You Don’t Need Permission to Solve Problems

<div class="header alignfull header--article header--min-height-full has-background has-tonal-black-background-color"> <div class="header__layout"> <div class="header__content"> <div class="header__metadata"><div class="header__metas"><div class="header__meta header__meta--taxonomy header__meta--tax-category"> Blog Posts</div></div></div> <h1 class="header__title has-h2-variant">Archives</h1> <div class="header__metadata"><div class="header__metas"><div class="favorite-block"> <button class="favorite" data-id="223296" data-state="" title="Favorites are not currently available" disabled><span class="favorite__on">Unfavorite</span><span class="favorite__off">Favorite</span><svg class="svg svg--svg-assets-svg-icon-bookmark" role="img" height="15" width="11"><use xlink:href="#svg-assets-svg-icon-bookmark" /></svg></button></div> <div class="header__meta header__meta--date"> June 3, 2026</div> <div class="header__meta header__meta--taxonomy header__meta--tax-program_tax"> Business &amp; Society Program</div></div></div> </div> </div> <figure class="header__media" role="presentation"> <img decoding="async" src="https://www.aspeninstitute.org/wp-content/uploads/2026/06/GettyImages-2210664869-1920x1079.jpg" alt="" width="1920" height="1079" srcset="https://www.aspeninstitute.org/wp-content/uploads/2026/06/GettyImages-2210664869-1920x1079.jpg 1920w, https://www.aspeninstitute.org/wp-content/uploads/2026/06/GettyImages-2210664869-800x450.jpg 800w, https://www.aspeninstitute.org/wp-content/uploads/2026/06/GettyImages-2210664869-1500x843.jpg 1500w, https://www.aspeninstitute.org/wp-content/uploads/2026/06/GettyImages-2210664869-768x432.jpg 768w, https://www.aspeninstitute.org/wp-content/uploads/2026/06/GettyImages-2210664869-1536x863.jpg 1536w, https://www.aspeninstitute.org/wp-content/uploads/2026/06/GettyImages-2210664869-2048x1151.jpg 2048w, https://www.aspeninstitute.org/wp-content/uploads/2026/06/GettyImages-2210664869-1600x899.jpg 1600w, https://www.aspeninstitute.org/wp-content/uploads/2026/06/GettyImages-2210664869-1200x675.jpg 1200w, https://www.aspeninstitute.org/wp-content/uploads/2026/06/GettyImages-2210664869-1024x576.jpg 1024w, https://www.aspeninstitute.org/wp-content/uploads/2026/06/GettyImages-2210664869-300x169.jpg 300w" sizes="(max-width: 1920px) 100vw, 1920px" loading="eager" class="header__image" style="object-position: 53% 34%"> <span class="header__overlay" style="opacity: 1"></span> </figure> </div> <div class="wp-block-group alignfull is-style-contour-lines has-white-background-color has-background is-layout-constrained wp-block-group-is-layout-constrained" style="margin-top:0;margin-bottom:0;padding-top:var(--wp--preset--spacing--large);padding-bottom:var(--wp--preset--spacing--large)"> <div class="wp-block-columns alignwide is-layout-flex wp-container-core-columns-is-layout-28f84493 wp-block-columns-is-layout-flex"> <div class="wp-block-column is-layout-flow wp-block-column-is-layout-flow" style="flex-basis:33.33%"> <div class="person-card"> <div class="person-card__layout"> <figure class="person-card__headshot"> <img loading="lazy" decoding="async" width="300" height="251" src="https://www.aspeninstitute.org/wp-content/uploads/2026/06/IMG_5620-e1780325817535-300x251.jpg" class="attachment-mobile size-mobile" alt="" srcset="https://www.aspeninstitute.org/wp-content/uploads/2026/06/IMG_5620-e1780325817535-300x251.jpg 300w, https://www.aspeninstitute.org/wp-content/uploads/2026/06/IMG_5620-e1780325817535-800x670.jpg 800w, https://www.aspeninstitute.org/wp-content/uploads/2026/06/IMG_5620-e1780325817535-768x643.jpg 768w, https://www.aspeninstitute.org/wp-content/uploads/2026/06/IMG_5620-e1780325817535-806x675.jpg 806w, https://www.aspeninstitute.org/wp-content/uploads/2026/06/IMG_5620-e1780325817535-808x676.jpg 808w, https://www.aspeninstitute.org/wp-content/uploads/2026/06/IMG_5620-e1780325817535.jpg 853w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px" style="object-position: 50% 45%" /> </figure> <div class="person-card__info"> <h3 class="person-card__name"> <a href="https://www.linkedin.com/in/raena-saddler/" class="person-card__link" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer"> Raena Saddler </a> </h3> <p class="person-card__position"> Senior Director of Product for Risk &amp; AI, Meta </p> </div> </div> </div> </div> <div class="wp-block-column is-layout-flow wp-block-column-is-layout-flow" style="flex-basis:66.66%"> <p class="has-h4-variant"><em>Lessons in Leadership with Raena Saddler</em></p> <p class=""><em>Raena Saddler is a Senior Director of Product for Risk &amp; AI at Meta. She currently leads the AI transformation of Meta&#8217;s Risk organization, designing how the company&#8217;s risk and compliance systems operate in an AI-driven world.</em></p> <p class=""><em>Prior to this role, she led cross-company Youth initiatives for three years, and Product Equity and AI Fairness initiatives at Meta for two years, and was VP of Product &amp; Managing Director at Sheryl Sandberg’s Family Foundation, which runs Lean In. She is an </em><a href="https://www.aspeninstitute.org/programs/business-and-society-program/first-movers-fellowship/"><em>Aspen First Mover Fellow</em></a><em> and holds a Bachelor’s degree from Stanford University, and a Master’s degree from Harvard Divinity School in Religion, Ethics, &amp; Politics.