In this episode of the AlchemistX Innovators Inside, host Ian Bergman speaks with Maura O’Neill, serial entrepreneur, academic, and founder of The Decade Project. Maura’s audacious goal? To reshape U.S. entrepreneurship within ten years so it reflects the racial, ethnic, and gender makeup of the nation — unlocking trillions in economic potential and millions of new jobs.

Her conversation goes far beyond inclusion — it’s a masterclass in systemic innovation, bold thinking, and the power of belief.

Here are the five key takeaways from their conversation:

1. Big Problems Demand Bold, Time-Bound Goals

Maura draws inspiration from President Kennedy’s moonshot challenge, arguing that meaningful change requires ambition and urgency. Incremental progress won’t solve entrenched inequities in access to capital or entrepreneurship. By setting a decade-long mission — clear, measurable, and audacious — The Decade Project creates momentum, accountability, and collective purpose.

2. The Four Pillars of Inclusive Entrepreneurship

The Decade Project is built on four interdependent pillars:

• Access to Capital: Innovating beyond traditional venture funding to include new debt and equity models for underserved founders.
• Knowledge: Providing practical business education and mentorship.
• Connections: Building inclusive networks to unlock opportunity.
• Belief: Instilling the confidence that success is possible — and deserved

Without progress across all four, systemic change stalls. Together, they form the foundation for a more representative and resilient entrepreneurial ecosystem.

3. Rethinking “Lifestyle Businesses”

Not every business needs a hockey-stick growth curve to create impact. Maura challenges the dismissive label of “lifestyle business,” emphasizing that small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) drive half of U.S. employment and power local innovation. She calls for new incubators, financing tools, and recognition for the 90% of businesses that operate outside the venture-backed model — the true backbone of America’s economy.

4.  Innovation Thrives on Diversity and Dissent

Through her research and leadership at USAID, Maura has learned that diversity alone isn’t enough — it must be paired with dissent and curiosity. When people from different backgrounds challenge each other’s ideas, solutions become more robust. Her advice to innovators: be more curious than certain. It’s a mindset that transforms disagreement into discovery.

5. Optimism and Grit Power Real Change

From leading innovation in global development to tackling inequality in entrepreneurship, Maura has learned that optimism isn’t naïveté — it’s strategy. Change-makers must combine realism with a belief in miracles, celebrate small wins often, and “run toward both danger and joy.” These habits sustain energy through the hard, messy, and deeply human work of innovation.

Maura O’Neill’s Decade Project reframes inclusion as an innovation opportunity — not just a social responsibility. By investing in diverse entrepreneurs, we don’t just close gaps; we unlock untapped markets, ideas, and growth.

Listen to the full episode to learn how Maura and The Decade Project are building an America where entrepreneurship truly looks like America — and why that’s one of the most powerful economic transformations of our time.

Have a question for a future guest? Email us at innovators@alchemistaccelerator.com to get in touch! 

Timestamps

📣 Introduction to Maura O’Neill & The Decade Project (00:00:00)

💸 The Four Pillars: Capital, Knowledge, Connections, Belief (00:04:29)

🏪 Beyond the Hockey Stick: SMBs, “Lifestyle” Businesses, and Real Growth (00:10:49)

🧠 Reframing the Debate: Opportunity, Not Just DEI (00:15:05)

🥖 From Pop-Up to Private Equity: Scaling Non-VC Ventures (00:18:56)

🧑‍⚖️ Bias, Pattern-Matching, and Funding Innovation (00:20:23)

🇺🇸 Public-Sector Innovation: Lessons from USAID (00:24:07)

🏛️ Changing Large Systems: Structure, Cover, and Internal Champions (00:28:17)

⏳ Urgency, Compounding, and the Power of a Decade (00:31:35)

📉 Crisis as Catalyst: Why Disruption Breeds Breakthroughs (00:35:20)

🔎 Fall in Love with the Problem: Curiosity Over Certainty (00:38:52)

🧩 Diversity & Dissent: Building Better Solutions (00:40:15)

✨ Mindsets for Builders: Celebrate Early, Run Toward Danger & Joy (00:45:24)

🎲 Rapid-Fire (00:43:16)

Full Transcript 

00;00;27;16 - 00;00;50;21
Ian Bergman
Welcome to season six of Alchemist x Innovators Inside the podcast, where we explore the world of corporate innovation and dive deep into the minds and stories of innovation. Thought leaders crafting the future. I am your host, Ian Bergmann, and if you're an innovation agitator like me, then this is where you want to be. Morrow. Good afternoon. How are you?

00;00;50;23 - 00;00;55;14
Maura Oneill
I'm great, Ian, and I'm delighted to be here today with you and your listeners.

00;00;55;16 - 00;01;09;05
Ian Bergman
Well, I'm so glad that you are here. It's in my world. Kind of a rainy Monday afternoon. I think you're calling in from the Bay area, or. I'm hoping the weather's a little nicer today and you're seeing spring. But thanks for taking a little bit of time.

00;01;09;08 - 00;01;10;16
Maura Oneill
Oh. Most welcome.

00;01;10;19 - 00;01;39;14
Ian Bergman
Well, for folks who don't know her, I am really pleased to welcome Mara O'Neill to innovators Inside a Serial Entrepreneur, a distinguished academic and pioneering public sector innovator. Mara is now on a new mission as founder and CEO of the Decade Project. And Mara, I want to hear about this in your words, but it's a mission to reshape U.S. entrepreneurship so that it reflects the racial, ethnic, and gender makeup of the United States as a whole.

00;01;39;15 - 00;01;42;01
Ian Bergman
A little more accurately, is that right?

00;01;42;03 - 00;02;11;06
Maura Oneill
Yes, yes. So about six years ago, I was asked to come back to the Senate Finance Committee for about six months and work on this issue of access to capital for women and people of color, entrepreneurs and business owners. And I'm unpacking it and working on it. And I looked out of capital one day and saw the flag, and I said, what if American business ownership and entrepreneurship look like America in terms of race, ethnicity and gender?

00;02;11;08 - 00;02;34;20
Maura Oneill
And so I got a bunch of data sets, and I looked at it and I found, oh my goodness, we'd have 2 million more businesses that employ at least one American or more. We could, we can employ 25 million more people. We could increase our GDP by, by two and a half to $5 trillion a year and have, as I said, 2.5 million more businesses.

