Igniting Innovation Summit 2011
Abby Fung
Senior Consultant
Root Cause Consulting
Andrew Yang
Founder
Venture for America
Casey Recupero
Executive Director
Year Up Boston
Cheryl Dorsey
President
Echoing Green
Chris Baker
Founder
OneSeed Expeditions
David Ager
Director of
Undergraduate Studies
Social Entrepreneurship
Lecturer
Harvard Sociology Dept.
David Gergen
Director
Center for Public Leadership
Senior Political Analyst
CNN
Debra Zimmerman
Executive Director
Women Make Movies
Elizabeth Garlow
Business Development
ACCION USA
Fabian Pfortmuller
Founder
Sandbox Network
Gordon Bloom
Founder
Social Entrepreneurship
Collaboratory at Stanford
Harvard & Princeton
Gus Schumacher
Executive Vice President
Wholesame Wave
Heidi Cuppari
Director of Investor Relations
International Development Enterprises
Jeff Church
Co-Founder & CEO
Nika Water Co.
Jessice Matthews
Julia Silverman
sOccket Inventors
Uncharted Play Founders
Jon Hall
Co-founder
Ivy Council
Social Enterprise
Jonah Lupton
Founder
Inspired Futures Fund
Josh Suskewicz
Principal
Innosight
Julie Idlet
Founder
CYCLE Kids
Kara Oehler
Co-Founder
MetaLAB@Harvard
Zeega
Kim Plewes
International Youth
Programming Coordinator
Free the Children
Laurie Parise
Founder
Youth Represent
Laura Menucci
Director of Outreach
RAW Art Works
Matt Stolhandske
Co-Founder
Director of Outreach
Sinapis Group
Nicholas Negroponte
Founder
One Laptop Per Child
Rebecca Kantar
Co-founder & CEO
Minga
Robert Pietrusko
Co-founder
MetaLAB@Harvard
Rachel Singh
Teaching Fellow
Boston Teacher Residency
Sean Palfrey
Professor of Pediatrics and Public Health
Boston University, Boston Medical Center
Stanley Pollack
Founder,
Executive Director
Center for Teen Empowerment
Tina Tan
Co-founder
Vertigrow
Vic Acosta
Executive Director
Back on my Feet
Zachary Hamed
Founder
Aid Aide
David Ager David Ager holds a Ph.D. in Organizational Behavior, a joint degree granted by Harvard Business School and the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences at Harvard University. Ager's research focuses on the leadership and organizational challenges that firms face as they conduct post-acquisition integration. His list of clients includes companies such as Mars, Inc., Rockefeller & Co., Inc., Caterpillar, and Morgan Stanley. His consulting activities include leadership development, strategic planning, talent management, change management, M&A, team building and succession planning. Ager currently teaches Organizational Leadership, Social Entrepreneurship and a tutorial in Sociological Theory at Harvard College.
Michael Zakaras Michael Zakaras is currently a student at Harvard's Kennedy School of Government, where he is pursuing a Master's in Public Policy. His areas of focus include social entrepreneurship, urban politics, and food policy. Prior to coming to Cambridge he worked with Ashoka for nearly five years, based in Washington D.C. and Central Europe, where he performed a variety of roles including searching for social entrepreneurs, communicating the work of Ashoka's Fellows, facilitating expansion into new regions, and development. He was born in Belgium and has worked in both the French and California wine industries.
Jeffrey Church Jeffrey Church is the cofounder of NIKA Water Company, a unique social entrepreneurial model that donates its profits in hopes of alleviating global poverty. After seeing the impacts of the global clean water crisis first-hand during a 2007 visit to Kenya, Church formed NIKA with business school classmate Mike Stone in March 2009. NIKA translates from Zulu as “to give.” Prior to cofounding NIKA, Church – CEO of Universal Building Products, a middle-market concrete forming and shoring company – purchased, built and sold several companies through his private equity firm, Autus Capital including Aztec Concrete Accessories, Lynx Professional Grills and Pool Tables.
