2006 Skoll Awards Ceremony
Thursday, March 30, 2006
Session Description
Jeff Skoll, Sally Osberg, Robert Redford and Sir Ben Kingsley present the 2006 Skoll Awards for Social Entrepreneurship to this years recipients.
Time & Location
Time:
18:00 - 19:45, Thursday, March 30, 2006
BST
Speakers
-
Speaker
Founder and Chairwoman - Vera Cordeiro graduated in medicine from the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro (UFRJ) in 1975. From 1978 to 1998, she worked at Hospital da Lagoa, a Federal Hospital in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, originally working as a general practitioner. She founded and led the Psychosomatics Department in 1979. In 1991, she founded Instituto Dara (former Associação Saúde Criança), a social organization that uses a pioneering methodology to promote the well-being of families in situations of social vulnerability, with long-term results, as proven by researchers at Georgetown University in 2013. Instituto Dara has been awarded among the many prizes received in Brazil and abroad Dr. Vera is an Ashoka fellow, Avina leader, Social Entrepreneur of Schwab Foundation andSkoll awardee. Honorary Member of the Ashoka World Council. Member of the Academy of Medicine of Rio de Janeiro and former board member of the PATH: A Catalyst for Global Health from 2005 to 2011.
-
Speaker
John Wood left his position as Microsoft’s Director of Business Development for the Greater China Region in 1999 to start Room to Read, a nonprofit organization that “combines the heart of Mother Theresa with the scalability of Starbucks” to help children across the developing world break the cycle of poverty through the power of education. The organization developed from an idea and a donkey-load of donated books into a network of 7000 libraries, 750 schools, 7,000 longterm girls scholarships and 5 million donated children’s books. Over 2 million children have access to this network of schools and libraries in nine countries in Africa and Asia. John is also the author of Leaving Microsoft to Change the World, which was featured on the Oprah Winfrey Show.
-
Speaker
Born in 1949 , raised in a refugee settlement in Karachi, completed high school and married off. Had 3 children at 21 , completed Masters in social work, first community assignment construction of pit toilets in the homes of 5000 poor families living in squatter’s community. The sanitation project helped create national policy , Completed PhD “ Sanitation to development “ from university of technology LOUGHBOROUGH UK .
Created methodologies of creating partnerships with the communities in Balochistan, established 2200 rural girls primary schools, enrolling more than 200,000 girls. Establish INSTITUTE FOR DEVELOPMENT STUDIES AND PRACTICE 7000 graduates, created Leadership training for Community Midwives 400 women empowered as Community midwives,
Organic agriculture with 300 small and landless farmers. Environment friendly campus for University of Community Development.
-
Speaker
Dr. Sakena Yacoobi is the President & Executive Director of the Afghan Institute of Learning (AIL), an organization she founded in 1995 in response to the lack of education and health care that the Afghan people faced after decades of war and strife. Dr. Yacoobi is also the President & Executive Director of Sakena Fund formerly known as Creating Hope International (CHI).
Dr. Yacoobi has established 352 Learning Centers, four schools, a hospital, and a radio/ TV station in Afghanistan and is the recipient of six honorary doctorates including from Princeton University. Each year, Dr. Yacoobi speaks at numerous events, conferences and at institutions such as the UN, Stanford University and Oxford University. Dr. Yacoobi particularly enjoys engaging with youth at schools, inspiring them to be globally minded citizens. Most recently in 2022 in response to the devastating fall of the nation, after the Taliban took over; Girls once again banned from schools, Dr. Yacoobi’s AIL staff with her
-
Speaker
Chief Executive Officer and President,
CeresMindy Lubber is the CEO and President of the sustainability nonprofit organization Ceres. She has been at the helm since 2003, and under her leadership, the organization and its powerful networks have grown significantly in size and influence.
As a well-known global thought leader, Lubber has inspired capital market leaders to consider all material financial risks and opportunities—including those related to climate change, water scarcity and nature loss—in decision-making.
She has also received numerous awards and recognitions for her leadership including the ’Champions of the Earth award, the UN's highest environmental honor; the Barron’s Magazine’s annual list of the 100 most influential women in U.S. finance every year since 2020; the Climate Visionary Award from the Earth Day Network; the Skoll Award for Social Entrepreneurship from the Skoll Foundation; and the Nonprofit Times 2022 Power & Influence Top 50.
-
Speaker
John Marks is the founder and Managing Director of Confluence International, an Amsterdam-based NGO that specializes in Track II diplomacy and TV production to promote social change. Until 2014, he was President of Search for Common Ground (SFCG), the world’s largest peacebuilding NGO, which he founded in 1982. SFCG was nominated for the 2018 Nobel Peace Prize. John also founded Common Ground Productions (CGP) and has produced or executive-produced TV series in more than 20 countries. He is a Visiting Scholar in Peacebuilding and Social Entrepreneurship at Leiden University in the Netherlands. With his wife, Susan Collin Marks, he is a Skoll Awardee in Social Entrepreneurship, and, additionally, he is an Ashoka Senior Fellow. A best-selling, award-winning author, he graduated from Cornell University and was a Fellow at Harvard's Institute of Politics and a Visiting Scholar at Harvard Law School. He has an honorary PhD from the UN’s University of Peace in Costa Rica.
