Awards Ceremony

Session leaders

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  Salman Khan Speaker

  Founder and Executive Director, Khan Academy

  Salman Khan is Founder and Executive Director of Khan Academy, a non-profit organisation providing free, high-quality education worldwide. With an MBA from Harvard Business School, he began tutoring his cousin by phone and using an interactive notepad, then he posted videos of his tutorials on YouTube. In 2009 he committed fully to Khan Academy. Salman has been recognised in Fortune’s '40 Under 40', Fast Company’s '100 Most Creative People in Business' and TIME’s '100 Most Influential People in the World'. In 2012 he released his book 'The One World Schoolhouse: Education Reimagined'.

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  Sally Osberg Speaker

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  As the first President and CEO of the Skoll Foundation, Sally Osberg helped 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, and as a board director of the Social Progress Imperative 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. Born in Boston, Sally grew up on the east coast but has spent most of her adult life in California. She now lives outside Philadelphia, in Wayne, Pa., within walking distance of her two grandchildren.

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  Jeff Skoll Speaker

  Founder & Chairman, Jeff Skoll Group

  Jeff Skoll is an entrepreneur devoted to creating a sustainable world of peace and prosperity. Over the last 17 years, he has crafted an innovative portfolio of philanthropic and commercial enterprises, each a distinctive catalyst for changing the trajectory of issues that most affect the survival and thriving of humanity. This portfolio includes the Skoll Foundation, Skoll Global Threats Fund, Participant Media, and Capricorn Investment Group—all coordinated under the Jeff Skoll Group umbrella. The Skoll entrepreneurial approach is unique: driving large-scale, permanent social impact by investing in a range of efforts that integrate powerful stories, data, capital markets, technology, partnerships, and organized learning networks. Operating independently from one another yet deeply connected through a shared vision, Skoll organizations galvanize public will, influence policy, and mobilize resources to accelerate the pace and depth of change. Jeff was the first full-time employee and President of eBay, where he experienced firsthand the power of combining entrepreneurship, technology, and trust in people. His work today embodies those fundamental lessons. All of Jeff’s organizations rely on the premise that people are fundamentally good, and that given the opportunity to do the right thing, they will.

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  Annie Lennox Performer

  Founder, SING

  Named as one of The 100 Greatest Singers of All Time by Rolling Stone magazine, internationally acclaimed singer songwriter and human rights activist Annie Lennox rose to fame with Dave Stewart as Eurythmics in the early 1980’s with the classic album "Sweet Dreams are Made of This.” In the decade to follow, Eurythmics went on to achieve more than 20 international hits, selling more than 80 million albums. In 1992, Lennox released her debut album, “Diva"…selling over 6 million copies worldwide and establishing her career as a solo artist. Lennox has received numerous accolades, including 8 BRIT Awards (including Lifetime Achievement), 10 Grammy nominations and 4 Grammy Awards, a Golden Globe and an Academy Award. In 2003, Lennox performed at the inaugural concert for Nelson Mandela's HIV/AIDS Foundation, 46664. Her experience in South Africa inspired her to found the SING campaign, supporting women and children affected by HIV/AIDS. A goodwill ambassador for UNAIDS, Oxfam, Amnesty International and The British Red Cross, she is also Special Envoy for Scottish Parliament and the City of London. She received the Woman of Peace Award at the 2009 World Summit of Nobel Peace Laureates and in 2011 was named an Officer of the Order of the British Empire (OBE) in recognition of her humanitarian work. Last year, she was awarded a Fellowship at the 60th Ivor Novello Awards - the first woman to receive it - and earlier this year Elle magazine awarded her the "Outstanding Achievement Award" for activism and campaigning. The Royal Scottish Geographic Society awarded Annie the prestigious "Livingstone Medal” in March 2016.

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  Muhammad Yunus Speaker

  Founder, Grameen Bank

  Nobel Laureate Muhammad Yunus is the father of microcredit and social business, Founder of Grameen Bank and of more than 50 other companies. Fortune Magazine named him 'one of 12 greatest entrepreneurs of our time'. Professor Yunus received the Nobel Peace Prize for his work with the Grameen Bank Project and is one of seven people to have received the Nobel Peace Prize, the US Presidential Medal of Freedom and the US Congressional Gold Medal. He received his BA and PhD in Economics and is the recipient of more than 50 honorary degrees.

