eBay Employee Lends Her Skills—and Gains a Fresh Perspective

Volunteering has always been part of eBay product manager Ruchi Sethi’s life. She freely gives her time to teach kids in underserved areas, collect donations and serve food to the homeless, and support various NGOs in her community. She even traveled to India to paint schools, and is now known to her friends as the “Queen of Volunteering.”

But Ruchi, an accomplished professional with more than 10 years of experience in operations, delivery management, and software quality testing, decided it was time to move from volunteering to “experteering”—sharing her professional skills to solve global challenges on a bigger scale.

Sponsored by the eBay Foundation, Ruchi joined MovingWorlds, a platform that connects professionals to social good organizations for real impact. Through the MovingWorlds guided matching process, Ruchi was connected with Awamaki, a community development nonprofit in Peru on a mission to lift communities out of poverty by investing in women. Awamaki works with rural and indigenous women and families to start their own small businesses, boosting their skills and leadership and connecting them to global markets, creating opportunities for a reliable source of income.

Ruchi traveled to Peru to help Awamaki improve their website, including helping them with strategies to increase search engine optimization, brainstorming more effective design and content approaches, and recommending a more intuitive user experience. She also helped connect the organization to the global marketplace, and guided them on how to maximize their impact from donations.

As much as Ruchi was giving to others, she was getting in return. She learned new skills and gained new cultural experiences that she has carried into her personal and professional life back in the Bay Area. Immersion in the Peruvian culture inspired Ruchi to study Spanish. During her trip, she also spent time with artisan groups connected with Awamaki, where she learned weaving and Peruvian cooking.

“Having the opportunity to spend time with the Quechua women in their communities was inspiring and connected me to Awamaki’s mission,” said Ruchi. “I learned a lot of new things, and also realized that life could be really happy even without a ton of material possessions and with no Internet.”

Ruchi returns to eBay with a fresh perspective and the confidence to lead positive internal change. She’s currently working on plans to leverage eBay’s infrastructure to support organizations like Awamaki by connecting them to a global marketplace to create even greater impact for all.