Vivien Luk

Under Vivien’s leadership, WORK has grown from helping just five families in Haiti to now accompanying more than 700 such families towards the goal of financial independence with a programme that is scaling globally and seeing many former subsistence refuse collectors becoming entrepreneurs. In 2015, she created the Run Across Haiti, the country’s 200-mile foot race, which has raised over $1.5m to support WORK’s mission. “The run is one of our signature fundraising programmes. Kelsey was actually the first woman to have run across Haiti with us and the pilot group when we were figuring out whether or not we could really run across Haiti, and it was definitely quite an experience!”

Her principal motivation lies in her work, “I think what motivates me in this work is recognising how big of a challenge poverty presents to the world, and one that we have hardly even begun to solve,” she says. “But I really believe that we can solve it, and one way we can really make a difference is by promoting change in supply chains to give the people meaningful support, through jobs with dignity.” 

“Since the very, very beginning of our work I think we've been flexible enough not to stick with one methodology to solve the issues we face. I do subscribe to the lean impact model – think big, start small, and relentlessly seek impact. I also believe in servant leadership: I try my best to allow our team to do what they do best. We try to hire people who are good at specific pieces of the work we need to execute so that as a team, we can be expert in the field and continue to serve the people that we serve with as much resourcefulness, knowledge and humility as possible.”

When not working, as well as the love of running that she shares with Kelsey, Vivien enjoys eating. “The pandemic forced me to improve my cooking skills, and that has given me a lot of fun too.”

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