People in Fundraising, ep. #101: Nida Januskis, Associate Dean of Advancement, INSEAD

Nida Januskis has been one of my all-time favorite colleagues, a mentor, and a friend to me for years. Welcoming her to "People in Fundraising" is an honor. It has been a pleasure watching Nida's career progress since our time at Harvard Business School (HBS), where she focused on donor engagement of HBS alumni and friends on-the-ground in Europe.

Since then, Nida has held various roles at INSEAD, one of the world's leading business schools. She focuses on engaging INSEAD's 70,000+ alumni around the world, with 3 campuses across the globe - and where no more than 10% of each class is represented by any one country.

In our conversation, Nida describes:

* Being a Lithuanian-American, spending a year backpacking with her husband, and starting her career in commercial real estate. The backpacking trip was a preamble to Nida's later career, and through commercial real estate, she developed an interest in fundraising.

* Meeting Jill Morelli, who was then working at HBS, which led to Nida joining the fundraising team. Nida managed young alumni in her first tenure at the school, then transferred to Paris for her husband's career and focused on their young family before an "HBS 2.0" opportunity in Paris developed.

* Working with such a diverse student body and staff, how this exposure to diversity is critical to engaging with alumni - and leads to a strong spirit of creativity, nimbleness, and an exciting entrepreneurial drive, which results in lifelong learning opportunities, a new My INSEAD app, and much more.

* The importance of finding time outside of one's work and personal commitments to express one's values through supporting nonprofits. Nida talks about her involvement with female empowerment nonprofits RefuSHE (a Kenya-based organization) and the European Network for Women in Leadership (WIL), an academic partner of INSEAD.

* Overcoming self-doubt and getting out of your own way, with a fantastic example from Nida's career when she appeared on a French news broadcast.

* Challenges Nida has overcome to become "a digital badass," asking stupid questions, and the critical need to surround yourself with the right people, since we all have aspects of our skillset that we are not good at.

Thank you Nida for an awesome conversation. You generously offer advice and mentorship to others, and viewers/listeners will enjoy your fantastic insights!