By Sapphira Goradia, Vijay and Marie Goradia Foundation

A few weeks ago, I found myself at the United Nations, in the company of hundreds of millennials intent on changing the world for the better. I was attending the Nexus Global Youth Summit, a gathering now in its fifth year that aims to ‘bridge communities of wealth and social entrepreneurship for dialogue, education, and collaborative problem solving.’

In the short time I’ve worked in philanthropy, I’ve learned that it is possible to spend 100% of your time attending conferences, summits, and events, leaving little time for the actual work of running a foundation. For me, every event I attend has to either provide an educational experience that I couldn’t get online, or offer a worthwhile networking opportunity. Nexus fulfilled both these requirements.

The Nexus Global Summit brings together social entrepreneurs, nonprofit leaders, investors, and philanthropists with a passion for a wide range of issues—everything from the discrete sciences to human trafficking. Putting all these interests in a room together can be overwhelming, so the Nexus team opens an online portal to participants a few weeks before the event. The portal allows participants to upload their bios, specify interest areas, and connect with others before, during, and after the summit. I had written in my profile that I was interested in impact investing, so was included in an impact investing sub-group on the site, where participants shared useful materials and updates.

Meeting and hearing from so many people who not only have big ideas, but have translated those ideas into action, is nothing short of inspiring. Whereas the sessions covered a wide range of topics, the thread I saw running through the majority of the summit was the worlds of business and social good overlapping more and more, whether through impact investing, B corporations, or corporate social responsibility.

Hamdi Ulukaya, CEO of the highly successful Chobani, is an advocate for refugees not only through his philanthropy, but through his business practices as well: Nearly half of Chobani’s employees are refugees. Kavita Shukla, the inventor and founder of FreshPaper, self-funded her start-up, a for-profit aimed at reducing food spoilage globally.

For these participants and many others, setting social returns at the same level of importance as financial returns has gone far beyond a concept to promote; it is a practice that many are proving successful.

To me, what sets the Nexus summit apart from other events I attend is the sheer earnestness and positivity of both the Nexus team and the attendees. It’s easy to be skeptical of this positivity. One take on this event is that it brings together people of privilege to talk to other people of privilege about the good they’re doing in the world. Another view, though, and the one I subscribe to, is that the Nexus summit is bringing people together who are choosing to use their privilege to create social change, with the hope that they can learn from and work with one another to make a greater collective impact.

As the sole staff member running my family’s foundation, I often become isolated and get mired in the details of my work. The Nexus summit provided me with the opportunity to take a step back from the day-to-day and plug into a community of people who translate optimism into action.

Sapphira Goradia is executive director of the Vijay and Marie Goradia Foundation. She leads the foundation’s efforts to improve health and educational outcomes in India by supporting innovative, measurable, and scalable initiatives. Prior to assuming her role, Sapphira worked for a number of NGOs focused on the prevention and treatment of both acute and chronic diseases. She holds a BA from Pomona College and a Masters of Public Health from The George Washington University. Sapphira is an advisory board member of Pratham USA’s Houston chapter, and a board member of the international NGO SightLife.