2018 Skoll Awards for Social Entrepreneurship

Speakers

• Lesley Silverthorn Marincola

  Speaker

  CEO, Angaza

  Lesley Marincola is the Founder and CEO of Angaza. Angaza's Pay-As-You-Go technology platform enables businesses in emerging markets to extend flexible solar payment plans to the billion individuals without access to grid electricity. A product designer (B.S.) and mechanical engineer (M.S.) from Stanford University, Lesley has also worked as a design engineer on the Amazon Kindle team, and at Bay Area design consultancy D2M Inc., with clients including DirecTV, Genentech, Qualcomm, and Volkswagen. Lesley is a Tech Awards Laureate, in recognition of Angaza’s Pay-As-You-Go technology, was named a Forbes "30 Under 30" Entrepreneur, and is an Echoing Green Fellow. Lesley’s vision is to solve the world’s most widespread problems – like energy access – with market-driven technology innovation developed with a human-centered design approach.

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• Jennifer Pahlka

  Speaker

  Founder, Code for America

  Jennifer Pahlka works on making government work for people in the digital age. She is the founder and former executive director of Code for America and served as U.S. Deputy Chief Technology Officer in the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy from 2013–2014, where she founded the United States Digital Service. She also co-founded United States Digital Response, which helps government respond to the Covid-19 crisis with volunteer tech support. She was named by Wired as one of the 25 people who has most shaped the past 25 years. She served on the Defense Innovation Board for four years. Her book Recoding America comes out in June 2023. Jennifer is a graduate of Yale University and lives in Oakland, California.

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• Harish Hande

  Speaker

  CEO, Selco Foundation

  Harish Hande is a renewable energy entrepreneur with over 27 years of grassroots experience in understanding, developing and deploying sustainable energy solutions for underserved communities. Born in Karnataka, India, Harish went on to pursue his graduation from the Indian Institute of Technology, Kharagpur and a PhD from University of Massachusetts. In order to catalyze deployment of sustainable solutions, SELCO operates at every level of the system and at every point in the supply chain, to build an ecosystem that increases accessibility, affordability, and appropriate renewable energy solutions for the poor. Today SELCO is an umbrella of organizations, each tasked to address gaps in the energy access ecosystem namely SELCO India (1994), energy access enterprise; SELCO Foundation (2010), non profit R&D, SELCO Incubation Centre (2012), nurturing grass roots energy enterprises and finally SELCO Fund (2016), deploy patient capital.

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• Barbara Pierce Bush

  Speaker

  CEO and Co-Founder, Global Health Corps

  Barbara Bush is CEO and co-founder of Global Health Corps (GHC), which mobilizes a global community of young leaders to build the movement for health equity. GHC was founded in 2009 by six twentysomethings who were challenged by Peter Piot at the aids2031 Young Leaders Summit to engage their generation in solving the world’s biggest health challenges. Barbara and her co-founders believe health is a human right and that their generation must build the world where this is realized. Since that time, GHC has placed almost 1,000 young leaders from more than 40 countries with non-profit and government health organizations like Partners In Health and the Clinton Health Access Initiative in Burundi, Uganda, Tanzania, Malawi, Rwanda, Zambia, and the United States, developing them as creative, effective, and compassionate leaders along the way. Prior to GHC, Barbara worked in educational programming at the Smithsonian Institution’s Cooper-Hewitt National Design Museum, where she supported design-thinking programs for high school students and faculty across the US. She has worked with Red Cross Children’s Hospital in South Africa and UNICEF in Botswana, and has traveled with the UN World Food Programme, focusing on the importance of nutrition in ARV treatment. Barbara is a member of UNICEF’s Next Generation Steering Committee and the UN Global Entrepreneurs Council. She sits on the Board of Directors for Covenant House International, PSI, Friends of the Global Fight for AIDS, TB, and Malaria. She is a Draper Richards Foundation Social Entrepreneur, a World Economic Forum Young Global Shaper, and a fellow of the Echoing Green Foundation. In 2011, Barbara was named one of Glamour Magazine’s Women of the Year, in 2013 she was recognized as one of Newsweek’s Women of Impact, and in 2015 she was named to Fast Company’s Most Creative People in Business list. Barbara graduated from Yale University with a degree in Humanities in 2004.