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  Festival in Exile Performer

  Performers,

  This part of West Africa is the cradle of music, and Mali in particular, which became the blues, which became rock n’roll... It’s really the big bang of all the music we love. —BonoJoin the Skoll World Forum community as we stand in solidarity with Mali’s leading musicians in their debut of the awareness campaign, Festival in Exile. Barred from performing in their own land and at their acclaimed Festival au Desert outside of Timbuktu by radical extremists, the campaign promotes an international dialogue of peace and plurality through cultural exchange. Performers include: Mama Wallet Amoumine – Malian singer from the Tuareg band Tartit, Habib Koité – Malian guitarist, singer & band leader, Bassekou Kouyaté – Malian Ngoni player, Vieux Farka Touré – Malian guitarist, singer & band leader, Mama Toumani Koné – Malian percussionist, and Valess Assouan – Côte d'Ivoire bass player.

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  Monica Yunus Performer

  Soprano and Co-Executive Director, Sing for Hope

  Monica Yunus is the Co-Founding Director of Sing for Hope, a leading non-profit that brings arts outreach programs to communities in need and presents initiatives -- such NYC's summertime street pianos -- that make the arts accessible to all. An internationally renowned soprano, Ms. Yunus has performed with the world's leading companies, including The Metropolitan Opera, Washington National Opera, The Zouk Festival, and in recitals in Spain, France, and her native Bangladesh. She has been honored with a 21st Century Leaders Award and, in 2013, received a Congressional Citation, was honored as "New Yorker of the Week" by NY1, and was named one of the "Top 50 Americans in Philanthropy" by Town&Country. A leading voice in the "artist as citizen" discussion, she has performed and spoken at the Fortune Most Powerful Women’s Summit, Nexus Global Summit, and The United Nations. The daughter of Nobel Peace Prize Laureate Muhammad Yunus, Ms. Yunus is a graduate of The Juilliard School.

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  Carne Ross Speaker

  Executive Director, Independent Diplomat

  Carne Ross is an award-winning innovator in transforming diplomacy and a writer and commentator on world affairs. Carne was a high-flying British diplomat for fifteen years who resigned from the foreign service in 2004 after giving secret evidence on Iraq’s WMD to an official inquiry into the Iraq war (he served as the UK’s Iraq expert at the UN Security Council for 4 ½ years). His work in the British Foreign Office included terrorism and the global environment, and postings in Germany, Afghanistan and the UN in New York. He was also speechwriter for the British foreign secretary. After his resignation, Carne then founded and now runs Independent Diplomat, a unique non-profit which advises marginalized democratic governments and political groups on diplomatic strategy, helping those most affected by diplomatic decisions have a say in international negotiations, for instance helping the Marshall Islands secure dramatic and positive outcomes at the recent UN climate talks and today advising the democratic opposition in Syria. ID has a staff of around 20 former diplomats, international lawyers and other experts, located in offices in New York, Brussels, London and Geneva. Carne has written two books on diplomacy and world affairs and multiple articles for publications across the world, including the New York Times and Financial Times, and regularly comments on international affairs on MSNBC, NPR, AJE, CNN, the BBC and others. He is the subject of the feature documentary film, Accidental Anarchist. Carne’s work has been profiled in the New York Times, The Guardian, Foreign Policy, Time magazine, Buzzfeed, Asahi Shimbun, Der Spiegel, Die Zeit, the LA Review of Books and others. In 2005, Carne was honored as a Visionary for a Just and Peaceful World by the Joseph Rowntree Charitable Trust. In 2013, Carne was awarded the Skoll Foundation Award for Social Entrepreneurship.

