Social Enterprise Conference: Engaging Customers and Clients in Social Change
October 4, 2013 | 8:00 AM–7:00 PM
Columbia University’s Alfred Lerner Hall, 2920 Broadway at 115th Street, New York, 10027
Society will never change unless we collectively want it to. Social entrepreneurs may have great visions for transforming the world, but little can be accomplished without energizing and motivating those on the receiving end of change efforts: the clients and customers of social enterprises. While lessons can be learned from marketers and social media practitioners, there are unique challenges in adapting these ideas to solving social and environmental problems. Organizations ranging from multinational corporations to social venture startups need to grapple with questions such as:
- What is the best way to compel customers to consider the social footprints of their purchases and leverage the power of the individual for social good?
- How can grassroots ideas and engagement translate into action to create a movement?
- How do you create demand for and deliver socially useful products and services that benefit underserved communities and the environment?
By uniting industry experts, thought leaders and practitioners, the 2013 Social Enterprise Conference will delve deeper into the ways leaders and managers can use innovative strategies to maximize social change.
About
The annual Social Enterprise Conference at Columbia Business School brings together thought leaders from across private, nonprofit, public, and academic sectors to share best practices, debate critical issues, and collaborate on innovative concepts to inspire change. Through interactive sessions, keynote speakers, workshops, a pitch competition, and networking opportunities, the conference presents guests with the opportunity to partake in the most important business and societal conversation of this new era. Tweet about the event by following @ColumbiaSEconf or by using #ColumbiaSEconf.
Spark Workshops
Spark provides Social Innovators with an opportunity to explore resources, connections and potential solutions to help their social ventures, by tapping the collective knowledge within Columbia University, and the larger entrepreneurial and social impact community in the New York area and beyond.
The Social Enterprise Conference is proud to be featuring Spark Workshops as a fifth conference track for the first time.
Agenda
7:30 – 8:00 | Registration and Breakfast | ||||
8:00 –8:15 | Opening Remarks by Professors Ray Fisman and Bruce Usher, co-directors, Social Enterprise Program, Columbia Business School | ||||
8:15 – 9:15 | Keynote I: How can you inspire others to join you in creating change? | ||||
Creating Engaged Customers | Social Media & Film | Reaching Mass Markets | Communities Taking Action | Spark Workshop | |
9:30 – 10:40 | Driving Adoption of Green Energy | The Secret to Viral Campaigns | Designing for Two Billion | Development: For Communities, by Stakeholders | Spark Workshop- Crowdfunding for Social Innovation |
10:50 – 11:50 | Keynote II: Insights from (RED) campaigns, sponsored by Wells Fargo | ||||
11:50 – 1:00 | Networking and Lunch | ||||
Creating Engaged Customers | Social Media & Film | Reaching Mass Markets | Communities Taking Action | Spark Workshop | |
1:00 – 2:10 | Overcoming Barriers to Corporate Change | Educating Young Minds through Media | Frontiers of Mobile Technology: Platforms and Big Data | Organizations for Change: How to Motivate Action | Spark Workshop- Crowdfunding for Frontier Innovations |
2:20 – 3:30 | Food Systems: Shake the Hand that Feeds You | Storytelling through Film | Impact Investing in Action; Where Would You Put Your Money? | Be the Change: Mobilizing Grassroot Movements | Spark Workshop- Frontier Markets and Scaling |
3:30 – 3:45 | Coffee Break | ||||
3:45 – 4:45 | Film Screening: WHAM! BAM! ISLAM! | Social Venture Pitch Competition | |||
5:00 – 6:00 | Keynote III: Changing Culture, Attitudes and Perspectives through the Arts | ||||
6:00 – 7:00 | Cocktails and Networking Reception, sponsored by HP | ||||
Keynote I: How can you inspire others to join you in creating change?
Jeremy Heimans and Charles Best are proven social movement makers. Whether it’s a successful campaign run by schoolchildren in Brazil to prevent their local public school from closing or the creation of global aggregation platform AVAZZ.org, individuals are becoming increasingly adept at creating social change. Jeremy focused on the tactical aspects of becoming an effective movement builder, encouraging the audience to think long term about their goals, deliberately construct a message that will allow for adaptation as goals evolve, and to create “stories with a purpose.” Charles Best used his organization, DonorsChoose.org, as an example of a successful social enterprise built through the efforts of individuals. DonorsChoose.org allows teachers to crowdfund the finances necessary for purchasing the supplies needed for their classroom or teaching project. Through the work of individual students, the organization was able to get itself off the ground and raise its first $30k in donations. Since then, there have been over 1 million “citizen donors” providing almost $200 million in funds for schools.
Charles Best, Founder & CEO of DonorsChoose.org
Jeremy Heimans, Co-Founder and CEO of Purpose
Moderated by Rachel Sklar, Co-founder of Change the Ratio and TheLi.st
Opening Remarks: Professors Ray Fisman and Bruce Usher, co-directors, Social Enterprise Program, Columbia Business School.
Bios
Charles Best leads DonorsChoose.org, a nonprofit organization which provides a simple way to address educational inequity. At DonorsChoose.org, public school teachers create classroom project requests and donors can pick the projects they want to support. Mr. Best launched the organization in 2000 out of a Bronx public high school where he taught history. DonorsChoose.org is one of Oprah Winfrey’s “ultimate favorite things” and was named by Fast Company as one of the “50 Most Innovative Companies in the World,” the first time a charity has received this recognition. For three years, Fortune Magazine has named Charles to its “40 under 40 hottest rising stars in business.”
Jeremy Heimans is co-founder and CEO of Purpose, a home for building 21st century movements and ventures that use the power of participation to change the world. Since its launch in 2009, Purpose has launched several major new organizations including All Out, a 1.5 million-strong LGBT rights group, built the world’s first open-source global activism platform, and advised institutions like the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, the ACLU and Google. Mr. Heimans has been building movements since the age of 8 when, as a child activist in his native Australia, he ran media campaigns and lobbied leaders on issues like children’s rights and nuclear non-proliferation. In 2004, Mr. Heimans dropped out of Oxford to co-found a campaign group in the U.S. presidential elections that used crowd-funding to help a group of women whose loved ones were in Iraq hire a private jet to follow Vice-President Dick Cheney on his campaign stops, in what became known as the “Chasing Cheney” tour. The following year he co-founded GetUp, an Australian political organization and internationally recognized social movement phenomenon that today has more members than all of Australia’s political parties combined. In 2007, Jeremy co-founded Avaaz, the world’s largest online citizens’ movement, now with more than 20 million members. In 2011, Mr. Heimans received the Ford Foundation’s 75th Anniversary Visionary Award for his work as a movement pioneer and the World Economic Forum named him a Young Global Leader. In 2012, Fast Company ranked him 11th on their annual list of the 100 Most Creative People in Business. The World e-Government Forum has named him as one of the top ten people who is changing the world of politics and the internet. His work has been profiled in publications like The Economist and The New York Times. Mr. Heimans began his career with the strategy consultants McKinsey & Company and he has degrees from Harvard University and the University of Sydney. He lives in New York. Mr. Heimans been a keynote speaker at venues such as the World Economic Forum at Davos, the RSA, Chatham House, the United Nations, Blair House, TEDx, The Economist Big Rethink, The Guardian Activate, Social Media Week and the Business Innovation Factory.
Rachel Sklar is a writer and social entrepreneur based in New York. She is the co-founder of Change The Ratio, which increases visibility and opportunity for women in tech & new media, and TheLi.st (supported by theKnight Foundation). A former lawyer who writes about media, politics, culture & technology, she was a founding editor at Mediaite and the Huffington Post. She has written things on trees (e.g. New York Times, Chicago Tribune, Financial Times, National Post, Glamour, Elle) and online (e.g. The Daily Beast, Mother Jones, Politico, Mashable) and she speaks widely at conferences, events and on TV. She is also the co-host of “The Salon” on The Jewish Channel (check local listings!). Occasionally, she sings. Ms. Sklar is a TechStars mentor and an advisor to several startups, including Vox Media, The Daily Muse, Lover.ly, Votizen &TeachAIDS.org, and is a proud Board member at She’s The First. She is also a proud member of the Reboot, TED & Summit communities and of the Lean In Foundation launch team. Rachel’s other initiatives include founding Charitini, a social enterprise to facilitate group giving around events, and CTRComedy – an all-women comedy initiative which quadrupled the number of women performing comedy at SXSW in 2011 and 2012. Ms. Sklar was named to the Silicon Alley 100 in 2009, 2010 and 2011, FastCompany’s “League of Extraordinary Women,” Forbes’ “Women Changing The World,” JWA’s “Making Trouble, Making History” award and has earned numerous honors and awards for her writing and her activism. In 2013 she & TheLi.st were profiled by the New York Times.
Professor Ray Fisman, Lambert Family Professor of Social Enterprise and director of the Social Enterprise Program, received his PhD in Business Economics at Harvard University. He worked as a consultant in the Africa Division of the World Bank before joining Columbia Business School in 1999. His research covers a range of topics, including the impact of corporate social responsibility, the determinants of altruism and global corruption. His work has been published in leading economics journals, including the American Economic Review, Journal of Political Economy, and Quarterly Journal of Economics and has been covered widely in the popular press, from Maureen Dowd’s column in the New York Times to al Jazeera to the Shanghai Daily. He also writes a monthly column for the online magazine Slate, where he’s tackled issues including teacher evaluation in public schools, women and leadership, and the economics of civil war. Professor Fisman’s first book, Economic Gangsters: Violence, Corruption, and the Poverty of Nations (coauthored with Edward Miguel), was published by Princeton University Press, and he is currently working on a book about the economics of office life, to be published by Twelve in 2012. He has taught nonprofit governance in an Executive Education program for leaders in the arts and teaches the Private Sector and International Development and Managerial Economics courses for EMBA and MBA students.
Bruce Usher is The Lise Strickler ’86 and Mark Gallogly ’86 Faculty Director of the Social Enterprise Program at Columbia Business School where he teaches MBA students on the intersection of finance, social and environmental issues. He is also Chairman of Persistent Energy Partners, an impact investment firm dedicated to financing clean energy businesses in Africa, with offices in the US, Ghana and Tanzania. From 2002 to 2009, Usher was CEO of EcoSecurities Group plc, during which time he built it into the world’s largest carbon credit company. Usher led EcoSecurities through an IPO, a secondary public placement and strategic investment, and the sale of the entire company to JP Morgan in December 2009. EcoSecurities developed more than 400 projects in 36 countries, representing approximately 10% of all projects approved by the United Nations under the Kyoto Protocol. Prior to EcoSecurities, Usher was co-founder and CEO of TreasuryConnect LLC, which provided electronic trading solutions to banks and was acquired in 2001. Prior to that, he worked in financial services for fifteen years in New York and Tokyo. He is on the Board of Community Energy, a US solar project development company, and the United Nations Fund for International Partnerships. He earned an MBA with distinction from Harvard Business School. Areas of Interest: social enterprise, climate change, renewable energy, international development and impact investing.
