Societal challenges like climate change, quality education and inequities, among others, loom large in today's world, affecting billions of lives. These issues are complex, interconnected and multifaceted spanning across communities, regions, and even continents. The sheer scale of these challenges is daunting, and no single entity ' whether the government, a non-governmental organization (NGO) or a community group ' can hope to solve them alone. Achieving equitable outcomes ' and not just for some, but for all ' will require collective action and shared leadership. We recently had a unique opportunity to be in a week-long course on 'Leadership for Systems Change' at the Harvard Kennedy School with 34 other wonderful social change leaders from the Schwab Foundation for Social Innovation community. The discussions were rich and thought-provoking, covering concepts of power, authority and leadership, innovation, scaling, systems change, diagnosing problems before jumping to solutions, and various roles ' agitator, innovator, orchestrator ' one ought to take to become an effective change-maker....

A lot has happened since Dev Ittycheria took the reins at MongoDB, the $26 billion database company he's led as president and CEO since September 2014. Ittycheria has taken MongoDB to the cloud, steered it through an IPO, overseen its transition from open source, launched a venture capital arm, and grown the customer base from a few hundred to something approaching 50,000. 'When I joined the company, it wasn't clear if people would trust us to be a truly mission-critical technology,' Ittycheria told TechCrunch. 'When I joined, it was doing roughly $30 million in revenue; now we're doing close to $2 billion.' It hasn't all been peaches and cream, though. Five months ago, MongoDB was hit by a security breach, which, while relatively contained, did momentarily risk its reputation in an industry where reputation is paramount. Throw into the mix the whirlwind AI revolution that has engulfed just about every industry, and there was much to discuss when TechCrunch sat down with Ittycheria at MongoDB's new London office, which opened in Blackfriars last year....

Taylor Swift's music, and music from all artists signed to Universal Music Group, was pulled from TikTok when the two parties were unable to come to a renewed licensing agreement. UMG published a scathing press release accusing TikTok of trying to 'bully' the label into accepting a deal worth less than its previous one. UMG framed its refusal to come to a deal with TikTok as a means of standing up for emerging artists. 'How did [TikTok] try to intimidate us' By selectively removing the music of certain of our developing artists, while keeping on the platform our audience-driving global stars,' UMG wrote. 'TikTok's tactics are obvious: use its platform power to hurt vulnerable artists and try to intimidate us into conceding to a bad deal that undervalues music and shortchanges artists and songwriters as well as their fans.' UMG also represents superstars like Billie Eilish, BTS, Ariana Grande and Olivia Rodrigo, but Swift is in a unique position. After contractual disputes of her own, Swift has been re-recording her old albums to reclaim ownership of the songs. Her 'Taylor's Version' recordings are back on TikTok, but songs from records like 'Reputation,' which doesn't yet have a 'Taylor's Version,' are still absent from the platform....

Four members of a conservation group focused on big cats who were jailed in Iran six years ago were pardoned on 7 April as part of a mass amnesty of prisoners ahead of Eid holidays at the end of the fasting month of Ramadan. The group includes Niloufar Bayani, a conservation scientist and former consultant with the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) and biologist Houman Jokar, who were both released yesterday. The other two, released today are ecologist Taher Ghadirian and Sepideh Kashani, an administrator with the Persian Wildlife Heritage Foundation (PWHF), a non-governmental organization (NGO) in Tehran. All four were arrested in January 2018 alongside five other conservationists; none of the nine now remains in prison. 'I am incredibly happy for them. We have all greatly suffered from the injustice that was done to us,' says Morad Tahbaz, a businessman and conservationist with US-British'Iranian citizenship who was one of the nine but was released last September as part of a US'Iranian prisoner swap. UNEP also welcomed the release in a statement....