10 Years, 10 Lessons: COVID-19, Or The Greatest Gift We Never Wanted
READ TIME: 6 mins
In March of 2020, we finally felt ready.
After three years of experimentation, JUST had a real office, a growing team, and a clear operational plan. We understood the JETA model well enough to believe it could scale. We had momentum, confidence, and a roadmap.
Then the world shut down.
There is no playbook for community organizing during a pandemic — especially not when your entire model is built around in-person human connection.
But we were faced with the first major test of core values. We had three at the time:
Action: We learn by doing.
Community: Solutions, openness, and consistency.
Trust: We believe trust is earned and a two-way street.
So we took action that supported the community and reinforced trust. We loaned $472,000 to 472 of our entrepreneurs ($1,000 each). All of these emergency loans were funded in one week, right at the start of the pandemic.
We knew that for many, the 1st of the month means bills due. And we assumed the pandemic would only last a week or two… This was my second rude awakening.
LESSON 5: The product was never the point. People, not products, create transformation.
The Strength of Community
In the midst of the hardest moment many of us have ever experienced, something extraordinary happened.
Without being told or given an answer, our community adapted.
Women who ran nail salons started delivering press-on nails to homes. Entrepreneurs who cooked food out of their kitchens expanded delivery networks overnight. Hair stylists cut hair in garages and backyards.
People found ways forward.
But the moment I’ll never forget involved one of our JETAs.
A woman in our community had no support system. She struggled to read and write, which made applying for benefits nearly impossible — she was isolated, scared, and running out of food.
Another JETA—who herself had two young children at home during the height of COVID uncertainty—wanted to help and decided to deliver groceries to her friend, despite the risk.
That moment stays with me, not because it was heroic — though it was — but because it made it undeniably clear that the strongest part of JUST wasn’t our financial product, it was the community itself.
Though at the time, I still didn’t fully understand that.
"The strongest part of JUST wasn't our financial product. It was the community itself."
Drifting Away From Ourselves
Like many organizations during COVID, we were in survival mode. And survival mode has a way of exposing what you truly believe.
At first, our decisions seemed logical: Emergency loans worked. People repaid. Our savings circle pilot showed promise.
So we started to think:
Maybe the financial product was the thing creating transformation. Maybe we could grow even faster by expanding access to money itself.
At the same time, we had begun rebuilding our technology platform. We refined our brand positioning, we explored new products, and we considered extending our work beyond entrepreneurs and into companies.
From the outside, it probably looked innovative. Inside, it felt like chaos.
Everything felt urgent. Every idea seemed important. Every experiment needed to happen immediately. We lacked the operating rhythms to slow down, reflect, and decide intentionally.
So my answer became simple: Do more.
More experiments.
More products.
More urgency.
This created more stress and often less joy. The antithesis of what we wanted to build.
That was my failure as a leader.
The Moment I Knew We Were Drifting
One day, someone on our team suggested we refinance our clients’ bad debt.
The logic made sense: debt is expensive, we could offer a better product, and we could help people save money.
And immediately, I knew it was wrong. But I couldn’t explain why. That was the scary part.
I had instincts. I had values. But I lacked the language and clarity to lead decisively.
At the time, we hadn’t formally defined our Point of View—the deeply held beliefs that shape how an organization sees the world and makes decisions.
So instead, we drifted.
We offered pauses. Then refinances. Then, more financial experiments.
Each decision made sense individually. But collectively, they slowly moved us away from the thing that made JUST different in the first place.
What I failed to appreciate was the discipline built into microcredit itself.
Weekly repayments matter — not because repayment is the goal, but because consistent rhythms force people to engage with their finances regularly. Structure creates awareness. Awareness creates agency.
But without this clarity, we treated the product — the money — as the source of transformation.
We didn’t know what we had. We thought we were scaling financial products when in reality, we were fostering the environment for change.
And that distinction was not yet stated.
"Egda didn't need JUST to rescue her. She needed encouragement, information, belief, and community."
Were We Actually Different?
Around this time, Kevin Starr from Mulago Foundation said something that hit me hard:
“Oh, it’s a better mousetrap.”
And internally, I remember thinking: “F*ck. He is right. I just bet my life on building a little less shitty mousetrap.”
That fear made me sad — and motivated to do something about it.
Was JUST really different?
Or were we just a slightly different version of an inadequate system?
Three years later, 60 Decibels conducted an independent evaluation of our work. They returned a Net Promoter Score of 96.
Ninety-six.
It was one of the first moments I thought, “Maybe this actually is fundamentally different.”
But even then, I still felt we were drifting away from our original purpose. The real insight came later through someone named Egda.
Egda Changed How I Saw Potential
At the time, we had started experimenting with homeownership programming.
We didn’t have mortgage products, bank partnerships, or a sophisticated strategy.
We simply connected our clients, shared basic information about homeownership, and created space for conversation.
That was it.
Egda attended one of those sessions. Through the process, she realized her income wasn’t high enough to qualify for a traditional mortgage. So she got a second job.
Not because we told her to. Not because we designed a product for her. Not because we gave her a loan.
She decided to do it.
Later, I heard she had bought a home. Honestly, I assumed it was a mobile home — an accessible asset, but not one that builds wealth.
I was wrong.
She bought a house. An appreciating asset.
That moment fundamentally changed my understanding of our work.
Egda didn’t need JUST to ‘rescue’ her. What she needed was encouragement, information, belief, and community. She needed an environment that helped her see new possibilities.
That’s when it finally clicked for me: The JETA wasn’t a feature of the model. She was the model.
Kevin was right. We were building something better. But it wasn’t a trap, and our clients weren't mice. Instead, we were forming new mindsets –all of us, me included – to envision a world of possibilities.
The Tool: Making Culture Explicit
As the pandemic eased, we were fortunate to begin working with Stand Together Foundation and their Principle-Based Management (PBM) coaches.
It deepened and provided more nuance to my thinking about how we leverage our vision for better decision-making.
Up until then, we had values. We had a mission. We had a vision — but we lacked a shared philosophy for decision-making.
PBM helped us operationalize our culture to build the human scaffolding for good growth. It was like television going from black-and-white to Technicolor.
We clarified JUST’s three Capabilities (this is what we are good at) that define JUST:
Building resilient communities
Developing leaders
Unlocking financial resources to build wealth
That last Capability crystallized our Vision — not debt management, not financial transactions, but building wealth.
We also developed our Points of View — the beliefs that shape how we interpret the world and guide decisions.
And finally, we built what we now call our Vision Dimension — a framework that helps us decide not only what to do, but what NOT to do.
That clarity changed me. I realized I was the cause of our chaos. The intentions were noble, but I was failing as a leader.
Because the pandemic taught us something we desperately needed to learn: Culture cannot remain implicit once complexity arrives.
I now see with clarity; culture is a system. We measure it and commit to improving it.
You can go deeper on Principle-Based Management resources through Stand Together Foundation here.
What Came Next
Today, I see the work differently.
Early on, I thought JUST’s value was helping people access money. Now I believe our real work is fostering environments where trust, leadership, and human potential can emerge.
Money matters. But money alone does not create transformation.
People do.
And sometimes the greatest gift you never wanted is the one that forces you to confront yourself and finally define who you are.
Next in the series: how we learned that technology is not the solution—it’s an amplifier of clarity.
