Lunchtime Delegate-Led Discussions

Session leaders

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  Adrian Sell Discussion lead

  CEO, BasicNeeds

  Adrian Sell is Chief Executive Officer of BasicNeeds UK. He has successfully steered BasicNeeds into a merger with CBM UK and recently secured over a million dollars in funding from an online games company. He has over twenty-five years experience in the charity, social enterprise, government and private sectors. His experience covers mental health, international work as well as considerable experience of scaling complex social interventions. He holds a Masters in Consulting and Leading in Organizations from the Tavistock and Portman Clinic. Previously he was Executive Director at OXPIP: Oxford Parent Infant Project a pioneering organization working to ensure a loving and secure start to life. With backing from Impetus-Private Equity Foundation and others he successfully doubled the turnover of the organization. His other roles have included Director of Services for an older people’s charity, Operations Manager for a social enterprise, working on organizational change in a county council as well as front line roles in a hospital, a care home and an insurance company. He is married with two children and enjoys cycling, running, walking, reading and spending time with friends and family.

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  Avary Kent Discussion lead

  Executive Director, Conveners.org

  Avary Kent is a serial Social Entrepreneur with deep expertise in making ideas a reality. Currently she is the Founding Executive Director of Conveners.org building the impact ecosystem through more effective convening, accelerators, and mapping initiatives. Her expertise in experience design supports her clients in the development of participant focused events integrating human centered design techniques that deliver outstanding feedback and results. As an on-site facilitator she has worked with politicians, academics, cyber security experts, factory owners and workers, Fortune 100 brands, investors, and foundation leaders. She is adept at navigating challenging conversations and supporting groups towards productive dialogue and action. She was also the co-founder of ImpactAlpha, The Happiness Institute, and Puzzlebox LLC. She received a BS in Genetics and Geobotanical Field Ecology from George Washington University and an MBA in Sustainable Enterprise from Dominican University.

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  Ella Gudwin Discussion lead

  President, VisionSpring

  Ella Gudwin is the President of VisionSpring, a leading social enterprise working to create access to affordable eyeglasses, everywhere. Ella leads an international team that is reaching low-income consumers in thirteen countries, with significant operations in India and growth in frontier markets. In 2015, VisionSpring will distribute its three millionth pair of glasses, creating a total of $280 million in economic impact. Our motto is 'See well. Do well.' Ms. Gudwin came to VisionSpring with extensive experience in global health and international development. As Senior Vice President of Strategy and Program Development at the global health and emergency response organization, AmeriCares, Gudwin led the development of the organization’s ten-year strategic plan and capacities to improve health outcomes in low-resource settings. Over almost nine years with AmeriCares, Gudwin helped the organization become the leading nonprofit provider of donated medicines and medical supplies, delivering over $500 million in quality medical products and relief supplies annually to a network of health care institutions around the world. As Vice President of Emergency Response, she managed humanitarian operations for major disasters including the 2011 Japan earthquake and tsunami, and as Director of Asia and Eurasia partnerships, oversaw the delivery of medical assistance and health programs in 10 countries. Prior to joining AmeriCares, Gudwin served as Head of Foreign Government Relations at the Population Council. She lived in Indonesia for three years where she taught at the University of Sanata Dharma and conducted research with the World Bank. Gudwin earned an MA with distinction in international economics and Southeast Asia studies at the School for Advanced International Studies, Johns Hopkins University, and a BA with honors from Vassar College. Gudwin is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations.

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  Henry McLoughlin Discussion lead

  Director, Corporate Development, Capricorn Investment Group

  Henry joined Capricorn in June 2015 where he oversees new initiatives and policy issues. Prior to joining CIG, Henry was a consultant for 5 years, with the Boston Consulting Group in Paris and Dubai and with Oliver Wyman in New York. During that time, he worked on approximately 20 projects in a dozen countries with a focus on infrastructure and government policy. His last year as a consultant was spent with the World Economic Forum where he was in charge of the infrastructure finance initiative. Henry is a former reserve officer in the French Marine Infantry, serving within NATO forces in Afghanistan in 2007. He is a graduate of Ecole Normale Superieure (rue d’Ulm), of Ecole Superieur de Commerce de Paris and of the Saint-Cyr Special Military School (ROTC).

