A Global Community

Seth Godin is an author, entrepreneur and long-time Acumen supporter.  He writes and speaks about how ideas spread and the stories we tell others (and ourselves).

Seth is the author of fifteen international bestsellers that have been translated into over 35 languages, and have changed the way people think about marketing and work. For a long time, Unleashing the Ideavirus was the most popular ebook ever published, and Purple Cow is the bestselling marketing book of the decade.In addition to his writing and speaking, Seth is founder and CEO of Squidoo.com, a fast growing recommendation website. His blog (find it by typing “seth” into Google) is the most popular marketing blog in the world. Before his work as a writer and blogger, Godin was Vice President of Direct Marketing at Yahoo!, a job he got after selling them his pioneering 1990s online startup, Yoyodyne.

Peter Cain is a Managing Director at Ambac Assurance Corp. He has been head of Credit Risk Management since June, 2009. He oversees key decisions on the run-off of the firm’s credit portfolio, which totals over $250 billion. Ambac’s portfolio includes public finance, international, and structured finance positions. In 2001, he moved from London to Ambac’s New York office and took on a series of senior risk management positions, which included structured finance portfolio management, health care and project finance work-outs, and heading Public Finance Credit Risk Management. In 1995, Mr. Cain opened Ambac’s London office and built a business focused on public-private partnerships and project finance. Prior to 1995, he worked for MBIA in Paris and New York as an underwriter in transportation, not-for-profits and infrastructure. From 1985 to 1990, he worked as an analyst at Bond Investors Guaranty and Moody’s. He graduated from Babson College and holds an MBA from NYU’s Stern School of Business.

Chris Anderson is the curator of the TED Conference, a conference that explores the power of ideas to make a difference in the world. Anderson was born in Pakistan in 1957. His parents were medical missionaries and he spent most of his early life in Pakistan, India and Afghanistan. In 1978 he graduated from Oxford University with a degree in Philosophy, Politics, and Economics.  In 1985 he launched Future Publishing, which ultimately expanded to more than 130 magazines, including Business 2.0, and more than 1,500 employees.   In 2001 Anderson acquired the TED Conference through his non-profit Sapling Foundation. Under his stewardship, over 1000 TED talks have been released free online to a global audience. He’s overseen introduction of the TED Prize, the TED Fellows Program, the TED open translation program, the TED-Ed initiative, and the TEDx program which allows hundreds of independently organized TED-like events to be held around the world.

Pat Tierney is the Director of Aviation for Freeport McMoRan, responsible for oversight of corporate flight operations and safety in Indonesia, Africa, North and South America. He is the Co-Chair of Flight Safety Foundation’s Technical Advisory Committee in Melbourne, Australia. Prior to joining Freeport, he served as US Army Officer for 27 years in a variety of command and staff positions in conventional and Special Operations forces from Platoon to Brigade Command. He is a veteran of multiple combat and operational tours including Panama, Haiti, Colombia, Iraq and Afghanistan.  Most recently serving as the Headquarters Department of the Army, Director of Aviation. He holds a Masters of Aeronautical Science, Airline Transport Pilot rating and is rated in over 25 military and civilian fixed and rotary wing aircraft. He received a Bachelor’s of Business Administration from the University of Georgia, Terry School of Business and Master’s degree in National Security and Strategic Studies from the US Naval War College. He is based in Phoenix, Arizona.

Sir Fazle Hasan Abed, KCMG is a Bangladeshi social worker and the founder chairman of BRAC (formerly, Bangladesh Rural Advancement Committee). For his outstanding contributions to social improvement, he has received the Ramon Magsaysay Award, the UNDP Mahbub Ul Haq Award, the inaugural Clinton Global Citizen Award and the inaugural WISE Prize for Education. He was appointed Knight Commander of the Order of St Michael and St George (KCMG) in the 2010 New Year Honours for services in tackling poverty and empowering the poor in Bangladesh and globally.

Diana Barrett, President, founded Fledgling in 2005 after a long career at Harvard University, where she taught in both the Harvard Business School and the School of Public Health. At Harvard Business School, she was a member of the Social Enterprise core group teaching Business Leadership in the Social Sector as well as various executive programs. Her areas of interest included the use of public private partnerships for global poverty reduction and specifically, in addressing the social and personal burden of disease such as HIV/AIDS. She received both her Masters in Business Administration and her Doctorate in Business Administration from the Harvard Business School. Fledgling provides an opportunity to further those interests by focusing on innovative approaches to complex social issues including the use of media to ignite social change. In addition to leading Fledgling, Diana serves on the Boards of the International Center for Photography, the Social Change Film Forum at Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government and the Advisory Board of the Acumen Fund.

Seth Berkley joined the GAVI Alliance as CEO in August 2011, as it launched its
five year strategy to immunise a quarter of a billion children in the developing
world with life-saving vaccines by 2015.

Prior to joining the GAVI Alliance, Seth was the founder, president and CEO
for 15 years of the International AIDS Vaccine Initiative ( IAVI ), the first vaccine
product development public-private sector partnership. Under his leadership, IAVI
implemented a global advocacy programme that assured that vaccines received
prominent attention in the media and in forums such as the G 8, EU and the UN.
He also oversaw the creation of a virtual vaccine product development effort
involving industry, academia, and developing country scientists.

Prior to founding IAVI, Seth served as associate director in the Health Sciences
Division at The Rockefeller Foundation. He has also worked for the Center
for Infectious Diseases of the U. S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention ( CDC ),
the Massachusetts Department of Public Health and for the Carter Center where
he served as an epidemiologist at the Ministry of Health in Uganda. He has
consulted or worked in more than 25 countries in Asia, Africa and Latin America.

Seth sits on a number of international steering committees and corporate and
not-for-profit boards, including those of Gilead Sciences, the New York Academy
of Sciences and the Acumen Fund. In the past, he has also served on the boards
of public and private vaccine companies such as PowderJect and VaxInnate
and health and development organisations such as OXFAM America.

