Social Enterprise is best learned from people who are actually doing it. In that spirit we have assembled a group of practicing social entrepreneurs who 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 serve as guest speakers in our classes, sources of feedback on student ventures, coaches and mentors to our students, and internship-providers.

Kate Ahern is Director, Social Innovation at the Case Foundation. At Case, she oversees a portfolio of initiatives, including Billion + Change, which mobilizes corporations to provide billions of dollars worth of pro bono service to nonprofits. She also leads the Foundation’s Impact Investing program and its new “Be Fearless” initiative. She has also worked with Partners for a New Beginning, a partnership with the Aspen Institute and the U.S. State Department dedicated to engagement in the Muslim world; and Change By Us, an online platform that lets people get offline to work together on projects to better their communities. Previously, Kate was Director of Business Development at CDC Development Solutions, where she spent 7 years managing international development, corporate responsibility, and skills-based pro bono programs in emerging markets worldwide. Kate has a Master’s degree from American University in international peace and conflict resolution.

Davis Broach is the Senior Director for Market Development at the Global Alliance for Clean Cookstoves. There he oversees its global market development strategy and the fostering of a new class of impact investments. Davis has served as Vice President of Social Enterprise at Relief International where he oversaw a portfolio of investments ranging from carbon-credit-financed fuel-efficient stoves in Africa to microfinance in the Middle East and South Asia. He also managed a $30M Millennium Challenge Corporation development fund and raised $75M in debt and equity financing for enterprises in emerging markets. Davis has both an MBA and an MS in Development Management from American University.

Robert Egger founded the DC Central Kitchen and has recently exported its bold business model to California where he leads the LA 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. He is also the founder of SHIFT, a new start-up to support the rising generation of social entrepreneurs; and the Co-Owner of EverydayFeminism.com.

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 created and directs ACCESS Health Worldwide (ACCESS-HW), an innovative program that brings companies, including multinational corporations,together with local NGOs to learn how to partner with each other and the public sector for healthy and sustainable communities. She has extensive international experience, having worked and lived in Asia, Latin America, Europe, and Africa. Previous positions include serving as a senior advisor to USAID, a member of the OECD secretariat, and director of international Programs at the Population Reference Bureau. Her doctorate is in population dynamics from Johns Hopkins. She is an expert in using data and research to influence policies and programs.
 

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.

G.K. Jayaram is the founder and nanaging director of the Institute of Leadership and Institutional Development (ILID) in Bangalore, India. ILID trains, develops, and consults to social entrepreneurs on issues related to leadership, scalability, and sustainability. He is also the chief mentor at the Jawaharlal Nehru Leadership Institute in New Delhi. Jayaram has had a four decades-long career in the consulting and corporate worlds. He has worked at Arthur D. Little, Inc. and Coopers and Lybrand, and was the first chairman of Infosys, India’s leading information technology firm. He co-founded a software firm in the U.S. and created and led Infosys’ award-winning Leadership Institute based in Mysore. His Ph.D. is from UCLA, where he studied behavioral sciences and social-technical systems design, and he has taught at Stanford and the Naval Postgraduate School.

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.

Zach Kaufman is the editor of Social Entrepreneurship in the Age of Atrocities, and is a Fellow at Yale School of Management’s Program on Social Enterprise, Yale Law School, and Yale’s Genocide Studies Program. He was instrumental in building Rwanda’s first public library, and serves on the advisory board of Indego Africa. Zach practiced law at O’Melveny & Myers LLP, where he served as pro bono counsel to Ashoka. He received his PhD in International Relations from Oxford University, where he was a Marshall Scholar and his J.D. from Yale Law School, where he co-founded and co-led Yale Law Social Entrepreneurs.

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 U.S. 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.

Lisa Nitze is the managing director of Mission Measurement’s Washington, DC office, overseeing client engagements with international aid, federal and state offices and agencies, national nonprofits, and corporations. She believes in the power of markets to drive positive social change. Her work has always been across sectors, and includes involvement with The Clinton Global Initiative and the White House Office on Social Innovation. Lisa has been CEO of the Social Enterprise Alliance and Vice President of Global Engagement at Ashoka. She is a graduate of Harvard College, holds an MBA from Stanford, and is a trustee of The American University of Cairo.

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.