-
Speaker
Co-Founder and Chief Facilitator, Catalyst 2030
Jeroo Billimoria is the founder of several innovative and award-winning NGOs, with over twenty years’ experience running systems change organizations as a Skoll Awardee, and Ashoka and Schwab Fellow. Among her previous organizations are Child and Youth Finance International, Aflatoun International, Childline India and Child Helpline International, which have helped enable the financial inclusion and protection of children and youth in more than 180 countries. Jeroo is now founder of One Family Foundation, which incubates social innovations, helps them scale, and is currently anchoring Catalyst 2030 – a global network working to accelerate progress towards the SDGs through radical and transformative social innovation at the country level.
-
Speaker
Dr Taddy Blecher is CEO of the Maharishi Invincibility Institute and the Imvula Empowerment Trust, CEO of the Community and Individual Development Association, and Chairperson of the SA National Government team on Entrepreneurship, Education, & Employability.
He is a pioneer of the free tertiary education movement in South Africa, helping to create six free access institutions of higher learning as well as co-founding the Branson School of Entrepreneurship with Sir Richard Branson. As a result, over 21,000 unemployed South Africans have been educated, found employment, and moved from unemployment into the middle-class.
As a qualified actuary and management consultant, Dr Blecher is passionate about the approach of Consciousness-Based Education, a system of education developing the full potential of every student. This has led the Maharishi Institute to winning multiple prizes including the first prize in a global competition for the most innovative education initiative in the world
-
Speaker
Susan Collin Marks, Peace Ambassador for Search for Common Ground, an internationally renowned peacemaker and peacebuilder, has worked in some of the most conflictual places on the planet, mediating, facilitating dialogue, and establishing supporting peace initiatives. In recent years, she focused on counsellin and supporting high level political, institutional and civil society leaders worldwide, including cabinet ministers, military generals, and members of the US Congress. In September 2014, she stepped aside after 20 years as vice president of what grew into the largest peacebuilding NGO in the world, and moved from Washington DC to Europe.
Search for Common Ground was nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize in 2018. Susan has numerous awards and honors.
Susan writes, speaks, counsels, teaches, and supports peace initiatives internationally. She holds a vision of a world of peace and dignity. She believes that our common humanity binds us together more than our differences divide us.
-
Speaker
Actor,
Sir Ben Kingsley, CBE (born Krishna Pandit Bhanji; 31 December 1943) is a British actor. He has won an Oscar, BAFTA, Golden Globe and Screen Actors Guild awards in his career. He is known for starring as Mohandas Gandhi in the film Gandhi in 1982, for which he won the Academy Award for Best Actor. He is also known for his performances in the films Schindler's List (1993), Sexy Beast (2000) and House of Sand and Fog (2003).
-
Speaker
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.
-
Speaker
Founder/former CEO, Benetech, and Founder/CEO, Tech Matters,
BenetechJim Fruchterman is a leading social entrepreneur, a MacArthur Fellow, a recipient of the Skoll Award for Social Entrepreneurship, and a Distinguished Alumnus of Caltech.
After starting two successful machine learning companies, he went on to found Benetech, the award-winning tech nonprofit. He’s built tools which help people with disabilities read independently and human rights groups document and analyze abuses.
His current nonprofit projects at Tech Matters include Aselo, a shared modern contact center for the crisis response field, and Terraso, a platform to bring better tools and more funding to locally-led sustainability initiatives to respond to climate change.
-
Speaker
Founder & Chairman, Jeff Skoll Group
Founder and Chairman Emeritus of the Skoll Foundation
Founder and Chairman Emeritus of Participant Media
Founder of Capricorn Investment Group
Co-founder and GP of the RISE Fund
First fulltime employee and President of eBay
-
Speaker
Heidi Kühn is the Founder and CEO of Roots of Peace. Since launching the organization in 1997, ROP has developed over 30 agricultural value chains impacting over a million farmers in Afghanistan, Angola, Cambodia, Croatia, Guatemala, Israel, Palestine and Vietnam.
In 2021, Heidi's visionary leadership was acknowledged with her inclusion in the inaugural Forbes 50 Over 50 “Women Who Are Leading the Way in Impact” List. Heidi has also received other prestigious awards including: the UC Berkeley Alumni of the Year Award for Excellence in Achievement (2002), the World Association of NGOs Peace & Security Award (2005), the Skoll Award for Social Entrepreneurship (2006) and the Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis Award for Outstanding Public Service (2007).
Heidi is a graduate of the University of California, Berkeley with a degree in Political Economics, and a former CNN reporter and producer. She lives in California, with her husband, Gary, with whom she has 4 children and 6 grandchildren.
