Apr 1, 2020
My guest this week is Sasibai
Kimis, the founder and director of Earth Heir.
Sasi founded Earth Heir in 2013 as a social business focusing on
luxury craftsmanship and showcasing the skills and traditions of
craftspeople. She has a background in investment banking, private
equity, nonprofit development agencies, mining, finance,
sustainable development, corporate responsibility and microfinance.
She’s also lived in eight countries and four continents. She is so
passionate about environmental sustainability, eco-tech, and
traveling. It was so cool using technology to speak with Sasi
across the world where she lives in Malaysia. Join me to hear more
about how Sasi is using her faith and knowledge to run a business
with purpose.
6:50 - The Sasi 101
- Sasi was born in Malaysia, but her
grandfather came to Malaysia from India. Sasi spent time in the US,
UK, West Africa, and Europe when studying abroad. When she was
almost 30-years-old, Sasi decided to return home to
Malaysia.
- In the summers, Sasi would return
to India. It was so different from what she was accustomed to, and
she was struck by how much poverty she saw there. In Malaysia, most
basic needs were met, unlike what she saw in India. From a young
age, she gained an understanding that there are many worlds out
there that she had no idea about.
- The idea grew for Sasi that people
who are poor need money, and she should work to earn a lot of money
to donate to people in need. She worked at a bank and made great
money, but quickly became disillusioned when the people around her
didn’t care about what was happening in the world. Most of them
were only focused on making more and more money for
themselves.
- Sasi quit her job when she
realized that while money is a means to an end, its focus should be
supporting people who are going to go out and make a difference.
Sasi wanted to better understand why poverty exists, so she studied
environment and development, gender, microfinance, and more in
graduate school.
- Sasi also worked in Ghana for two
years with the UN and an NGO. She saw the NGO doing a lot of good
work, but funding started to be cut as the country became more
developed. She and her colleagues questioned how their work
supporting orphans of the HIV/AIDs crisis would be able to continue
without proper funding.
- Sasi thought of a way to both make
money and continue to do good, so that they didn’t have to rely on
the donations or grants that had started to wane. It was the seed
of social entrepreneurship in her life.
12:30 – The Wake Up
Call
- When she returned to Malaysia,
Sasi started working in finance again. One night on her way home,
she fell asleep at the wheel. Luckily, she didn’t crash, but it was
a wake-up call for her. She told God that she didn’t want to die
for a job. If she died tomorrow, she wanted to know that her life
meant something and that she could leave a legacy that she was
proud of.
- Sasi’s focus until that point had
been about building up a shiny CV. She decided to take some time
off so that she could figure out how to give God the best of
herself; as much as she had given to her career and education. She
quit her job and joined Youth with a Mission in Hawaii, learning
about the bible and building her relationship with God.
- When her teamed moved from Hawaii
to Cambodia, they started work teaching English and building
houses. Sasi met many families who were struggling; mothers who’d
lost children to traffickers and children who’d been rescued from
trafficking.
- Sasi decided to support those
families by purchasing from weavers and selling their products to
her family. She also met with an impact investor,
Dr. Kim Tan, a few months later. Dr.
Tan told Sasi that if she really wanted to help the women, it
couldn’t just be her side gig. It had to be her full-time
business.
- She was nowhere near ready to
start her own business but asked God to help her use her skills and
passions in a business capacity to help the local women. Soon
after, she started Earth Heir. The name comes from Genesis 2:15,
when God tells Adam to be a good steward of what God has given
him.
- As Christians, we are called to be
good stewards of the environment, animals, people. Sasi believes
that Christians should be at the forefront of ecological
conservation. The Earth Heir logo includes a fern from Ghana. The
fern’s name translates to “God with us.”
- Sasi’s dad was both her biggest
supporter and biggest critic. At first, he was disappointed that
she’d quit her job with all of her education and skills. In the
beginning, she was selling scarves, and he felt like she might be
wasting her talent. After six or seven years of running Earth Heir,
the company is successful at standing up for conscious consumption,
safe factory conditions, and how to do good through
business.
- Earth Heir (20:03) is an
artisan-focused social enterprise that works with refugees and
indigenous tribes and rural women to make ethical
fashion.
- Some people and businesses are
beginning to realize that “business as usual” should be business as
a force for good. We still have a long way to go, but there’s also
been so much progress made toward this change. (You can hear more
about this on
Episode 170 where Molly shares how her
belief in God fuels her passion for how Christians can be at the
forefront of the ethical fashion).
26:27 – Led by God
- Sasi’s mom was raised in a
Christian family in India, and her dad was raised in a Hindu
family. When her parents got married, her dad professed his faith
in Christ. Sasi grew up in a traditional Christian home but admits
her motivation for church attendance was meeting cute
boys.
- When Sasi was 17, she was born
again and felt the Holy Spirit in her life. She was going through a
difficult time after living an independent life away at school, and
then coming home to live with her parents. She was even suicidal at
one point. She prayed that God would take her. It was during this
time that she felt God’s presence in an unexplainable, very
tangible way, and everything changed.
- She realized God is more real than
anything she knew. When she felt that for herself and started her
new journey as a Christian, her decisions became led by God, not
just her own idea of what she thought she wanted and needed in
life.
33:33 – Where to find Earth
Heir
35:27 – Getting to Know Our
Guest
- Find out what food Sasi would eat
if she could only eat one thing for the rest of her life, something
you’d never guess about her, and something that’s important to her
but she rarely gets to talk about. Sasi’s answer to what it means
to her to run a business with purpose will inspire you no matter
what season of life you’re in.
Memorable Quotes:
8:30 - “I think early on I became
introduced to this idea hat the world is not what I see and what I
know, and that there’s another world, and many different worlds out
there that I have no idea about.”
9:20 - “The little that I thought
that I have is a luxury to so many people.”
13:17 - “As much as I grew up as a
Christian, I accepted Christ as my Savior, I was really living my
life to build a great CV.”
13:42 – “For the first time
in my life I actually thought, ‘Why is it that I don’t give to God
the best of myself the way that I do to my career and education?’
“
19:44 ‘It shouldn’t be that we do
business as usual, make a lot of money and just donate that money,
we should seek to change how we do business itself.”
25:03 “It’s something that we can’t
pretend to do, but not be applying those things in everyday
decisions that we make, in our beliefs and how we vote.”