Douglas Cohen Douglas Cohen is a sustainability catalyst who works with organizations and communities to envision triple bottom line prosperity and pursue their flourishing futures. His work takes advantage of his 20-year career as a strategic organizational change management consultant and leadership development specialist. Doug works closely with a community's sustainability vanguard — from government, business, civil society, and education — to create shared visions and pathways to implementation. Through his youth leadership development programs, the Inspired Futures Campaign, Doug helps nurture and equip young people to serve as sustainability-literate change agents and community builders. He is Chair of National Youth Initiatives for the US Partnership, through the UN/UNESCO Decade of Education for Sustainable Development.
Kathy Eldon Kathy Eldon has worked as a teacher journalist, author and film and television producer in England, Africa and the United States. She is the founder of the Creative Visions Foundation, a global organization that supports “creative activists”, to use their creative talents to change the world around them. Kathy is the author of 17 books, including "Angel Catcher", "Soul Catcher", and "Love Catcher" (Chronicle), a series of popular self guided journals written with her daughter Amy Eldon, which help people negotiate loss and grief, find their purpose and introduce more love in their lives.
Steve ButcherSteve Butcher, CEO of Brown Paper Tickets, created the Not-Just-For-Profit business model in 1999. Partner in Reclaim Media and Little Rae's Bakery, he enjoys startup companies and fixing flawed industries, especially when others think it's impossible.
Elana Rosen Elana Rosen has over 20 years experience in media and education. She was the co-founder of Just Think, as well as the US’s first national media education membership organization, the National Association for Media Literacy Education. In this capacity, she organized national leaders to author the Core Principles of Media Literacy Education. She received an Emmy nomination for the documentary, "Czeslaw Milosz: A Poet Remembers," and is the co-author of the media literacy education guidebook, "Changing the World through Media Education."
Gaurav RohatgiGaurav Rohatgi, Principal, Social Innovation, Design Continuum. Mr. Rohatgi brings strong capabilities in technology development and business innovation to the challenges of social enterprise. Gaurav helped found Continuum’s Social Innovation research group when he realized, like many of his colleagues, that those projects which sought to significantly improve people’s lives were his favorites. Gaurav is a key developer of Insulet’s Omnipod insulin management system which gives even elderly and pediatric patients access to pump therapy through unprecedented ease and price point. He’s consulted on the design and architecture of the $100 laptop which is bringing better education at a lower price point to millions of students. Gaurav’s latest interest is in driving innovations in food and eating that make the food system more equitable for the billions of people who can’t afford a diet that maintains wellness.
Erica Dhawan Erica Dhawan is a joint Harvard Kennedy School/MIT Sloan MPA/MBA candidate and MIT Legatum fellow 2010. Erica was the founder of Acumen Fund’s global chapter volunteer network. Now, as a social entrepreneur herself, she is currently incubating an organic fair trading company that sources directly from cooperatives and captures the excess supply of small-scale, multicrop farmers through appropriate mobile technologies and local processing innovations. Erica has also helped launch an Indian education social enterprise dedicated to bring innovative tools to schools in rural India. She started her career at Lehman Brothers and graduated from the Wharton School in Business & Public Policy.
Earl Phalen Earl Phalen is the CEO of Reach Out and Read and Founder of Summer Advantage USA. Reach Out and Read, promotes early literacy skill development of children ages 0-5; and Summer Advantage USA ensures the academic and social development of school-aged children, ages 5-14. ROR is in 4,300 health centers throughout the country and impacts the lives of 3.7 million children annually, and Summer Advantage is a start-up organization that will scale its program to children throughout the country. Phalen is a proven leader with a track record of success. He grew his former organization, BELL from a community service project educating 20 children to a national non-profit educating 15,000 scholars annually, and President Obama modeled federal legislation after his summer learning program. Phalen is a Mind Trust Fellow and Ashoka Fellow, and holds a B.A. from Yale University and a J.D. from Harvard Law School.
Bret CarrBret Carr, born in Peoria, IL and alumni to Southern Illinois University, currently manages the Boston office of Ashoka’s Youth Venture. While living in various parts of the world, he saw that there is one thing in common with youth everywhere; they are all passionate about what they do. He gained his first experience in youth social entrepreneurship in Tulear, Madagascar where he helped kids start up their own soccer leagues and fabricate soccer balls made of plastic bags and tape. His second experience in the field was in Prague, Czech Republic where he helped college students brainstorm ideas of positive governmental policy change, and write documents to outreach them to the English speaking world.