00;02;34;22 - 00;03;05;01
Maura Oneill
And I thought, well, since women and people of color are starting businesses at 2 or 3 times the rate, maybe we'll just work its way out in. And so I did that analysis and I found good news. White men, Asian men were there. We should celebrate. That's fantastic. Asian women are pretty close. But women as a whole. And Latino and Latinos, 100 years, African Americans 300 years, and Native Americans 500 years.

00;03;05;07 - 00;03;08;13
Ian Bergman
And I think generations and generations and generations.

00;03;08;15 - 00;03;21;19
Maura Oneill
Exactly. And I thought if we could put a man on the moon in a decade and bring him back safely, we ought to be able to do this. So, you know, once again, I embarked on the most audacious project probably I've ever done in my life.

00;03;21;21 - 00;03;44;17
Ian Bergman
Well, and there have been a number of audacious projects, and I think I'd love to hear some of your stories about them, but I want to hear more about the Decade Project. So within a decade, getting American business ownership to mirror right the Nation, I love it. It's a concrete time frame. I come from a world of accelerators, and half of acceleration is having a, defined time period in which to operate right.

00;03;44;23 - 00;04;10;12
Ian Bergman
And a clear ambition with economic upside that you can articulate. But this is hard, right? Let's talk about let's talk about sort of access to capital for female founders. Right. Right. This has been a topic of discussion sort of around me for almost as long as I can remember, certainly a decade. And I, I feel like, sadly, I think we peaked at something like 2% of venture capital going to female founders.

00;04;10;12 - 00;04;29;24
Ian Bergman
And I think it's actually been coming down a little bit over recent years. You know, that pattern, I'm sure, like stands writ large against every, every sort of underrepresented demographic. So what are some of the concrete levers that you see that we can pull that are going to make a difference, that are going to help us achieve the aims of the decade project.

00;04;29;27 - 00;04;55;08
Maura Oneill
Right. Well, there's really four areas. And and you're absolutely right. I've started four companies. And sadly in my and I've pitched and I've been told that when they discovered that I had to school age children. This is a direct quote. Am I a terrible mother and therefore have what it takes to be a startup CEO or my good mother and not going to put in the time again?

00;04;55;10 - 00;05;33;28
Maura Oneill
And so I think what is motivated I know, just stunning, stunning. But what's even worse about that in my kids are now 40, they are not in elementary school. And I teach new venture finance at UC, at UC Berkeley and my female students are getting variations of this same question as they're pitching for money. And so, you know, part of this quest is to say, we're not just going to pretend and get better at this and hope next to your stats when they come out will be 2.1 or 2 point 2 or 1.8.

00;05;34;00 - 00;05;56;11
Maura Oneill
We're going to really smash this. You know, as I said, when when we had Sputnik in the 50s and early 60. President Kennedy didn't say, oh, let's just do a little bit better at Stem and hope that we will win this race. No, he chose a goal like getting on the moon. He had no idea. And most people don't even know.

00;05;56;12 - 00;05;59;14
Maura Oneill
We didn't have any of the technology. We hadn't invented it.

00;05;59;15 - 00;06;00;14
Ian Bergman
We had nothing.

00;06;00;16 - 00;06;23;08
Maura Oneill
No. So I lay that as to say if I had the box with the silver bullets in it, that would solve this problem in a decade. I would be serving them up. But what I know is they will come in four categories. They will come in the capital. I have the capital. And what we need to do is look at the capital continuum.

00;06;23;14 - 00;06;54;04
Maura Oneill
Not just startup capital, but growth capital, not just equity, but also debt. And really unpack and develop, I believe, new tools. I mean, venture capital was once an innovation. So we have got to really have significant innovation. And if we are going to continue that economic miracle that has been the US. And so that's I've got the capital and that's got to be very, very deliberate.

00;06;54;05 - 00;07;31;19
Maura Oneill
I'll give you an example. There is a fantastic development finance institute that operates in the seven Deep South states, and they do about 84, 87% of their loans to African-American firms. They have a bunch of firms that are well on their way and in many cases eligible for like $900,000 lines of credit or loans, but they don't have enough equity on their balance sheet, and they don't have a rich uncle or somebody in their neighborhood or belong to a club.

00;07;31;21 - 00;07;35;27
Maura Oneill
And the difference is they only need 20 to $25,000 worth of equity.

00;07;35;28 - 00;07;36;14
Ian Bergman
Amazing.

00;07;36;15 - 00;08;04;08
Maura Oneill
We ought to be able to develop instruments that gives that black entrepreneur the equity that they need, while still holding on to the ownership of that company, and be eligible for that very leap forward in doing that. So that's an example. So I've got the capital, I've got the knowledge. All businesses, but particularly women and people of color, we've identified five areas that they need upskilling in.

00;08;04;08 - 00;08;27;17
Maura Oneill
And go into those if you want. The next thing is connections. You know, women, you know, it's changed a little bit. But, you know, I was one of the first ones allowed into the men's traditional clubs. You know, whether it's rotary who had voted against women being in the club or the Rainier Club, but just get into there.

00;08;27;17 - 00;08;41;02
Maura Oneill
As my close friend said, we get day passes. We don't get full membership. So that mentoring and connections and then the last and probably the most important is I can do it, a belief that I can do it.

00;08;41;05 - 00;08;42;21
Ian Bergman
Yeah. That conviction.

00;08;42;24 - 00;09;09;23
Maura Oneill
Exactly. And we have a male ask any woman, ask any person of color how many times people have rolled their eyes or look the other way, or just dismiss the fact that they can do it? Or when me and somebody else shows up, a man shows up, they assume he's in charge, and I'm not. Now I'm getting old enough that maybe they do think I'm in charge, but for most of my career they would.

00;09;09;25 - 00;09;26;19
Maura Oneill
So if we don't simultaneously work on all four of those areas, I can do it. I have the capital, I have the knowledge, and I have the connections. At best, we will sort of make progress, but we won't get there. We've got to work on all four.

00;09;26;22 - 00;09;45;15
Ian Bergman
Absolutely. Well, and you know some of this I love this as a framework, right, for making change in the world. But I love something else that you said. And I want to kind of, you know, talk about it. You said, hey, at some point, at one point, venture capital was an innovation, right? And as we all know, like innovation for innovation sake doesn't actually do anything.