Driving Adoption of Green Energy
Session Track: Creating Engaged Customers
As sustainable energy technologies become more abundant and affordable, startups like MPOWERD need to look ahead to confront the challenge of customer adoption. MPOWERD is the creator of the innovative Luci solar lantern and continues to develop consumer products that use clean energy, with a social vision of solving energy poverty issues in the developing world. In this workshop, participants will explore some of MPOWERD’s existing and prototype products with the founders of the company and explore ways to drive consumer adoption in both developed and developing markets.
Jacques-Philippe Piverger, CEO, MPOWERD
John Salzinger, Senior Director of Business Development & Co-founder of MPOWERD
Moderator: Bruce Usher, The Lise Strickler ’86 and Mark Gallogly ’86 Faculty Director; Executive-in-Residence at Columbia Business School
Bios
Jacques-Philippe Piverger is the CEO & Co-founder of MPOWERD. He previously founded Soleil Global and was a Director at PineBridge Investments. Mr. Piverger serves as a Team Member on the Council on Foreign Relations and as a Young Global Leader in the World Economic Forum. He obtained his BS from Georgetown University and his MBA at Dartmouth’s Tuck School of Business.
John Salzinger is the Senior Director of Business Development & Co-founder of MPOWERD. Prior to his role with MPOWERD, Mr. Salzinger was an Executive Producer at AP Digital, founded EVO Platinum Processing, and was a Director of Sales at Gopogo. He is alum of Ithaca College and Hofstra University.
Bruce Usher is the Lise Strickler ’86 and Mark Gallogly ’86 Faculty Director of the Social Enterprise Program at Columbia Business School where he teaches MBA students on the intersection of finance, social and environmental issues. He is also Chairman of Persistent Energy Partners, an impact investment firm dedicated to financing clean energy businesses in Africa, with offices in the US, Ghana and Tanzania. From 2002 to 2009, Usher was CEO of EcoSecurities Group plc, during which time he built it into the world’s largest carbon credit company. Usher led EcoSecurities through an IPO, a secondary public placement and strategic investment, and the sale of the entire company to JP Morgan in December 2009. EcoSecurities developed more than 400 projects in 36 countries, representing approximately 10% of all projects approved by the United Nations under the Kyoto Protocol. Prior to EcoSecurities, Usher was co-founder and CEO of TreasuryConnect LLC, which provided electronic trading solutions to banks and was acquired in 2001. Prior to that, he worked in financial services for fifteen years in New York and Tokyo. He is on the Board of Community Energy, a US solar project development company, and the United Nations Fund for International Partnerships. He earned an MBA with distinction from Harvard Business School. Areas of Interest: social enterprise, climate change, renewable energy, international development and impact investing.
The Secret to Viral Campaigns
Session Track: Social Media & Film
Getting mass attention for a social cause or issue can be the critical element to making an impact. Social media has made it easier than ever to relay content to broad audiences as long as you can catch their attention. What are the creative ways that successful marketers have attracted attention to their causes and capitalized on the resulting momentum? How can we creatively attract attention and capitalize on momentum? How can we develop campaign ideas to garner attention? Is there a case for generating ideas so outrageous that they might just work?
Jimmy Soni, Managing Editor, Huffington Post
Grant Garrison, Strategy Director, GOOD/Corps
Bios
Jimmy Soni rose the ranks at the Huffington Post after being handpicked by Arianna Huffington to manage a 400-person staff at the age of 26. One year later, Mr. Soni is now a Managing Editor at the Huffington Post and a published author.
Grant Garrison is a Co-Founder and Director at GOOD/Corps, GOOD’s social innovation consultancy. Drawing upon experience in philanthropy, community organizing, the nonprofit sector, movement-building, marketing and social innovation, Mr. Garrison helps client “intrapreneurs” across sectors identify opportunities for transformational leadership that leverage core competencies. Together with the multi-disciplinary team at GOOD/Corps, Mr. Garrison develops partnerships that involve research-driven program design, public engagement, collective impact, and just about whatever else is required to realize a compelling vision for accelerating social impact. Grant has led initiatives with Dick’s Sporting Goods, Pepsi, Starbucks, 100Kin10/The Carnegie Corporation of New York, Origins, The Nature Conservancy, Girl Scouts of the USA, Aquafina, and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. Prior to joining GOOD/Corps, Mr. Garrison served as a Program Officer for the Rockefeller Brothers Fund and a consultant to diverse independent sector organizations.
Designing for Two Billion
Session Track: Reaching Mass Markets
Two billion people live on less than US$2.50 per day. How do you apply creative ideas and methods to design products for Base of the Pyramid (BoP) customers? Interactive product ideation will highlight the perspective of design strategy firms and BoP product start-ups.
Ed Chan-Lizardo, Chief Development & Partnerships Officer, KickStart International
Donnel Baird ’13, Founder, BlocPower
Manmeet Kaur ’12, Executive Director & Founder, CityHealthWorks
Connie Lewin, Strategic Partnerships & Marketing Director, Global, Sustainable Health Enterprises (SHE)
Moderator: Natalie Foley, Vice-president & Chief Operating Officer, Peer Insight
Bios
Edward (Ed) Chan-Lizardo is currently the Chief Development & Partnerships Officer for KickStart International, responsible for global fundraising and partnerships. In December 2011, Mr. Chan-Lizardo relocated back to the U.S. after five years as KickStart’s Chief Operating Officer in Nairobi, Kenya. During his tenure as COO, he increased impacts by over 140%. He was responsible for the day-to-day operations of KickStart’s programs, which included product/ innovations development, institutional partnerships, smallholder farmer outreach & education and sustainable supply chain development. Prior to KickStart, Mr. Chan-Lizardo worked in the private sector. He held various management positions in technology companies including Handspring, a Smartphone manufacturer acquired by Palm, where he was Director of Asia-Pacific & Latin America. Mr. Chan-Lizardo was also a management consultant at Coopers & Lybrand Consulting. He has an MBA from the University of Michigan, a MS from Stanford University and a BS from Virginia Tech both in Mechanical Engineering. He is a graduate of INSEAD’s Social Entrepreneurship Programme.
Donnel Baird is the founder of BlocPower, a startup that markets and finances the installation of energy efficiency and renewable energy technologies in religious institutions, small businesses and nonprofits in underserved communities. Individual and institutional impact investors are connected to solar and energy efficiency project finance opportunities via BlocPower’s online platform. Mr. Baird spent three years as a community organizer in Brooklyn and one year as a voter contact director for Obama For America. Mr. Baird managed a national Change to Win campaign to leverage Dept. of Energy energy efficiency stimulus financing to create green construction jobs for out of work populations. He partnered with the Washington Interfaith Network to generate a $100m government energy efficiency investment in underserved communities in the District of Columbia. Mr. Baird’s team negotiated similarly successful agreements in Portland, Milwaukee, and New York. Mr. Baird is an Open Society Foundation/ Echoing Green Fellow and a recent graduate of Columbia Business School, where he was a Board of Overseers Fellow, a member of the Student Leadership Board and Ethics Board, and a recipient of investment from the Eugene F. Lang Fund for Entrepreneurial Initiative.
Manmeet Kaur (pronounced “mun-meeth kawr”), founder and executive director of City Health Works, has been a champion for healthier communities and equitable livelihoods for the past 10 years. She has worked in New York City to improve the working conditions of “unregulated” workers, in India to stabilize the chaotic lives of construction day laborers at a social enterprise called LabourNet, and in South Africa to help HIV- postive individuals build their own health food business with Mamelani Projects. Before launching City Health Works, Ms. Kaur was an advisor to the Earth Institute’s strategy on the retention and financing of community health workers in the Millennium Villages Project, which has contributed to the One Million Community Health Worker Campaign across Sub-Saharan Africa. In launching City Health Works, Ms. Kaur saw the potential for reverse innovation from lower cost community health systems across the world applied to domestic health. Ms. Kaur incubated City Health Works while completing an MBA at Columbia with the goal of creating an organization that harnesses the power of community members to create jobs and improve health in New York City. She also has BA in History/Anthropology from Barnard College, where she was selected as a Third Millennium Human Rights fellow. She was born and raised in New York City and lives in Harlem with her husband and son.
Connie Lewin is the Strategic Partnerships and Marketing Director, Global for Sustainable Health Enterprises, or SHE. SHE is a social venture that invests in people and ideas that are typically overlooked (and often taboo) as vehicles of socio-economic change. Their first initiative, SHE28, addresses girls’ and women’s lack of access to affordable menstrual pads resulting in significant costs to their reproductive health, educational achievements, work productivity, and dignity. Ms. Lewin leads consumer marketing, business development, and global communications. Prior to joining SHE, Connie was at L’Occitane USA, where she executed on e-commerce and digital strategy for the U.S. market entrance of the Melvita brand, and managed all marketing operations for fragrance and limited edition product launches for L’Occitane. Ms. Lewin earned her MBA in 2010 from the Simon School of Business at the University of Rochester. She graduated from Princeton University in 2005 with a B.A. in Politics.
Natalie Foley is Vice- president & Chief Operating Officer at Peer Insight, a consultancy that combines design & business problem-solving techniques to help organizations innovate around their services. Her expertise is in design thinking and customer-centered problem-solving in complex environments. With a background in strategy, technology implementation, and change management, Ms. Foley has led projects for IBM and PricewaterhouseCoopers in various countries, functions, and industries. The diversity of her experience is brought to bear throughout the innovation lifecycle; enabling strong exploratory and divergent thinking while understanding the ins and outs of execution. She has worked across sectors, with clients such as Allstate, the World Bank, Kimberly-Clark, the State Department, the U.S. Air Force, and the Good Samaritan Society. She holds an MBA from UVA’s Darden School of Business and a BA in Psychology from The College of William and Mary.
Development: For Communities, By Stakeholders
Session Track: Communities Taking Action
Affordable housing development faces more budgetary and regulatory challenges than ever. Innovations in financing and construction offer new housing solutions. In this session we learn from the Atlantic Yards’ modular housing program, City of New York’s adAPT NYCCompetition, and Phipps Houses’ Hunter’s Point South. Project champions will discuss lessons, challenges, and the future of affordable housing.
Daniel Nissenbaum ’88, Director, CRA Programs for the Urban Investment Group (UIG), Goldman Sachs
Kathryn Matheny, Chief of Staff & Deputy Commissioner for Strategy and Operations at the New York City Department of Housing Preservation and Development
Robert P. Sanna, Executive Vice President and Director of Construction & Design Development, Forest City Ratner
Adam Weinstein, President and CEO, The Phipps Houses Group; Chair, Phipps Community Development Corporation
Moderator: Leanne Lachman, President, Lachman Associates; Executive-in-Residence, Columbia Business School
View speaker materials for this session.
