How two former Judd Fellows are carrying out the legacy of a professor and changing the face of the international development industry one picture-based diary at a time.

It might not seem like a memorial website and a lakeside vacation could be related, but for Judd Fellow Alumni, Anna Martin and Sara Thompson, they were elements that set a life-changing business venture into motion.

Both Anna and Sara received Judd Fellowships as graduate students at the University of Minnesota, although with Anna studying social work and Sara studying public policy and graduating a year earlier, their paths didn’t cross. Another thing they had in common was that they both took courses with Dr. Helzi Noponen, a visiting professor at the Humphrey School of Public Affairs. The women found instant appreciation for Dr. Noponen, especially captivated by a methodology she created called the Internal Learning System (ILS).

The ILS system was centered around a picture-based diary that international development organizations could use to share curriculum without the need for translation or literacy training. Program participants answered prompts in the diaries using drawings and symbols, which were later translated into data. Anna spent her time as a Judd Fellow in India helping Dr. Noponen bring the system to other organizations.

Anna and Sara weren’t brought together until years after their graduations, following Dr. Noponen’s death in 2012. In the time after their dear professor passed away, Anna often thought about how she could continue the work she had helped establish in India, often discussing ideas with Katrina Mitchell, a classmate from the trip. Together the two spent hours brainstorming, never quite finding a way to bring their ideas into fruition.

Meanwhile, Sara was looking to make a career change. She’d spent the previous seven months living and working in Haiti—the same place she’d spent her time as a Judd Fellow years earlier—but after seeing the downfalls of the institution she was working with, she decided to move home.

That’s when the three women first connected through Dr. Noponen’s memorial website, realizing they were equally passionate about preserving her legacy and continuing her work. In 2014, the three women set a lunch date.

They hit it off immediately, with Sara making the snap decision to invite Anna and Katrina along on a family vacation to the North Shore in order to get to know them better. The two agreed.

Anna recalls the vacation as the moment she and Katrina found their missing link in Sara. The three then began talks of how to keep Noponen’s work alive.

“We all thought there was something really vital and really relevant about her work, as well as that we each have something to add to take it to the next level,” Anna said. “Her work is published in academic journals, but that’s not where practitioners look.”

“It was going to die with her,” Sara agreed. So with the blessing from Dr. Noponen’s family, the women set out to continue her work.

A Business Takes Off

The women had a strong idea of what they wanted to do with the diaries, but getting the idea off the ground was another challenge. The women contemplated making sample diaries, and applying for grants, but—much like the spur-of-the-moment North Shore vacation—they found themselves on another whim, this time applying for the 2015 Carlson School of Management’s MN Cup Start Up Competition the night before applications were due.

Their boldness paid off, and the women were named semifinalists. After that, things happened quickly: they were linked to a business mentor, created a business model, made the decision to become a for-profit company, got incorporated, and met an attorney specializing in intellectual property for startups. They named their company Picture Impact.

The next step was to find revenue, so they booked tickets to Washington D.C. to meet with potential clients. Again, things happened quickly, with the women signing a contract to create diary-based curriculum for Catholic Relief Services (CRS). Six weeks from the time they’d flown out to Washington D.C., the women were on a plane again, this time heading to Nigeria.

As soon as the plane touched down, the team got to work collecting data that would help them create the diaries. The first days were spent learning about CRS’s goals of increasing and diversifying the income of Nigerian families, in addition to promoting health and nutrition. Then the three set out with a translator for field visits.

The days of the field visits were a blur of meetings, picture-taking, questions, and scribbling notes. At night, they would sit in their hotel room making sense of what they experienced, typing page after page of observations.

 

During the early days of their business, the women experienced many things that made them uncomfortable, from requesting to meet with large companies to pitch the diaries, to landing in Nigeria without a perfect plan in place, to being the first Caucasian women some of the villagers had ever seen.

Another uncomfortable situation was leaving their jobs to make Picture Impact their full-time work. Each woman had previously owned her own consulting business, but when the contracts they signed with Catholic Relief Services demanded a full-time commitment, they made the leap.

Seeing the Impact

The next step for the women was to work with artists on designing their diaries, the planning of which was an art form in itself. The design must present curriculum in a way that is useable and quantitative, with each page doubling as a survey that can be coded to produce a set of numbers for the program to analyze.

While keeping in mind the need for data-driven design, the women also placed high value on designing diaries that community members could see themselves in. Each page of the diary tells stories and asks questions using hand-drawn images of the participants that are designed to be simple enough so that every user can see him or herself represented, but also specific enough to keep each group engaged.

The women understand that even the tiniest of intricacies can make a difference in how a diary is perceived, based on a story from Dr. Noponen in which an image showing a sari with an incorrect pattern convinced a village that the diary was not representing them, but in fact, their neighboring village.

When the participants can see themselves in the curriculum, the results can be incredible. Anna and Sara saw this for themselves as they watched a video of a caseworker describing the reaction of a woman who received a CRS booklet for the first time. 

Nigeria Video from Picture Impact on Vimeo.

“The woman said, ‘I can’t do this. I’ve never been to school.’ Then, after interacting with [the diary], she said, ‘I can do this. I can read this. My girls can learn!’” Anna recalls, noting that after receiving the booklets, the woman’s female grandchildren were enrolled in school.

The women heard similar sentiments from men in Nigeria who said they were sending their daughters to school, telling them, “No one has ever suggested that [our girls] could be capable in this way. They’re discovering that they can do it.”

Empowering females is something that is very important to Anna and Sara, especially when it is common for girls in northern Nigeria to be married as young as ten. Though the main focus of the CRS program was in diversifying income and promoting health, hearing that their diaries played a role in sending girls to school was enough to drive the women to tears; seeing parallels between their own work and Dr. Noponen’s made the experience even more special.

“It was really fun in our very first diary to go out and see those unintended consequences when you truly bring out someone’s capacity,” said Anna. “Helzi has got to be smiling.”

Today, after separate trips for testing and training, thousands of picture diaries are in use throughout Nigeria, with plans for 31,000 to be distributed by the end of August.

In the two years since launching Picture Impact, Sara, Anna, and Katrina have had the opportunity to watch Dr. Noponen’s idea and their hard work continue to make a positive impact on many lives firsthand. As they look to the future of their business, they are exploring other places to incorporate picture-based material: the group currently has twelve proposals out with different companies, is planning a picture-based instruction manual for a solar food dryer in Tanzania, and is in talks to create assessments for the orphan and vulnerable care movement.

Each woman also has a different focus for the future of their companies, with Anna hoping to become the primary consultant in the field, Katrina’s passion lying in research and design, and Sara’s eye for business focused on growing the company.

While focusing on the future of their company, both Anna and Sara remember what drove them to begin. For both women, the bottom line of Picture Impact is creating design with dignity, something Dr. Noponen strongly emphasized in her own work.

“Just because someone can’t read or write, [it doesn’t] mean they lack the capacity for critical thinking, for making strategic decisions in their life, for being the expert in their own life,” said Anna, recalling the lessons she learned from Dr. Noponen. “Remember to hold them as whole and capable.”

“We want people to have a sense of dignity and a sense of empowerment,” said Sara.

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You can help more graduate and professional degree students participate in career-changing experiences as a Judd Fellow, just like Anna and Sara, by making a gift to the Judd Fellowships.