00;09;45;15 - 00;10;10;12
Ian Bergman
You need innovation that gets people to change behavior. And it sounds like you have some pretty interesting ideas around win win wins in financial instrument innovation, right? Get a little get a little equity stake on the balance sheet. Use that to be able to pull in, you know an increased qualification for loans. Get these teams in these founders in the enterprise entrepreneurs capitalized.

00;10;10;14 - 00;10;19;25
Ian Bergman
Is that the first step is this a serial process or is there, you know, is this something where you have to try and tackle all four of these pillars at once?

00;10;19;27 - 00;10;49;15
Maura Oneill
Well, on some level, we do have to tackle all four of them, but you can tackle them, interestingly enough, in sort of simultaneous ways. So I'll give you an example. Not only was venture capital a game changer, so was the idea of lean startups and Y Combinator and, Techstars and the various accelerators. Okay. But those were aimed at businesses that had a profile to have a hockey stick.

00;10;49;15 - 00;11;10;04
Maura Oneill
But in the United States, and I suspect in Canada, in most countries, but in the United States, where I know the data better, 90% of the businesses in the US have 20 employees or less. Yep. There are only 20,000 companies and all 6 million companies in the US that have one or more employees that have more than 500.

00;11;10;06 - 00;12;02;15
Maura Oneill
And so we need to invest at the Y Combinator and the Techstars and the venture capital for all the other 90% of the businesses, you know, there's fortunes been made around the world and businesses that never got any venture capital. In fact, only 50% of the companies that go IPO, the Holy Grail, have had venture capital. So when we need to invent stuff, we need to not only invent the venture capital for the rest of the businesses that can have long term profitability, not just lifestyle businesses that everybody dismisses all these businesses as, but also we need to look at incubators, mentoring and knowledge creation that the Y Combinator S have been so fabulous that

00;12;02;21 - 00;12;05;15
Maura Oneill
for the other 90% of the businesses.

00;12;05;15 - 00;12;14;02
Ian Bergman
Yeah. Well, let's dig into this for a second. Okay. You just said something really interesting, right? You made the point that in in circles that maybe you and I run in.

00;12;14;05 - 00;12;14;16
Maura Oneill
Right?

00;12;14;20 - 00;12;52;02
Ian Bergman
The word lifestyle business is often treated as something a little bit dismissive because it's not that hockey stick. It's not that 1 in 1000 chance to produce a million x returns. I'm exaggerating numbers a bit. Yeah, right. But lifestyle businesses throw off capital. They throw off free cash flow. They generate a lot of productivity for the economy. Is is part of this reframing the definition of success and maybe recognizing that actually setting up, financial ecosystem that tries to just pursue the hockey sticks, maybe is causing us to miss a lot of kind of positive economic and social outcomes.

00;12;52;04 - 00;13;18;28
Maura Oneill
Oh, completely. And as importantly, like that, think about what I think about in these 2.5 million entrepreneurs. I think of them stalled on the sidelines. What entrepreneur, what ideas do they have to solve some of the most compelling problems that are facing our world and can really lift people out, like one out of every. We have a big debate about immigration, for example.

00;13;19;00 - 00;13;29;29
Maura Oneill
Sure. And it's not my area of expertise, but I will say something that touches on this conversation. One out of every four businesses in the U.S. are an immigrant.

00;13;30;04 - 00;13;30;16
Ian Bergman
Yes.

00;13;30;24 - 00;14;03;05
Maura Oneill
And 40% of the fortune 500 CEOs in the U.S. are an immigrant or a son or daughter that represents 10 million jobs. And so we need to reframe what we think about lifestyle businesses that has been so derogatory. And I'll give you my definition. There are 30 million, roughly 30 million businesses in the U.S. only 6 million of them have one or more employ those 24 million businesses.

00;14;03;06 - 00;14;25;28
Maura Oneill
Sometimes it's somebody who has a photography hobby and they want to call it a business. So they write it off on their taxes. To somebody who's making a million. But by definition, those 24 million businesses don't have any employees. They don't create jobs. And they're only 5% of the U.S. economy. So I'm not saying there is isn't a difference in lifestyle.

00;14;26;03 - 00;14;49;02
Maura Oneill
But what about those 6 million businesses that all are not only the lifeblood, they're half of the U.S. employment. More importantly, they are the innovation engine. That's why the U.S. and Silicon Valley and others can innovate again and again and again, because all of these were once businesses under 20 employees.

00;14;49;05 - 00;15;05;03
Ian Bergman
So okay, this is fascinating. And I'm going to ask you something that I'm a little bit worried is going to make me sound like a jerk, but I it's a hard question. But, you know, some people call me a jerk, and that's okay. But no, who cares? And here's why I ask. We are living for better or worse.

00;15;05;03 - 00;15;31;14
Ian Bergman
And boy, is this painful. We are living in a kind of a political and social environment right now, where you can quickly get labeled with Dei and dismiss by a huge percentage of the country. And I think that's incredibly unfortunate, but it's a real challenge. So if we come back to the base principles of innovation that says that innovation comes when there's somebody who has a problem and you know who they are, and you know why they care about that problem.

00;15;31;16 - 00;15;46;29
Ian Bergman
Who cares about this problem where behavior change is going to result in the outcomes that you need? Besides, of course, the entrepreneurs that are suffering from lack of access to capital and connections and capability, etc..

00;15;47;01 - 00;16;22;22
Maura Oneill
So I'll give you just one example of how we've gotten smarter on this. Until 1990, in the U.S., all medical research was done only on white men, right? We worried about doing it. And so, so when my son and my daughter and my son's African-American roommate bear with me went into the University of Washington emergency room suffering from a heart attack, they would admit my son in closing and my daughter Lisa would go home and statistically more likely to die.

00;16;22;24 - 00;16;48;06
Maura Oneill
Now, obviously, the three of them did not. This is not an example of discrimination. It's because the E.R. doctor was looking at the symptoms my son was presenting, and that's what he and she had studied in their medical books. Yes. It turns out that heart attack symptoms present very differently if you're African-American or if you're female. And so why does it matter?