He has been featured on the cover of Newsweek, recognised by TIME magazine
as one of the “100 Most Influential People in the World” and by Wired Magazine as
among “The Wired 25 – a salute to dreamers, inventors, mavericks and leaders.”

Seth received his undergraduate and medical degrees from Brown University and
trained in internal medicine at Harvard University.

Peter Goldmark currently works as an independent consultant in the areas of philanthropy, environmental policy, international affairs and development, and organizational development in the social change field.  He directed the Climate and Air program for Environmental Defense from 2003 through 2010. Prior to joining Environmental Defense, he was Chairman and CEO of the International Herald Tribune.  Peter has had exceptional careers in both the public and private sectors.  His public service was highlighted by his tenure as Budget Director for the State of New York during the 1970s city- and state-wide fiscal crisis where he was an architect of its rescue; and as Executive Director of the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey through to 1983.

He served as president of the Rockefeller Foundation from 1988 through 1997, encouraging its involvement in environmental issues, particularly as they related to energy.

Mr. Goldmark was also a trustee of the Rockefeller Brothers Fund (1982-1988), member of Board Overseers and Chair of Harvard University’s Finance Committee (1984-1990), director of Knight Ridder Inc. (1991-1998), director of the Dreyfus Third Century Mutual Fund (1992-1998), member of the National Commission on Civic Renewal (1997-1998), trustee of the Whitehead Institute for Biomedical Research (2000-2007) and trustee of the Financial Accounting Foundation.  In addition, he serves as a board member of Lend Lease Corporation (1999-present), and member of the Council on Foreign Relations.

Mr. Goldmark is a recipient of the Wilson Wyatt National Award for Urban Revitalization and a member of the Legion of Honor, France.  He has taught courses at the JFK School of Government, Harvard; Yale College; The New School; Brandeis University; and Woodrow Wilson School, Princeton University as Visiting Professor of Public and International Affairs.

He holds a B.A. from Harvard University, and several honorary degrees.

Activist and educator, Jill Iscol, Ed.D, is President of the IF Hummingbird Foundation, a family foundation established in 1989 to support domestic and international efforts to strengthen democracy and reduce the social, economic, and educational inequalities that threaten it.  For the past two decades, Jill has developed an expertise in identifying visionary leaders and programs at early stages of their development and has fostered their advancement enabling them to become stable, sustainable and successful organizations, impacting lives around the globe.

As a Democratic Party Activist, Jill has served as Co-Chair of Hillary Rodham Clinton for Senate’s New York Finance Committee and as National Vice-Chair of Hillary Rodham Clinton for President’s 2008 Finance Committee.

Jill’s first book, Hearts on Fire: Stories of Today’s Visionaries Igniting Idealism into Action, was released by Random House in January 2013.

Susan Meiselas received her B.A. from Sarah Lawrence College and her M.A. in visual education from Harvard University. Her first major photographic essay focused on the lives of women doing striptease at New England country fairs. She photographed the carnivals during three consecutive summers while teaching photography in the New York public schools. CARNIVAL STRIPPERS was published by Farrar, Straus & Giroux in 1976. A selection was installed at the Whitney Museum of Art in June 2000. The original book was revised and reprinted by the Whitney Museum and Steidl Verlag in 2003.

Meiselas joined Magnum Photos in 1976 and has worked as a freelance photographer since then. She is best known for her coverage of the insurrection in Nicaragua and her documentation of human rights issues in Latin America, which were published widely throughout the world. In 1981, Pantheon published her second monograph, NICARAGUA, JUNE 1978-JULY 1979 which was reprinted by Aperture in the fall 2008.

Meiselas served as an editor and contributor to the book EL SALVADOR: THE WORK OF THIRTY PHOTOGRAPHERS (Writers & Readers, 1983) and edited CHILE FROM WITHIN (W.W. Norton, 1991) featuring work by photographers living under the Pinochet regime. She has co-directed two films: “Living at Risk: The Story of a Nicaraguan Family” (1986) and “Pictures from a Revolution” (1991) with Richard P. Rogers and Alfred Guzzetti. In 1997, she completed a six year project curating a 100 year photographic history of Kurdistan, and integrating her own work into the book entitled KURDISTAN: IN THE SHADOW OF HISTORY (Random House, 1997; reprinted by the University of Chicago Press, 2008). Meiselas then created the website, www.akaKURDISTAN.com, an online archive of collective memory; as well as an exhibition that launched at the Menil Collection in Houston, and traveled for eight years to several venues in the United States and Europe.

Her 2001 monograph, PANDORA’S BOX (Magnum Editions/Trebruk) which explores a New York S & M club, has been exhibited both at home and abroad. In 2003, ENCOUNTERS WITH THE DANI was featured as an installation in the International Center of Photography’s Triennial “Strangers” and co-published by ICP/Steidl Verlag. The book explores a 60 year history of outsiders’ discovery and interactions with the Dani, an indigenous people of the highlands of Papua in Indonesia. In 2008, Susan Meiselas, In History, a major U.S. overview highlighting key moments in Meiselas’ documentary process was exhibited at the International Center for Photography. The accompanying reader, SUSAN MEISELAS, IN HISTORY co-published by ICP/Steidl received the Krasna Krauss book of the year award in 2009.

Meiselas has had one-woman exhibitions in Paris, Madrid, Amsterdam, London, Los Angeles, Chicago and New York. Her work is included in American and international collections. Honorary awards of recognition include: the Robert Capa Gold Medal for “outstanding courage and reporting” by the Overseas Press Club for her work in Nicaragua (1979); the Leica Award for Excellence (1982); the Engelhard Award from the Institute of Contemporary Art (1985); the Maria Moors Cabot Prize from Columbia University for her coverage of Latin America (1994); the Hasselblad Foundation Photography prize (1994) and most recently, the Cornell Capa Infinity Award (2005). In 1992, she was named a MacArthur Fellow.

