2015 Skoll Awards for Social Entrepreneurship: Awards Ceremony
Speakers
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Alasdair is a marine conservationist working at the interface of ocean protection and social justice.
His organisation Blue Ventures develops locally led approaches to marine conservation that benefit people and nature.
Blue Ventures’ approach is helping many hundreds of thousands of people address overfishing and safeguard ocean life in fifteen countries across southeast Asia and Africa,
Alasdair is a TED fellow, and holds a PhD in marine ecology and an honorary doctorate of science from the University of Edinburgh.
He has spent more than two decades working with communities to rebuild small-scale fisheries across the tropical Indo-Pacific.
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Founder, Graça Machel Trust
Graça Machel is a renowned international advocate for women’s and children’s rights and has been a social and political activist over many decades. She is a former freedom fighter and was the first Education Minister of Mozambique. Her contributions to the Africa Progress Panel, the United Nations Secretary-General’s Millennium Development Goals Advocacy Group and the High-Level Panel on Post 2015 Development Agenda, have been widely appreciated. She is a member of The Elders, Girls Not Brides, Board Chair of the Partnership for Maternal, Newborn & Child Health, African Ambassador for A Promised Renewed, President of SOAS, University of London, Chancellor of the University of Cape Town, Board Chair of the African Centre for the Constructive Resolution of Disputes, President of the Foundation for Community Development, founder of the Zizile Institute for Child Development.
As Founder of the newly established Graça Machel Trust, she has focused more recently on advocating for women’s economic and financial empowerment, education for all, an end to child marriage, food security and nutrition, and promoting democracy and good governance.
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, Soweto Gospel Choir
The Soweto Gospel Choir was formed to celebrate the unique and inspirational power of African Gospel music. The 24-strong choir, under the direction of Beverly Bryer, draws on the best talent from the many churches in and around Soweto.
The choir is dedicated to sharing the joy of faith through music with audiences around the world. Formed in 2002, Soweto Gospel Choir has achieved incredible success in a very short time. They have travelled the world, recorded 5 albums, two dvds and have won countless awards in Sth Africa, USA and Australia. They are Ambassadors for the Nelson Mandela Foundation and their patron is Archbishop Desmond Tutu. Soweto Gospel Choir has performed with some of the biggest names in music and performed for some of the most influential people in the world.
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A practitioner from the very beginning, Jagdeesh’s 37 year professional engagement has been on interrelated issues of poverty and environmental degradation and on ‘systems thinking’ at the interface of ecology, society and economy.
Jagdeesh has been the Chief Executive of Foundation for Ecological Security (FES) since its inception in 2001 till July 2020. Subsequently, he was associated its Promise of Commons initiative since it's inception in 2020 till September 2021 as it's anchor and curator. He was an Entrepreneur-in-Residence at Omidyar Network India in 2022. Along with a few partners, he is currently designing an ecosystem initiative titled 'Common Ground' to build collaborative action for addressing challenges posed by climate change, loss of economic opportunities and inequalities.
Jagdeesh is a Skoll Awardee, a Henry Arnhold Fellow and a Senior Ashoka Fellow. His areas of interest include Commons, decentralized governance, systems thinking and systems change.
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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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Ma Jun began his career in 1993 working for the South China Morning Post, where his research on China’s environmental problems spurred him to publish the 1999 book China’s Water Crisis. In 2004 he was selected as a Yale World Fellow. Upon returning to China, Ma Jun founded the non-profit organization the Institute of Public & Environmental Affairs (IPE) in Beijing in 2006.
As Director of IPE, Ma Jun led the development and launch of China’s first environmental public database, the Blue Map, with website and mobile app platforms. The Blue Map collects air, water and soil quality data from across the country, as well as pollution source information that provides a foundation for green credit and green finance systems. The Green Choice supply chain program he and colleagues initiated has motivated more than 3000 suppliers of major global and local brands to openly address their violation problems.
In 2006, he was awarded as China’s “Green Person of the Year” and was named as one of TIME Magazine’s World’s 100 Most Influential People. Ma was also honored with the Magsaysay Award in 2009 and Goldman Prize in 2012 for his environmental protection work in China, as well as the 2015 Skoll Foundation Award for Social Entrepreneurship for his innovative approach to “lifting the veil” on China’s pollution problems.
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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
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A lifelong educationalist, I began my career teaching English at secondary level before focusing on children excluded from mainstream education. Following research in Zimbabwe, I founded CAMFED International to support and advance the education of rural girls in sub-Saharan Africa. The organisation has grown into six countries, working with Ministries of Education and an array of other partners to extend education beyond the secondary into the tertiary level as well as providing financial intelligence training and job creation programmes. CAMFED’s work is rooted in rural communities and credits its strength and success to the creative endeavours and resilience of these communities as well as the alumna of young women supported by CAMFED and now more that a quarter of a million strong.
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Safeena Husain is the Founder and Board Member of Educate Girls, a non-profit working towards empowering communities for girls’ education in remote villages of India. Under Safeena’s guidance, Educate Girls has mobilised 1.4 million+ girls for enrolment to date, supporting over 18.6 million+ children.
Safeena’s efforts to bridge the gender gap in education in India have been instrumental in Educate Girls achieving the world’s first Development Impact Bond in education and becoming an Audacious Project.
