dynamic because I knew a bit more about the perspectives that those individuals were speaking from.

How did you particularly clarify your impact, activate your purpose, and learn to contribute to the New Way of working and living through participating in IC’s PGF?

My overarching takeaway is that it all doesn’t have to happen right now. Your purpose is lifelong, which is in some ways a great relief. I think there is a lot of pressure to figure out what you want to do and who you want to be, and to be able to announce it to the world as quickly as possible. I think that it’s much more nuanced than that; you can find your purpose by following what resonates the most with you right now. There are so many problems in the world, but there are also so many humans and everyone’s purpose is different. If you are able to find that little bit of good that you can do, then that is a great first step.

The impact that you have will then evolve the more you are exposed to new experiences, new ideas and new people. While you don’t have to have it all figured out right away, you do have to get started right away. This realization was refreshing and invigorating.

One of the ways in which I activated my purpose is by making a career switch while I was going through the Fellowship. I really believe in the power of creativity, and the arts have always been an important part of my life. I wanted my next career move to allow me to improve my own creative skill. I am now doing a lot more writing in my new role in an effort to improve my written communication skills and be able to bring new voices into the spotlight. The arts have been hit especially hard during the COVID-19 pandemic, so I also wanted to make sure that I was supporting the artistic community in my new role. I am a firm believer that the arts play an incredibly powerful healing role within communities. While the arts have suffered a lot, I also think the arts are largely wherein lies the solution to healing a lot of the rifts in our society. Ultimately, I want to make sure that I am carving out the time within not just my professional life, but in my personal life to do everything I can to make sure that the arts recover and receive the support that they need.