</em></p> <hr class="wp-block-separator has-alpha-channel-opacity is-style-dots"/> <div class="wp-block-group is-content-justification-left is-layout-constrained wp-container-core-group-is-layout-12dd3699 wp-block-group-is-layout-constrained"> <p class="has-h6-variant">What early professional experience shaped&nbsp;your approach to leadership?&nbsp;&nbsp;</p> <p class="">Early on when I was working at Sheryl Sandberg’s foundation, I had a one-on-one conversation with her where I shared a list of things I thought could be improved at the org.&nbsp; After we had gone through the whole list together, she said to me: “Raena, I know your problem, and I’m going to completely change your mindset.” She told me about her time working at Google—how she would raise her hand, flag all these problems, and eventually a mentor pulled her aside and said, “This is helpful, but instead of just identifying the problems and bringing them to me to solve, could you actually just start solving these problems?”</p> <p class="">Sheryl challenged and empowered me to stop waiting for permission to solve problems. Her advice was to “start solving the problems like you run the business—because that’s how you find yourself running the business one day.” This is such important advice, and now I pass it on to people who come to me in one-on-ones with their list of problems for leadership to solve.</p> <p class="">There’s this idea that your agency sits in a contained box, but it can extend much farther if you don’t wait for formal authority. Formal empowerment can help, but this advice is always relevant.</p> </div> <div class="wp-block-group is-content-justification-left is-layout-constrained wp-container-core-group-is-layout-12dd3699 wp-block-group-is-layout-constrained"> <p class="has-h6-variant">What professional&nbsp;advice do&nbsp;you&nbsp;wish&nbsp;you’d&nbsp;received earlier&nbsp;in your career?&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;</p> <p class="">Let positive feedback land.</p> <p class="">For most of my career, I’ve been very focused on what’s broken and what needs fixing. It’s hard for me to sit in compliments. I’m constantly scanning for feedback about what could be better, and I tend to reject any positive input about myself on what’s going well already since it’s not actionable. A mentor of mine once said, “You audit every critical piece of feedback for accuracy and deeply internalize it, but you completely dismiss every compliment and don’t examine it. That’s not humility, you’ve got a distorted view of yourself.”</p> <p class="">That’s so right. If you only internalize the gaps and don’t internalize evidence of your strengths, you build a skewed picture of yourself. You will always feel behind, even if you’re ahead or on track. That mindset helps with problem solving, but it also leads to underestimating your strengths and what you bring to the table. I think this is especially common for women, people of color, and people who work in social impact. I’m learning the importance of letting positive feedback land and treating it with the same rigor as critical feedback. It helps you understand the power you have and wield it more responsibly instead of rejecting it.</p> </div> <div class="wp-block-group is-content-justification-left is-layout-constrained wp-container-core-group-is-layout-12dd3699 wp-block-group-is-layout-constrained"> <p class="has-h6-variant">What, in your experience, makes it possible for a person to lead with courage and conviction?</p> <p class="">First, it’s incredibly important to have a moral and ethical grounding—a compass pointing to true north. You need a very clear picture of what you’re trying to accomplish that you’re constantly calibrating against.</p> <p class="">Second, you need the ability to take yourself and your ego out of the picture. I see people across workplaces, working on the same thing, but optimizing for themselves: their position, their visibility, how it reflects on them. They might say they’re doing it for the outcome, but their judgment is clouded by ego.&nbsp; People who lead with courage and conviction do it continuously on behalf of a clear cause and impact. Their mission or goal is the work, not themselves in relation to it.</p> <p class="">One important caveat: sometimes—especially early in your career—you’re not in a position to take a moral stand. There are real risks and sometimes you just need to keep your job. In those cases, you need psychological safety to speak up without penalty. It might look like finding the person you can safely flag things to, or doing what you can within the constraints of your role. Courage and conviction require not just character, but the conditions for that character to manifest.</p> </div> <div class="wp-block-group is-content-justification-left is-layout-constrained wp-container-core-group-is-layout-12dd3699 wp-block-group-is-layout-constrained"> <p class="has-h6-variant">What professional accomplishment are you most proud of?