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  Jaison Morgan Discussion lead

  CEO, Common Pool

  Jaison Morgan is the CEO of Common Pool (www.commonpool.org), an agency that funds social enterprises through an open, transparent, and fair process of granting awards, prizes, fellowships, and other forms of incentive-based programs. In 2017, Common Pool was responsible for facilitating over $200 million in total resources to registrants around the world. Jaison Morgan has been recognized by the BBC as "the world's expert" in designing prizes to drive innovative breakthroughs. He helped establish a lab at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 2007 to study how targeted rewards can be used to induce new approaches to engineering challenges. He has served as an Advisor to the Office of the First Minister of Scotland, the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy, the government of the United Arab Emirates, and many multi-national interests to counsel their use of challenge competitions for solving large-scale public problems. Jaison completed graduate studies at the University of Chicago and is a frequent lecturer on the subject of incentive engineering (https://youtu.be/NyOaoIcCeMY).

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  Kartik Shanker Discussion lead

  Director, Ashoka Trust for Research in Ecology and The Environment

  Kartik Shanker the Director of the Ashoka Trust for Research in Ecology and the Environment (ATREE), Bangalore. He is an ecologist with interests in inter-disciplinary research as well as conservation action and outreach. He is on deputation from the Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore where he has worked on various aspects of the distribution and diversity of flora and fauna in terrestrial and marine ecosystems, with applications for conservation decision making. He is also a founder trustee of Dakshin Foundation, an NGO which works largely on coastal and marine conservation and livelihoods. Shanker has worked on the biology and conservation of sea turtles for the last 25 years, and has ongoing projects on olive ridley turtles in Orissa, and leatherback turtles in the Andaman and Nicobar Islands. He has been involved in initiating national and regional networks for the conservation of sea turtles and their habitats. He has started newsletters and websites and conducted international symposiums on sea turtles. He has also served as President of the International Sea Turtle Society and is Regional Vice-Chair of the IUCN/SSC Marine Turtle Specialist Group. He served as the editor of Conservation and Society for 10 years, is the founding editor of the magazine, Current Conservation. He is the author of the book ‘From Soup to Superstar’, a historical account of sea turtle conservation in India. He is the author of several children’s books, including Lori’s Magical Mystery, Turtle Story and The Adventures of Philautus Frog.

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  Kevin Starr Discussion lead

  Managing Director, Mulago Foundation

  Kevin Starr directs the Mulago Foundation which is focused on scalable solutions to meet the basic needs of the very poor. Kevin had a perfectly good career in medicine when he stumbled into philanthropy in 1994. His friend and mentor Rainer Arnhold died suddenly when they were working together in Bolivia, and the Arnhold family asked Kevin to help carry on Rainer's work through the Mulago Foundation. He spent the next decade working with projects from Afghanistan to Zambia, trying to figure out what makes for real impact at big scale. Kevin established Mulago's Fellows Program in 2003 to apply principles and tools that help social entrepreneurs turn good ideas into lasting change at scale. The program gives fellows a chance to design for impact that can go big. Kevin teaches and mentors fellows in numerous other programs for social entrepreneurs and serves as the chairman of Big Bang Philanthropy, a group of funders working together to direct more money to those best at fighting poverty. Kevin went through medical school and residency at UC San Francisco and has lived in SF ever since.

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  Louis Boorstin Discussion lead

  Managing Director, Osprey Foundation

  Louis is Managing Director of the Osprey Foundation, where he leads programs on water, sanitation and hygiene (WASH) and sustainable energy. In addition to managing a portfolio of grants and impact investments, Louis works to advance these sectors through wide-scale systems change. From 2005-2013, Louis founded and led the WASH program at the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, building a portfolio of more than US$ 400 million, assembling a cross-disciplinary team, and focusing the program on non-piped sanitation. Prior to that, he worked for 15 years at the International Finance Corporation of the World Bank Group, where he led the environmental finance team from 1997 to 2004. In that capacity, he helped pioneer the impact investing field by building a portfolio of over 30 ventures, ranging from solar power to clean drinking water, totaling US$ 250 million. Louis currently sits on the boards of IRC International Water and Sanitation Centre, the RICE Institute and Sanergy and serves as a senior adviser to several other social ventures and non-profits. He holds a BA in economics from Yale University and an MBA and MA (Development Economics) from Stanford University.

