One Mile Between Two Buildings

It takes exactly one mile to see how completely a system can fail.

In the early 2000s, I spent my time working at an orphanage in Alexandria, Romania.

To understand the children there, you have to understand the trauma of the system that created them. In 1966, the dictatorial regime passed Decree 770, forcing a massive population boom to build a labor force, while simultaneously starving the country to pay off foreign debt.

The tragic result? Hundreds of thousands of children abandoned to state run institutions. By the time I arrived, the legacy of that trauma was still everywhere.

Just one mile down the road from our orphanage was a local Baptist church. It was a beautiful, welcoming community to us Americans. They had a cook named Sora Doina (Sister Doina) who made us lunch and dinner every day with the warmest, most motherly love you could imagine.

But there was a glaring, invisible wall: The church had ZERO relationship with the orphanage in their own backyard.

Because of the deep cultural and systemic prejudices of the time, there was a quiet hostility toward the orphans. The church was rigid and proper. The orphan girls, on the other hand, had to look and act incredibly tough, often dressing like boys, just to protect themselves from predatory men who would wander into the facilities.

It was a broken system. And I could not stand it. So, I hatched a plan to force a collision.

We started bringing the girls to church on Sundays. It was awkward. It was uncomfortable. The cultures clashed. But then, on one particularly sweltering Sunday, it got so hot inside the building that one of the orphan girls passed out.

The church members rushed to her. They got her water. They showed her deep, human kindness.

I used that exact moment of empathy to point out that she had not just fainted from the heat. She was malnourished and hungry. The wall had cracked, and I pushed right through it.

I had already been building quiet relationships with the 18 to 30 year olds in the church's youth group. I went to the pastor and pitched an idea: What if we let the youth group host an evening of games, music, and dinner for the orphans right here in the church?

Sora Doina, with her massive heart, immediately volunteered to cook. The pastor agreed.

That one evening broke the ice completely. It forged a relationship between the church and the orphanage that was sustained for years after we left.

We talk a lot about disrupting systems in the startup world. But systems are not just code or capital. Systems are people. Sometimes, fixing a broken system does not require millions of dollars. Sometimes, it just requires the boldness to walk the one mile between two buildings, find the empathy in the room, and build a bridge.

That was my first real lesson in systemic change. And it is exactly how I approach building Pistachio Pay today.