Paul Polman has been Chief Executive Officer since 1st January 2009. Under his leadership Unilever has set out an ambitious vision to double its size while reducing its overall environmental footprint and increasing its positive social impact.

Paul is Vice-Chairman (and the next Chairman) of the World Business Council for Sustainable Development, a member of the International Business Council of the World Economic Forum and serves on the Board of the UN Global Compact. He is on the Board of the Consumer Goods Forum and is a Director of the Swiss American Chamber of Commerce. Last year, he was invited to serve on the High Level Panel looking at the Post 2015 Millennium Development Goals and previously acted as co-chairman of the B20 group of companies reporting to the G20 on Food Security. He is also a member of the European Resource Efficiency Platform Working Group chaired by Environment Commissioner Janez Potocnik. Since 2010, Paul has been a non-executive director of the Dow Chemical Company.

In recognition of his contribution to responsible business, in 2012 Paul received the Atlantic Council Award for Distinguished Business Leadership and the CK Prahalad Award for Global Sustainability Leadership.

Paul began his career at Procter & Gamble in 1979, holding many senior executive positions, including Group President of Europe. He moved to Nestle in 2005, where he was the Chief Financial Officer and Executive Vice President for the Americas.

He earned a BBA/BA from the University of Groningen, Netherlands, in 1977 and an MA Economics and MBA finance/international marketing from the University of Cincinnati in 1979. Married with three children, Paul is Chairman of Perkins School for the Blind International Advisory Board and serves as President of the Kilimanjaro Blind Trust.

Kerry Sulkowicz, MD, a psychiatrist and psychoanalyst, is the founder and Managing Principal of the Boswell Group LLC, a consulting firm based in New York. He advises CEO’s, boards and investors on psychological aspects of leadership in complex organizations. Dr. Sulkowicz serves as a sounding board to some of the most influential business and political leaders in the US and abroad. He has written and spoken on a range of topics related to the psychology of business, and has been a regular columnist for BusinessWeek and Fast Company magazines, and a contributor to the Harvard Business Review.  Dr. Sulkowicz has an AB from Harvard and a MD from the University of Texas. He is a Clinical Professor of Psychiatry at NYU School of Medicine, where he received the Distinguished Teacher Award. He also serves on the boards of Physicians for Human Rights and the New York Center for Children.

Fareed Zakaria hosts CNN’s flagship foreign affairs show, is Editor-at-Large of TIME Magazine, a Washington Post columnist, and a New York Times bestselling author. Esquire Magazine called him “the most influential foreign policy adviser of his generation.”

In more than three decades as a change agent, Katherine Fulton has been a journalist, teacher, entrepreneur, philanthropist, convener, strategist, advisor, leader and citizen. In whatever role she finds herself, she aspires to work with leaders who are creating the future and to help people and organizations have courage in the face of uncertainty. She loves playing with complicated puzzles: seeing the possibilities and then putting the pieces together in new ways, across sectors, disciplines and cultures, always seeking to challenge existing assumptions and to engage minds, hearts and spirits along the way.

Katherine is at present a director of Monitor Deloitte Consulting and president of Monitor Institute. In that role she has advised many of this generation’s leading philanthropists and foundations as well as rising social entrepreneurs and established business leaders. Katherine is known for her expertise on the evolution of philanthropy and the emergence of impact investing as the co-author of What’s Next for Philanthropy: Acting Bigger and Adapting Better in a Networked World and Investing for Social and Environmental Impact: A Blueprint for Catalyzing an Emerging Industry. She has given dozens of major speeches about the future of philanthropy, including one at the main TED conference.

Katherine’s work draws upon her own life experiences of change, healing and transformation. A native Virginian, she graduated Phi Beta Kappa from Harvard, and then returned to the South, where she covered politics for a daily newspaper. Driven by a desire to innovate, she co-founded The North Carolina Independent, an award-winning investigative newspaper, which won her both a Nieman Fellowship at Harvard and a foundation prize for community service. After leaving journalism in the early 1990s, she taught at Duke University before working as a consultant and later serving as co-head of the practice at Global Business Network (GBN). At GBN, she worked with world-class futurists, mastered the scenario planning toolkit and advised leaders in more than a dozen industries as they sought to adapt more skillfully to rapid change. She has served on numerous governing boards, including the global board of Monitor and the founding board of the Global Impact Investing Network.

Katie Hill is a Global Supply Manager at Apple Inc, managing the sourcing of renewable energy and energy efficiency services as part of Apple’s goal to convert to 100% renewable energy.  Katie recently graduated as an Arjay Miller Scholar from a joint MBA/MS in Environmental Science at Stanford University.  Katie’s career has focused on energy infrastructure and natural resources in emerging markets. Having spent six years living in Asia and Africa (India, China, Nepal, Uganda, Botswana), Katie has acquired a deep understanding of these markets.

Katie spent her early career at Acumen Fund.  She worked with Acumen’s CIO to gain Board approval for the Energy Portfolio and moved to India to launch Acumen’s energy work.  As the Energy Portfolio Manager, Katie evaluated more than 300 clean technology businesses and managed $4 million in investments in solar, biomass, and small hydro power, as well as efficient agriculture.

Katie is a TED Fellow and a member of the World Resources Institute’s (WRI’s) New Innovators Council.  She has also worked for McKinsey & Company, Generation Investments, Dalberg Advisors and the China Greentech Initiative.

