Connect & Collaborate Sessions

Speakers

• Edward Diener

  Moderator

  Chief Operating Officer & General Counsel, King Philanthropies

  In September 2018, after nearly 13 years at the Skoll Foundation, I joined King Philanthropies as its first COO/GC. I have been in the philanthropy sector for over 22 years, working in various legal and financial roles at 4 Silicon Valley private foundations. A lawyer and certified public accountant by training and profession, my passion is supporting the efforts of highly effective organizations to alleviate extreme poverty at scale.

  Read Full Bio
• Christo Greyling

  Moderator

  Director, HIV and Infectious Diseases, World Vision International

  Christo Greyling is World Vision’s Director for HIV and Infectious Diseases. His vision is to see World Vision contribute towards reaching ZERO new HIV infections in children by the end of 2015. As an HIV positive faith leader, he realised the potential of faith communities and co-developed the Channels of Hope methodology to equip local faith leaders and congregations to respond effectively to HIV and AIDS. He served as board member of HIV focused NGOs such as INERELA+, CABSA and EAA.

  Read Full Bio
• Marc Koska

  Speaker

  Founder, SafePoint Trust

  Marc Koska OBE is the inventor of the K1 and following Auto-Disable syringes, the founder of Safepoint Trust (a UK-registered charity) and a highly regarded advocate around the world for needle safety in both immunisation and therapeutic sectors. Marc’s engineering company StarTek leads the world in syringe manufacturing consultancy. His mission in life is the mandatory use of auto-disable syringes globally, to reduce cross-infection through dirty needles and needle-stick injuries, the world’s ninth biggest killer annually. If needles cannot be used twice, this tragic man-made cause of death and illness can be prevented completely. Marc has spent nearly twenty years promoting the use of any Auto-Disable device and persuading the global health community of the enormous benefits of a switch in terms of lives saved – over a million and a half every year – and healthcare costs saved – over half a billion dollars annually. He has created successful behavioral change / public safety campaigns – for example in India, where in 2008 Safepoint Trust created One Injection One Syringe - one of the largest ever public health campaigns in India, leading to mandatory use of auto-disable syringes in all governmental and subsequently all private hospitals. More recently Marc and the SafePoint Trust have catapulted safe injections to the top of the international health agenda, as on 23 February 2015, Margaret Chan, DG WHO announced a new global policy on injection safety.

  Read Full Bio
• Shona McDonald

  Speaker

  Director, Sonaquip

  Shona McDonald runs Shonaquip, a socially driven business providing user appropriate assistive devices and services that support the inclusion and equal opportunities of persons with disabilities. Her team designs, builds and provides developing countries with appropriate postural support wheelchairs, and support and training on safe wheelchair provision for therapists, rehab workers, wheelchair users, their care providers and families.

  Read Full Bio
• Naganand Murty

  Speaker

  Co-Founder and President, Technologies, Embrace

  Nag Murty manages Embrace’s Clinical product line and the technology-related activities. In this role, he has overseen the Thermpod product through from market research to a market pilot and regulatory approval. Nag brings a solid blend of engineering skills and life science business experience to the team. He has work experience in strategy consulting and venture financing with global pharmaceutical and med-tech companies. Nag holds an MS from Stanford University, and a BS and MS degree in Aerospace Engineering from IIT Bombay.

  Read Full Bio
• Mary Gordon

  Speaker

  Founder and President, Roots of Empathy

  Mary Gordon is Founder and President of Roots of Empathy, a citizen-sector organisation harnessing the power of the parent-infant attachment relationship to build empathy in elementary school children. This programme – evidence-based to reduce aggression and bullying – has reached hundreds of thousands of children on three continents.  An internationally recognised social entrepreneur, educator, author and child advocate, Mary is an Ashoka Globalizer Fellow and in 2011 received a Manning Innovation Award as Canada’s top social innovator.

  Read Full Bio
• Lesley Silverthorn

  Speaker

  Co-Founder and CEO, Angaza Design Inc.

  Lesley Silverthorn is the Co-Founder and CEO of Angaza Design, Inc., a for-profit social venture that uses human-centred design to create solar home systems with embedded pay-per-use technology, inspired directly by the needs of the rural poor. A product designer and mechanical engineer from Stanford University, she has also worked as a design engineer on a large variety of products from the Amazon Kindle eReader to medical devices.

  Read Full Bio
• Pablo Suarez

  Moderator

  Consultant, Oxfam America

  Pablo Suarez supports Oxfam's work in microinsurance for climate risk management. He is also Associate Director of Programs for the Red Cross/Red Crescent Climate Centre and faculty member at the Parsons School in New York. He has worked in more than 45 countries. His current work addresses institutional innovation - including the design and facilitation of participatory games for learning and dialogue.

  Read Full Bio
• Alison Lucas

  Speaker

  Director of London, Fenton

  Alison Lucas recently opened a London office for Fenton, whose unique mission is to serve the public interest by creating powerful issue campaigns that make change. Alison has 20 years of professional international communications experience with strong emphasis in branding and messaging, special events, campaigns and media strategy, in both the commercial and charitable sectors. In 2004, Alison co-founded The Climate Group and previously ran an environmental communications consultancy.

