2021 Corporate Partner Win

Global healthcare company Johnson & Johnson (J&J Mexico), in collaboration with the Brazilian social business Phomenta, became our most recent corporate partner when they selected PSYDEH as one of 16 Mexican nonprofits to participate in their 2021 Corporate Social Acceleration Program (Marathon).

The Marathon program

Phomenta works with J&J Mexico to recruit multidisciplinary J&J professionals wanting to create social impact with nonprofit leaders through a seven-week program of weekly virtual work sessions. Their methodology is immersion-focused where the J&J team is empowered to deliver a feasible solution to a PSYDEH business challenge via a deep dive into our organization, including our business and fieldwork strategies and complicated 2022 challenges.

How we collaborated

Three PSYDEH leaders (Andrea Muñiz, Hannah Swenson, and Damon Taylor) worked directly with seven professionals spread across J&J Mexico offices (Ana Isabel Tellez, José Manuel González, Lesly Robles, Liliana López, Mateo Cruz, and Silvia Saucedo), and this team’s J&J Global mentor (Ruby Castilla). We were guided through the Marathon cycle by Phomenta workshop facilitator Isabel Davila with backstop support from Flávia D’Angelo.

The team chose to present a solution to this urgent business challenge: how does PSYDEH attract and retain mutually beneficial alliances with private companies in Mexico wanting to partner with us as an organization and our nascent network of cooperatives led by Indigenous women.

At the end of the Marathon, the J&J Mexico team (1) delivered to PSYDEH what they call their Story selling playbook, an eight-step road map we can use to attract Mexican companies seeking alliances with Mexican non-profits like us and the Indigenous women leaders of cooperatives we’ll incubate in 2022-2024. We also cement and now strengthen (2) strong relationships with our J&J Mexico peers, as well as with Phomenta, on whom we know we can count when trying to implement the proposed solution to our wicked business challenge.

As Isabel Davila, Phomenta representative and Marathon facilitator, shares: “The most powerful thing about PSYDEH’s work is its ability to help women discover their own value and abilities to transform their lives and that of their community. The ability to realize a vision of oneself as a woman and a shared vision about the potential of the community is a very difficult task, but one that if achieved, is what is truly transformative and clearly, PSYDEH is succeeding very effectively in transforming the life of the community.”

Our partnership produces needed outcomes

Today more than ever, where the pandemic and climate change disproportionately hurt rural areas in Mexico and across the Global South, and Mexican civil society confronts a hostile funding climate, it is crucial that the private and public sectors join forces to help companies win while they help non-profits and their beneficiaries like PSYDEH’s majority Indigenous women partners win, including and especially creating a sustainable social and economic impact that reflects local women and community demands.

A corporate partner like J&J Mexico is key to PSYDEH’s resource stream diversification strategy explained generally in this Spanish-language article. These partnerships, including those that involve in-kind donations of professional services, come in many sizes and forms. If managed well, they can make an important impact on all stakeholders’ lives, not to mention help us to build more just communities and sustainable futures.

As Mateo Cruz, J&J LATAM representative, shares: “I consider the involvement of the private sector in empowering the social projects that organizations like PSYDEH do to be very important. Social responsibility is now an expectation of our consumers and as private sector companies we must and want to play a more active role in closing social gaps and empowering marginalized communities; empowering them and giving them the tools to progress. As an employee of a private sector company, it is very enriching to be able to participate in these projects, to broaden our vision, to contribute our professional experience, our passion and resources to give a “push” to these communities that need it so much.”

See this case study to learn more about how we make a measurable impact with our corporate partner J&J Mexico.

About Johnson & Johnson Mexico

Johnson & Johnson is a U.S. multinational manufacturer of medical devices, pharmaceuticals, personal care, fragrances, and baby products founded in 1886 with a strong presence in Mexico and other countries around the world.

About Phomenta

Phomenta is a Brazilian social business that links education and innovative management strategies when helping business professionals to solve the most complex societal challenges through the diagnosis and certification of NGOs, social acceleration, and corporate social acceleration activities.