Catherine Muther built a business career in the Internet infrastructure industry, as senior marketing officer at Bridge Communications, 3Com and Cisco Systems, Inc. She is a social enterprise field builder as founder, funder, board member, impact investor, and professor.  Ms Muther was a Founding Partner and Chair of the Board of Acumen. She is the founder of Astia, a business accelerator with global reach for women technology entrepreneurs; and Springboard Enterprises, a resource hub for women entrepreneurs seeking early stage capital. Ms Muther is a Director of BRAC USA and PolicyLink. She is on the Advisory Boards of Duke University Center for the Advancement of Social Entrepreneurship (CASE), Global Philanthropy Forum, and Acumen. She teaches an Economics seminar on Global Poverty and Social Entrepreneurship. Ms Muther is a graduate of Stanford University Graduate School of Business, Cambridge University, and Sarah Lawrence College.  She has received numerous awards for business and philanthropic leadership.

Cristina Ljungberg is a partner at Influence Film, supporting the production of new documentary films and growing new audiences for them.  IFF supports the documentary industry through a foundation, an investment fund and an online platform. Since 2010, she has been chairman and the driving force behind the Giving Wings Foundation, a Swedish foundation focusing on education and healthcare for women and girls with a specific interest in menstrual hygiene. She is an active board member of Afripads in Uganda and has also served on the boards of Global Grassroots and Ostrea Sverige.  In 2011, Giving Wings became an anchor donor of the Acumen Education Portfolio.

Cristina started her career working for Baxter Healthcare, in Chicago, as a principal engineer, designing medical devices and biotech products. Following an MBA, she worked in the management consulting industry for McKinsey and Co.  In 2007, she produced her first film, the award winning documentary, “The Devil Came on Horseback.”  This experience precipitated her love for documentary film.  She earned a Bachelor of Science in Biology from Tufts University, a Masters in Biotechnology from Northwestern and an MBA from The Tuck School of Business at Dartmouth College.  She is originally from Indiana and currently lives in Stockholm, Sweden with her husband and four sons.

Robert (Bob) Collymore is the CEO of Safaricom Limited, a leading communications company in Africa and pioneer of M-PESA, the world’s most developed mobile payment system.

His work experience spans across diverse countries such as Japan, South Africa and the United Kingdom where he’s held senior roles in marketing, purchasing, retail and corporate affairs. Bob has more than 30 years of commercial experience working in the telecommunications sector and is passionate about how businesses can be catalysts in transforming communities.

The United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon appointed Mr. Collymore to the United Nations Global Compact Board. This is seen as a recognition of Safaricom’s commitment to environmental, sustainability and anti-corruption issues as well as the work it is undertaking to address the Millennium Development Goals 4 and 5 on maternal health and child mortality.

Mr Collymore has served as a Commissioner on the United Nations Commission on Life-Saving Commodities for women and children. In Kenya, he sits on The Vision 2030 Delivery Board and the United States International University advisory board.  He is also the chairman of the TEAMS (The East African Marine System) Board.

Jonathan Haidt is the Thomas Cooley Professor of Ethical Leadership at New York University’s Stern School of Business. He received his B. A. from Yale University in 1985 and his Ph.D. from the University of Pennsylvania in 1992. He then did post-doctoral research at the University of Chicago and in Orissa, India. He was a professor at the University of Virginia from 1995 until 2011, when he joined the Stern School of Business. Haidt is a social psychologist whose research focuses on morality – its emotional foundations, cultural variations, and developmental course. He began his career studying the negative moral emotions, such as disgust, shame, and vengeance, but then moved on to the understudied positive moral emotions, such as admiration, awe, and moral elevation. He is the co-developer of Moral Foundations Theory, and of the research site YourMorals.org. He uses his research to help people understand and respect the moral motives of people with whom they disagree (see CivilPolitics.org). He won three teaching awards from the University of Virginia and one from the governor of Virginia. His three TED talks have been viewed more than 3 million times. (Those talks are on political psychology, on religion, and on the causes of America’s political polarization.)  He was named a “top 100 global thinker” of 2012 by Foreign Policy magazine, and one of the 65 “World Thinkers of 2013″ by Prospect. He is the author of more than 90 academic articles and two books: The Happiness Hypothesis: Finding Modern Truth in Ancient Wisdom, and the New York Times bestseller The Righteous Mind: Why Good People are Divided by Politics and Religion. At NYU-Stern, he is applying his research on moral psychology to business ethics, asking how companies can structure and run themselves in ways that will be resistant to ethical failures (see EthicalSystems.org). He is currently writing Three Stories about Capitalism: The Moral Psychology of Economic Life.

(Photo credit: Mathew Asselin)

Bryan Stevenson is the founder and Executive Director of the Equal Justice Initiative in Montgomery, Alabama. Mr. Stevenson is a widely acclaimed public interest lawyer who has dedicated his career to helping the poor, the incarcerated and the condemned. Under his leadership, EJI has won major legal challenges eliminating excessive and unfair sentencing, exonerating innocent death row prisoners, confronting abuse of the incarcerated and the mentally ill and aiding children prosecuted as adults. Mr. Stevenson has successfully argued several cases in the United States Supreme Court and recently won an historic ruling in the U.S. Supreme Court banning mandatory life-without-parole sentences for all children 17 or younger are unconstitutional. EJI has also initiated major new anti-poverty and anti-discrimination efforts challenging the legacy of racial inequality in America. Mr. Stevenson’s work fighting poverty and challenging racial discrimination in the criminal justice system has won him numerous awards including the ABA Wisdom Award for Public Service, the MacArthur Foundation Fellowship Award Prize, the Olaf Palme International Prize, the ACLU National Medal Of Liberty, the National Public Interest Lawyer of the Year Award, the Gruber Prize for International Justice and the Ford Foundation Visionaries Award. He is a graduate of the Harvard Law School and the Harvard School of Government, has been awarded 21 honorary doctorate degrees and is also a Professor of Law at the New York University School of Law. He is the recent author of the critically acclaimed New York Times bestseller, Just Mercy, which was named by Time Magazine as one of the 10 best books of nonfiction for 2014 and has been awarded several honors including the Carnegie Medal by the American Library Association for the best nonfiction book of 2014 and a 2015 NAACP Image Award.