Bios
Daniel Nissenbaum is the director of CRA Programs for the Urban Investment Group (UIG), overseeing compliance functions and special initiatives, including the capital component of the GS 10,000 Small Businesses program. UIG, a division of Goldman Sachs Bank USA, provides financing for community development projects and manages the Bank’s Community Reinvestment Act (CRA) program. Mr. Nissenbaum joined Goldman Sachs in 2009 in this role, and was named managing director in 2010. Prior to joining the firm, Mr. Nissenbaum was a senior vice president overseeing an affordable housing finance team in HSBC Bank’s real estate division. His career has focused on real estate and community development finance, in roles that included leading transaction teams, directing bank CRA regulatory and compliance groups, and overseeing philanthropy and community outreach programs. Mr. Nissenbaum serves as a board member for the Center for Housing Policy, and its affiliate, the National Housing Conference, and for the Community Restoration Corporation, a de novo national nonprofit which is developing solutions to address the home foreclosure crisis. Mr. Nissenbaum previously served as board chair for both the National Housing Conference, and for the Low Income Investment Fund, one of the nation’s leading community development finance institutions. Mr. Nissenbaum earned a BA in Urban Studies from Grinnell College in 1983 and an MBA from Columbia Business School in 1988.
Kaye Matheny is the Chief of Staff and Deputy Commissioner for Strategy and Operations at the New York City Department of Housing Preservation and Development (HPD). In this capacity, she works closely with the Commissioner to define and implement key housing policies and priorities for the Bloomberg Administration. Most recently, Ms. Matheny took the lead in coordinating HPD’s response to Hurricane Sandy and over the past few years, she served as a key leader of the Mayor’s adAPT team, which conceived of and launched the initiative to build New York City’s first microunit building and continues to explore other housing models to better serve the City’s evolving demographics. In addition, Ms. Matheny oversees the agency’s divisions of strategic planning, IT, and administration; helping to lead HPD’s bold agenda by steering policy, people, and technology. Ms. Matheny has been at HPD since September 2007, and previously served as the Assistant Commissioner for Strategic Planning, during which time she helped to re-write the 10-year New Housing Marketplace Plan to ensure HPD could continue to meet its 165,000 unit target and maintain stability of families and neighborhoods during the housing market downturn. Prior to joining HPD, Ms. Matheny was a management consultant for ten years, helping companies shape large-scale business and technology strategies. She received a B.A. with honors in international relations and political science from the Ohio State University, and a Masters of Urban Planning from the Robert F. Wagner Graduate School of Public Service at New York University.
Robert Sanna has nearly thirty years of leadership experience within the New York City construction industry. An accomplished project and administrative leader, his expertise has driven notable growth in the retail, commercial and mixed use sectors for Forest City Ratner Companies (FCRC). Mr. Sanna began his career as a field project manager for HRH Construction, working on such notable projects as the Jacob Javitts Convention Center and World Wide Plaza. He joined FCRC in 1989 as a project manager, providing project administrative leadership for the construction of One MetroTech Center, one of the first projects at the downtown Brooklyn campus. Later, as the Executive Vice President and Director of Construction & Design Development, he organized FCRC’s construction department with specific emphasis on quality build-out experiences for its tenants and proactive cost and schedule management. This dynamic technical group provided construction administration for over 40 retail, office, residential, hotel and sports & entertainment projects totaling more than 15 million square feet. Some of Mr. Sanna‘s most high profile projects include New York by Gehry, the 76 story residential building in downtown Manhattan built by world renowned architect Frank Gehry, The New York Times Building, designed by Pritzker Prize winning architect Renzo Piano, and Barclays Center, the new, world class, state of the art sports and entertainment venue at Atlantic Yards, which is home to the Brooklyn Nets.
Adam Weinstein joined Phipps Houses in 1989 and became its President and CEO in 2001. The Phipps Houses Group is the nation’s oldest and one of its largest not-for-profit organizations committed to developing, acquiring, owning and managing affordable housing. The Phipps Houses Group has developed nearly 8,000 apartments, maintaining a continuing interest in over 6,800 of these occupied or currently in construction. Another 2,200 units of affordable and mixed-income housing are currently in its development pipeline as of June 2013. Phipps’ property management affiliate oversees more than 10,000 affordable and mixed-income apartments throughout New York City, along with appurtenant retail and professional space. Its affiliate, Phipps Community Development Corporation, serves over 8,000 lower-income New Yorkers annually through extensive educational, vocational, child care, and support programs for households of all ages targeting neighborhoods where Phipps has a substantial housing presence. During his career at Phipps, he has at various times headed each of its operating entities: real estate development and asset management, property management, and community development. Mr. Weinstein is also on the boards of Citizens Housing and Planning Council, the New York Housing Conference, and the Advisory Board of the Furman Center Affordable Housing Institute. Mr. Weinstein holds a BA from Yale and an MBA from Harvard Business School.
M. Leanne Lachman is president of Lachman Associates, an independent real estate consulting company. Previously, Ms. Lachman spent 13 years as a partner at Schroder Real Estate Associates, a boutique real estate manager that was acquired by Lend Lease, a global institutional investment manager, where she spent four years. Her early career was with Real Estate Research Corporation, where she served as chief executive officer. A highly sought after speaker and widely published author of books and articles on the real estate industry, Ms. Lachman is also a Trustee of the Urban Land Institute and a Governor of the Urban Land Foundation, a director of Lincoln National Corporation and a member of Liberty Property Trust. She received her BA from the University of Southern California and her MA from Claremont Graduate University. Her areas of interest include real estate, demographics (U.S. and global trends), corporate governance, and offshoring.
The Dog Ate My Grant Application: Crowdfunding for Social Innovation
Breakout Session 1: Spark Workshop
Crowdfunding and social sector industry expert Breanna DiGiammarino will run a workshop on crowdfunding. She will cover use cases for crowdfunding in social innovation, and then delve deeply into the key pieces of a successful campaign: the pitch, perks and promotion. You will have the chance to select a social innovation crowdfunding case study and develop a campaign strategy for it over the course of the session. Come ready to think creatively about ways to leverage the crowd to achieve social impact, and leave inspired and ready to run a supercharged campaign!
Facilitated by Breanna DiGiammarino, Education Vertical Lead and Vertical Team Ops at Indiegogo
Bio
Breanna DiGiammarino is the education, research and social innovation category marketing director at Indiegogo. She has been responsible for developing key partnerships with institutions such as the Clinton Global Initiative University (CGI U), George Mason University and Village Capital. Prior to Indiegogo, Ms. DiGiammarino was the Senior Associate at the Draper Richards Kaplan Foundation, a social venture fund in San Francisco, where she helped raise $30 million to support the company’s second fund for social entrepreneurship called the Springstep Venture Fund and increased the number of applications from hundreds to thousands. Before that, she was an Associate Consultant at The Bridgespan Group, the non-profit arm of Bain & Company, where she consulted with high impact educational organizations and foundations including the Cristo Rey Network to help urban students into work-study programs and the Gates Foundation to improve low-income graduation rates. Ms. DiGiammarino was invited as a reader for the 2011 and 2012 Echoing Green social venture fellowship and Haas Global Social Venture competition. She is also an Avanti Fellows advisory board member. Ms. DiGiammarino holds a Master of Public Administration in Nonprofit Management from the NYU Wagner School of Public Service and graduated with a B.A in Biology and Government from the University of Virginia.
Keynote II: Insights from (RED) campaigns
“When you buy red, you can be helping bring someone on the brink of death back to life.”
Deborah Dugan, CEO of (RED).org, shared insights on how (RED) is able to marry a global aid foundation with corporations to create a community of giving. Ms. Dugan walks the audience through case studies of successful (RED) campaigns and discusses what it’s like to have U2’s Bono for a boss all while addressing how social media has changed the way that corporations and Millennials engage in philanthropy.
Deborah Dugan, CEO of (RED).org
Moderator: Joe Sibilia, CEO of CSRWire.
Bios
Deborah Dugan is the Chief Executive Officer of (RED). (RED) was founded in 2006 by Bono and Bobby Shriver to engage businesses and consumers to help fight AIDS in Africa. (RED) partners with the world’s most iconic brands, such as Apple, Starbucks, Converse and The Coca Cola Company who contribute up to 50% of profits from the sale of (RED)-branded products and services to the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria. To date (RED) has raised close to $210 million with 100% of that money going to AIDS programs that have helped impact more than 14 million lives. Ms. Dugan joined (RED) in 2011, and under her leadership (RED) has welcomed global partners such as The Coca-Cola Company, SAP, and Latin America’s major mobile carriers Claro and Telcel. With Ms. Dugan at the helm, (RED) has continuously pushed the boundaries for how social media is used for social good. In 2011 (RED) was recognized as the first cause to have reached over 1 million on both Facebook and Twitter, and (RED) recently set a new record with the largest non-profit check-in campaign on foursquare to date, in partnership with Starbucks, raising $250,000 in 8 days. In June 2013, (RED) partnered with Mashable and set a new awareness-raising world record using the emerging video app, Vine. Prior to (RED), Ms. Dugan was President of Disney Publishing Worldwide, generating $1.8 billion in global retail sales. During her eight years at Disney, she oversaw 275 magazines and published more than 4,000 new book titles. In particular, she developed The Cheetah Girls, Artemis Fowl, acquired Baby Einstein, and launched Disney English language learning programs throughout Asia. She also served as Senior Advisor to the Tribeca Enterprises Board. Ms. Dugan’s roots are in the music industry – she spent many years as Executive Vice President at EMI/Capitol Records. Deborah began her career as an attorney on Wall Street. Ms. Dugan has written on the AIDS issue number times for the Huffington Post, and has recently given speeches at the IEG Sponsorship Conference in Chicago, and the University of Utah Law School Commencement address. Ms. Dugan is included in Forbes’ “100 Most Powerful Women” issue (June, 2013) for Social Entrepreneurism.