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  Sasha Fisher Discussion lead

  Co-Founder & Executive Director, Spark MicroGrants

  Sasha is the co-founder and executive director of Spark MicroGrants. Spark supports governments and civil society to develop inclusive democratic processes across Rwanda, Uganda, Burundi, the Democratic Republic of Congo and Ghana. Spark has developed a streamlined village planning process paired with a seed grant that equips families facing poverty to launch a project of their choice together, such as a farm or school. Since 2010 Spark has reached over 170 villages across five countries with 94% of villages continuing to meet on a regular basis.

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  Rachel White Discussion lead

  President, theguardian.org Foundation

  Rachel is president of theguardian.org and executive vice president, philanthropic and strategic partnerships at Guardian News & Media. Theguardian.org, a US-based non-profit, was publicly launched in August, 2017 to support independent journalism on issues related to climate change, human rights, inequality, and other topics. Prior to joining the Guardian, Rachel served as executive vice president and interim president of the Washington D.C.-based, journalism-centered think tank New America Foundation. Working across media, policy, government, the private sector, and philanthropy, she led the organization in advancing new thinkers and new ideas to address the next generation of challenges facing the United States. From 1995 to 2005, Rachel worked for the World Wildlife Fund.

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  Cathy Clark Discussion lead

  Faculty Director of CASE and CASE i3, Center for the Advancement of Social Entrepreneurship

  Named in 2014 one of the top 20 women in the USA working in philanthropy, social innovation and civic engagement, Cathy Clark has been an active researcher, educator, and consultant for over 25 years in the fields of impact investing and social entrepreneurship. She serves as Faculty Director at the Center for the Advancement of Social Entrepreneurship (CASE) at Duke University’s Fuqua School of Business, where she founded and directs the CASE i3 Initiative on Impact Investing and co-leads the Social Entrepreneurship Accelerator at Duke (SEAD). She is also lead author of CASE’s online learning series for impact entrepreneurs, CASE Smart Impact Capital, and co-author of CASE’s ScalingPathways series, in partnership with the Skoll Foundation, USAID’s Global Development Lab and MercyCorps. A former impact investment fund manager and private foundation program officer, Clark’s work has helped thousands of entrepreneurs, investors, intermediaries, and governments around the globe improve their ability to use business as a tool for good. She helped develop the standards for B Corporations, and was the recipient of the 2017 B Champions Award for service in building the B Corporation movement. Clark was also the sole academic member of the G8 Social Impact Investment Taskforce US National Advisory Board, and was invited to track $2.5 billion in new impact investments by the Obama White House Office of Social Innovation and Civic Engagement. She is co-author of The Impact Investor: Lessons in Leadership and Strategy for Collaborative Capitalism, which reached #18 in finance textbooks on Amazon in 2014. Cathy holds a BA from the University of Virginia and an MBA from Columbia Business School, and tweets at @cathyhc.

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  Sujatha Sebastian Discussion lead

  Co-Founder, Conveners.org

  Sujatha thrives on helping mission-driven leaders engage in transformational conversations for positive change. She is a co-founder of Conveners.org, and a seasoned network builder, facilitator and capacity builder. In her role as a managing director, she led the development of Conveners.org’s membership and advisory service programs. Building on this work she is now preparing to launch a new organization focused on convening design. Sujatha has worked with several mission-driven organizations including the Aspen Institute, C&A Foundation, the Hewlett Foundation, Open Society Foundations, the Paul and Daisy Soros Foundation for New Americans, and the Skoll World Forum. She is a dynamic and experienced consultant and facilitator who has worked across a variety of issue areas ranging from health equity to transparency in supply chains, and from education to cyber security. She has moderated discussions and conference sessions for a broad spectrum of institutions ranging from West Point Military Academy to the US Small Business Administration, and from the New Mexico Community Foundation to the Latin American Impact Investing Forum. Sujatha grew up in a multicultural household, the daughter of an immigrant entrepreneur and a midwife. She brings a diverse background in community economic development, international relations, and education to her work. She received her BA in Peace & Conflict Studies from Bryn Mawr College and completed her graduate studies at the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts University.

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