(Photo credit: Robert Fouts)

Felipe Medina leads the Transforming Philanthropy Initiative. The purpose of this initiative is to create a community of strategic philanthropists and to facilitate collaboration and exchanges of best practices and lessons learned with the final objective of increasing the volume of effective social investments. Mr. Medina spends twenty five percent of his time analyzing and researching philanthropy and social investment trends. He is particularly interested in studying projects that generate sustainable development in Latin America.  Mr. Medina is studying the obstacles that exist to create a culture of philanthropy in Latin America and the motivations for US based philanthropists to get involved in international philanthropy.

Mr. Medina is in the Board of Directors of Give to Colombia, Enseña por Colombia, and LASPAU. He is in the Board of Advisors of Lumni and LeapFrog Investments. He is part of the Steering Group of the Global Philanthropy Forum and the Philanthropy Center at the Adolfo Ibañez University.  Mr. Medina is a member of the Global Advisory Council of Acumen, Teach for All, Ashoka Support Network and of the Clinton Global Initiative. He is the Chair of the Board of Directors of L’Atelier, a Reggio Emilia inspired pre-school that he founded with his wife Simonetta. L’Atelier is working with several organizations to establish Reggio Emilia inspired early education centers.

Mr. Medina began his career in Goldman Sachs in 1990, managing assets for Latin American clients and formed the largest team in the region. Between 2000 and 2003, he was Regional Director for Latin America Private Wealth Management. Currently, Mr. Medina manages relationships with some of the most influential families and individuals in the Region. He is a member of the Private Wealth Philanthropy Advisory Committee of Goldman Sachs.

Mr. Medina has an MBA from Harvard Business School and a BS in Economics and Civil Engineering from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

Angela Glover Blackwell, Founder and Chief Executive Officer, founded PolicyLink in 1999 and continues to drive its mission of advancing economic and social equity. Under Blackwell’s leadership, PolicyLink has become a leading voice in the movement to use public policy to improve access and opportunity for all low-income people and communities of color, particularly in the areas of health, housing, transportation, education, and infrastructure. Prior to founding PolicyLink, Blackwell served as Senior Vice President at the Rockefeller Foundation, where she oversaw the foundation’s Domestic and Cultural divisions. Blackwell is the co-author of the recently published Uncommon Common Ground: Race and America’s Future (W.W. Norton & Co., 2010), and contributed to Ending Poverty in America:  How to Restore the American Dream (The New Press, 2007) and The Covenant with Black America (Third World Press, 2006). Blackwell earned a bachelor’s degree from Howard University, and a law degree from the University of California at Berkeley.  She serves on numerous boards and served as co-chair of the task force on poverty for the Center for American Progress.  Blackwell currently serves on The President’s Advisory Council on Faith-based and Neighborhood Partnerships.

Nathan Laurell is the founder and Managing Partner of New Frontier Holdings, an investment firm focused on sustainable energy and agriculture. He is a cofounder of Energy.me and the founder and CEO of AMP Americas, a company that builds, owns, and operates sustainable infrastructure to create and supply renewable energy. Nate currently sits on the boards of AMP Americas, Carbon Solutions Group, Energy.me, and Infinium Capital Management. Prior to New Frontier, Nate was a principal and director of Infinium Capital Management, a proprietary-trading firm with offices in Chicago, New York, and London. He holds a BS and MS in Electrical and Computer Engineering from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.

Maria Eitel is the founding President and CEO of the Nike Foundation where she works to unleash the girl effect, the powerful social and economic change brought about when girls have opportunity. She leads the Foundation’s efforts to put girls on the global agenda and drive resources to them with the goal of eradicating global poverty. The work of the Nike Foundation is supported by Nike, Inc. and the NoVo Foundation, a collaboration which has enabled exponential impact of the Girl Effect. Prior to the Foundation, Ms. Eitel served as NIKE, Inc.’s first Vice President of Corporate Responsibility working on the development and implementation of its first corporate responsibility agenda. Before Nike, she served at the White House, the Microsoft Corporation, the Corporation for Public Broadcasting and MCI Communications Corporation .Early in her career, she was a reporter and producer in commercial and public broadcasting. She holds degrees from McGill University (BS) and Georgetown University (MSFS), and Stanford University (SEP).
Ms. Eitel serves on a variety of boards, committees and advisory councils including the Acumen Fund Advisory Council, Girl Hub Trustees, Initiative for Global Development Leadership Council Nike Foundation Board of Directors and the World President’s Association.  She is a regular speaker at local, national and global forums on corporate responsibility, governance, human and labor rights, sustainable development, philanthropy and social entrepreneurism.

Ambassador Elizabeth Frawley Bagley rejoined the U.S. Department of State as Special Representative to the Secretary of State for Global Partnerships on June 1, 2009.  On October 1, 2010 she assumed the position of Senior Advisor for Special Initiatives to the Secretary.
Prior to her appointment Ambassador Bagley served as Vice Chair of the U.S. Advisory Commission on Public Diplomacy, a Presidential appointment with Senate confirmation, on which she served from 2003 – 2009.  She has served as Chair of the National Advisory Board for the Democratic National Committee and Chair of the Clinton Library Board of Trustees.

Ambassador Bagley served as Senior Advisor to Secretary of State Madeleine Albright from 1997 – 2001, where she established and headed the Office of Media Programming Acquisition for the newly independent Balkan states.  Prior to this position, Ambassador Bagley served as the U.S. Ambassador to Portugal from 1994 to 1997.

She is a member of the Board of Directors of the National Democratic Institute for International Affairs, the American Ireland Fund, the French American Foundation, the National Park Foundation, the Atlantic Council, the Foreign Affairs Museum Council and the International Center for Missing and Exploited Children.  She is also a member of the Council on Foreign Relations and the Prime Minister of Ireland’s Global Irish Forum.