Amar Ashar Amar Ashar is the Program Coordinator at the Berkman Center for Internet & Society at Harvard University. He serves on the Board of Advisors for WZBC 90.3 FM, consults for the social entrepreneurship organization Sparkseed, and was a teaching assistant for the Virtual Worlds course at the Harvard Extension School. In 2009, he was a StartingBloc Fellow for social innovation. Amar graduated from Boston College in 2005.
Fabian Pfortmüller Fabian Pfortmüller is co-founder and chairman at Sandbox (www.sandbox-network.com). Sandbox is a global community of the most active young individuals between 20 and 30. Fabian has also co-founded Holstee, a NYC-based startup that creates positive impact through design (www.holstee.com) and Incubaker, a social innovation think tank (www.incubaker.com). Fabian is a fellow of the Royal Society of Arts and blogs at http://pforti.posterous.com/.
Sam Vaghar Sam Vaghar is the executive director of the Millenium Campus Network. At Brandeis, Sam started the student organization, Positive Foundations. Since then he has raised $5000 for the NGO Millennium Promise, made hundreds of phone calls to elected officials on anti-poverty legislation, and has raised awareness on the crisis of extreme poverty. As the 2007-2008 Executive Director of the MCN, Sam worked closely with several students in facilitating organizational development and a successful inaugural conference, while also meeting notable advocates, including President Bill Clinton and Dr. Paul Farmer.
Rithesh Menon Rithesh Menon handles communications and marketing strategy for StartingBloc. Previously he worked in Corporate & Investments Tax Advisory at Deloitte LLP and KPMG LLP. He has also been involved with grassroots marketing and fund raising efforts for various organizations in the non-profit sector. When he isn't thinking of more ways in which StartingBloc can change the world, he enjoys traveling and reading. Rithesh graduated from Temple University, Philadelphia with a degree in Economics and is a New York 2009 StartingBloc Fellow.
Arshad Merchant Arshad Merchant is a Director at Wellspring Consulting. Drawing on over thirteen years in consulting, he brings substantial experience in strategy, strategic planning, competitive analysis, benchmarking, survey design and analysis, organizational assessment, operational improvement, and implementation planning. Arshad has been with Wellspring Consulting for six years, during which time he has worked with clients in philanthropy, youth development, higher education, advocacy, arts and culture, human services and other fields.
Laure "Voop" de VulpillieresLaure "Voop" de Vulpillieres, head of TightShip Consulting, is a leading authority on organizational effectiveness. Her interest in the field began at Harvard, where she studied organizational effectiveness first as an undergraduate, later as a researcher, and currently as a Masters student at the Harvard Kennedy School of Government.
Matthew LeeMatthew Lee, Doctoral Candidate in Management at Harvard Business School. His research focuses on social entrepreneurship, corporate social responsibility, and the management of hybrid organizations. He is a Teaching Fellow in Sociology at Harvard College. Previously, Matthew was a non-profit strategy consultant at The Bridgespan Group in Boston and New York. He has also held positions at the Center for Strategic and International Studies and the U.S. Department of State in Malaysia, where he worked and studied on a Fulbright Award.
Back on My Feet provides a 6-9 month program to individuals living in homeless facilities, using job training opportunities, education, and dedication to running as a means of building community and self-sufficiency.
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In exchange for a three-year commitment to Boston Public Schools, the Boston Teacher Residency gives college graduates the opportunity to spend an entire year in a public school classroom and to earn a master's degree in education.
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The Center for Teen Empowerment uses the Teen Empowerment Model to inspire problem-solving among young people and encourage them to create positive change within their communities. Each of the Center's four sites hires young people as organizers to hire other youth and establish other initiatives that address serious issues.
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CityStep is a unique organization run entirely by undergraduates that introduces public school youth to the performing arts as an outlet for creative self-expression, a tool for building self-esteem, and a means to mutual understanding.
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CYCLEKids uses the bicycle as an instrument for 4th and 5th grade students to exercise and engage in both physical and literacy activity. Participants of the program learn bike-skills-based lessons that instill a love for physical activity, build an understanding of healthy eating and play, gain confidence and meet mentors who further instill these positive teachings.
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d.light serves households without reliable electricity by replacing kerosene lanterns, allowing them to attain the same quality of life as those with access to electricity. d.light aspires to have improved the quality of life of 50 million people by the end of 2015.