Joe Sibilia is the CEO of CSRwire, a digital media platform for the latest corporate social responsibility and sustainability news for journalists, analysts, investors, activists, academics, public relations and investor relations professionals worldwide. A trusted brand since 1999 for the latest news, views and reports on business sustainability as well as its members’ most trusted CSR advisor, the CSRwire team works on a wide range of traditional and social media services and solutions to support its members’ marketing and communications strategies. As a visionary of the socially responsible business movement, Mr. Sibilia was the founder and former CEO of Meadowbrook Lane Capital (MBLC), described by the Wall Street Journal as a “socially responsible investment bank” specializing in turning values into valuation. Through MBLC, he worked with a number of socially responsible companies and has been widely recognized for his work in attempting to take Ben & Jerry’s Homemade Ice Cream private, while creating a private stock exchange for responsible companies. Throughout his career, Mr. Sibilia has purchased and sold 19 companies and served on the Boards of a number of enterprises – public and private. Presently, he is a Board member of the Office Depot Foundation and is one of the longest serving Board member of the Social Venture Network (www.svn.org). A graduate of Providence College, Joe matriculated at the Universite’ de Fribourg in Switzerland and studied privately under a Dominican monk. He is an avid reader, enjoys the outdoors and has three daughters with Claire Sullivan – Kristen, Kendra and Kayla – and a loyal dog named Finally.
Overcoming Barriers to Corporate Change
Session Track: Creating Engaged Customers
Many global companies have made significant shifts in sustainability practices, gaining plaudits from environmental and social advocates, but often costing the company time, resources, and money. How can influential stakeholders, employees, customers, and investors be convinced to rally behind such changes? And how can this support be translated into concrete action?
Mitchell Gold, Co-founder & Chairman, Mitchell Gold
Jeff Seabright, Vice-president of Environment & Water Resources, The Coca-Cola Company
Brian Orlando ’99, Senior Marketing Director, Unilever
Moderator: Erika Karp ’91, CEO, Cornerstone Capital Inc.
Bios
Mitchell Gold, co-founder and chairman of Mitchell Gold + Bob Williams, is a different kind of man running a very different kind of business. In addition to running a $100 million company, Mr. Gold is founder of Faith in America, a nonprofit organization dedicated to educating people about religion-based bigotry and how it is used to justify discrimination against LGBT Americans (www.faithinamerica.com). He also served on the Board of Directors of the Human Rights Campaign (HRC), an advocacy group for gay rights, for seven years. In addition, Mitchell was active in the 2004 Presidential campaign as a North Carolina delegate to the Democratic Convention and a fundraiser who raised over a million dollars for the Democratic Party. The Mitchell Gold + Bob Williams company has enjoyed meteoric growth fueled largely by Mr. Gold’s energy and influence on everything from product and design to marketing, promotion, and, most emphatically, a truly unique approach to managing the enterprise. Above all else, Mr. Gold has been consistent in his defiance of conventional wisdom. Twenty-four years ago, the company based its manufacturing in rural North Carolina and it remains there today. The company’s gutsy ad campaigns have frequently depicted same-sex couples, “alternative” families and sexy models. The company has been recognized for its innovative campaigns, including being honored with the Public Visibility Award at the first annual GLAAD Media Awards in Advertising in October 2009. When other businesses were focused on driving down labor costs throughout the ‘90s, Mr. Gold and Mr. Williams were investing in people through an on-site not-for-profit, education-based day-care center (the first in the residential furniture industry), as well as a trained corporate chef managing a health-conscious gourmet cafe at the company’s headquarters, time-saving concierge services and annual health fairs for employees, an on-site nurse, and scholarships for children of employees. And the investments continue today. Mr. Gold is also a published author, having published Let’s Get Comfortable: How to Furnish and Decorate a Welcoming Home, published by Meredith Books in March 2007 and The Comfortable Home, published by Clarkson Potter, a division of Random House. Mr. Gold is also editor of CRISIS: 40 Stories Revealing the Personal, Social and Religious Pain and Trauma of Growing Up Gay in America. Mr. Gold grew up in a suburban Trenton, NJ home and attended Long Island University. A six- year stint with Bloomingdale’s, followed by managing The Lane Company’s national accounts and in-store gallery division, gave Mr. Gold the two things needed most to succeed: experience in the business and the vision to see what needed to be changed. Today, Mr. Gold heads a renowned company that operates out of 600,000-square-feet of state-of-the-art manufacturing and warehouse space. He and Bob are known locally and nationally for creating a corporate culture that respects diversity, supports education, provides daycare, and has been environmentally responsible since its inception. The company is a Sustaining member of the Sustainable Furnishings Council, and Mr. Gold is on the Board.
Jeff Seabright is the chief environmental officer at the Coca-Cola Company, where he is responsible for environmental governance and leadership across global operations of the Coca-Cola system including water stewardship, sustainable packaging, climate protection practices, and sustainable agriculture. Mr. Seabright has held several positions in government and business, including as Foreign Service Officer in the State Department, legislative assistant in the U.S. Senate, director of environment and energy at the U.S. Agency for International Development, and head of the White House Task Force on Climate Change under President Clinton. Before joining the Coca-Cola Co., he served as vice president for policy planning at Texaco. Mr. Seabright is vice-chair of the World Economic Forum’s Global Agenda Council on Water Security, and he serves on the Boards of The Global Water Challenge, Pace Academy, Erb Institute Strategic Advisory Council for the University of Michigan, and the National Council for Science and the Environment.
Brian Orlando is the Senior Marketing Director of Dressings, US for Unilever’s Hellmann’s, Best Foods and Wish-Bone brands. He has held this position since June 2011, but has been with Unilever for a total of 15 years. Mr. Orlando has had many years of experience domestically and internationally. He spent 7 years working in Tea (Lipton Leaf & RTD US), 3 years in Paris as the Director of Lipton Western Europe, and 6 years in spreads and dressings – 2 of those years were spent in the US as the Director of Dressings. He has received multiple industry awards including the Effie, David Ogilvy, Unilever Marketing Excellence and Unilever Global Chili. Mr. Orlando has his MBA from Columbia Business School.
Erika Karp is the Founder and CEO of Cornerstone Capital Inc. The mission of the firm is to apply the principles of sustainable finance and economics towards facilitating the flow of capital around the world. Primary activities of Cornerstone include consulting to both corporations and financial institutions, promoting new research in the field of ESG analysis (Environmental, Social and Governance), and facilitating introductions leading to the financing of new enterprises engaged in sustainable business practices. Prior to founding Cornerstone, Ms. Karp was Managing Director and Head of Global Sector Research at UBS Investment Bank. She chaired the UBS Global Investment Review Committee and managed a global team of analysts and strategists. Erika served on the UBS Securities Research Executive Committee and the Environmental and Human Rights Committee of the UBS Group Executive Board. While at UBS, Erika created and drove key branded global investment research products including the UBS Q-Series®, the Global I/O®, Global SignalsTM and the weekly “UBS Global Portfolio Manager’s Spotlight.” Ms. Karp speaks and writes extensively on topics including: sustainable investing and finance, corporate strategy and business models, transparency and excellence in the areas of Environmental, Social and Governance (ESG) performance, and employee engagement/diversity in the workplace. Her work has been featured by Euromoney, the Financial Times, Bloomberg Businessweek, Investor Relations Magazine, and Forbes. For driving collaboration across the capital markets, she has been named among the nation’s “Top 50 Women in Wealth” by AdvisorOne. Erika is a founding Board member of the Sustainability Accounting Standards Board, a member of the World Economic Forum Global Agenda Council on Financing and Capital, and sits on the Program Design Advisory Council for Harvard Business School’s Executive Education Program. Erika speaks at events including those of the OECD, the UN Global Compact and PRI, Deloitte, Oxford University, The Forum for Sustainable and Responsible Investing, Ceres, the Clinton Global Initiative, the EPA, and the White House. She holds an MBA Columbia University and a BSE from the Wharton School.
Educating Young Minds Through Media
Session Track: Social Media & Film
This session will explore successful and not-so successful campaigns geared towards educating youth. Speakers will discuss best practices for educating and engaging youth both in a domestic and international context. We will examine how social media and rapid information sharing has shaped the success of organizations like Sesame Workshop and dosomething.org and how these lessons can be applied to other social campaigns. Finally, we will explore how technology and media can be leveraged to expand operations internationally and reach a greater audience.
Naomi Hirabayashi, Chief Marketing Officer, DoSomething.org
Daniel Lewis, Director of New Media Communication, Sesame Workshop
Abran Maldonado, Co-founder, NuSkool
Moderator: Shane Snipes, Chief Digital Officer, Good-B
Bios
Naomi Hirabayashi is the Chief Marketing Officer at DoSomething.org where she oversees business development, marketing and PR for the organization. Prior to DoSomething.org, she was Associate Director at Attention, one of the first social media marketing agencies where she offered strategic counsel for campaigns such as International Women’s Day for Avon, Breast Cancer Awareness for Estée Lauder, and TOMS Shoes. A popular speaker, Ms. Hirabayashi has appeared on network TV news programs, at the United Nations discussing Media/Social Media and most recently at the 24 Hours of Reality event on a panel with former Vice President Al Gore.
Daniel N. Lewis is the Director of New Media Communication for Sesame Workshop, the nonprofit organization behind Sesame Street. He is responsible for creating and implementing a comprehensive strategy to leverage social media to extend the Workshop’s reach and influence. Prior to joining Sesame Workshop, Mr. Lewis was at Wikia, Inc., where he negotiated and executed on partnerships with the Washington Post, Twitter, Reuters, AccuWeather, and Digg. Prior to that, he was Co-Founder and General Manager at ArmchairGM.com, a user-generated media entity using wiki-based and custom community blogging software. Mr. Lewis earned his J.D. from Benjamin N. Cardozo School of Law, where he served as an Editor of the Cardozo Law Review. He graduated from Tufts University in 2000 with a B.A. in Economics.
Abran Maldonado is the CEO and Founder of NuSkool and is a student-engagement expert. He is a Gates Millennium Scholar, an honor awarded to America’s future leaders by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. This award has afforded him the opportunity to earn an M.A. in Adolescent Culture in Education from Teachers College—Columbia University, and presently pursue a Ph.D on 21st Century Teaching and Learning at New York University. Prior to his academic pursuits, Mr. Maldonado spent a decade working in the music and entertainment industry developing content and working in product and artist management, radio marketing, songwriting and music publishing.
Shane Snipes is Chief Digital Officer at Good Business Network. Mr. Snipes presents to small and large groups alike and specializes in translating technology trends to business, impact, and social change. He serves as advisor and strategist for Good-B, Microsoft, Best Buy, HP, Shared Value Media, and several municipalities. Prior to his strategist role, he was a chief internet officer at Environmental Defense Fund, Citizen Schools- an after-school program, and the Fund for Public Interest Research. He has taught technology at the College of Charleston and enterprise sustainability at City University of Seattle. Mr. Snipes is a Fulbright Scholar, holds a MBA from Vytautas Magnus University, and is pursuing a doctorate in Social innovation Leadership from Prescott College. A native of North Carolina, he resides in Harlem and frequents photography exhibits. His personal media projects include the EcoRoadTrip– 1000 interviews about sustainability across 48 states covering 28,000 miles in 8 months.
