The story of Priya Haji’s life is full of numbers. There are upsetting numbers, like 44–her age when she died earlier this month from a suspected pulmonary embolism. There are awe-inspiring numbers, like the 500,000 people (at least) in 70 countries served by her socially conscious startups. And there are tongue-in-cheek numbers, like 325,510, a rough estimate of the total voice mail messages she left family and friends–messages full of her warmth, optimism, insight, self-deprecating humor, and advice.
These and other numbers were projected onto a screen at a recent memorial service for Haji at the Haas School of Business at the University of California at Berkeley. As her friends and relatives, still stunned by the news, spent hours putting together the tribute, they wondered how they could do justice to such a prolific, pioneering, and dynamic entrepreneur and friend. Then they thought about what she would have done. They decided to apply the strategy that had served her so well in business: quantifying the impact of her work.
Casting a wider net to others friends and former colleagues, they amassed all sorts of data, some conventional, some not (such as hours of advice given, solicited or not), and created a PowerPoint presentation about Haji. It was inspiring, personal, and funny–pure Haji. “We were absolutely channeling Priya,” Jagadha Sivan, a former colleague and close friend, tells Co.Exist.
As a social entrepreneur, Haji was rare: a big dreamer with the pragmatism of a dutiful MBA. For her, the business ideas worth pursuing were those that changed people’s lives, in ways you could actually measure. Like SaveUp, a clever rewards-based financial app and her most recent company (she was CEO). In its first two years, SaveUp has helped Americans pay down $856 million of debt and increase savings by $1.2 billion.
Van Jones, another close friend and an accomplished social entrepreneur in his own right, told the Haas audience that Haji was “the best social entrepreneur of our generation.” Unlike most social entrepreneurs who are fortunate to start one successful organization, she started five. Unlike most who choose for-profit or not-for-profit organizations, she created both. And unlike those who focus on one issue, she tackled a remarkable breadth of problems: health care accessibility, third-world poverty, drug and alcohol addiction, and crippling debt.
“Priya was completely fearless about diving into something new and conquering it,” David Guendelman, a close friend and the CFO of SaveUp tells Co.Exist.
Haji began her career as a social entrepreneur at 16. She opened Health for All, a free health clinic in Bryan, Texas, a town of 78,000 between Austin and Houston, so that her father, a doctor, could see low-income patients. A sense of activism and social justice ran in the family, says Aleem Ahmed, a younger cousin and a fellow entrepreneur. Haji’s maternal grandfather had run a similar clinic in India. Her grandmother had marched with Mahatma Gandi. “All of this was in the air, around us,” says Ahmed. “Priya put her unique entrepreneurial twist on it.”