Upon her departure from Portugal, she received meritorious awards from the Portuguese Navy and Air Force, as well as the “Grand Cross of Prince Henry the Navigator,” the President of Portugal’s highest civilian commendation.  She has also received an Honorary Doctor of Laws from Regis College in 2003, the “Global Democracy Award” from the International Women’s Democracy Center in March, 2005, the Ellis Island Medal of Honor in May, 2005, the 2010 Meridian International Public Diplomacy Award, and the 2013 Secretary of State’s Distinguished Honor Award.

Ambassador Bagley currently serves as Chair of SBI, Inc., a rural wireless company located in Show Low, Arizona.

Ambassador Bagley graduated cum laude from Regis College in Weston, Massachusetts, with a B.A. degree in French and Spanish.  She is a 1987 cum laude graduate of the Georgetown University Law Center, where she obtained a J.D. Degree in International Law.  Ambassador Bagley is a member in good standing of the Massachusetts Bar and District of Columbia Bar.

She is the proud mother of two children, a daughter, Vaughan, age 23, a graduate of Stanford University, and son Conor, age 19, presently at Yale University.

Niko Canner founded Incandescent in 2013, building on nearly twenty years as an advisor to leaders of many of the world’s major companies. Niko was named one of ten “new gurus” by Fortune magazine in November 2008, featured as a “rising star” in Fortune’s 2009 “40 Under 40” issue, and named as one of the top twenty five in the consulting profession by Consulting Magazine in 2010.

Niko was co-founder and Managing Partner of the consulting firm Katzenbach Partners and then Senior Partner at Booz & Company following the sale of Katzenbach to Booz in 2009. Most recently, Niko was a member of the Management Committee of Bridgewater Associates.

Niko began his consulting career at McKinsey & Company, where he was a founding member of the McKinsey Change Center. He subsequently co-founded Mitchell Madison Group’s Organization Practice. Niko is a founding investor and board member of Journelle, a lingerie retailer; a board member of Purpose; and a Director of Sevident, an early-stage company applying nanotechnology to the diagnostics industry.

Niko earned an A.B. in economics, summa cum laude, from Harvard College and completed graduate work in philosophy at Oxford University on a Marshall Scholarship. He serves on the Advisory Council of Acumen. He initiated and co-leads China 2024, a twenty-year longitudinal study of the development of business leaders in China, is a World Economic Forum Young Global Leader, and a member of the US-Japan Leadership Program.

Mark Malloch-Brown served as a Minister in Prime Minister Gordon Brown’s cabinet, where he had particular responsibility for strengthening relationships with Africa and Asia and the international system. The Prime Minster appointed him as his envoy for preparation of the London G-20 Summit.

In addition, Lord Malloch-Brown has served as Deputy Secretary General and Chief of Staff of the United Nations under Kofi Annan and, for six years prior, as Administrator of the UN Development Programme, where he led UN development efforts around the world. Before that he was a Vice-President at the World Bank.

He is well versed in global markets, economics and investing. After an earlier career in consulting when he advised political and business leaders around the world, he was Vice Chairman of George Soros’ Fund and Foundation until he entered the British government. He has also served as Vice Chairman of the World Economic Forum.

Throughout his career, he has had frequent interactions at the highest levels of government and business. From his early years as a journalist for The Economist, Lord Malloch-Brown has been afforded a unique and nuanced perspective on a wide array of global economic, political and social issues.

He is chair of the Royal Africa Society and on a number of non-profit and advisory boards, including the International Crisis Group and the Open Society Foundation.

Made a Life Peer and Privy Counsellor when he joined the UK Cabinet in 2007. He is a member of the House of Lords. Knighted by the Queen for his international service, January 2007. Honorary Degrees from Michigan State University, Pace University and Walden University in the United States. Also from the Catholic University in Lima, Peru. He is an Honorary Member of the Philosophical Society at Trinity College, Dublin and an Honorary Fellow of Magdalene College, Cambridge.

Allen Grossman was appointed a Harvard Business School Professor of Management Practice in July 2000. He joined the Business School faculty in July 1998, with a concurrent appointment as a Visiting Scholar at the Harvard Graduate School of Education. He served as President and Chief Executive Officer of Outward Bound USA for 6 years before stepping down in 1997 to work on the challenges of creating high performing nonprofit organizations. His current research focuses on leading and governing high performing nonprofit organizations and leadership and management of public school districts.

In partnership with four foundations, Mr. Grossman founded the Going to Scale Project in 1994. This project led to the book, High Performance Nonprofit Organizations: Managing Upstream for Greater Impact, published by John Wiley & Sons, Inc and the article, Virtuous Capital: What Foundations Can Learn from Venture Capitalists published in the Harvard Business Review, both co-authored with Christine Letts and William Ryan.

In the MBA program, Mr. Grossman currently teaches the second year course, Leading and Governing High Performing Nonprofit Organizations and co-teaches a new Social Innovation Lab.  He most recently taught the first year course, Leadership and Corporate Accountability. He has also taught the first year course, The Entrepreneurial Manager and co-taught the second year courses, Entrepreneurship in the Social Sector and Effective Leadership of a Social Enterprise. Mr. Grossman is faculty chair for the Public Education Leadership Project (PELP), a joint project of HBS and HGSE; he co-chairs the executive education program, Performance Measurement and Management of Nonprofit Organizations (PMNO), a joint project of HBS and KSG; he teaches in the HBS executive education programs, Strategic Perspectives for Nonprofit Managers (SPNM) and Governing for Nonprofit Excellence (GNE) and others.

Before joining the nonprofit sector, he served as a Regional Chief Executive of Albert Fisher PLC and Chairman of the Board of Grossman Paper Company, a national distributor of packaging products. Mr. Grossman serves on and has chaired a number of nonprofit and for-profit boards. He received a B.S. in corporate finance from the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School.

