Accelerating Systems Change: Making Possibility Real
Wednesday, April 10, 2019
Session Description
Social issues are more global, complex, and interdependent than ever. While social innovators continue to drive progress in specific areas, systems change requires an approach that unearths the root cause of critical societal challenges and gathers a spectrum of actors. What collaborative models and pathways achieve systems change? Join a lively, evidence-based discussion with social entrepreneurs and other leaders demonstrating what systems change impact demands of us all.
Time & Location
Time:
10:00 AM - 11:15 AM, Wednesday, April 10, 2019
BST
Location:
Nelson Mandela Lecture Theatre
Speakers
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Speaker
Marc Freedman is Founder and Co-CEO of CoGenerate (formerly Encore.org), and a faculty member at The Yale School of Management. Freedman is the author of five books, including most recently, How to Live Forever: The Enduring Power of Connecting the Generations. He co-founded Experience Corps to mobilize people over 50 to improve the prospects of low-income elementary schools, and the Purpose Prize, an annual award for social innovators in the second half of life. Freedman is an Ashoka Senior Fellow; was named a Social Entrepreneur of the Year by the World Economic Forum; and has been honored with the Skoll Award for Social Entrepreneurship. A former visiting fellow at Stanford University, King’s College, London, and the David and Lucile Packard Foundation, he holds an MBA from the Yale. He lives with his wife and three children in the San Francisco Bay Area.
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Moderator
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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Speaker
Founder and CEO, Co-Impact
Olivia Leland is the Founder and CEO of Co-Impact, a global philanthropic collaborative for equitable systems
change at scale, focused on advancing gender equality and elevating women and
girls’ power, agency and leadership at all levels. Olivia has more than two decades of international
experience in philanthropy, government, and the non-profit sector. Prior to
Co-Impact, Olivia was the founding director of the Giving Pledge – an effort
launched by Bill Gates, Melinda French Gates, and Warren Buffett to help
address society’s most pressing problems by encouraging increased philanthropy.
Previously, Olivia worked in microfinance and financial inclusion, and in the
areas of strategy development, multi-sector collaboration, and advancing gender
equality.
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Speaker
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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Speaker
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.
