This is the first piece in a series produced by Acumen Academy and 100x Impact, exploring what it takes to achieve outsized impact while staying rooted in purpose. The social sector often talks about scale in visible terms: bigger organizations, broader reach, faster growth, clearer proof of impact. But for the founders in this series, another question runs just as deep — what kind of leadership makes lasting, values-aligned scale possible in the first place? Samina Bano, the founder and Executive Director of RightWalk Foundation, opens the series with an answer rooted not only in strategy, but in the inner work of leading change.

 

"At RightWalk, we address the dual challenge of poverty and inequality in India by activating transformative social policies and converting them into real-world outcomes," Samina says. "We focus on three core areas: education, livelihood, and health. These are the fundamental needs people must have access to in order to live dignified, sustainable lives."

Over more than a decade, that work has taken Samina deep inside public systems, where progress is rarely linear and resistance is often built into the structure itself. What it has taught her is that scale is not only strategic or operational, it is personal. It demands patience, resilience, and the willingness to keep building when the path is uncertain and results come slowly. Samina's story is a sustained exploration of what that inner work actually looks like.

When opportunity becomes responsibility

Her commitment to this work did not begin with a theory of policy. It began with her own life and a more personal question: why had opportunity reached her, when it had been denied to so many others around her?

"I come from a very orthodox Muslim background. My father grew up in a rural village in one of the most backward states in India, where girls were rarely educated. Most girls in my extended family were married off by age 15 or 16."

Two things changed her trajectory. The first was her father joining the Indian Air Force, which moved the family into military communities where government schools were accessible. The second was that she contracted polio at the age of one, leaving one of her legs partially paralyzed. In a painful irony, that delayed pressure for early marriage and gave her more room to continue her education.

"I studied hard and eventually became the first person in my family to graduate," she says. "Later, after studying and working in India and the United States, I kept asking myself: what really changed my life compared to others in my family?"

The difference was opportunity; and that realization became a moral obligation: "In my faith, every gift is also a responsibility. If you receive an opportunity, you must use it to give back."

That conviction brought her back to India, where she spent a year volunteering with the government, discovered the Right to Education policy, and the gap between what it promised and what children were actually receiving.

"The policy allowed poor children to attend elite private schools for free. But it existed only on paper. It was not being implemented. I knew personally how transformative education could be. Once I saw that this opportunity already existed in law, but was not reaching the children it was meant for, I knew this was the work I had to do."

That clarity gave her direction. It did not make the work easier.

What systems change asks of a founder

"One thing I learned during the Acumen Fellowship is that if a system is inefficient, it is often serving someone's interests," Samina says. "Changing it will trigger resistance from those who benefit from the current arrangement."

That is exactly what happened when RightWalk began pushing for implementation in Uttar Pradesh. Wealthy parents and elite private schools resisted fiercely — and what might sound, from a distance, like policy work quickly became something much more personal.

"In the early days, I was running the effort with a very small team. We faced serious threats — life threats, legal threats, and even physical attacks. This is the part many people do not see when they talk about systems change. It is not only technical or strategic. It is deeply personal."

"To continue requires deep conviction and inner work. Without that inner work, I do not think I could have continued. It was a David versus Goliath battle. We were small, and the opposing forces were extremely powerful. But I held the belief that if you are fighting for the right cause, history shows that the weaker side can still win."

There were many moments when she could have chosen a simpler path.

"When we decided to pursue the Right to Education policy implementation, almost everyone told me it was too difficult. People warned me that it would be nearly impossible to win against powerful private schools. Many advised me to choose a simpler intervention, one that would attract funding and support more quickly."

But for Samina, the issue had already become a question of justice.

"For me, justice is deeply ingrained. When I saw that a powerful private school was blocking a policy that was legally meant to provide opportunities for poor children, it became personal. How can a school place itself above the law? No one should be above the law."

She learned early that visible success and meaningful change are not always the same thing. "Sometimes the easiest path brings visible success — funding, partnerships, recognition. But visible success is not the same as solving the underlying problem."

The hard questions about systems change

That conviction shaped how Samina thought about scale from the beginning. Rather than building a parallel organization that delivered services directly, she wanted change to take hold through systems that already existed.

"Scale was part of the design from the beginning," she says. "I studied the largest nonprofits in the country and noticed that even the biggest organizations were serving only a tiny percentage of the population. If I created another nonprofit operating parallel to government systems, I would simply add another small percentage. That would not fundamentally change the system."

She also asked herself: what would happen when she was no longer around? Would the change continue without her?

Those questions led her to partner with the government. While that required patience and a willingness to work inside institutions often dismissed as too slow to engage, Samina saw something far more valuable in them: reach.

"I volunteered with the government to understand how it worked. I traveled across districts, visiting schools and hospitals. Government systems have extraordinary reach with infrastructure, personnel, and distribution networks extending to the last village. No nonprofit can match that scale. The challenge is not the absence of capacity but often the absence of motivation, systems, or coordination."

RightWalk's model became one of partnership, systems strengthening, and leverage; working with government institutions rather than around them, and raising funding from philanthropic partners rather than from the state. That allows it to help unlock far larger pools of public funding and institutional capacity.

"In some cases, every dollar we spend unlocks hundreds of dollars in public funding," Samina explains.

Building for scale beyond the founder

As RightWalk grew into a team of around 125 people and deepened its work across multiple states, Samina codified its methods into playbooks and training modules so that staff and government partners could replicate the approach.

"There is a quote that says you do not rise to the level of your goals, you fall to the level of your systems," she says. "That realization pushed us to build strong operational systems. We intentionally remain lean because our work primarily happens through government partnerships. But our model is complex. We work across multiple states and policies and we are a team of teams — our team working with government teams. That requires systems."

Leveling up on the inner work of leading scale

Acumen and 100x helped sharpen Samina's evolution as a leader, expanding her view of what scale and systems change actually require.

"Initially, I was very focused on implementation: on the work we were doing directly, the programs we were running, and the immediate outcomes we were seeing on the ground. Through Acumen, I was exposed to a different lens, with more emphasis on systems. Understanding how change happens within institutions, particularly within government systems, and how patient capital, long-term partnerships, and trust play a role in enabling that change."

"100x reinforced this in a different way. They pushed us to think more intentionally about scale; not just growing an organization, but designing models that can work within and alongside existing systems. They encouraged us to think about leverage points: policy, institutional partnerships, and mechanisms that allow solutions to spread beyond a single organization."

Together, those influences helped clarify something Samina now holds firmly: "Scale is not only about growth. It is about building models that governments and systems can adopt, adapt, and sustain over time."

Staying rooted in purpose

When asked about the advice she offers founders who feel pressure to grow quickly in fragile systems, Samina's answer is less about tactics than about staying anchored.

"Stay rooted in your purpose and do not succumb to external pressure. It is important to distinguish between what your heart truly wants and what external expectations push you toward. Short-term success can be very tempting — funding opportunities, recognition, rapid expansion. But if those choices move you away from your purpose, the cost is much higher."

For Samina, purpose is not an abstract ideal. It is a daily practice.

"Every morning I read my purpose statement and spend time reflecting on it. I pray and anchor myself in the reason I started this work. This practice strengthens my resolve so that the pressures of the day do not pull me off course. Purpose requires constant reinforcement. Without that, small compromises slowly erode your mission."

Scaling impact, her story reminds us, is not only about capital, technology, or execution. It is about the discipline to stay anchored when the system pushes back, the resilience to keep going through uncertainty, and the willingness to be changed by the work itself. That inner game, it turns out, is where the outer work of scale begins.