“Elena’s candor is a gift that rare leaders are willing to bestow. Change-maker’s Handbook is brilliantly written using real-life examples to guide us on how to achieve positive change at a time when the world needs to alter so many negative patterns of behavior.”

— MARIA ATKINSON AM, Director. Investor. Sustainability advisor.

Impact Table podcast with Elena

In conversation with Marssie Versola, Elena shares her impact journey, illustrating it with candid reflection and stories from childhood and professional experience. Hear about purpose, leadership, ego, self-care, cultural differences, and Change-maker’s Handbook.

Change-maker’s Handbook is for you if you recognize possibilities others miss; if you see an alternative but utterly plausible reality where today’s problems cease to exist. It is also for you if you have wondered whether your inability to stay in your lane means there’s got to be something wrong with you or if you can’t help fixing problems you did not cause. And it is for you if you have wondered why you seem, time and again, to choose the path less traveled – and perhaps concluded that you like discovering something nobody else has. You may have felt yourself a misfit, been pegged as a troublemaker, or been honored as a mover-and-shaker. As long as you feel personally responsible for making the world a better place, you are a change-maker even if you don’t think your impact warrants the title (and many of you don’t). That makes you the world’s most precious resource, and it makes Change-maker’s Handbook your comprehensive guide for creating impact.

Change-maker’s Handbook is a tell-all from a prolific change-maker who has been honing her craft though research and practice across two decades and six continents. Through Change-maker’s Handbook, Elena Bondareva presents a never-before revealed roadmap to impact; a roadmap that – co-narrated by many who have traversed it – demarcates all major junctures and obstacles, so that your vision can succeed in remaking the world for the better.

As candid and actionable as it is ground-breaking in its insight, Change-maker’s Handbook is a must-have for emerging and experienced change-makers alike.

A glowing Kirkus Review

“Comprehensive, rigorous, and friendly”

“The author presents familiar concepts in fresh ways | She also provides useful exercises, strategies, and tips for everything from preparing financials and presentations to gauging impact and managing stress relief | The author’s style is clear and direct, using simple analogies, examples, and occasional charts and diagrams to explain potentially difficult concepts. Her passion for her subject is obvious as she frankly presents the challenges of trying to change the status quo while also encouraging readers to overcome such obstacles.”

Why did I write this book?

Extract from Change-maker’s Handbook

There is no shortage of business books. However, they assume that commercial or political success is enough when for us, it is not.  Few acknowledge our need for positive impact. Furthermore, most are written by people who cast themselves as unassailable experts despite coming from a perspective of myopic privilege and lived experience that most of us cannot respect or relate to.  Moreover, what these experts have celebrated as business excellence is precisely what created the problems that we are on borrowed time to solve. Yet they have not owned up to this, so we don’t trust them.  

There is also no shortage of books on social and environmental causes.  However, while resonating with our passion, they tend to pit us against the mainstream we strive to influence. 

Increasingly, there are also books that speak to the heart of change-makers.  They guide us towards self-knowledge, self-acceptance, and vulnerability.  However, most result in what feels like a sugar high because they do nothing for our entrepreneurship skills or the vital savvy of seeing around the corner.  We may crash harder for having read them. Read more…

Let’s make some good change together!