Frontiers of Mobile Technology: Platforms and Big Data
Session Track: Reaching Mass Markets
Mobile technology has enriched and empowered individuals in the developing world in many ways, from better information on employment prospects to improved financial access. But what’s next for mobile? What are the cutting edge big data business models that provide information to address the needs of the poor?
Alina Kogan ’12, Venture Lab, Accion
Keith Nalepka, Vice-president of Global Sales and Marketing, PharmaSecure
Shivani Siroya, CEO & Founder, InVenture
Camilo Tellez-Merchan, Financial Sector Specialist, CGAP-World Bank
Moderator: Scott Anderson, Managing Editor, Next Billion
Bios
Alina Kogan is an Investment Officer at Accion Venture Lab, leading their work in Latin America. Venture Lab is an investment initiative of Accion International that provides patient seed capital and support to innovative financial inclusion start-ups, fostering experimentation and promoting business models that improve financial access for people living in poverty worldwide. Ms. Kogan began her career as a social entrepreneur, founding a school in Afghanistan and leading grassroots development projects in Mexico and Brazil. As a strategy consultant at Dalberg, she helped the IFC launch SME Ventures funds in frontier markets and advised the IDB on facilitating investments in renewable energy in Central America. Her recent experience includes managing finance for a clean tech start-up in emerging markets, venture investing at Pershing Square Foundation and Fanisi VC Fund in East Africa, and Latin American investment banking at Citigroup. Ms. Kogan is fluent in Spanish, Portuguese and Russian. Ms. Kogan holds an MBA from Columbia Business School and a bachelor’s degree in public policy and international affairs from Princeton University.
What do you get when you mix professional baseball, Big Pharma, and Big Data? Keith Nalepka, PharmaSecure’s new Vice-president of Global Sales & Marketing, based in the USA. Mr. Nalepka has just joined PharmaSecure’s team to help customers measure and understand patient behavior as they secure the distribution of their pharmaceutical products. “We have some incredible opportunities to put our mobile platform in the pockets of patients, utilize the data they generate to improve health outcomes, and change the way the world manages and delivers healthcare,” said Mr. Nalepka. “Our goal is to become the leader in emerging market healthcare data by working with multinational companies.” After spending several years playing professional baseball for the Texas Rangers, Mr. Nalepka joined the Biotech-Pharmaceutical industry, working for 12 years in sales and marketing with billion-dollar cardiovascular, respiratory and pain management brands. After getting the itch to work for himself, he was selected to participate in a Johns Hopkins-based technology transfer program called Innovate, sponsored by a grant from the National Science Foundation and REDI. Using the contacts in the program, he joined distribution security company, Hi G Tek, and grew its sales by expanding its business into the pharmaceutical space.
Shivani Siroya is currently the CEO and Founder of InVenture. InVenture is a mobile technology company providing simple credit scoring and accounting tools to the >4 billion people across the globe currently lacking a formal financial identity. InVenture’s work has been recognized by USAID, TED, Economist Vodafone, Bloomberg, and Forbes. Ms. Siroya has a wide array of professional experiences in global health, microfinance, and investment banking. Prior to InVenture she worked in health costing at the United Nations Population Fund and Mergers & Acquisitions at Health Net and Citigroup. She is a 2013 Ashoka Fellow, 2013 TED Fellow, 2011 Echoing Green Fellow and 2011 Unreasonable Institute Fellow. She is also a blogger for the Huffington Post, and on the board the LA Chapter of Young Women Social Entrepreneurs. Shivani holds a M.P.H from Columbia University and a B.A. from Wesleyan University.
Camilo Tellez-Merchan leads the work in Brazil for the Technology and Business Model Innovation Team. His research area focuses on the use of the digital payments infrastructure in sectors such as energy, water and health. Prior to joining CGAP, he was an analyst for the Mobile Money for the Unbanked (MMU) Programme at the GSM Association in London where he supported mobile network operators in the LAC region as they developed mobile financial services. He has also worked at the UN Economic Commission for Asia and the Pacific in Bangkok, and at Microsoft Labs in Bangalore where he conducted ICT4D research in the technology for emerging markets team. He completed a prior appointment at the World Bank’s aid effectiveness unit as a Junior Professional Associate. He holds an MA in international relations and Latin American studies from the Johns Hopkins University School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS), an MSc in information systems and economic development from the London School of Economics and Political Science, and a Diplome International from the Institut d’etudes politiques de Paris (Sciences Po).
Scott Anderson is the managing editor of the NextBillion network, a leading online source for market-based strategies that create opportunities to improve the quality of life for the world’s four billion low-income producers and consumers. An editor and journalist by training, Anderson has covered a wide variety of business, industry and technology issues for various news publications, including Ward’s Automotive, Automotive Design and Production Magazine, The Ann Arbor News, and the Midland Daily News. More recently, Anderson was the director of Online Media at Ann Arbor-based ICON Interactive, where he managed blogs and other social media initiatives for Accenture, Audi, and Chrysler Group. He also edited and wrote for a trio of independent alternative energy and green technology websites. Mr. Anderson is based at the William Davidson Institute at the University of Michigan, which manages the NextBillion network.
Organizations for Change: How to Motivate Action
Session Track: Communities Taking Action
How do you build momentum for a cause? Learn about how successful builders of environmental and political movements inspire momentum nationwide, and the results that can be attained by mobilizing masses of people. Apply key lessons in innovation approaches to critical social challenges in your community and beyond.
Peter Lehner, Executive Director, Natural Resources Defense Council
Laura Olin, Social Media Director, Obama for America
Moderator: Deborah Bielak, Partner, Bridgespan
Bios
Peter Lehner is the Executive Director of NRDC and NRDC Action Fund. NRDC is one of the nation’s leading environmental advocacy organizations with over 1.3 million members and activists and 430 staff in seven offices. It works to protect people’s health and families, communities, jobs, and wild spaces by accelerating clean and efficient energy, transportation and protecting our oceans, waters and homes from pollution. Mr. Lehner is responsible for guiding NRDC’s policy positions, advocacy strategies, communications plans, development and administration, and managing NRDC’s seven offices while also leading the Action Fund’s political activities. Since Mr. Lehner’s return to NRDC in 2006, NRDC has opened new offices in Beijing and Chicago, started the Center for Market Innovation, and expanded both its policy and communications capacity. Previously, Mr. Lehner served as chief of the Environmental Protection Bureau of the New York State Attorney General’s office for eight years. He supervised all environmental litigation by the state, prosecuting a wide variety of polluters and developing innovative multi-state strategies targeting global warming, acid rain and smog causing emissions. He previously served at NRDC as a senior attorney in charge of the water program. Before that, he created and led the environmental prosecution unit for New York City. Mr. Lehner holds an AB in philosophy and mathematics from Harvard College and is a graduate of Columbia University Law School, where he continues to teach environmental law. He also has extensive experience in sustainable farming and green business.
Laura Olin ran national social media strategy for the Obama 2012 campaign (@BarackObama, @MichelleObama, @JoeBiden, their Facebook pages, Spotify, Pinterest, Google+, Instagram, etc) and was the author of the Barack Obama Tumblr. Her team grew the campaign’s social media followings by 40 million, raised millions of dollars over social media, and created the most-retweeted and most-liked Twitter and Facebook posts to date.
Deborah Bialek is a partner in Bridgespan’s New York office. Since joining Bridgespan in February 2008, Ms. Bialek has focused on serving a wide range of Bridgespan’s philanthropy and education clients. Ms. Bialek’s consulting engagements for foundations include program and organization-level strategy for the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, the McKnight Foundation, the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, and the UN Foundation. As a former teacher, Ms. Bialek has applied her belief in the transformative power of education in work spanning early childhood education, secondary education, and postsecondary education. She has led an early childhood investment philanthropic approach, district-strategy for The College Board, strategic planning for the Public Education Network, and facilitation of six local education funds in developing their own strategic plans. Her work in postsecondary education began in 2007 with analysis of the US sector for the Aspen Institute’s Forum for the Future of Higher Education, and recently includes support for the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation’s Postsecondary Success Team – on their broader strategy as well as for Completion by Design, a signature initiative supporting 16 community colleges in systemic change. She is interested in connections across P-16, and recently completed planning for the National College Access Network. She leads Bridgespan’s own working group on postsecondary education. Prior to joining Bridgespan, Ms. Bialek worked at McKinsey & Company, where she had been an engagement manager in their Philadelphia office. As a community fellow in their Social Sector Office she developed advocacy organizations from scratch, interviewed global CEOs on the most pressing environmental, social and governance issues, and developed a road map for collaboration between two global health organizations. Her for-profit work spanned international brand strategy, acquisition strategy, stakeholder influence, and pre- and post-merger management in the pharmaceutical, retail, and consumer sectors in six countries. Ms. Bialek has co-authored articles in the McKinsey Quarterly and the National Association of College and University Business Officers Magazine. Ms. Bialek earned her BS in Mathematics with honors from Haverford College and her MBA from the Wharton School of Business, where she was a Joseph Wharton grant recipient and co-founder of the Social Impact Management Initiative.
Crowdfunding for Frontier Innovations
Breakout Session 2: Spark Workshop
Millions of people die annually as a direct result of exposure to carbon emissions from kerosene and cook stoves. There are many social enterprises that are building distribution companies to increase the access of clean energy solutions for low-income households in developing countries, however they face challenges including: energy financing and scaling distribution models.
Frontier Innovations (FI) is a 501c3 established in early 2013 to address the challenges of last-mile distribution in clean energy products in developing countries. FI promotes clean energy initiatives and partners with social entrepreneurs to ensure safe, reliable and sustainable access to energy for developing countries.
Recently, in efforts to raise funding for a project, FI launched a crowdfunding campaign for its partner, Frontier Markets, which was facing challenges in providing access to solar lanterns to ultra-poor households. However, the crowdfunding strategy was unsuccessful.
This session will discuss the challenges of crowdfunding through a casestudy of FI efforts with Frontier Markets.
Challenges to discuss:
Many social ventures look to crowdfunding as an option to raise capital to fund their projects. FI launched a crowdfunding campaign this year which donors sponsored a child in the ultra-poor who would receive solar lanterns in return. To identify the children needing solar lanterns, FI partnered with local rural schools to identify those needing the charitable donation. The crowdfunding platform was launched with a target of sponsoring 5,000 children, or $100K in funds for this campaign, however they did not meet our target.
Groups will be asked to brainstorm on the following questions to help FI with future campaigns:
- What approach should FI be using to raise capital?
- Is crowdfunding the best source?
- If so, how do they market it? Who do they reach out to? How should the campaign be setup? Who is their target donor? What should donors be funding and what are their interests?
- If not, what are some approaches they can use? What are similar social ventures doing to raise capital?