00;16;48;09 - 00;17;26;10
Maura Oneill
We have largely ignored women's health. You know, we have largely not talked about menopause, miscarriage is perimenopause. That is a ginormous field of economic opportunity for entrepreneurs and for VCs to make a boatload of money. And generally women, at least on the founding team, if not in charge, are going to have some insights. Much like Latino Latinas or South Asians come into the U.S. looked and saw the food.

00;17;26;10 - 00;17;33;26
Maura Oneill
That's the stuff's being sold in Safeway, doesn't actually meet what I grew up eating. And so a.

00;17;33;26 - 00;17;36;03
Ian Bergman
Great analogy what a great analogy.

00;17;36;09 - 00;17;48;24
Maura Oneill
So so we think that in both of those areas, whether it's health or whether it's food, there's just an untapped latent demand that is ginormous.

00;17;48;26 - 00;18;24;14
Ian Bergman
Yeah. Well, and to your point on sort of pattern matching in the medical field, in the investment field, in assessing loan risk. And, you know, it's what humans do in so many places and it traps us. And so, you know, I think being able to frame this as there's a massive opportunity cost not just to society and even and kind of like national economic output, but there's an opportunity cost for the people whose businesses will benefit and prosper as we unlock more economic activity, I think is actually a wonderful reframing.

00;18;24;14 - 00;18;29;22
Ian Bergman
And it's interesting because it's not one that I hear a lot. Maybe it's because it seems a little too self-serving.

00;18;29;24 - 00;18;56;21
Maura Oneill
I don't know, I think it's because some of the people, most of the people having the conversation are sort of confused by it, rather than more curious than certain. But also, I think we need to reframe how we think about it as entrepreneurs. So I just talked about food. So lots of people who may have a recipe this and it's awesome by their grandmother or their answer their uncle.

00;18;56;27 - 00;19;20;26
Maura Oneill
And so they decide to do a pop up at their farmers market. There was a Brazilian American woman in Portland that loved this Brazilian snack that kids a couple cheesy bites and she developed. It sounds great, but instead of doing it as a pop up, she decided to do it as a frozen food and sold it into Target and Costco.

00;19;21;01 - 00;19;45;20
Maura Oneill
And ultimately a private equity firm bought it. So part of what we need to do in the I Can Do it is help women and and people of color who haven't necessarily grown up thinking, you two can be a large scale entrepreneur. You know, to rethink about the opportunity, recognition and the pattern matching in front of them.

00;19;45;22 - 00;20;05;13
Ian Bergman
You know, it does seem to me like we are living in a time where you can just do it is more and more of a meme, right? I mean, certainly if you go on like X or almost any social media, you're going to get lots of people who are showing off their vibe coding an AI and being like, you can just build, you can just do it.

00;20;05;16 - 00;20;23;17
Ian Bergman
But it does seem like we're at a bit of a social moment where maybe we can capitalize on that. Because I love that, because, you know, you can just do it and you have the technology, you have the resources, you have the assistance to be able to, quote unquote, just do it. Maybe with that one extra little unlock the capital to connect.

00;20;23;19 - 00;20;50;21
Maura Oneill
I think a big the capital is a big part of it. And because we all have this unconscious bias that we're looking for, the guy in a hoodie who dropped out of one of the big schools and whether we, you know, I have a really close friend that is an amazing woman entrepreneur, and she's been an entrepreneur. And right when she got out of Stanford Business School, she joined a VC firm.

00;20;50;24 - 00;21;24;26
Maura Oneill
Then she had a country's VC and is now back being a CEO. And she said, she comes to my class at Berkeley and she says, I hate to admit it, but even me, who has spent my life trying to get more women funded, starting organizations, if people came in, I was selecting for an Asian or a white man, and she said, so I think that we all need to work at what are those ideas that are laying in full blown side of us?

00;21;24;29 - 00;21;57;12
Maura Oneill
And what are those people that can both bring solutions to, whether it's climate, which we see some amazing people of color, entrepreneurs doing some of the most leading edge work in energy storage or in ways to get healthier and to not be so seized by diabetes and other diseases. And I just think it is a plethora of opportunity, not just for the people stalled on the sidelines, but for our countries and our communities as well.

00;21;57;14 - 00;22;26;20
Ian Bergman
And I'm hearing of framing around this is an opportunity, and it is an innovation problem and an innovation opportunity, not a social impact and social justice problem, at least not exclusively, and at least for what it's worth. I love that because I think that you become more sort of inclusive and in terms of grabbing all of the people that you need to buy and be supportive when you can give them an outcome that is relevant to their own mental model of the world.

00;22;26;22 - 00;22;27;03
Ian Bergman
Right?

00;22;27;04 - 00;22;51;28
Maura Oneill
I think that's absolutely right. And it also powers our community, whether wherever you live. You know, listen, I've got the opposite problem. I was born and raised in Silicon Valley when it was more apricot and prune orchards. And unless you're a hugely successful, hugely successful Silicon Valley entrepreneur, you can't live in the town I grew up in. But that is not the case for most of America.

00;22;51;29 - 00;23;17;15
Maura Oneill
And so I have a couple of mantras in my life. Ordinary people are capable of extraordinary things, and great ideas come from all different places. And I just know that in the areas for which parents my age are wondering, can my kids have an opportunity to come back to the town they grew up in? Or is just the big cities in the metro entrepreneurial centers the only place they can go?

00;23;17;17 - 00;23;41;11
Maura Oneill
I say just as we transformed America in deciding to do this space race, I think we can transform states and communities all across the United States with this commitment to say that great idea, that great entrepreneur may actually be in our community.

00;23;41;14 - 00;24;07;12
Ian Bergman
I love it. And so let's talk about where some of this ambition came from. Right. You've had you know, you've had a number of really interesting roles, but you were the chief innovation officer at USAID, the first chief innovation officer, is that right now? Right. And so talk about an organization, nation with big ambition against intractable problems. Can you tell me a bit about what you learned in that role?

00;24;07;18 - 00;24;13;17
Ian Bergman
And how you're kind of applying it today, whether with the Decade Project or elsewhere?

00;24;13;19 - 00;24;32;04
Maura Oneill
Yeah. So, you know, President Kennedy decided to create the USAID in addition to the space race and the first country that was a customer or a client of USAID was South Korea.

00;24;32;05 - 00;24;32;27
Ian Bergman
I didn't know that at.

