7 - Diana Aviv, Feeding America CEO: A Holiday Lesson on Leading with Heart & Head

A car accident convinced a teenaged Diana Aviv that she had to leave home and fight for the poor and forgotten. One she caused. "As I pulled out, I hit him, and he went into the air and did somersaults and crashed to the ground," she remembers. She, a white Jewish teen, had hit a black bicyclist in apartheid South Africa in the early 1970s. "When we went to the police station, I went to the white entrance and he had to wait and go in the black entrance. And the police officer said to me, 'You tell me whatever you like, and that's what will be what happened.' And I decided I couldn't live in a society where I couldn't take the consequences of my actions, which was to get in trouble because of what I'd done. ... This was as contaminating to me as it was for him. Just, the consequences were easier for me – but they weren't, because how could I live with myself? And I decided then that I had to leave." Today, Aviv is CEO of Feeding America, the third largest charity in America by donation value, at more than $2 billion annually. As I learned when I sat down with her for the Fortt Knox podcast, her journey to that position is a study in how leading with your emotions as well as your head can bring world-changing results.

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