The biggest waste of our time is the waste of talent. All around the world, there are millions of people who could make major contributions towards creating a better world, but don’t.

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There is a medicine to treat this wastage, and we call that medicine ‘moral ambition’. Moral ambition is the drive to drastically improve the world – to devote your career to addressing the biggest problems of our time, whether you’re focusing on climate change or infant mortality, tax evasion or the next pandemic. It is the desire to make a difference, and leave a legacy that actually has an impact.

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So, what makes a person morally ambitious? We believe that it is a combination of two traits: the idealism of an activist, and the ambition of an entrepreneur.  

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Ambition, with a healthy dose of idealism

It could be assumed that you can either be idealistic or ambitious, but not both.

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Some idealists see ‘ambition’ as obscene – a distasteful trait shared only by people who are obsessed with wealth and success. In actual fact, ambition is just raw energy: what you do with it is up to you. Having ambition means that you want to be the best at something, and to achieve as much as you can. Where you want to excel and what you want to achieve will determine your impact on the world, for better or worse.

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Conversely, many people climbing the corporate ladder are dismissive of ‘idealism’ – associating it with long-winded lectures from ardent activists. Organisations that incorporate and prioritise their ideals in their mission – non-profit organisations, charities, action groups – sometimes come across as granola-eating hippies. And yes, most charitable foundations do not have the same get-it-done mentality as many large-scale commercial organisations.

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But what if we combine the best of both worlds? What if we take the ambition of a highly successful go-getter and add a healthy dose of idealism? What happens then?

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Pioneers brimming with moral ambition

At the School for Moral Ambition, we are building a movement of pioneers that are idealistic as well as ambitious. Just look at one of our ambassadors, Jacqueline van den Ende, founder and CEO of Carbon Equity. She has already raised over €150 million for her greener-than-green investment platform, which invests in high-risk, high-reward innovations that show great promise, such as carbon-free cement, meat substitutes and high-capacity batteries.

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Or Mpanzu Bamenga, the human rights activist and politician who has filed a historic lawsuit against the Dutch border police, joined by a broad coalition of activists, putting an end to ethnic profiling during border controls.

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The thing that people like Bamenga and Van den Ende have in common is that they do not see what they are doing as just a tiny drop in the bucket. They believe they can make a difference and are willing to take risks to make it happen. They don’t say “what if someone did something about it?”, but instead take action themselves. They don’t settle for taking small steps, but constantly contemplate how they can generate even more positive impact – lots more. That is moral ambition.

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Translation by Joy Phillips

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