THE SOCIAL ENTREPRENEUR
JOAN MARIE GODOY, 39
CEO, Radical Partners, Miami
The Backstory
Joan Marie Godoy likes to say she was born and raised in Guatemala, personally and professionally. It speaks to a worldview shaped early by contrast: abundance alongside inequity and deep cultural richness alongside systems that failed to distribute opportunity fairly. Growing up in the small Central American country where rural, Indigenous, educated and urban worlds rarely mixed, Godoy says she learned to move between these "bubbles" with ease.
While in Guatemala, she studied clinical psychology in college, and early in her career, Godoy traveled across that country, volunteering with non-governmental organizations (NGOs) and teaching Indigenous leaders to champion human rights, gender equity and environmental preservation. While the work was meaningful, it was also eye-opening. "I became frustrated with this idea of doing a lot of things with the leaders, but with a system that didn't necessarily allow them to grow or to succeed," she recalls.
Seeking to bridge the gap between grassroots passion and systemic change, Godoy secured a full scholarship to study in the Netherlands. There, she earned a master's degree focused on international NGOs, political economy and impact management. Her career path led her to Costa Rica and Chile, working on education and youth initiatives, and back to Guatemala, where she ran an economic empowerment program focused on women for the United Nations — all before moving to Miami in 2017.
Looking for a way to use her multidisciplinary background for social impact in Miami, Godoy discovered Radical Partners, an organization that described itself as issue-agnostic and focused on accelerating the leaders already working to solve real community challenges. For Godoy, that "was love at first sight."
She started out by managing Radical Partners' consulting arm and within three years was leading the organization.
"It kind of fell on my lap because our founder was moving to another key position in the county. ... Then the pandemic hits." Godoy found herself naturally supporting her staff, stabilizing programs and responding to urgent needs across Radical Partners' network. In June 2020, Godoy officially became CEO and owner of Radical Partners.
Clients and Programming
The social impact accelerator has worked with South Florida nonprofit leaders and founders who innovate in education, fight youth sexual abuse, spread the arts to low-income communities, clean up the oceans, battle climate change, tackle the local affordability crisis in creative ways, and much more.
Radical Partners operates at the intersection of innovation and empathy. On one side, the tech and startup world races ahead with innovation, sometimes without considering human consequences. On the other, passionate nonprofits labor with limited tools and funding. "Our superpower is precisely being the social innovators," Godoy explains. "We do leadership development, we do community engagement, we co-create solutions and we build coalitions so that we can strengthen communities together."
Radical Partners — a team of six, plus consultants — has led more than 20 cohorts in programs including social entrepreneurship bootcamps and strategic planning summits, as well as Leadership Lab, a leadership development program for and by people of color, and more recently GET Champions, an initiative focused on advancing gender equity within the tech ecosystem. More than 200 non-profit and social entrepreneurial ventures have graduated from these programs.
Beyond the cohorts, more than 100,000 people across South Florida have taken part in Radical Partners' programs and community initiatives that "help make our city function a little bit more effectively, a little bit more efficiently and a little bit more joyfully," Godoy says. One of her favorite initiatives is 10 Days of Connection; this year, the program's 10th, it kicks off May 1. Ten Days of Connection brings together people across lines of difference — faith, politics, culture — through hundreds of free grassroots events and experiences hosted by community organizations.
"We love stating that we are a social impact accelerator, and those three words are very important. lt's all about humankind and trying to make everybody's lives better, but for us to be able to do that, we need to move fast." — Joan Marie Godoy
Radical Partners itself operates as a hybrid model, part nonprofit, part earned revenue. Cohorts are free to participants, and Radical Partners fundraises for donations, while more established organizations pay for coaching, training and project design. "It's a matter of understanding what your mission is and finding creative ways to find the revenue that will allow you to advance that mission," Godoy says. More than 50 organizations have gone on to hire Radical Partners in recent years.
To be sure, there are challenges. "Running a social venture is exciting and exhausting, and whoever doesn't say that is lying," says Godoy. Her leadership philosophy now includes personal well-being: proper sleep, yoga and running, and making time for relationships and travel. She tries to model that balance for the leaders she supports, many of whom face burnout in their struggles to fund their ventures.
Future Focus
Looking ahead, Godoy plans to focus Radical Partners' work on three interconnected groups: locals, leaders and builders with resources. That means activating residents to care for and engage with their city, sustaining social impact leaders so they don't burn out or leave the sector, and persuading large funders to step up and make bold, collective-impact investments in the region. The stakes are high, she says, because when communities lose their dreamers and doers to financial strain, society pays a long-term price.
Godoy's advice to nonprofit leaders, many who have suffered from recent funding cutbacks and decreased giving: "Stay committed and very close to your vision and your mission, not so much to your programs or the way you have always been doing things." In lean times, particularly, mergers, acquisitions, shared services and shared spaces should be considered, she says. "Get creative ... and be super open to how your mission could be deployed."