Facilitated by Ajaita Shah, Founder/CEO of Frontier Markets & the President of Frontier Innovations Foundation
Bio
Ajaita Shah is the Founder/CEO of Frontier Markets and the President of Frontier Innovations Foundation. Frontier Markets is a rural marketing, sales, and service distribution company providing access to affordable and quality consumer durables to low-income households; focusing on products in clean energy. Ms. Shah was an American India Foundation Fellow in 2006. She has 5 years of microfinance experience in India with organizations like SKS Microfinance, and Ujjivan Financial Services. Ms. Shah has worked on numerous development projects in 7 states in India. She has consulted with the World Bank about microfinance in South Asia. She served on the Committee of the Social Performance Task Force. Ms. Shah has been awarded with scholarships from SOCAP, is a 2012 Echoing Green Fellow, a Cordes Fellow, has been awarded the most influential award in Microfinance for people under 30, and Business Week’s 30 under 30 award. This year, she will be participating as a member of the Clinton Global Initiative. She is an active member of the UN Practitioner’s Network, Asian Development Bank’s Energy For All Partnership. Ajaita Shah holds her B.A. in International Relations from Tufts University.
Frontier Markets is a sales and marketing distribution company with a mission to reach low income households in emerging markets. Frontier Markets works with microfinance institutions and locally trained field staff to educate, relate, and reach households providing them access to high social impact and affordable products, and customer service. Frontier Markets started operations in rural India and are working with clean energy products like solar lighting and smokeless stoves. Frontier Markets’ innovative marketing and sales channel will open new opportunities for manufacturers to create affordable and relevant products for rural markets. Frontier Markets becomes THE scale solution for manufacturers creating products for rural markets, focusing on areas like clean energy, healthcare, and livelihoods. Frontier Markets’ mission is to provide over 10 million products to 30 million households in India by 2016, and become a global leader in rural distribution and products for low-income households.
Food Systems: Shake the Hand that Feeds You
Session Track: Creating Engaged Customers
Come hear 4 food-entrepreneurs give small talks on their big ideas for solving the global food crisis. In our world of 7 billion, 1 billion suffer from undernutrition, while another 1 billion suffer from overnutrition. Although the world’s farmers harvest enough to feed the planet, twenty-five percent of our global food supply is lost to spoilage. In addition, society has a growing concern about the environmental and social consequences of where our food comes from and how it gets to our plates. Each world-class speaker will have 10 minutes to share their groundbreaking story and offer sustainable business solutions to the global food crisis.
Christopher Lorn, Co-Founder, Table for Two USA
Stephen Ritz, Founder, Green Bronx Machine
Kavita Shukla, Founder & CEO, Fenugreen
Jacqueline Holmes, Kopali Organics
Facilitator: Arianne Perry ’14
Bios
Chris Lorn is the co-founder of Table For Two Usa, food-based non-profit addressing issues of nutrition imbalance in developing nations and the U.S. Internationally founded in 2007 in Japan, Table For Two International focuses transferring excess calories from nations suffering from obesity to those suffering from malnutrition. His experience currently includes marketing data strategy and research impacting brands within industries such as healthcare IT, restaurants, and hotels. He holds a degree in Anthropology from Columbia University, where he co-founded the organization with several colleagues.
Stephen Ritz is a South Bronx teacher and administrator who believes that students shouldn’t have to leave their community to live, learn and earn in a better one. Moving generations of students into spheres of personal and academic successes they have never imagined, while reclaiming and rebuilding the Bronx, Mr. Ritz’s extended student and community family have grown more than 30,000 pounds of vegetables in the Bronx while generating extraordinary academic performance. His Bronx classroom features the first indoor edible wall in NYC DOE, which routinely generates enough produce to feed healthy meals to 450 students and trains the youngest nationally certified workforce in America. His students, traveling from Boston to Rockefeller Center to the Hamptons, earn living wages en route to graduation. Mr. Ritz has consistently moved attendance from 40 percent to 93 percent daily, helped fund and create 2,200 youth jobs, captured the US EPA Award for transforming mindsets and landscapes in NYC, recently won the ABC Above and Beyond Award and the 2012 Chevrolet National Green Educator Award, and helped earn his school the first ever Citywide Award of Excellence from the NYC Strategic Alliance for Health—and Mr. Ritz attributes these results directly to growing vegetables in school. The National Association of Secondary School Principals cited Mr. Ritz’s work and the Green Bronx Machine as one of five national exemplars of service learning. His speech at Columbia University, entitled “From Crack to Cucumbers,” along with the release of a YouTube Video, “Urban Farming NYC,” resulted in a national following, including an invite to the White House Garden. Recently dubbed the Pied Piper of Peas by Lorna Sass, Mr. Ritz has launched the Green Bronx Machine to a national audience and has signed on more than 6,000 local followers in several months. Mr. Ritz was just announced as a national Green Apple Education Ambassador for the US Green Building Council. He is currently working on embedding the concepts of sustainability and environmental justice into K-12 programming and beyond. Mr. Ritz has electrified and inspired audiences of all types with his “Si se puede” message of hope, urgency and Amer-I-Can innovation. In February 2013, he received the first standing ovation in the thirteen year history of Green Biz and went on to standing ovations at the United Nations Social Innovation Summit and City Resilient. He was just named a Poptech Fellow. His work has been featured in Forbes, Wall Street Journal, and Fast Track, as well as on CNN, NBC, ABC, NPR, TED and regionally across the country. Dedicated to harvesting hope and cultivating minds, Mr. Ritz dreams of opening a nationally replicable Career Technical Education public school in the poorest Congressional District in America rooted in urban agriculture, green, and sustainable initiatives. Mr. Ritz recently lost more than 100 pounds by modeling positive behavior and eating what he and his students grow in school.
Kavita M. Shukla is the Inventor and Founder/CEO of Fenugreen, a pioneer in the movement towards sustainable, active, natural food packaging. Fenugreen is addressing the massive, yet often overlooked global challenge of food spoilage (25% of the world’s harvest is lost to spoilage each year) with its simple and all-natural FreshPaper innovation. By keeping food fresher from “farm to fork” in a sustainable way, while reducing transportation, inventory and energy costs, Fenugreen’s FreshPaper holds the potential to revolutionize the food economy. Ms. Shukla holds two patents, with four pending and has received several international honors for her potential as an inventor-entrepreneur, including recognition from the Lemelson-MIT Foundation, the Cartier Women’s Initiative, the Davidson Institute, the Swiss Consulate, and the French Ministry for Foreign Affairs. She has also been inducted into the National Gallery for America’s Young Inventors. In 2011, Fenugreen was recognized as one of the most innovative young companies in the world as Grand Prize winner of the Kauffman Foundation’s Startup Open competition. Ms. Shukla holds a BA from Harvard University.
Storytelling Through Film
Session Track: Social Media & Film
Films have the ability to take the viewer inside a completely new life, inspiring audiences towards change and an understanding of alternative lifestyles. Whether it’s witnessing indifference in war torn Darfur, fighting for better public education in New York City or celebrating female empowerment within the Arab world, these movies take us to the heart of major social issues. Come behind the lens and hear three renowned filmmakers discuss how their work strives to make a difference. How do films generate mass movements? Is there a secret ingredient to moving public opinion? What tactics do filmmakers use?
Mona Eldaief, Director, Rafea: Solar Mama
Madeleine Sackler, Filmmaker, Dangerous Acts Starring the Unstable Elements of Belarus
Ricki Stern, Filmmaker, The Devil Came on Horseback
Moderator: Monika Mitchell, Founder & CEO, Good-B
Bios
Egyptian American filmmaker, Mona Eldaief, is Director and Cinematographer of the award winning film, ‘Rafea: Solar Mama’. The film is the story of a Bedouin woman from the northeastern desert in Jordan who struggles against the patriarchal rules of her society to get a transformative education as a solar engineer at the Barefoot College in India and empower the women of her village.
Madeleine Sackler is the director and producer of Dangerous Acts Starring the Unstable Elements of Belarus (coming to HBO in 2014). Her first documentary, The Lottery, sparked a renewed debate on the future of public education and was shortlisted for the 2011 Academy Awards. Duke 91 & 92: Back to Back, her second film, was co-produced by Turner Sports and gave viewers an inside look at one of the most storied basketball programs in history. Madeleine is the co-founder of M&J Creative, a new media company dedicated to producing interactive, long form content, as well as Great Curve Films. A Duke ’05 alum, she also has a degree in biopyschology and has previously worked as a freelance editor for television, commercials and documentaries.
Ricki Stern is a Emmy-nominated documentary film director, producer and writer. Her films have been shown on PBS, National Geographic, Showtime, History Channel, IFC, HBO and ESPN. Presently, she is co-directing a 6-part series for the Ovation Network on the Vogue Fashion Fund and a feature documentary in Chicago about a homeless father’s reunion with his Grammy-winning rapper son. She is the director of the Emmy-nominated Joan Rivers A Piece Of Work, (Sundance Film Festival award winner 2010, IFC FILMS, Showtime). She co-directed and co-produced with her film partner Annie Sundberg Knuckleball! (2012), featuring knuckleball pitchers RA Dickey, Tim Wakefield and Phil Neikro; Burma Soldier (HBO 2011) about a former Burmese soldier who turned pro-democracy activist; Emmy-nominated The Devil Came on Horseback (Sundance Film Festival, HBO 2007, Gotham Award nominee, Best Int. Film Brit Docs), which looks at the Darfur genocide through the eyes of a former marine who became an African Union monitor in Darfur. Ms. Stern co-directed and co-produced the Emmy-nominated The Trials of Darryl Hunt, (Sundance, HBO 2006, winner of over 30 film awards including Independent Spirit nominee) about a man who spent 20 years in prison for a brutal rape/murder he did not commit; Her first film was the Emmy-nominated Neglect Not The Children (PBS 1992) and she directed and co-produced In My Corner (PBS 1998) about a Jr. Olympic boxers in the South Bronx. Ricki is a producer of five films for HBO including Murder 9 to 5 and the Autopsy series (1992-1996). Ms. Stern and her filmmaking partner Annie have received a Sundance/Skoll “Stories of Change” production grant to support a feature film about the innovative education and anti-poverty program YouthBuild. Their new short for the Sundance Institute / Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation (BMGF) was recently released as part of the BMGF focus on the United Nations’ Millennium Goals. They have been recognized with A Lifetime Achievement Award from Full Frame Documentary Film Festival, the Best Female Filmmakers Award-San Diego Film Festival, The Best Female Filmmakers Award- St. Louis FF, Adrienne Shelly Excellence in Filmmaking Award and Lena Sharpe/Women in Cinema Persistence of Vision Award–Seattle International Film Festival. Ms. Stern is also the co-author of the book series Beryl E. Bean, Mighty Adventurer of the Planet (Harper Collins Publishing).