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  Gemma Mortensen Speaker

  Co-Founder, More In Common

  Gemma has worked in the media, for government, international organisations, non-profits and within the tech sector; all in a life-long quest to learn the skills needed to bend the arc of power, wherever it resides, towards the public interest and the least advantaged. She is abandoning sunny California, where she served as Change.org’s first Chief Global Officer overseeing teams in 17 countries, to return home to contribute to More in Common. She is co-chair of the World Economic Forum’s Global Future Council on Platforms and Systems, a board member of Intelligence Squared and co-founder of The Syria Campaign (with Tim Dixon). She was previously Executive Director of Crisis Action from 2008 to 2015 and received the 2012 MacArthur Award for Creative and Effective Institutions and the 2013 Skoll Award for Social Entrepreneurship. CNN named her as one of their inspirational women for 2014 and she became a Yale World Fellow in 2015. She believes we are experiencing an unprecedented rate of change that will only intensify.

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  Gopi Gopalakrishnan Speaker

  President and Founder, World Health Partners

  Gopi Gopalakrishnan has over 30 years of experience in implementing large-scale service-delivery programs in low-resource settings. He has founded two large organizations so far—World Health Partners which focuses on delivering primary health care to rural communities by innovatively harnessing existing resources in the poorest states of India and earlier Janani which delivers reproductive health services in Bihar and Jharkhand. Gopi’s network management strategies have been recognized worldwide as some of the most effective methods for translating the vast unmet need of underserved communities into adoption with a focus on the ‘here and now’. He has won the Skoll, Schwab (World Economic Forum) and Asian awards for social entrepreneurship. A major part of Gopi’s work has focused on operationalizing public–private partnerships in which private sector resources are tailored to complement public sector service provision. Increasingly, his recent work has devoted attention to integrate stronger management systems and technologies into public sector programming. He has been a member of India’s Population Commission and has advised the Ministry of Health and Family Welfare and numerous national and international organizations on large-scale cost-effective service delivery. He has served on the global technical advisory board of the International Finance Corporation, an affiliate of the World Bank, and is currently a member of the Advisory Group on Community Action (AGCA) of the National Health Mission. During his career, Mr. Gopalakrishnan also worked as the Director of International Programs of DKT International based in Washington DC and as Country Director of DKT Vietnam based in Hanoi. He has been awarded by the Skoll Foundation, the Schwab (World Economic Forum) and Ashoka Foundation for social entrepreneurship and is also recipient of a prestigious civilian honor from the Government of Vietnam.

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  Chris Underhill Speaker

  Founder, BasicNeeds

  Chris is a serial social entrepreneur who works to bring new concepts of social change into being. He is an expert in global health and rehabilitation systems, runs his own mentoring practice, and is a trainer in the community-based facilitation technique, known as Animation. He is currently co-founding citiesRISE, which is a multi-stakeholder initiative designed to promote mental health by catalysing collective actions across sectors within cities. This follows on from his most recent organisation, BasicNeeds, which he established in 2000, which delivers a holistic model for mental health in the most disadvantaged countries of the world. Recognized as a significant innovation in community mental healthcare delivery, the Model combines medical, social, economic and personal aspects into one successful programme and has benefited more than 697,000 people via the BasicNeeds global programme. Chris is senior Fellow of the Ashoka Fellowship, a recipient of the Skoll Award for Social Entrepreneurship and was selected as a Schwab Foundation Social Entrepreneur for 2014. In 2000 Chris received an MBE from the Queen for his services to disability and development.

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  Mushtaq Chhapra Speaker

  Co-Founder and Chairman, The Citizens Foundation

  A Founding Member of TCF’s Board of Directors, Mr. Chhapra has played a key role in nurturing a number of prominent nonprofit organizations. He serves on the boards of Patients’ Aid Foundation and The Kidney Centre as well. In recognition of his eminent service to society, the Government of Pakistan has conferred upon him the Sitara-e-Imtiaz, one of Pakistan’s highest civil honors. Mr. Mushtaq is Director of various companies and corporations including Coastal Trading, CBM Plastics, Transpak (Pvt) Ltd., Coastal Synthetics (Pvt) Ltd., Multipaper Products (Pvt) Ltd., and Coastal Converters (Pvt) Ltd. He is Chairman of the Executive Committee of Patient Aid Foundation, a Foundation that was established to extend help to needy and poor patients and provides free medicine. He is also a Member of the Board of Governors of The Kidney Centre, which provides treatment and dialysis to patients suffering from kidney problems

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