Antony started his career at Barclays in 1983. He completed the Barclays Management Development Programme before going on to hold various roles in retail and corporate banking. He moved to Citigroup in 1989, working in both London and New York. In January 2006, he rejoined Barclays as Chief Executive of Barclaycard where he led a revival in the fortunes of the business. He joined the Barclays Executive Committee in November 2009.

Between February 2009 and February 2013, Antony represented Barclays as a Non-executive Director on the Board of Absa, the South African banking group. He was also on the Board of Visa Europe Ltd between October 2008 and December 2011.

Antony is married and a father of two children.

Sally Osberg has led entrepreneurial organizations and been an agent for social change throughout her career. As President and CEO of the Skoll Foundation, she partners with Founder and Chairman Jeff Skoll and heads the organization’s team in identifying and supporting innovators pioneering scalable solutions to global challenges. She is a well-known proponent of thought leadership, research, and alliances that advance the work of social entrepreneurs solving the world’s most pressing problems.

Currently, Sally serves on the boards of the Skoll Foundation, the Skoll Global Threats Fund, the Oracle Education Foundation and the Palestine-based Partners for Sustainable Development. She was founding Executive Director of Children’s Discovery Museum of San Jose, guiding that institution to international recognition for its cutting edge work in the museum field, and formerly active as a director on the boards of the American Association of Museums, the American Leadership Forum, and Women and Philanthropy, among others.  Sally has received the John Gardner Leadership Award from the American Leadership Forum, been inducted into the Junior Achievement Business Hall of Fame, and been named by the San Jose Mercury News as one of the “Millennium 100” for her role in shaping and leading Silicon Valley.

Rob Stewart has been with The JBG Companies, a regional real estate investment and development firm since 1988. JBG is one of Washington’s larger real estate investment and development firms and currently manages over $4 billion in real estate private equity capital on behalf of some of the nation’s leading university endowments and foundations.  Rob’s focus over his tenure with JBG has been the acquisition, financing and disposition of JBG investments, the conception of a development plans for JBG properties and the asset management and fund-raising processes.  Rob is a member of the firm’s Executive Committee and is the Chairman of the firm’s Investment and Design Review Committees.

Rob’s charitable interests have been focused on the provision of affordable housing in DC, childhood education in DC and in investing in businesses that serve the poor in the developing world.  He is a past board member for the New Community for Children, a long-time partner with Manna (a DC affordable housing group), co-chair of a significant five year fund-raising event for the Nation’s Children’s Hospital and a member of the Advisory Council for Acumen.

He received a B.A. from Princeton University, and an M.B.A. from The Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania.

Daniel Toole has advised Acumen since before its official founding in 2001.  He served as the first COO of Acumen and was part of the start-up team. Daniel Toole serves in his personal capacity.

Daniel currently works with UNICEF in Asia covering twenty-eight countries in the East Asia and the Pacific region.

He has served previously in numerous positions at UNICEF including from late 2007-2011 as Regional Director for South Asia in Kathmandu, and from 2003-2007 as global Director of Emergency Programmes in New York. During 2007 he also served for four months as Deputy Executive Director a.i. of UNICEF. Previously he served as Chief of Staff of UNICEF, Representative in Mali and in Rwanda and had many years of experience working in both emergencies globally and in food security and nutrition in Africa.

He continues active involvement in humanitarian issues and was an Advisory Group Member for the global UN report “To Stay and Deliver: Good Practice for Humanitarians in Complex Security Environments.”  He also served as a Board Member of Professionals in Humanitarian Assistance and Protection (PHAP).

Daniel also worked several years with USAID in Burundi and with the Peace Corps in Central African Republic.  He was a Visiting Fellow at the Program on Humanitarian Policy and Conflict Research, Harvard University. He holds an MA from The Institute of Social Studies, The Hague, The Netherlands and a BA from the University of Arizona.

Tim Brown is CEO and President of IDEO. He frequently speaks about the value of design thinking and innovation to businesspeople and designers around the world. He has participated in the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, since 2006, and his talk “Serious Play” appears on TED.com.  An industrial designer by training, Brown has earned numerous design awards and has exhibited work at the Museum of Modern Art in New York, Axis Gallery in Tokyo, and the Design Museum in London. He takes special interest in the convergence of technology and the arts, as well as the ways in which design can be used to promote the well being of people living in emerging economies.

Brown advises senior executives and boards of Fortune 100 companies and has led strategic client relationships with such organizations as the Mayo Clinic, Microsoft, PepsiCo, Procter & Gamble, and Steelcase. He is a board member of the Mayo Innovation Advisory Council. Additionally, he writes extensively, with articles in the Harvard Business Review, The Economist, and other prominent publications. His book on how design thinking transforms organizations, Change by Design, was released by HarperBusiness in September 2009. Brown maintains a blog on the subject of design thinking.

Arianna Huffington is the chair, president, and editor-in-chief of the Huffington Post Media Group, a nationally syndicated columnist, and author of thirteen books.

In May 2005, she launched The Huffington Post, a news and blog site that quickly became one of the most widely-read, linked to, and frequently-cited media brands on the Internet. In 2012, the site won a Pulitzer Prize for national reporting.

In 2013, she was named to the Forbes Most Powerful Women list. In 2006, and again in 2011, she was named to the Time 100, Time Magazine’s list of the world’s 100 most influential people.

Originally from Greece, she moved to England when she was 16 and graduated from Cambridge University with an M.A. in economics. At 21, she became president of the famed debating society, the Cambridge Union.

She serves on several boards, including EL PAÍS, PRISA, the Center for Public Integrity, and the Committee to Protect Journalists.