00;24;32;27 - 00;25;05;11
Maura Oneill
The time in the early 60s. It's hard to believe today that South Korea had a lower per capita income than sub-Saharan Africa. And so what I like to say is that across all of the areas that USAID did democracy, food safety, rule of law, entrepreneurship, a whole plethora that what USAID was about was creating more South Koreas and not North Koreas.

00;25;05;13 - 00;25;39;28
Maura Oneill
And I think that is the dilemma. So when I was the first chief innovation officer of USAID, we operate in 100 countries, but we were physically in 80 countries. And as Secretary Robert Gates, who was the secretary, defense Under Secretary, under President Bush, George W Bush, and at the beginning, Obama said, I'd much rather have USAID go in there with boots on the ground to stabilize and make countries more prosperous than to have to send the men and women or sons and daughters in the United States, troops.

00;25;40;01 - 00;25;41;18
Ian Bergman
Of 100%.

00;25;41;20 - 00;26;00;27
Maura Oneill
These foreign service officers take this, this charge incredibly serious and have been some of the most courageous people, whether it's on the ground in Afghanistan or in Somalia, or it's in Kenya and Indonesia that you have ever seen in your life.

00;26;01;00 - 00;26;18;01
Ian Bergman
Well, what was it like kind of coming in with a founder and entrepreneur mindset, right. Roles that you had held in your career into a governmental organization under the title of innovation? What was that like? What did you struggle with and how did you get some of your big wins?

00;26;18;03 - 00;26;43;23
Maura Oneill
So I think the part of it was that, you know, I say, let me start at the end and then I'll tell you about the struggles. So I look back on that time and say, even for somebody who sets the bar high and swings for the fences, I am honored by what we were able to do. And it's because there was such an enormously talented people, but they had structural problems.

00;26;43;29 - 00;27;13;06
Maura Oneill
You know, so we did amazing things in the Haiti earthquake response. And that was the very first week of my job. And I watched when there was crisis, how these people just did amazing things. I mean, two minutes after the head of a Coast Guard cutter saw on his radar that the earthquake had happened in Haiti, he turned around with no orders and and headed there to see if they could help.

00;27;13;08 - 00;27;16;29
Maura Oneill
You know, and you just saw the force the.

00;27;17;02 - 00;27;19;12
Ian Bergman
That makes me tear up a little. Like I'm not even kidding.

00;27;19;14 - 00;27;46;27
Maura Oneill
It does. Every time I think about it, it really does. The force for good that America has historically been is just amazing. You know, as I like to say, is that 130, you know, a lot of kids under the age of five used to die as well as moms. And since 1990, there are 130 million people globally that are alive today.

00;27;46;27 - 00;28;17;17
Maura Oneill
As a result, as a result of the, you know, shutting down, I'd we have now 16 million moms who, like me, had conditions where that were likely the risk that we would die at birth and 11 million kids a year that if they don't get lifesaving medicine in the first two years, will. And so I think that the good news was, you can't think of a better mission on Earth than these people did.

00;28;17;19 - 00;28;42;05
Maura Oneill
The bad news was, is it was like there was arteriosclerosis. It was like the structural problems. You know, we set up systems that worked in the Cold War era or worked in former Soviet Union. And I think that you develop an institution with all the pieces around it, and it's hard to change.

00;28;42;10 - 00;29;08;21
Ian Bergman
And that's going to that's going to be something that I think is probably familiar to a lot of folks that are listening who even in the private sector. Right. I mean, you you get sclerosis, you get a classic innovator's dilemma, right? Efficiency toward one problem where the context is changed. So I, I'm really curious, you know, how you thought about that, how you how you thought about kind of agitating and railing for change versus taking advantage of the structures because it's a it's a tough problem.

00;29;08;24 - 00;29;39;27
Maura Oneill
Yeah. And and you're absolutely right. I mean, the reason why every single time there's a structural change in our economy, some of the most iconic companies bite the dust because it is not a problem just in the public sector. It is absolutely the problem in the private sector, as I like to say, when Amazon blew on to the I think you had Barnes and Noble survive the borders, who had been actually the innovator in the books and music space, went belly up.

00;29;40;03 - 00;30;04;26
Maura Oneill
So none of this is spared whether you're in the public or private sector. But I believe, remember I told you that I have a mantra that ordinary people are capable of extraordinary things. And there are companies. There are people inside our large companies, inside the federal government, inside cities, who fundamentally believe that it's possible. And so what I did is I provided them the political cover.

00;30;04;28 - 00;30;10;21
Maura Oneill
I provided a good strategy G but they were the ones that filled in the blanks.

00;30;10;26 - 00;30;18;07
Ian Bergman
Yeah. And with a fundamental belief that it's possible. Sorry. That is actually a great line. Right.

00;30;18;08 - 00;30;19;00
Maura Oneill
Exactly.

00;30;19;01 - 00;30;27;23
Ian Bergman
When you have that, when you understand that, yes. This thing I want to do should be possible in the world. Well, at that point, it's almost an inevitability.

00;30;27;26 - 00;31;01;06
Maura Oneill
Exactly. And so I can just tell you on topic after topic after topic, what kind of things we were able to do in 3 to 5 years that would just take your breath away. And so that informs, you know, listen, are there days in which I think I'm crazy to do the jacket project or I, I feel the weight of the challenge, you know, like 250 or 2500 pounds on my shoulders.

00;31;01;07 - 00;31;35;23
Maura Oneill
Yes. But I harken back to the belief that we've taken on every bit as tough a challenge before. And there are innovators all over, and there are people who care deeply. I mean, not know how to turn our remarkable agricultural system in the US to grow America's biofuels. But there's people that do. And if we can get the right people together and we can make the case, and we have a sense of urgency, because that sense of urgency is really critical.

00;31;35;25 - 00;31;54;13
Ian Bergman
Well, and, you know, this is a quote or a saying that I think has been misattributed and misquoted a million times. Right? So I'll just do it again. But it's something that I fundamentally believe, right, that folks always overestimate what they can get done in the short term and underestimate what they can get done the long term. Overestimate what you can do in a year.

00;31;54;13 - 00;32;15;27
Ian Bergman
Dramatically underestimate what you can do in a decade. And you know, to your point, part of the reason that you can achieve so much on that slightly longer time horizon is because you can have a sense of urgency, you can make progress, you can beat against that, you can beat against it, and this stuff accumulates, right? You get the, compounding effect of your work.