As a serial entrepreneur and award-winning writer & media personality, Monika Mitchell founded Good-B with a small group of equally passionate social changemakers to support the emerging new economy of social entrepreneurship growing in the wake of the financial crisis. After a brief stint on Wall Street as a recruiter for the ill-fated mortgage-backed securities markets, she founded Good-B as an anecdote to the 20th century model of “profit at any cost.” Her experience in the center of the investment banking collapse of 2008-2010 is documented in the ground-breaking book: “Conversations with Wall Street: The Inside Story of the Financial Armageddon and How to Prevent the Next One,” winner of a 2012 Axiom Award for Business Ethics. Ms. Mitchell regularly writes a blog called: “Making Business Cool Again.”, as well as articles for Good Business NY and the Huffington Post among other publications. She is an outspoken advocate for the economic empowerment for women in developing and developed nations through her work with the NGO Working Group “Values & Business.” She was named one of the, “Top 100 Thought Leaders in Trustworthy Business” for 2012 and 2013 by Trust Across America.
Impact Investing in Action: Where Would You Put Your Money? (Acumen case study)
Session Track: Reaching Mass Markets
In this session, you will step into the shoes of an impact investor. Jessica Martin will introduce you to a potential impact investment opportunity for agriculture development in Africa. You will learn about the criteria Acumen uses to determine which investments to make, evaluate a potential business plan and work with your peers to decide whether to invest.
Jessica Martin, Innovation Associate, Acumen
Moderator: Antony Bugg-Levine, CEO, Nonprofit Finance Fund
Bios
Jessica Martin is an Innovation Associate at Acumen working to scale Acumen’s leadership curriculum through +acumen chapters and online channels. Prior to joining Acumen, Ms. Martin was an iCats Fellow at Driptech, a for-profit social venture that makes affordable drip irrigation for smallholder farmers, where she worked on building out the company’s international business operations in California and Pune, India. Ms. Martin’s jump into the world of social enterprise was heavily influenced by the people she met while serving on the leadership committee of the NY+acumen volunteer chapter. Previously, Ms. Martin was a market strategy analyst at U.S. Trust, Bank of America Private Wealth Management in New York where she focused on in-depth macroeconomic and investment strategy research. Ms. Martin holds a BA in International Studies and Economics from Fairfield University and spent a year in Beijing, China on a Fulbright Scholarship researching the development of China’s environmental NGOs.
Antony Bugg-Levine is the CEO of Nonprofit Finance Fund, a national nonprofit and financial intermediary that unlocks the potential of mission-driven organizations through tailored investment, strategic advice, and accessible insights. In this role, he oversees more than $340 million of investment capital and a national consulting practice, and works with a range of philanthropic, private sector and government partners to develop and implement innovative approaches to financing social change. Mr. Bugg-Levine writes and speaks on the evolution of the social sector and the emergence of the global impact investing industry. He is the co-author of Impact Investing: Transforming How We Make Money While Making a Difference (Wiley, 2011). As a Managing Director at the Rockefeller Foundation, Mr. Bugg-Levine designed and led the initiative, Harnessing the Power of Impact Investing. He is the founding board chair of the Global Impact Investing Network and convened the 2007 meeting that coined the phrase “impact investing.” Previously, Mr. Bugg-Levine was the country director for Kenya and Uganda for TechnoServe, a nongovernmental organization that develops and implements business solutions to rural poverty. Earlier in his career, as a consultant with McKinsey, he advised Fortune 100 clients in the financial services and health care sectors, and helped develop new frameworks for incorporating social dynamics into corporate strategy.
Be the Change: Grassroots Movements Mobilize!
Session Track: Communities Taking Action
When the well-being of communities is threatened, some are resilient and come together to take action. Why and how do people mobilize to make change? Join us as we discuss a case study in effective grassroots organizing in the wake of Hurricane Sandy in New York City.
Matt Pelak, Director of Strategic Partnerships, Team Rubicon
Diego Ibanez, Organizer, Occupy Sandy
Jake Beinecke, Farm Viability Project, Analyst, Open Space Institute
Moderator: Ray Horton, Frank R. Lautenberg Professor of Ethics and Corporate Governance and Faculty Director, Programs in Social Enterprise, Executive Education, Columbia Business School
Related articles about this session:
- Hundreds of Storm Evacuees in Hotels Face Evictions (NY Times)
- Occupy Sandy builds worker power in Far Rockaway (Resilience.org)
- Outsmarting The Surge (Time)
- ‘We Are All Going to Die Tonight’: Fire in the Rockaways (Outside)
Bios
Matt Pelak currently serves as the Director of Strategic Partnerships at Team Rubicon, a veteran service organization that engages military veterans and first responders to respond to natural disasters in the US and around the world. As a career civil servant, Mr. Pelak has spent over 15 years in the Army on active duty and in the National Guard as an infantryman and has spent over 36 months deployed to Iraq with the Army as well as with the State Department’s Diplomatic Security Service. Mr. Pelak has also been working as a paramedic for over 12 years and is currently working in Poughkeepsie, NY as a firefighter/paramedic. He’s been a member of Team Rubicon since 2010 and has deployed several times domestically and internationally as a team leader and medic.
Diego Ibanez is a social justice activist based in Brooklyn, who focuses on climate justice, as well as migrant and human rights. An early volunteer after Hurricane Sandy, he helped organize the network Occupy Sandy, and he’s currently working to help form worker-owned businesses in Far Rockaway post-storm. He recently helped launch Deep Roots United Front, a people of color climate justice network.
Jake Beinecke is a New York City-based attorney and strategic consultant with experience in sustainable food & agriculture, environmental conservation, social enterprise and philanthropy. He is currently a Program Analyst with the Open Space Institute, a $200m regional land conservancy, and has previously worked on the Legal Team at Acumen, a $100m global social venture fund. Prior to launching a legal career, Mr. Beinecke was a professional cook, mostly in San Francisco. Mr. Beinecke serves as a Director of several nonprofit organizations, including the Global Greengrants Fund, Page 73 Productions, and the Prospect Hill Foundation. A born and bred New Yorker, Mr. Beinecke graduated from the Trinity School, Columbia University and New York University’s School of Law, where he chaired the Law and Social Entrepreneurship Association.
A lawyer and political scientist, Prof. Ray Horton teaches the course Modern Political Economy. A member of the Columbia Business School faculty since 1970, he served two years while on leave from the School as Executive Director of the Temporary Commission on City Finances during the New York City fiscal crisis, and later served 15 years as Director of Research and President of the Citizens Budget Commission. His publications on municipal finance and management include 14 books, numerous journal articles and policy studies. In 1983, he founded the Public and Nonprofit Management Program at the School. In 1998, that program morphed into the Social Enterprise Program, which Prof. Horton directed until 2009. In 2009, he was named Faculty Director of Social Enterprise programs in the School’s Executive Education division. As part of his executive education responsibilities, Prof. Horton directs custom programs for the Center for Curatorial Leadership and the King Khalid Foundation.
Scaling for Frontier Markets
Breakout Session 3: Spark Workshop
Millions of people die annually as a direct result of exposure to carbon emissions from kerosene and cook stoves. Product exist which minimize this risk, however these organizations do not have the requisite customer understanding, rural infrastructure, or servicing capability to ensure customer adoption on a mass scale.
Frontier Markets (FM) provides rural Indian villagers access to clean energy for cooking and lighting. FM is able to bridge the gap between Indian Villagers and the organizations with an inclusive business model that makes last-mile distribution of clean-energy solutions possible. Brick-and-mortar retail and service centers have been setup by FM to establish a presence in the communities, and to facilitate transparency and trust in solar technology among rural villagers. Through FM innovative marketing campaigns are conducted and designed to educate rural villagers on the financial and health benefits of solar over kerosene, and are committed to unparalleled after-sales service to ensure ongoing customer satisfaction and thus, permanent social and environmental impact.
Currently, FM has operations in 2 states of India, with 4 service centers selling products through 75 rural entrepreneurs in 800 villages. FM will introduce technology integration as a potential solution to some of these challenges they face while scaling their organization.
Challenges to discuss:
FM will discuss the challenges for scaling their rural energy distribution company. Attendees will be asked to provide feedback on:
- What challenges do social ventures face during the scaling process in India?
- Will the new technology integration help FM scale their organization? What challenges will they face as they integrate technology into their organization?
- What is needed to implement Technology into FM?
- Are there alternative solutions to help address these challenges? What models do similar social ventures use to reach their mass market? Can these models, or parts of these models, be used at FM to help scale?
Facilitated by Ajaita Shah, Founder/CEO of Frontier Markets & President of Frontier Innovations Foundation
Bio
Ajaita Shah is the Founder/CEO of Frontier Markets and the President of Frontier Innovations Foundation. Frontier Markets is a rural marketing, sales, and service distribution company providing access to affordable and quality consumer durables to low-income households; focusing on products in clean energy. Ms. Shah was an American India Foundation Fellow in 2006. She has 5 years of microfinance experience in India with organizations like SKS Microfinance, and Ujjivan Financial Services. Ms. Shah has worked on numerous development projects in 7 states in India. She has consulted with the World Bank about microfinance in South Asia. She served on the Committee of the Social Performance Task Force. Ms. Shah has been awarded with scholarships from SOCAP, is a 2012 Echoing Green Fellow, a Cordes Fellow, has been awarded the most influential award in Microfinance for people under 30, and Business Week’s 30 under 30 award. This year, she will be participating as a member of the Clinton Global Initiative. She is an active member of the UN Practitioner’s Network, Asian Development Bank’s Energy For All Partnership. Ajaita Shah holds her B.A. in International Relations from Tufts University.
Frontier Markets is a sales and marketing distribution company with a mission to reach low income households in emerging markets. Frontier Markets works with microfinance institutions and locally trained field staff to educate, relate, and reach households providing them access to high social impact and affordable products, and customer service. Frontier Markets started operations in rural India and are working with clean energy products like solar lighting and smokeless stoves. Frontier Markets’ innovative marketing and sales channel will open new opportunities for manufacturers to create affordable and relevant products for rural markets. Frontier Markets becomes THE scale solution for manufacturers creating products for rural markets, focusing on areas like clean energy, healthcare, and livelihoods. Frontier Markets’ mission is to provide over 10 million products to 30 million households in India by 2016, and become a global leader in rural distribution and products for low-income households.
Film Screening: Wham! Bam! Islam!