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Echoing Green provides start-up capital and technical assistance to social entrepreneurs and offers a strong network of support to leaders in the field.
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Free the Children works to alleviate poverty and exploitation among children through educating and empowering young people in both developing and developed countries. The organization's Adopt a Village development model provides education, health care, and income sources to rural communities.
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Guayaki partners with farming communities in the South American Atlantic Rainforests, which harvest organic yerba mate and generate renewable income streams that enable these communities to improve their lives and restore their lands. Guayaki aims to restore 200,000 acres of rainforest and create over 1,000 living wage jobs by 2020.
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Harlem Children's Zone aims to holistically rebuild the Harlem community by providing parenting workshops, educational programs, and health services free of charge to families. The organization, which operates three charter schools, has expanded its network of programs to nearly 100 blocks of Harlem.
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For more then 10 years, iCater has been delivering tasty and nutritious meals to non-profit institutions, schools and other organizations. 100% of the proceeds from iCater fund Pine Street’s food service training program. This program advances the work-life skills of homeless men and women, enabling them to move toward self-sufficient lives and gain tangible skills that aide them in that effort.
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Innosight is a boutique consulting, training, and investment firm that works with Fortune 500 companies, startups, non-profits, and national governments to improve their ability to create innovation-driven growth. Our unique methodologies and proprietary tools facilitate the discovery of new, high-growth markets and the rapid creation of breakthrough products and services that maximize resonance with customers while minimizing competitive threats. Our end-to-end, highly differentiated approach converts the quest for innovation and growth into a predictable and reliable process.
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International Development Enterprises creates income opportunities for the rural poor by providing irrigation technologies, creating supply and market chains, and promoting rural marketing.
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The Inspired Futures Social Impact Venture Fund invests in emerging socially responsible companies in the Boston area, providing social entrepreneurs with funding, office space, advising, and a variety of resources that encourage growth and revenue.
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KIPP, the Knowledge is Power Program, is a network of college-preparatory charter schools across the United States. KIPP schools strive to establish a strong culture of achievement through building partnerships among parents, students, and teachers; hiring outstanding educators; and increasing time in school.
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Maa-Bara is a closed-loop agricultural model that produces healthy fish and vegetables in areas with limited arable land. The organization has successfully established the model in the Niger Delta, bringing jobs and food security to hundreds in the area.
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metaLAB@Harvard is an experimental research unit hosted at the Berkman Center for Internet and Society dedicated to innovation in the arts, media and humanities. The lab is founded on the belief that some of the key research challenges and opportunities of the new millennium, not to mention crucial questions about experience in a connected world, about the boundaries of culture and nature, about democracy and social justice, transcend divisions between the arts, humanities and sciences; between the academy, industry, and the public sphere; between theoretical and applied knowledge.
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Minga is the only nonprofit dedicated to fighting the global child sex trade by harnessing the power of teens. In the Quechua language, Minga means “the coming together of a community for the betterment of all," reflected their uniting of teens to fight the commercial sexual exploitation of children.
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NIKA donates 100% of the profits from the sale of its bottled water to supporting clean water projects in impoverished countries. In addition, NIKA invests in carbon offsetting programs and has developed a unique recycling program in which the organization pays high schools nationwide a small fee for each plastic bottle that the school collects and recycles.
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OneSeed expeditions partners with travelers and local communities to ensure that tourism revenue goes directly to guides, porters, and local entrepreneurs. In addition, the organization invests 10 cents of every dollar through the OneSeed Fund into microfinance initiatives that provide start-up capital to women entrepreneurs.
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OLPC aims to provide each child in the developing world with a rugged, low-cost, low-power, connected laptop. To this end, OLPC has designed hardware, content and software for collaborative and self-empowered learning. With access to this type of tool, children are engaged in their own education and are able to learn and create together.
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Partners in Health has developed a community-based model of care to treat health problems in poor settings that involves access to primary health care; free health care and education for the poor; community partnerships; development of the public sector; and alleviation of poverty. Partners in Health has brought its approach to twelve countries across the globe.
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Project Rural Irrigation System for Ekumdipe, one of Ghana's northern rural regions, aims to help Ekumdipe overcome poverty by providing its citizens with a rural irrigation system to overcome idleness during the unproductive dry season and improve income.