-
Speaker
Founder and Chairman of the Board of Directors,
VillageReachBorn in Cameroon, Blaise Judja-Sato was a successful U.S. businessman until a devastating flood in Mozambique prompted his return to Africa. While helping with relief efforts, he saw both the suffering of the rural poor and the frustration of nongovernmental organizations that could not get medicines across the “last mile” of remote country to those in need. Judja-Sato founded VillageReach (VR) because he recognized that the solution involved building a reliable “pipeline” infrastructure. He also realized that these last-mile barriers affected industries and others who might be willing to pay into a shared system that benefited everyone. Blaise remains on the board of VillageReach however, over the past few years, he has increasingly been dedicating resources to the development of innovative, scalable solutions to help: (1) raise awareness on the world’s most pressing challenges; and (2) enable donors, and the advisors and institutions serving them, to become more strategic and effective in reaching their philanthropic objectives. For more information, please contact him at bjsato@gmail.com
-
Speaker
First degree: philosophy. Post-graduate: law. First career: journalism: The Guardian, BBC etc. Second: business/corporate communication consultant. Third (and final?!) devloping systems for reliable transport for health-care delivery in Africa.
-
Speaker
Andrea Coleman is co-founder of Riders for Health and founder of Two Wheels for Life.
She is life-long motorcyclist and co-founded Riders with Barry Coleman, her husband, and motorcycle sporting hero, Randy Mamola in 1996. She has worked for 30 years to show that a systematic approach to managing motorcycles and motorised vehicles in Africa means health care can be delivered – predictably and reliably, however harsh the conditions or however remote the community - money saved and people employed and trained to a very high standard. Andrea’s motorcycle racing life and her work in promotion and sports management provided her with a practical outlook and a set of skills that have helped to guide the financial and advocacy development of the work of Riders for Health.
In 2013 Andrea won the Women of the Year Award, sponsored by Barclays Bank for her part in revolutionising medical provision across Africa. In 2006 she won the Ernst & Young Entrepreneur Of The Year Award. Andrea was select
-
Speaker
Founder and President of Ciudad Saludable, and President of Healthy Cities International Foundation, all belonging to Healthy City Group; external Consultant for the InterAmerican Bank – IADB and the World Bank. Albina obtained her Ph.D. summa cum laude in Chemical Engineering, at the Universitat Ramón Llull, Spain (2010). Graduated as Industrial Engineer at the UNI (National University of Engineering), and as Sanitary Engineer in Solid Waste, as second specialty, Peru. M.A. in Ecology and Environmental Management at Ricardo Palma University (2000), Peru. Ashoka Social Entrepreneur Fellow since 1996, she is considered among the world’s best social entrepreneurs. Also chosen by Schawb Foundation and by Skoll Foundation as Outstanding Social Entrepreneur and Avina Leader as well, as a result of the work she develops in environmental issues and especially in solid waste and water care; she has performed several environmental studies of the basin of the Santa River, of the Yarinacocha Lagoon, due to the impact that solid waste and sewage water have on this water stream. She is Board Member at the Global Fairness Initiative in USA.
-
Speaker
An international human rights lawyer, ordained minister and former San Francisco public defender, Karen founded IBJ in 2000 after witnessing hundreds of prisoners of all ages being held without trials, usually after being tortured into making 'confessions’. She realised that systematic early access to a lawyer can create global conditions for a “new normal” in which democracy is strengthened, people have access to justice, and we end the use of torture as an investigative tool. IBJ now has a presence in 52 countries and over 22 years, IBJ has supported more than 40,000+ lawyers and defenders who have represented more than 500,000 detainees.
Karen is a recipient of awards from the Skoll Foundation, Echoing Green, Ashoka, and among others, the American Bar Association Human Rights Award, the Gleitsman International Award, Harvard Divinity School Gomes and Alumna awards. Karen is named as one of America’s best leaders by the US News and World Report.
-
Speaker
Managing Partner and Founder, Grove Social Impact Partners
J.B. Schramm is Managing Partner of Grove Impact, a national partnership of social change pioneers catalyzing bold systems-change initiatives. Schramm formerly led New Profit’s $25M Learn to Earn fund to help learners achieve economic mobility by weaving work and study together. Forbes named J.B. to its “Impact 30” list of top social entrepreneurs for leading College Summit (now called PeerForward), which was recognized by President Obama with a portion of his Nobel Peace Prize. Selected as the U.S. Social Entrepreneur of the Year at the World Economic Forum (2007), J.B. is a fellow of the Aspen Institute, Skoll Foundation, and Manhattan Institute, and has been published by media outlets including The New York Times, The Washington Post, and the Consumer Electronics Show.
-
Speaker
Gary Cohen has been a pioneer in the environmental health movement for thirty eight years. He has helped build coalitions and networks globally to address the environmental health impacts related to toxic chemical exposure and climate change. Gary is Co-Founder and President of Health Care Without Harm (www.noharm.org), and Practice Greenhealth (www.practicegreenhealth.org). Both organizations were created to help transform the health care sector to be environmentally sustainable and anchor institutions to support environmental health and resilience in the communities they serve. In 2013, he was awarded the Champion of Change Award for Climate Change and Public Health by the White House. In 2015, Cohen was named a MacArthur Fellow and was a recipient of a “genius” grant from the MacArthur Foundation.