</p> <p class="">I’m really proud of the project I worked on while I was a First Mover Fellow. I was a key contributor on the initial launch of <a href="https://about.fb.com/news/2024/09/instagram-teen-accounts/">Instagram Teen Accounts</a> in 2024 and continued building on this over 2025, leading the launch of <a href="https://about.fb.com/news/2025/10/instagram-teen-accounts-13-movie-ratings/">updated Teen Account content settings</a>, inspired by 13+ movie rating standards and designed to create a more age-appropriate experience for teens.</p> <p class="">I am proud of this not just as a mom, but because I care deeply about getting the content experience right for teens. It can be very hard to understand what your teen can see online. We wanted to simplify this for parents and make sure we were owning the right level of responsibility for what teens see on our platforms. Now, there is quantifiably less adult/18+ content reaching teens as a result of this work.</p> <p class="">I am also a big believer that the means are just as important as the ends. This project was a massive cross-company effort, with over a thousand people working on it over the course of a year, but we had so much fun along the way. We set a culture of supporting one another, pushing each other, and recognizing each other’s work. It’s the first project I led where, not only did it go really well internally and externally, but the people working on it felt really good about the experience throughout the journey.&nbsp;</p> </div> <div class="wp-block-group is-content-justification-left is-layout-constrained wp-container-core-group-is-layout-12dd3699 wp-block-group-is-layout-constrained"> <p class="has-h6-variant">How has your Aspen experience shaped your view of the world?&nbsp;</p> <p class="">Aspen came at exactly the right moment in my career and life. The Fellowship experience gave me space to pause and reflect on my leadership, and it was incredibly helpful to be connected to a network of people driving similar social impact work across corporate spaces. It was striking how similar our challenges were, despite different industries. Finding community with other Fellows made me feel less isolated in this work – I’ll lean on our Fellowship class (<a href="https://www.aspeninstitute.org/programs/business-and-society-program/2023-first-mover-fellows/">Tentpoles!</a>) forever.</p> <p class="">The Fellowship made me a more intentional and mindful leader. I brought small practices from the seminar into my workflow. I had thought about reflection and mindfulness as separate from work, but Aspen helped me integrate those practices into how I lead. It also gave me more structure, including frameworks, best practices, and ways of thinking about social impact and innovation that I could apply directly to my role.</p> <p class="">More broadly, it widened the aperture of how I see my work. Instead of being deep in my own company’s challenges, it helped me see that my work is part of a larger fabric of people trying to drive change. It was inspiring.</p> </div> <div class="wp-block-group is-content-justification-left is-layout-constrained wp-container-core-group-is-layout-29bcd8d4 wp-block-group-is-layout-constrained" style="padding-bottom:var(--wp--preset--spacing--small)"> <p class="has-h6-variant">What keeps you grounded?</p> <p class="">My family. I have three daughters and we start every single day together hanging out in my room with our dog. Unless I’m traveling, I start every day with them, and I tuck them in every night. It’s a very grounding practice. Not a day goes by where I don’t think about how lucky I am and how grateful I am to have a close and intentional family.</p> <p class="">Outside of family, I have close circles of friends who support me, encourage me, and make me laugh—especially when work gets intense. They help me not take things too seriously but also hold me accountable and grounded in the responsibility I do have to make impact in the world.</p> <hr class="wp-block-separator has-alpha-channel-opacity is-style-dots"/> <!-- Start Constant Contact Active Forms --> <h6 style="text-align: center;">SUBSCRIBE TO OUR MONTHLY NEWSLETTER: <br><em>The Business &#038; Society Inside View</em></h6> <p style="text-align: center;">Want more insights like these? <strong> Sign up</strong> to receive thought leadership and updates from the Business &amp; Society Program each month!</em></p> <div class="ctct-inline-form" data-form-id="c6f4dcdd-1a8c-4b98-b168-aef01bf80821" style="padding: 0 10%;"></div> <script> var _ctct_m = "bd512d0aaa0692b8f942a0754b25c12b"; </script> <script id="signupScript" src="//static.ctctcdn.com/js/signup-form-widget/current/signup-form-widget.min.js" async defer></script><!-- End Constant Contact Active Forms --> <br> <br> <br> </div> </div> </div> </div> <p>The post <a href="https://www.aspeninstitute.org/blog-posts/you-dont-need-permission-to-solve-the-problem/">You Don&#8217;t Need Permission to Solve Problems</a> appeared first on <a href="https://www.aspeninstitute.org">Aspen Institute</a>.</p>