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Project Yele was created in 2007 to improve the living conditions of the citizens of Yele, Sierra Leone, by establishing a community bazaar and by developing a hydro electric power plant. Project Yele intends to enhance business opportunities for small industry in the area and expand rural electrification across Africa.
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Over 20 years ago RAW started to place paint brushes into the hands of kids. RAW's team of art therapists began by traveling throughout Massachusetts creating art with incarcerated youth. In 1994 we opened RAW Space in Lynn to help more youth and to prevent more incarceration by creating a safe, supportive environment within their community. Since then, RAW has used the power of the arts to inspire thousands of young artists to tell their stories, envision new possibilities, and transform their lives.
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Sandbox incubates the most exceptional young achievers between 20 and 30 by providing them with a trusted environment to grow and ultimately have more impact. We select, connect and support young people who make things happen in a global community.
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Sinapis provides aspiring social entrepreneurs in the developing world with consulting and mentoring services, access to seed capital, and a Christ-centered business education. The organization focuses specifically on Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs) in their earliest stages, typically when these ventures are still merely ideas.
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The sOccket is a cutting-edge alternative energy solution: it's a mini-generator in the form of a soccer ball! The device was designed for use in developing communities where electricity is often inaccessible. When kids play with the sOccket, an internal mechanism captures energy from the movement of the ball. This power is stored and can be used later to charge critical accessories like a reading lamp, water purifier, or cell phone. The sOccket provides families in need with immediate access to an energy source that is clean, simple, portable, and, of course, fun.n order to bring the sOccket from the drawing board to reality, Julia and Jessica launched Uncharted Play, Inc., which has allowed the two recent Harvard grads to transform the sOccket project from an exercise in innovative design into a full-fledged social enterprise that serves those in need around the globe.
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The Solar-Powered Autoclave harnesses the power of the sun into a device that allows nurses in underprivileged communities to quickly and efficiently sanitize medical equipment for re-use. These portable devices provide for higher quality medical care and lower chances of infection, regardless of a community's access to electricity.
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Supply Change is a fair-trade organic fruit company that uses fruit that would otherwise be wasted, processing it into high-value, high-quality products to provide income for farmers and nutritious food for consumers. The organization connects Paraguay's small-scale farmers, enabling them to participate in trade and business decisions.
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VertiGrow is a vertical farming device that allows families to grow their own nutritious food on the sides of their homes, walls, or roofs, and is designed to conserve water, reinforce unstable house structures, and maximize growing space. The technology addresses two global problems: rapid urbanization and malnutrition. It improves the health and agency of people in slums and crowded urban areas around the world, while cultivating community empowerment and entrepreneurship.
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The Water Innovations Alliance is an industry association focused on developing new funding, increasing collaboration and raising awareness for cutting-edge water technologies and the problems they solve.The Alliance serves the entire spectrum of the water sector: corporations, investors, engineering firms, start-ups, NGOs, research centers, municipalities, and others in the field.
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The mission of Wholesome Wave is to empower historically excluded urban and rural communities to make better food choices by increasing access to and affordability of fresh, locally grown food. Their partnership-based initiatives, such as the Double Value Coupon Program (DVCP) and the Fruit & Vegetable Prescription Program (FVRx), demonstrate and support the viability of healthy food commerce and its ability to rebuild our nation’s food system.
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Women Make Movies is a non-profit media arts organization that facilitates the production, promotion, distribution and exhibition of independent films and videotapes by and about women. The organization places a special emphasis on supporting the work of women of color.
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Year Up is a one-year, intensive training program that provides urban young adults 18-24, with a unique combination of technical and professional skills, college credits, an educational stipend and corporate internship.
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yogaHOPE is a non-profit organization dedicated to establishing rehabilitative yoga programs in residential facilities for underserved women in substance abuse recovery, poor and homeless women, and victims of domestic violence.
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Youth Represent provides legal representation, education, policy advocacy, and community support to youth ages 24 and under who have been affected by the criminal justice system.
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Zeega will enable anyone to create participatory projects that combine original content with photos, videos, text, audio and maps via APIs from across the web. Our mission is not only to give voice to individuals, but to create a platform that empowers individuals to give voice to others.
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