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• Aloe Blacc

  Performer

  Musician, Invidividual

  A Southern California native born to Panamanian parents, Blacc was raised on boundary-pushing hip-hop acts like Public Enemy, The Pharcyde, and De La Soul, and developed a fierce admiration for such soul musicians as Donny Hathaway, Marvin Gaye and folk-rock singer/songwriters like Joni Mitchell and James Taylor. “I got interested in folk and soul because of the songwriting,” he says. “Especially with folk, I was really drawn to the way those artists turned their songs into storytelling.” Carefully crafting lyrics to create impactful music has been essential to Blacc since high school, when he first broke into the indie hip-hop scene. Back then Blacc and his partner DJ Exile formed a duo named Emanon and quickly became cult favorites in Los Angeles, largely due to their heavy inventiveness in working with jazz samples and breakbeat loops. Going solo in 2003, Blacc soon signed to indie label Stones Throw and transformed from rapper to singer—albeit without shedding his hip-hop spirit or sense of social consciousness. Three years after the release of his solo debut Shine Through, Blacc began work on the record that would change his life and career: Good Things, an album certified gold in the UK, France, Germany, and Australia, among other countries. “Wake Me Up” having sold more than 2.8 million copies in the U.S., Blacc notes that one of his main ambitions is to use his surging popularity to affect social change while continuing to infuse his music with a mindful positivity. “What it comes down to in my songwriting is trying to tell the story of the underdog and all the obstacles they have to overcome in this life,” says Blacc of the songs that make up Lift Your Spirit and his overall body of work. “The stories in my songs are about the common individual and all the struggles they’re dealing with everyday, and also all the hopes and aspirations that they have. It’s about reflecting all of that, and at the same time getting people to sing along and feel good."

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• Sally Osberg

  Moderator

  Vice Chair and Senior Advisor, Skoll Foundation

  As the first President and CEO of the Skoll Foundation, Sally Osberg partnered with Jeff Skoll to build it into the leading philanthropy in the field of social entrepreneurship. During her tenure, the Foundation supported more than 100 entrepreneurial organizations driving equilibrium change on many of the world’s most pressing problems and developed innovative platforms for connecting civil society, government and private sector leaders with societal problem solvers. Among these platforms are the annual Skoll World Forum on Social Entrepreneurship, the Skoll Centre at Oxford University’s Said Business School, and the Sundance Institute’s “Stories of Change” initiative. In 2015, Sally and Roger Martin published Getting Beyond Better: How Social Entrepreneurship Works, which articulates a theoretical framework for social entrepreneurship and distills lessons for practitioners, academics and impact investors. Her thought pieces have appeared in leading social impact and business journals and books; in 2015, she and Roger Martin were honored by Thinkers 50 for their intellectual leadership in the field of social enterprise. Prior to joining Jeff Skoll and the Skoll Foundation, Sally served as the founding Executive Director for Children’s Discovery Museum of San Jose, a pioneering institution in the field. Sally currently serves as the Chair of the Camfed (the Campaign for Female Education in Africa) USA Foundation, on the Philanthropy Advisory Council of the Royal Bank of Canada, on the Advisory Council of the Elders, as Vice Chair of the Social Progress Imperative and as a board director for New America and the Palestine-based Partners for Sustainable Development. She is also an Associate Fellow of the Said Business School of Oxford University. She received her M.A. in English and American Literature from the Claremont Graduate School and her B.A. in English from Scripps College, where she was elected to Phi Beta Kappa.

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• Jess Ladd

  Speaker

  Founder, Callisto

  Jess Ladd is the Founder & CEO of Callisto, a nonprofit creating technology to combat sexual assault, support survivors, and advance justice. Callisto's websites provide survivors with the information they need to make the reporting decision that is right for them, and allow survivors to privately learn whether others have been victimized by the same assailant. When Callisto finds a serial perpetrator, they connect each survivor with their own free attorney - a Legal Options Counselor - who help their client explore their options and (if they wish) coordinate action with other victims of the same perpetrator. Jess is a Skoll Awardee, a Senior TED Fellow, and the co-founder of The Social Innovation Lab in Baltimore. She has worked in the sexual health space since age 16 (as an educator, advocate, entrepreneur, and researcher), and holds a BA from Pomona College and an MPH from Johns Hopkins.

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• Anushka Ratnayake

  Speaker

  CEO & Founder, myAgro

  Anushka Ratnayake is the CEO and Founder of myAgro, based in Senegal and working across Africa. Anushka is recognized as a global leader in designing digital financial tools for smallholder farmers. She's a World Economic Forum Young Global Leader, TED speaker, and Skoll Awardee for Social Entrepreneurship. Anushka lives in Senegal, where myAgro is headquartered. myAgro served 115,000 farmers across West Africa last year and helped them increase their yields by 100% and their farm income by 35%. myAgro's North Star is to reach 1 million farmers by 2026.

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