How Plan USA’s new CEO aims to put girls in charge

Growing up in western Massachusetts, Shanna Marzilli knew few women who ran boardrooms and led multinational organizations. As a first-generation college student herself, she didn’t necessarily have nearby role models she could emulate. So it wasn’t always easy to want to chart a new path for herself. “I think I have the experience a lot of young women have, which is, you know, being put down a little bit if you're ambitious, if you had big goals for yourself,” Marzilli told Devex in a recent interview. Marzilli persevered and built a strong career in the private sector and in the world of nonprofits. She became a leader. And last month, she reached the top, after Plan International USA, an NGO focused on youth and gender equality, announced her as their new president and CEO. Marzilli knows the power of having people who look like you in positions of power and leadership, something she wants to make a reality for girls around the world. “I barely knew any women who were college graduates, and when I got exposed to these different ideas, and these opportunities, it has made me want to be able to work on that at a larger scale,” she said. While there has been some progress for women in some parts of the world, those opportunities are not available for everyone. “We know, in humanitarian situations, girls are often left behind and at greater risk.” --— Shanna Marzilli, president and CEO, Plan International USA “Look at what's happened after COVID[-19], with young women around the world, really impacting their education, and, you know, more early forced marriages, and I think these are just incredibly important issues to work on,” Marzilli said. Focus on youth The new Plan USA CEO said her organization will double down on what she described as girls-centered, youth-led approaches to how they deliver on their mission of gender equality, especially for young people. Marzilli said that she aims to lean more into the Plan’s youth advisory board in all types of business questions and issues throughout the organization. Plan already has a seat on its main board with full voting rights reserved for a young person. “I want to continue to see us leading with young people, and listening to what they have to say, and treating them as equals at the table,” Marzilli told Devex. Global uncertainty Marzilli takes over Plan USA at a time of deep uncertainty and convulsions in global development. Economies everywhere are struggling under the weight of high inflation and high-interest rates. Governments are scaling back their aid budgets and debates over how to shift the running of development to local leadership dominate conversations around the future of aid. On funding, Marzilli said she was looking to grow private sources of revenue and its relationship with the U.S. government. “It's been exciting to see the U.S. government, the work from the White House Gender Policy Council, around gender equality, the attention that that's getting, and that's a space that we think we can deliver a lot of value, and also a lot of impact,” she said. Marzilli acknowledged that the economic slowdown and the rise in the cost of living have affected fundraising. “A dollar doesn't go as far today as it did yesterday and that is not only from a programming perspective but also with donors’ pocketbooks. And we have seen some challenges in that area, particularly over the last couple of months,” she said. Marzilli pointed to a recent report from the Fundraising Effectiveness Project which showed that despite a rise in total dollars spent toward aid, the number of individual donors continues to decline. “That's a challenge for us and a lot of other organizations,” she said. “One of the things that we saw with interest was the decline in funding to international development organizations.” “Changing power, and the way we work is always hard, and acknowledging that, then we actually start to get to the root of the issues.” --— Shanna Marzilli Marzilli said having a diversified approach to fundraising could mitigate such uncertainty, especially in the small market of individual giving. “While recessions can be difficult for individual giving,” she said, “sometimes the stock market really drives how the higher end of that major giving market works.” Marzilli also said that donors have been understanding about the rising costs of delivering projects in the context of high inflation and devalued currencies. “We've found donors to be very open to those conversations because they're experiencing those things in their own life. I think our goal is to really be transparent and to share as much information as we can in those conversations with donors,” she said. Proponent of localization Marzilli said that when looking at the issue of localization, the idea that development should be driven by local leaders, she starts with a question of what development is about. “What is it that we're trying to accomplish? We are trying to accomplish [moving] power where it belongs, local voices and whose voices need to be there and in need to be leading,” she said. For Plan, that means thinking about localization through the lens of adolescent girls and women and young people, she said. Asked why localization has been a challenge for the development sector to realize more quickly, Marzilli said that it’s about power. “Changing power, and the way we work is always hard, and acknowledging that, then we actually start to get to the root of the issues,” she said. “Putting targets out there, and really being ambitious about it, I think we'll push ourselves further.” Marzilli comes into the CEO role after temporarily occupying the position for seven months prior to assuming the job of chief operating officer in April 2022, a position she held before becoming a permanent CEO this year. During her time as the interim CEO, she oversaw a $200 million fundraising campaign for girl-led programs focused on girls’ equality. She is now leading the completion of that fundraising, the organization said when it announced her appointment. One project that puts girls in the lead is the GirlEngage program that started in Zimbabwe, “where girls are involved in every stage of program development from the conception and design to implementation and monitoring,” she said. The project went on to get its first USAID funding in Niger. Plan implemented several of those programs with the U.S. government and also worked to bring private funding to those projects. This mix of funding is something Marzilli wants to build on as CEO. “I see even more opportunity to bring not only aid from the American people, as it were from USAID and the U.S. government, but the funding from American people who really support girls' rights,” she said. Marzilli expects Plan to have a greater focus on humanitarian assistance in the future. “We have just seen the proliferation of humanitarian crises, whether it's famine and hunger crisis, or in Ukraine, and we know, in humanitarian situations, girls are often left behind and at greater risk,” she said. Marzilli said that she saw being CEO of Plan as a great opportunity for her and a responsibility to show that women can lead and make a difference. “We have a lot of young people who want to work in this field and make a lot of impact,” she said. “We need to do better, we need to do more, and we need to do it faster. And that's my goal here.” Update, Feb. 13, 2023: This story has been updated to clarify that Plan’s first GirlEngage project was in Zimbabwe, while its first USAID-funded GirlEngage project was in Niger.