  Read Full Bio
• David Torres

  Speaker

  Professor of the Practice of Social Entrepreneurship and Global Health, Middlebury College

  David Torres is a Professor of the Practice and Executive in Residence at Middlebury College in Vermont in the US, where he teaches courses in Global Health and Social Entrepreneurship. David has held this professorship since January, 2019. Previously, David was based in Cape Town, South Africa, where he served as Senior Advisor to the President and CEO of mothers2mothers, a Cape Town-based NGO and Skoll Fellowship organization, working in the field of HIV and maternal and child health. David worked at mothers2mothers for 12 years in a number of different leadership roles, covering special projects, business development across Sub-Saharan Africa, fundraising and donor relationship management, and organizational governance. Prior to joining m2m in 2006, David worked for 22 years in a variety of roles across a number of different countries in Latin America, the US and the UK for JPMorgan Chase and Co, and predecessor firm, The Chase Manhattan Bank. David holds a BA in Political Science from Middlebury College. He is married to Kathryn, and has two children.

  Read Full Bio
• Alex Hofmann

  Moderator

  Founder, Changents.com

  Alex Hofmann is a Founder of DAC Digital Media, a boutique consulting practice that helps socially- and culturally-oriented media organisations generate mission-aligned revenue through licensing and distribution partnerships. He is also Founder of Changents.com, a social-media driven storytelling platform dedicated to helping a global network of Change Agents connect with people, organisations, and companies that want to support their work.

  Read Full Bio
• Lisa Witter

  Speaker

  Co-Founder & Executive Chairman, Apolitical

  Lisa Witter is an eternal optimist, executive, entrepreneur, and author. She is the CEO of the Apolitical Foundation, a not-for-profit set up by Apolitical.co to advance the revitalization of democracy through effective and transformational public and political leadership. She is co-founder and board member of Apolitical, the global learning network used by public servants in 170+ countries. The tech company’s mission is to accelerate the transformation of government. She’s a World Economic Forum Young Global Leader, serves on and has co-chaired the Forum’s Council on Agile Governance, and served for six years on the Brain and Behavior Council. She is a former public servant with deep experience in gender and behavioral science. She was recently awarded, along with her co-founder Robyn Scott, the 2020 Creative Bureaucracy Award.

  Read Full Bio
• Lakshmi Karan

  Moderator

  Director, Global Strategy, Riders For Health

  Lakshmi Karan is Global Strategy Director of Riders for Health, a social enterprise delivering transportation solutions to millions in the last mile. In the social sector, she was the Skoll Foundation’s Director of Impact Assessment and served as a strategic advisor to global non-profits. In the private sector, she was a management consultant to Fortune 500 companies. Her expertise is in growth strategy and social impact.

  Read Full Bio
• James Koch

  Moderator

  Executive Director, Global Social Benefit Incubator

  Jim Koch is the Bill Terry Professor of Management and Director of the Global Social Benefit Incubator Network and Sector Strategy.  GSBI Network is comprised of mission-aligned universities that seek to spread social enterprise incubation capacity by localising Santa Clara University's successful model and its Silicon Valley approach to technology and business model innovation. GSBI Sector Strategy focuses on systems change and the potential to replicate demand-based solutions to global challenges.

  Read Full Bio
• Yusuf Randera-Rees

  Speaker

  CEO, Awethu Project

  Yusuf Randera-Rees was born in South Africa and studied at Harvard and as a Rhodes Scholar at Oxford University. Struck by the number of poor South Africans with entrepreneurial flair yet hindered by lack of formal training and resources, Yusuf set up the Awethu Project, which identifies and develops high-potential young entrepreneurs and invests in businesses alongside them. The goal is to replicate this model across Africa, creating a generation of entrepreneurial leaders from poor backgrounds to drive the continent’s development. Yusuf was selected as an Echoing Green Fellow in 2011.

  Read Full Bio
• Bill Drayton

  Speaker

  Founder and CEO, Ashoka, Ashoka

  Bill Drayton is a social entrepreneur with a long record of founding organizations and public service. As the founder and CEO of Ashoka: Innovators for the Public, Bill Drayton has pioneered the field of social entrepreneurship, growing a global association of over 3,900 leading social entrepreneurs who work together to create an ‘Everyone a Changemaker’ world. Ashoka Fellows bring big systems-change to the world’s most urgent social challenges. Over half have changed national policy within five years of launch. As a student, he founded organizations ranging from Yale Legislative Services to Harvard’s Ashoka Table, an inter-disciplinary weekly forum in the social sciences. After graduation from Harvard, he received an M.A. from Balliol College in Oxford University. In 1970, he graduated from Yale Law School. He worked at McKinsey & Company for ten years and taught at Stanford Law School and Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government. While serving the Carter Administration as Assistant Administrator at the Environmental Protection Agency, he launched many reforms including emissions trading, a fundamental change in regulation that is now the basis of much global as well as US regulatory law, including in fields beyond the environment.  Bill launched Ashoka in 1980; in 1984, he used the stipend he received when elected a MacArthur Fellow to devote himself fully to Ashoka. Bill is Ashoka’s Chief Executive Officer. He also chairs Ashoka’s Youth Venture, Community Greens, and Get America Working! Bill has won numerous awards and honors throughout his career. He has been selected one of America’s Best Leaders by US News & World Report and Harvard’s Center for Public Leadership. In 2011, Drayton won Spain's prestigious Prince of Asturias Award and, in 2019, Drayton was elected as member of the American Philosophical Society. Other awards include Honorary Doctorates from Yale, NYU and more.

  Read Full Bio