Social Enterprise can be best learned from people who are actually doing it. In that spirit we are assembling a group of practicing social entrepreneurs who will help guide the program and serve as a resource for its students. Their advice about real world practicalities is essential to keep our degree anchored in actual practice rather than ideas about actual practice. They will serve as guest speakers in our classes, sources of feedback on student ventures, coaches and mentors to our students, and internship-providers.

Davis Broach is Vice President of Social Enterprise at Relief International’s EnterpriseWork’s division. He’s an expert in using investment dollars to generate social benefits. He has managed a $30M Millennium Challenge Corporation development fund and raised $75M in debt and equity financing for enterprises in emerging markets. Davis now oversees a portfolio of investments in projects ranging from carbon-credit-financed fuel-efficient stoves in Africa to microfinance in the Middle East and South Asia. He has both an MBA and an MS in Development Management from American University.

Robert Egger is the founder and president of the DC Central Kitchen. The DC Central Kitchen is the nation's first "community kitchen," where unemployed men and women learn marketable culinary skills while donated food from restaurants and farms is converted into balanced meals. Since opening in 1989, it has distributed over 20 million meals, and has been honored by several U.S. presidents. The Kitchen operates its own revenue generating business, Fresh Start Catering as well as the Campus Kitchen Project, which operates at 30 college and high school based kitchens. Robert has chaired a Mayor’s Commission and founded Street Sense, Washington DC’s first newspaper to benefit the homeless. He also authored Begging for Change: The Dollars and Sense of Making Nonprofits Responsive, Efficient, and Rewarding for All.

Derek Ellerman co-founded the Polaris Project in the living room of his cramped apartment when he was a senior at Brown. Since then, it has become one of the world’s leading international anti-trafficking organizations, conducting advocacy and providing support for trafficking survivors. At 26, Derek was elected an Ashoka Fellow, one of the youngest members of this leading promoter of social entrepreneurship.

Stephanie Fischer helps students in the social enterprise program get the most from their outside-of-class learning experiences. She has an extensive background in the social sector having been chief operating officer of Microfinance Opportunities and chief program officer of GlobalGiving. She advises a number of social enterprises in program planning and communications, and has been an associate director at Ashoka. She is a graduate of Middlebury College and has an MBA from University of Pennsylvania's Wharton School, where she majored in strategic management.

Alene Gelbard is the founder of Company-Community Partnerships for Health, an innovative project that brings multinational corporations operating in Indonesia together with local NGOs to improve community and workplace health.  She has been a senior advisor to US AID, a member of the OECD secretariat, and a director of the Population Reference Bureau.  Her doctorate is in population dynamics from Johns Hopkins and is an expert in using data and research to influence social policy.

Jerry Hauser is CEO of The Management Center, a consulting and training organization dedicated to bringing practical management practices to organizations fighting for social justice. He previously headed the Advocacy Institute and was the Chief Operating Officer of Teach for America during a very critical period in that organization’s growth. Jerry is co-author of Managing to Change the World, a pragmatic guide to basic management skills used in the Social Enterprise Degree Program.

Krista Hendry is Executive Director of The Fund for Peace. She also directs its Human Rights & Business Roundtable, a forum where corporations, governments, and NGOs focus on issues arising when businesses operate in conflict-sensitive areas. She works with companies to support their development of human rights policies in partnership with NGOs, and helps them identify the risks they face in their overseas operations. She has an MBA from the McDonough School of Business at Georgetown University, worked in Germany at the Frankfurt Economic Development GmbH as its Asian Director, and also chairs the board of Liberty’s Promise, a non-profit that develops programs to increase civic participation of immigrant youth.

Monisha Kapila is the founder of ProInspire, an organization that recruits and trains outstanding professionals from business, consulting, and investment banking to work in the social sector. ProInspire is a social enterprise focused on building the next generation of management-savvy nonprofit leaders. Her career straddles both sectors: she has an MBA from Harvard and has worked in banking and consulting as well as with ACCION, CARE, and the Clinton Foundation.

Anna Lefer Kuhn, a committed activist and recognized leader in philanthropy, is the Executive Director of the Arca Foundation. Arca supports innovative approaches to advance equity, accountability, social justice, and participatory democracy in the US and abroad, and has helped fund many organizations immediately after their start-up stage of development. Her career has focused on strengthening the involvement of young people in social change movements. Before leading Arca, she served as a a Program Officer at the Open Society Institute, and has been involved as a board member or advisor with the Center for Community Change, League of Young Voters, the Urban Justice Center, and the White House Project.

John Passacantando’s career took him from Wall Street to leading the global fight to stop climate change. He founded the Ozone Action Project; the first NGO focused exclusively on global warming, and was the longest-serving executive director of Greenpeace USA. A life-long activist and practitioner of non-violent civil disobedience, he has been interviewed by every major news and broadcast outlet. John is now involved in helping develop sustainable energy projects and provides opposition research to the environmental movement through his Eco-Accountability Project.

Nina Smith is Executive Director of GoodWeave, (formerly RugMark) another innovative organization, which is dedicated to ending illegal child labor by providing a certification label for rugs and carpets, giving consumers assurance that no illegal child labor was used in their making. GoodWeave, in turn, uses the fees it obtains for its certifications for programs to rescue, rehabilitate, and educate children formerly in the rug-making workforce. A former president of the Fair Trade Federation, Nina won the 2005 Skoll Award for Social Entrepreneurship, a tribute to her creative use of market strategies to drive social change.