00;32;16;05 - 00;32;30;09
Ian Bergman
And it is really interesting to have kind of a decade long time frame because it does seem so far away. But the amount of change that can happen as we look back across any given decade, like at this point, like the world is transforming every decade.

00;32;30;12 - 00;33;09;03
Maura Oneill
Exactly. I was actually looking at, I said, okay, if this is going to increase the GDP by 20% in the U.S., is that even possible? So I looked back at different parts and I said, it is absolutely possible. We increase quite regularly the GDP by the US when we are at these moments. And I think the other thing in is once you sort of embark on this and collect the people, Steve Jobs says, the crazy misfits, the people who nobody wanted to believe as possible, who all have something to contribute, is an amazing charge.

00;33;09;04 - 00;33;27;20
Maura Oneill
Iran, it's you know, I just look back with, the people I had in each of my companies, but particularly in the federal government. And I just think of what was possible with the depth of commitment and expertise. And I'm just gobsmacked.

00;33;27;20 - 00;33;49;09
Ian Bergman
Depth of commitment and expertise. And I love that. A couple of crazy misfits and a deep, deep dissatisfaction, I think, with certain aspects of the status quo. Exactly right. And, you know, that's one of the things that I've seen. And I think, look, the the public sector is getting a lot of critique in the political environment in the US today.

00;33;49;16 - 00;34;13;28
Ian Bergman
And sure, some of it's deserved a lot of it's probably not, but it's getting a lot of critique. But I think one of the things that stands out to me, though, is that dissatisfaction with the status quo can come from inside, it can come from outside, it can be imposed. But when it when it meets that magic mix of dedicated servants to a cause, people with vision on what's possible.

00;34;13;28 - 00;34;33;11
Ian Bergman
Like maybe you do actually get a world where real innovation and real systemic change can happen. So there's a piece of me that is kind of looking around like, frankly, a little bit nervously is the understatement of a century at some of the dialog. Yeah, but a piece of me is wondering, can this act as a catalyst for change?

00;34;33;11 - 00;34;52;13
Ian Bergman
And so that's a really long way of me asking you a very simple question. Can the Decade Project take advantage of the political environment and the social environment in the US today? Maybe in some ways that are surprising or, you know, maybe that you couldn't have foreseen when you started it a few years ago?

00;34;52;16 - 00;35;19;28
Maura Oneill
Well, if you look at where do the breakthrough ideas come from and when do they come through? I'll give you two examples. In 2008, you know, we laid off 100,000 tech workers. We're just they're doing it again. It was the Great Depression or the Great Recession. I guess it was really people were losing their homes. It was a point of tremendous despair.

00;35;20;00 - 00;35;48;04
Maura Oneill
And yet, if we look at it, that's where Airbnb came from. That's where WhatsApp came from. That's where Instagram, many of our same with the.com boom and bust. Amazon came out of that. And so we actually find that is these major disruptive moments. And I you know I do take exception that I'm the head of the class for wanting USAID to have been to have structural reform.

00;35;48;08 - 00;36;15;16
Maura Oneill
I do not believe that you burn it all to the ground in those relationships. So I will take exception to the serious exception to the way it was done. But let's go back to the decade project in the U.S. we also know that when I looked at the trends for the decade from 2008 2018, it was the first five years that women and people of color just were like rocket ships with entrepreneurship.

00;36;15;22 - 00;36;45;21
Maura Oneill
So we see, as you suggested, in these moments where maybe you do it because you have put food on the table, or maybe you do it because you said, what the heck, I may as well take it this now or people are open to new ideas. This historically is the moment. Yeah, even though it seems like it would be exactly the opposite, particularly if you care about wider inclusion.

00;36;45;24 - 00;36;48;15
Maura Oneill
I do think it is an opportunity to be.

00;36;48;15 - 00;36;53;28
Ian Bergman
Greedy when others are fearful. Yes. You know, Mara, you're an optimist. I think.

00;36;54;00 - 00;36;56;20
Maura Oneill
Yeah, that would be that would be the case.

00;36;56;25 - 00;37;02;08
Ian Bergman
I love that. Well, I think that's a necessary trait for a lot of of entrepreneurship.

00;37;02;10 - 00;37;17;15
Maura Oneill
You know, I will I will tell you a new term that I like. I was talking to somebody whose brother is in the confidential discussions going on between Israel and Palestine ends. And he says he's a realist but believes in miracles.

00;37;17;17 - 00;37;18;20
Ian Bergman
So a good one.

00;37;18;27 - 00;37;47;29
Maura Oneill
I am an optimist. About the decade project. But you have to have a little belief in miracles. Because in my lifetime that hope that it would just change and us working on it incrementally didn't get us there. So whether it's climate change or whether it's, greater prosperity for all, we've got to be optimists. But also believe that the heavens are going to open in and give us a little help along the way.

00;37;48;01 - 00;38;08;03
Ian Bergman
Right. You got to. And maybe, maybe you can create the environment for that miracle to happen, right? Yeah. Well, so let me ask you a little bit of a tangential question. So we have we have a lot of folks listen to the show because they're trying to drive change in the world. Sometimes it's as simple as, you know, getting their team to operate in a more modern way.

00;38;08;03 - 00;38;31;20
Ian Bergman
Sometimes they're building new companies for you. What are some of the through lines that you've seen connect effective entrepreneurship and effective kind of innovation across all these different environments? Public sector with USAID startups that you've done, the work that you're doing now? Do you have any any thoughts or pieces of wisdom?

00;38;31;22 - 00;38;52;15
Maura Oneill
I do, and I also do custom programs through Berkeley Exec Ed to do leadership training for some of the most important global companies. So I see it at that stage because, as we said, many of those wouldn't exist if they didn't figure out how to innovate. So I think I would say that there's two lessons that I've learned.

00;38;52;17 - 00;39;17;07
Maura Oneill
One is that when I went back to do this work for the Senate Finance Committee, I'm listening to a podcast and on comes Albert Einstein. And he says, there's really only one difference between everybody else and me. And I thought, well, there's probably what I want to do to make it okay. He said that everybody else spends 90% of the time on the solution, and I spend 90% of the time on the problem.

