“At a moment when the world can feel very heavy, whether it’s from conflict, inequality, or the growing pressure on so many of the communities that we care about, coming together to reflect on hope right now seems both urgent and necessary.”

With those words, Trickle Up President & CEO Lauren Hendricks opened our recent virtual conversation with Nicholas Kristof, two-time Pulitzer Prize–winning journalist and New York Times opinion columnist, about his new memoir, Chasing Hope: A Reporter’s Life, and what it means to hold onto hope in dark times.

From global poverty and conflict to women’s empowerment and the power of storytelling, their conversation offered a grounded but deeply hopeful view of where we are and where we can go from here.

Why Investing in Women and Girls Changes Everything

Kristof’s work has long focused on women and girls, not only out of outrage at injustice, but because the evidence shows that empowering women transforms entire societies.

On the “macro level,” he explained, years reporting in Asia pushed him to ask why East Asia experienced such rapid economic growth despite different national strategies. He came to believe that a key factor was that these countries “had really invested in human capital, and particularly in women and girls, and that enabled these educated women, in turn, to then participate in the economy in ways that enormously benefited their own children, and ultimately the whole society.”

Together, Kristof and Hendricks emphasized the transformative power of giving women economic opportunities and control over resources. As Kristof put it, “a ‘silver bullet’ is empowering women and giving them financial opportunities. It’s imperfect, but it helps, and educating young girls is also a large element of that.”

Hendricks underscored what Trickle Up sees repeatedly: “when women control resources in their household, one of the first things they invest in is educating their children and their daughters, because they know the impact that it can have in the long term.”

Progress Despite the Headlines

Kristof is known for his reporting on genocide, war, and atrocity, yet he insists he is not a pessimist. Part of his hope comes from recognizing our bias toward bad news.

“In journalism, we cover planes that crash, not planes that are landing,” he said. When that lens is turned on the Global South, without context, “people don’t really have a framework to understand, and they think that all planes are crashing.” Yet, the data shows a very different reality. Kristof pointed to the past decades of incredible progress against global poverty and deep reductions in child mortality.

That progress, he emphasized, is “painstaking, intermittent, and imperfect,” but very real. “We’ve made a lot of progress and can continue to do so if we just put our shoulder to the wheel.”

Stories, Empathy, and the Power to Care

A recurring theme of the conversation was how to move people from numbness to action in the face of so much suffering—something that had led Kristof to research social psychology and what makes us care. The answer, he said, comes down to two things: “One is about telling the story of an individual rather than focusing on entire populations in distress. And the other is about communicating to people that if we all engaged and if we all care about this issue, there can be a better outcome.”

That insight has shaped his writing, and it mirrors Trickle Up’s approach to storytelling, too. “Ever since then,” Kristof shared, “I’ve tried start a column with an individual story as a way of building a little bit of empathy and compassion and then generalizing it to the larger problem.”

Hendricks echoed the need to focus on our shared humanity: “There’s no mother who puts a hungry child to bed and it doesn’t hurt her heart. There’s no father who can’t buy the medicine his children need and doesn’t feel it impact his self-identity… at the heart, we’re all people, striving to make life better for ourselves and for our children.”

Savings, Agency, and the Everyday Power of Women’s Decisions

The conversation also highlighted practical, hopeful tools—like savings groups—that are changing lives in the communities where Trickle Up works. Kristof described how Village Savings and Loan Associations (VSLAs) and other micro-savings groups provide a safer, more reliable way to save and invest in regions where income is irregular and formal banking is out of reach.

He’s seen these groups spread organically: “if one village had a group, then the next village would see what’s going on over there, and they would copy it. I think that’s a tribute to a very smart program.”

Hendricks shared what women often tell Trickle Up teams: “Often, women will say, ‘this is the first time I’ve held $5 in my hand, and I get to make the decision about how we spend it.’”

That shift—from never handling money to making decisions about it—is deeply empowering. As Kristof said, once women start earning and saving, “it changes the dynamic in the family. Suddenly, women become partners and start making decisions for the household. It really does transform that dynamic.”

Hope Is a Muscle

Toward the end of the conversation, Hendricks shared a quote from Mariame Kaba: “Hope is a discipline… not wishful thinking, but the practice of imagining better and choosing to show up again and again to move the world forward,” and asked Kristof what that means in his own life.

“My thought, which I think is parallel to ‘hope is a discipline,’ is that hope is a muscle,” he responded. Even in extraordinarily difficult circumstances, Kristof has seen people hold onto hope. “We’ve gotten out of really difficult, terrible situations in the past, and if we work with others, we can improve our odds this time as well. Sure, it may not work, but we need to take a shot.”

As the event drew to a close, Kristof returned to Trickle Up’s role in this broader story of progress and possibility: “One of the things that gives me hope is the work of Trickle Up and other organizations that are using evidence-based ways to try to make this a better world.”

In a moment when despair can feel easier than hope, this conversation was a reminder that hope is about believing that each of our contributions matter and choosing again and again to do the work that makes better outcomes real.

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