When film maker Isacc Solotaroff was researching this project, it seemed that Muslim societies across the world were at a fascinating crossroads. There were the forces of fundamentalism that wanted to anchor the culture to Qur’anic strictures and modernists who wanted to find a way for Islam to integrate with the rest of the world. Mr. Solotaroff was fascinated to see what would happen to someone like Naif who was so demonstrably planting his flag on the side of those who want to push Muslim societies into the 21st century. Beyond that he was doing it in a way that could be seen as highly provocative — a children’s entertainment property based on Western-styled superheroes with powers that are borrowed from Allah’s 99 names! —Mr. Solotaroff figured that was likely to stir up the hornets nest and would make for an interesting film.
Social Venture Pitch Competition
Session Track: Spark Workshop
The 2013 Social Impact Pitch Competition will feature emerging social entrepreneurs in a variety of fields who will each be allotted five minutes to pitch their enterprise to a panel of judges. The judges will provide feedback and rate each competitor. This session is intended to highlight and analyze the common interaction between funder and entrepreneur and to expose conference participants to exciting new startups in the social enterprise space.
Judges:
- Kesha Cash ’10, Director, Investments, Jalia Ventures
- Alberto Escarlate, Venture Partner, Collaborative Fund
Entrepreneurs:
- Abran Maldonado, Co-founder, NuSkool
- Tommy Mitchell, CEO, Green Barrel Energy
- Casey Santiago ’07, Founder of Kangu
Moderator: Professor Ron Gonen ’04, Founder, Recyclebank
Bios
Kesha Cash is the Director of Investments at Jalia Ventures, a sub-fund that invests in scalable mission-driven businesses owned by minority entrepreneurs. There are nine companies in the Jalia portfolio including: Pigeon.ly, an online platform that offers low cost photo sharing and telephone services to the 2.3 million inmates in the US and their support networks; Red Rabbit, a provider of healthy meals to 20,000 students in NYC and NJ; and ConnXus, a SaaS platform that makes it efficient for corporations to locate, evaluate and engage small, minority- or woman-owned businesses. Prior to Jalia Ventures, Ms. Cash spent three years as a mergers and acquisitions analyst at Merrill Lynch and then six years as a consultant to early-stage businesses in Los Angeles and Puerto Rico. She also worked in London at Bridges Ventures, a $475M UK investment firm that delivers both financial and social returns. Ms. Cash received her BA in Applied Mathematics from UC Berkeley and her MBA from Columbia Business School.
Alberto Escarlate is an investor, designer, professor, entrepreneur, all-around good guy and currently a Venture Partner at Collaborative Fund. Before becoming a VC he co-founded Sojo Studios, a company that provides joyful and accessible ways for people to join with others to do lasting social good. Before that he created TigerTag; the first free lost & found service for consumer electronics – an early precursor of the Internet of Things. Throughout his career, he has served as CTO for startups such as Entertainment Media Works, and YellowPin. Previously he led projects for a long list of customers that include AT&T, Delta, General Motors, IBM and Kraft Foods, among others. He holds a degree in Computer Science from The Pontificia Universidade Catolica in Rio de Janeiro, and a Masters in Computer Science from The Federal University of Rio de Janeiro. He enjoys passing on what he’s learned and does so by teaching Design at The New School of Design at New School University in New York.
Abran Maldonado is the CEO and Founder of NuSkool and is a student-engagement expert. He is a Gates Millennium Scholar, an honor awarded to America’s future leaders by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. This award has afforded him the opportunity to earn an M.A. in Adolescent Culture in Education from Teachers College—Columbia University, and presently pursue a Ph.D on 21st Century Teaching and Learning at New York University. Prior to his academic pursuits, Mr. Maldonado spent a decade working in the music and entertainment industry developing content and working in product and artist management, radio marketing, songwriting and music publishing.
Tommy Mitchell is the founder and CEO of Green Barrel Energy, a NYC-based start-up that aims to make clean technology products that seamlessly integrate with urban life. Mr. Mitchell created one of the first solar charge stations for mobile devices in October 2011, and is now working to install them throughout public spaces in New York City. He studied Neuropsychology at Florida Institute of Technology, and moved to New York in the summer of 2012 to work in the renewable energy sector.
In 2012, after becoming a mother, Casey Santiago founded Kangu to leverage crowdfunding technology to reduce preventable maternal and neonatal deaths and disability. Before founding Kangu, Ms. Santiago worked for fifteen years in global health, innovative finance and technology. As an early staff member at Kiva.org, Ms. Santiago managed a multi-million dollar investment portfolio in West Africa, and led engineers to develop software for 100+ local institutions. She has advised for-profit, nonprofit and social enterprises on strategic planning, new product development and financial sustainability, including Doctors without Borders, Institute for OneWorld Health, Bristol Myers-Squibb, GAVI and USAID, both independently and as a Senior Consultant at Deloitte. She also blogs for Forbes.com, Women 2.0, and the Huffington Post and was recently selected by 85 Broads as a “CEO to watch.” She has worked in Bangladesh, the Dominican Republic, Ghana, Kenya, Mali, Morocco, Palestine, South Africa, Senegal, Tanzania, Togo and Zambia. Ms. Santiago holds a BA from Wellesley College, an MBA from Columbia Business School and an MA in International Affairs from Columbia University.
Professor Ron Gonen is the Co-Founder of RecycleBank. During his tenure as CEO from 2004-2010, RecycleBank grew from an idea to a company with contracts with over 100 cities and a service that rewards millions of people for their positive green actions across North America and the UK. Mr. Gonen and RecycleBank were recognized by a number of leading business and environmental organizations including: the World Economic Forum as a Young Global Leader in 2007, the World Economic Forum as a Technology Pioneer in 2009, the United Nations Environment Programme as a Champion of the Earth in 2009, The Pennsylvania Environment Council with the Philadelphia Sustainability Award in 2007, The Social Venture Network with their Innovation Award in 2007, O Magazine as one of their Eco Role Models of 2009, Time Magazine as Social Responsibility Pioneer in 2009, U.S. Conference of Mayors – Outstanding Excellence in Public/Private Partnerships in 2009, and the Wall Street Journal as one of their top 10 Venture Backed Clean Tech Companies of 2009 & 2010. Mr. Gonen is currently a member of RecycleBank’s Board of Directors. Prior to RecycleBank, Mr. Gonen was a Senior Consultant at Deloitte Consulting. He was a co-recipient of Deloitte Consulting’s National Impact Award for the development of a consulting unit that provided pro bono service to NGO’s. Mr. Gonen is a frequent guest speaker on the role of business and the environment at universities, conferences and companies. He is a past member of the World Economic Forum’s Council on Sustainable Consumption and is currently a Research Associate at the Earth Engineering Center at Columbia University and a Henry Catto Fellow at the Aspen Institute. Mr. Gonen was a recipient of the 2010 University Medal of Excellence from Columbia University, which is awarded annually to an alumnus under the age of 45 for outstanding achievement in scholarship, public service and professional life. In 2011, Mr. Gonen joined the faculty at Columbia Business School as an Adjunct Professor. Mr. Gonen is a Founding Partner of Linhardt Design Studio, a jewelry company that designs and manufactures fine jewelry with a focus on high design merged with sustainable principles. The Linhardt Design store was recently chosen as the “Critic’s Pick” by New York Magazine. He serves on the Board of Directors of Fitango and JobRooster and is on the Board of Advisors of Source4Style and DailyFeats. Mr. Gonen received a BA in History from UMass-Amherst where he graduated with Departmental Honors and was a Massachusetts Commonwealth Scholar. He received an MBA from Columbia Business School where he was a Eugene M. Lang Center for Entrepreneurship award winner.
Keynote III: Changing Culture, Attitudes and Perspectives through the Arts
Learn about Naif Al-Mutawa ’03’s quest to create The 99, a superheroes comic series based on the values of Islam, and the role that culture and arts can have in influencing culture. Along with Issac Solotaroff, the filmmaker of WHAM! BAM! ISLAM!, a documentary about Mr. Al-Mutawa’s project, hear about the challenges associated with starting an organization dedicated to changing culture attitudes and perspectives through the arts.
Naif Al-Mutawa ’03, Founder and CEO of Teshkeel Media Group
Issac Solotaroff, Filmmaker, WHAM! BAM! ISLAM!
Moderator: Sheena S. Iyengar, S. T. Lee Professor of Business, Columbia Business School
Bios
Dr. Naif Al-Mutawa is the Founder and CEO of Teshkeel Media Group, for whom he created THE 99, the first group of comic superheroes born of an Islamic archetype. THE 99 have received positive attention from the world’s media. Recently, Forbes named THE 99 as one of the top 20 trends sweeping the globe and most recently, President Barack Obama praised Dr. Naif and THE 99 as perhaps the most innovative of the thousands of new entrepreneurs viewed by his PresidentialSummit on Entrepreneurship. Dr. Al-Mutawa has a PhD in Clinical Psychology from Long Island University where he also earned a Masters Degree in Clinical Psychology. He holds a Masters in Organizational Psychology from Teacher’s College, Columbia University and an MBA, also from Columbia University. He earned his undergraduate degree from Tufts University, where he triple majored in clinical psychology, English literature and history. Dr. Al-Mutawa has extensive clinical experience working with former prisoners of war in Kuwait and the Survivors of Political Torture unit of Bellevue Hospital in New York. His direct contact with the horrors of people tortured because of their religious and political beliefs, led to his writing a timeless children’s tale that won a UNESCO prize for literature in the service of tolerance. He received the Eliot-Pearson Award for Excellence in Children’s Media from Tufts University, the United Nations Alliance of Civilizations “Marketplace of Ideas” Award, The Schwab Foundation Social Entrepreneurship Award presented at the 2009 World Economic Forum and has been named as one of WEF’s Young Global Leaders for 2011.
Isaac Solotaroff has been producing, editing and directing documentaries since 1999. His last film Ballplayer: Pelotero about two major-league baseball prospects from the Dominican Republic was released in theatrically across the country last summer and acquired by HBO Latino. His previous film WHAM! BAM! ISLAM! opened the 2011-2012 season of PBS’s documentary series Independent Lens. His other films include Los Romeros for PBS’ American Masters and was nominated for an Emmy in 2002 and his first documentary Belief Amended, Faith Revealed was short-listed for an Academy Award for Best Documentary Short in 1999. He is currently producing a documentary series for GQ.com called Casualties of the Gridiron about a clinic in New Jersey that is providing free surgical, psychological and drug rehabilitation services for former NFL players.
Professor Sheena S. Iyengar has taught courses in leadership and entrepreneurial creativity. Her research addresses the implications of offering people, whether they be employees or consumers, choices. She has examined choice in a multitude of contexts ranging from employee motivation and performance in a global organization, Citigroup, to chocolate displays at Godiva, to the magazine aisles of supermarkets, and to mutual fund options in retirement benefit plans. Professor Iyengar received the Presidential Early Career Award for her ongoing work in examining cultural, individual, and situational factors that influence people’s choice-making preferences and behaviors.