00;39;17;08 - 00;39;18;07
Ian Bergman
Yeah. That's it.

00;39;18;11 - 00;39;47;09
Maura Oneill
So I think that whether it's in these corporate meetings or whether it's entrepreneurs or whether it's governments, we first need to spend a heck of a lot more time on defining the root. What is the problem? And ask, why, why, why, why? To really get down with the essence of what it is for us to disintermediate or innovate around.

00;39;47;11 - 00;40;06;23
Ian Bergman
I love that you fall in love with the problem, right? You open yourself up to the best solutions from from everywhere. And you know, I talk about this concept a lot, and I'm embarrassed to say I did not know that that was an Einstein quote or an Einstein message written. So I'm going to go dig that up. I'm going to use it on my slides.

00;40;06;24 - 00;40;15;23
Ian Bergman
It's probably I'm looking behind. But yeah, literally it's you know, I've got the book by Eric Levine on the shelf by.

00;40;15;25 - 00;40;40;14
Maura Oneill
Exactly. So I think it's Fall in Love with the problem. But the second is bring a group of people that have diverse backgrounds. And I don't just mean in ethnicity and in gender, I mean in thinking differently. And it turns out that in my PhD work on narrow, on discovery, narrow mindedness and how to break it, it's that you have to embrace diversity and dissent.

00;40;40;21 - 00;41;05;00
Maura Oneill
And the emphasis are actually on dissent, that if you and I were in a group and one of us disagreed, even if we are wrong, the group decision is better and more nuanced as a result. So first we have to get really, really great about the problem. We have to develop a pretty wide solutions set before we narrow in on it.

00;41;05;03 - 00;41;20;11
Maura Oneill
But in doing so, we have to surround ourselves with people that are different, that have different points of view, and we need to deeply listen because it's in that that the magic is really going to emerge.

00;41;20;14 - 00;41;42;03
Ian Bergman
Well, and you said something earlier as we were talking before the show, you said that this, turn of phrase, which I, you also dropped earlier in the discussion, more curious than certain, is such a powerful turn of phrase. And I'm going to I'm going to connect the dots with you here. If you embrace diversity, you embrace dissent, and then you are curious about the causes of that dissent.

00;41;42;03 - 00;41;45;15
Ian Bergman
Oh, man, how powerful you know. Well your insights be.

00;41;45;17 - 00;42;08;23
Maura Oneill
Exactly. And because I love to give credit where credit is due, let me just, tell everybody this story because it's really stuck with me. I was at dinner with Carmen Rojas, who's the head of the Marguerite Casey Foundation, and they work on extreme poverty in the US. And she was in discussion with somebody who was an anti-vaxxer and wasn't exactly a position that she embraced.

00;42;08;23 - 00;42;38;24
Maura Oneill
But she said, why are you and anti-vaxxer? And he said, because the last minister or government told me to rely on them. It was that OxyContin was not addictive and it's ruined my community. And she suggested that, and that's why I borrowed it to be more curious than certain. And, while I still am a big proponent of vaccines, it has always stayed with me to say, ask more questions, be more curious.

00;42;38;26 - 00;42;47;22
Maura Oneill
That's the way we're going to get smarter and more innovative and it's actually the only way we're going to get smarter and more innovative.

00;42;47;24 - 00;43;16;18
Ian Bergman
I absolutely love that sentiment. And what a note to to start to wrap up on. Be curious and follow your curiosity. Embrace the problems. Embrace the diverse feedback. And that is the road to more innovation. Mara, it's been really fun to be in conversation with you on innovators Inside here. I would love, if you're okay with it, to spend a few minutes just playing a little bit of a game.

00;43;16;20 - 00;43;37;08
Maura Oneill
Yep. And before you do that, I would say thank you so much. And I think that this podcast is so important to have a conversation. And you've just done a terrific job. So you can wrap up. But I just wanted to take that moment to say that this has been lucky for both of us and the listeners to be able to have this conversation with you today.

00;43;37;10 - 00;43;44;19
Ian Bergman
Well, it's been a delight. And now I need to be nicer when I'm playing my game with you, because you're saying I'm probably better.

00;43;44;22 - 00;43;53;13
Maura Oneill
It's okay. I grew up with a brother. They used to do water torture on me. So. Yeah, no, it can't be that bad in.

00;43;53;15 - 00;44;09;23
Ian Bergman
Okay. I will not do water torture on you, but. No, genuinely, this is really fascinating. So what I want to do, I want to get to know you just a little bit more, and I'm going to ask you some rapid fire questions, okay? And every once in a while, it'll just be a yes no, and we'll move on.

00;44;09;23 - 00;44;21;20
Ian Bergman
And some of them maybe we'll dig into. Okay. But since you, since you mentioned water torture, let's talk about where your curiosity lies. Are you a space tech person or ocean tech? Where's the mystery for you?

00;44;21;22 - 00;44;34;05
Maura Oneill
I probably should say ocean tech, but I really think it's space tech because I traffic in in what seems impossible.

00;44;34;07 - 00;44;48;15
Ian Bergman
Yeah, right. So you're looking forward to, you know, the the suborbital like point to point rockets to escape quote unquote traffic. But you know, the sci fi future, the limitless possibility.

00;44;48;18 - 00;45;11;12
Maura Oneill
Yeah. My son is a particle physicist. And he was part of the team that found the Higgs boson. And he told me that, you know, and I'm going to get this wrong, that sort of 95% of around us is dark matter. We don't understand it. Well, that just blows my mind. And so so that's why I say that there's so much out there that we have yet to understand.

00;45;11;14 - 00;45;23;28
Ian Bergman
How. Isn't that fun? Isn't that a fun thing to be curious about? Yeah. So how do you celebrate wins when you get them? How are you going to celebrate in 6 or 7 years when the decade project is accomplished? Its goals?

00;45;24;01 - 00;45;48;00
Maura Oneill
So I will say that I also have another mantra that I think is super important for innovators and entrepreneurs, and that is celebrate early and often. Because the fact of the matter is, if I wait till the end of the decade, I will not have the stamina and the enthusiasm to get there because it is super hard. I have a friend who is an entrepreneur right now.

00;45;48;07 - 00;46;15;27
Maura Oneill
He's done three successful companies and he, you know, has been plummeted with these tariffs and trying to figure out how the heck to actually make this business work. And I just texted him this morning and said, I don't care how many times you've done this before. It is just hard, just simply hard. And so I think celebrate early and often people need to actually have tattooed on their chest and.

00;46;15;29 - 00;46;18;08
Ian Bergman
Maybe, maybe on the forehead so they can be reminded.

00;46;18;09 - 00;46;42;12
Maura Oneill
Yes, yes, exactly. So I think that you do that by figuring out what brings you joy. So I have two things I decided last year. There's a great writer of Canada who wrote a book called Run Towards Danger. And so I've decided that my watchword is run towards the danger and run towards the joy and run towards the danger means do tough, difficult things.

00;46;42;15 - 00;47;17;19
Maura Oneill
But I had to supplement it to run towards the joy. So I ask myself whenever I'm asked to do stuff, is this danger meaning really cutting edge stuff? If it isn't, not really interested in it? Or is it joy? And that's going to give me the stamina to continue to do the hard things. And part of the challenge is to make sure that I have actively put in times and things for joy, and that's hard for innovators and entrepreneurs.

00;47;17;21 - 00;47;36;23
Ian Bergman
It is you can get you can get stuck in the grind and the mission. You can even feel guilty. Yes, about taking time for the joy. I you know that. But yeah, you're right. There's a portfolio of goals and ambitions you've got to build and think about. So okay, what's a guilty pleasure app or tool that you just can't live without.

00;47;36;25 - 00;47;46;23
Maura Oneill
Oh you know a present. So there's two. One is that The New York Times did a new game called strands. And that's so.

00;47;46;25 - 00;47;47;28
Ian Bergman
It's so good.

00;47;48;00 - 00;48;09;27
Maura Oneill
Yeah. And it loads up at midnight. And I'm a night owl so often when I should be sleeping decide oh well I'll just do today's strands. So so I like that. And then the other guilty pleasure which may or may not be a guilty pleasure, but I have been an early devotee of, listening to books on audio.

00;48;10;00 - 00;48;43;10
Maura Oneill
And so I, I just find that, it both allows me to listen to 24, 30 more books, read them more. But but since since the world has gotten really cruel and mean in the last six months, I've decided to choose books that just bring me a little bit away, but are interesting. So I'm reading a biographer listen to a biography of August Wilson, the African American playwright who was such an innovator in the theater.

00;48;43;12 - 00;48;45;17
Maura Oneill
So those are my two guilty pleasures.

00;48;45;24 - 00;48;50;04
Ian Bergman
Those are wonderful guilty pleasures. Have you read or listen to the book? Same as ever.

00;48;50;08 - 00;48;53;02
Maura Oneill
I haven't, I haven't. I'm going to read that one's a.

00;48;53;02 - 00;49;16;10
Ian Bergman
Favorite of mine recently. It's one I've been talking about a lot. I listen to it on, on audiobook. That's how I like to consume these things that get the mind going but aren't, you know, they're a little bit of a distraction as well. Yeah, it really is the story. It's actually a series of stories of how, you know, humans are just kind of humans all through the decades and centuries, and there's patterns.

00;49;16;10 - 00;49;19;23
Ian Bergman
And I actually find that a little reassuring sometimes. Okay.

00;49;19;27 - 00;49;22;07
Maura Oneill
Well, I will definitely download it after this.

00;49;22;13 - 00;49;37;13
Ian Bergman
Yeah. Check it out. Check it out. Okay. One last question for you. And I saved the easiest one for last one word or one really short phrase that you would use to describe the next decade of innovation.

00;49;37;15 - 00;49;42;18
Maura Oneill
Let's see. Complexity and excitement.

00;49;42;20 - 00;49;49;02
Ian Bergman
Complexity and excitement. I can get behind that. Tell me about the complexity.

00;49;49;04 - 00;50;17;19
Maura Oneill
Well, I think that you you know, our geopolitical situation is complex or economic, you know, or health issue of an aging population that's going to lose our minds more and get more diabetes, you know, so our health outcomes are actually failing in not in the developed world or immigration or what I would say is global migration issues are getting more complicated.

00;50;17;22 - 00;50;39;19
Maura Oneill
But in those things, and I just laid out three of them, there's also an excitement because if you believe that these incredibly difficult problems can actually be solved, but probably need to be solved in new and innovative ways, that's where the excitement lies.

00;50;39;21 - 00;51;00;04
Ian Bergman
Amazing. Well, Mara, thank you so much for coming on the Innovators inside again. You've shared some stories about how you are running towards danger and joy. We've I've really appreciated them. It's been great to get to know you. I wish you the best of luck. For folks that are interested in keeping track of your work, what's the best way to follow you?

00;51;00;04 - 00;51;07;19
Ian Bergman
Are you on LinkedIn? Does the Decade project have a website or a way to get engaged in the project? What's the best way to follow your work again?

00;51;07;26 - 00;51;39;18
Maura Oneill
So I'm on LinkedIn, so people should feel free to link in or send me a message. We do have a website, The Decade project.org, but we are in the process of refreshing it in a very significant way. I'm also looking to kick myself upstairs, and I'm in the process of hiring a new CEO for the Decade project. So if you're listeners, both have really are excited about operational excellence and about fundraising, then I'd love to talk to them and listen.

00;51;39;25 - 00;51;51;16
Maura Oneill
You know, life is a team sport and great ideas come from all different places. So I appreciate this audience and I look forward to being in community with your listeners going forward.

00;51;51;18 - 00;51;59;15
Ian Bergman
Amazing. Well, Mara, I hope you have a wonderful rest of your day and evening. And I wish you all the best and look forward to talking to you again soon.

00;51;59;17 - 00;52;05;07
Maura Oneill
Thank you so much. I really appreciate it. And it's been a sheer delight.

00;52;05;09 - 00;52;25;28
Ian Bergman
And that's a wrap for today's episode of Alchemist x Innovators Inside. Thanks for listening. If you found value in today's discussion, be sure to subscribe to our podcast and check out our segments on YouTube. Links and follow ups are in the show notes, and if you have questions you want us to feature in future episodes, email innovators at Alchemist accelerator.com.

00;52;26;00 - 00;52;30;21
Ian Bergman
Stay tuned for more insider stories and practical insights from leaders crafting our future.