Brad Rosenberg, a native of Los Angeles, has a wide variety business experience of managing both ‘for profit’ and ‘not for profit’ organizations.  He has served as a board member of Jewish Big Brothers Big Sister and Camp Max Straus since elected in 1967, acting as it’s Chairman and interim CEO from 2001 – 2004.  He is currently the Development Chairman, Corporate Secretary and Board Member of Green Dot Public Schools.  During the past four years, he has continued to serve the needs of children as Chairman of Imagine LA, an innovation organization which matches a homeless family with a team of mentors from a faith based organization providing a two year program that leads the family to independence.  Brad was the founding Chairman of two non profits formed to protect hillside recreation areas from development: SOMI (Save our Mountains, Inc.) in West Los Angeles and Glendale/La Crecenta V.O.I.C.E. in the Verdugo Mountain foothills in Glendale.  Additionally,  he was the Interim CEO of two organizations, responsible for their reorganization: Health Research Associates, a grants administrator at USC and Genesis LA Economic Development Corporation, a non profit formed by former Mayor Richard J. Riordan focused on creating capital to be invested in low/moderate income areas to encourage industrial and commercial development.

Jan Piercy is Senior Advisor at Enclude, engaged in the capital mobilization practice, business development, and strategic partnerships. Jan previously served a seven year term representing the United States on the Board of the International Bank for Reconstruction and Development, where she chaired Board Committees on  Personnel and Development Effectiveness and served on the Board Audit Committee. She received the US Treasury Medal of Honor for her service at the Treasury and World Bank. In President Clinton’s first term, Jan was Deputy Assistant to President Clinton for Presidential Appointments in the White House. She was also a Senior Vice President at ShoreBank Corporation, and earlier in her career headed public interest management programs at Cornell and then Stanford graduate schools of business. She also worked for non-profit economic development agencies in the US and South Asia.  Jan serves on the board of the DC Homeless Children’s Playtime Project and the advisory council of the Global Philanthropy Forum in addition to Acumen, and she is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations.

Vikki Tam is a partner in Bain & Company’s New York office and head of the firm’s Global Development Practice, which partners with cutting-edge, global organizations that support entrepreneurship in developing and emerging markets to help grow local businesses, create jobs and ultimately combat global poverty.

Vikki directs Bain’s global partnership with Acumen.  In 2012, Vikki and a Bain team worked with Acumen to better align its global operating model with next-stage growth objectives and helped clarify and improve some of its most critical structures, including a more transparent investment process and post-investment governance. Building upon the success of that effort, Vikki continues to collaborate with Acumen on other strategic topics and research development.  She also oversees the firm’s global partnership with Endeavor, a non-profit that aims to catalyze long-term economic development in emerging and developed markets through high-impact entrepreneurship.

In addition to her client work, Vikki leads Bain’s semi-annual Net Promoter Social Impact Forum.  The forum brings together executives from leading non-profits to share best practices on using Bain’s proprietary Net Promoter System^SM to enhance stakeholder loyalty and shape how impact is measured in the social sector.

Prior to her current role, Vikki was based in Bain’s Shanghai office, where she led the firm’s Telecom, Media & Technology and Organization Practices in Greater China. There, she worked with local and multinational companies on business growth strategies, market entry, organizational design and corporate performance improvement.  She also oversaw Bain’s multi-year relationship with Jet Li’s One Foundation, China’s first non-government public foundation.

Vikki credits her personal and professional experiences living and working in China, Japan, Australia, U.K. and the U.S. with nurturing her sensitive curiosity about different cultures and cultivating a lifelong interest in global development.  Through her work at Bain, she combines her expertise in data-driven analysis and developing practical insights with her deep understanding of the non-profit sector to help global development organizations, such as Acumen, increase their social and economic impact.

Vikki earned her MBA from the Wharton School of Business and graduated phi beta kappa with a bachelor’s degree in economics from the University of Pennsylvania.

Rebecca Eastmond is a Managing Director of J.P. Morgan and heads J.P. Morgan Private Bank’s philanthropy advisory practice for Europe/Middle East/Africa (EMEA) – helping clients of the bank to be more effective with their philanthropy through providing innovative advice, thought leadership and collaborative opportunities.

Rebecca worked as a lawyer at Allen & Overy in London from 1996 to 2002, and left to develop the pilot of The Prince’s Foundation for Children & the Arts. In 2005, she was appointed by HRH The Prince of Wales as CEO of the new charity, and worked with a core group of partners to grow the charity — which from 2008-2009 helped over 33,000 children across the UK. She joined J.P. Morgan in 2008.

Rebecca currently serves on the board of two grant-making trusts as well as of Smart Works, a UK charity that fights poverty by helping women back into work. She has also served on the board of the UK’s Philanthropy Review, as a founding trustee of the House of Illustration and on the national advisory council for both Teach First and the Prince’s Teaching Institute. She read law at Oxford University.

Maria Popova is a reader and a writer, and writes about what she reads on Brain Pickings, which is included in the Library of Congress archive of culturally valuable materials. She has previously written for Wired UK, The Atlantic, The New York Times, Nieman Journalism Lab, and Smithsonian Magazine, among others, and is an MIT Fellow. She is on Twitter as @brainpicker.

(Photo credit: Elizabeth Lippman)

Anand Giridharadas is an author and New York Times columnist. He writes the “Admit One” column for The Times’s arts pages, and the “Letter from America” for its global edition. He is the author, most recently, of “The True American: Murder and Mercy in Texas,” about a Muslim immigrant’s campaign to spare from Texas’s Death Row the white supremacist who tried to kill him. In 2011 he published “India Calling: An Intimate Portrait of a Nation’s Remaking,” about returning to the India his parents left. His datelines include Italy, India, China, Dubai, Norway, Haiti, Brazil, Colombia, Nigeria,Uruguay, and the United States. He has written occasional pieces for The New York Times Magazine, The Atlantic and elsewhere. Born in Cleveland, Ohio, he was raised there, in Paris, France, and in Maryland, and educated at the University of Michigan, Oxford and Harvard. He is a former consultant for McKinsey & Company and later reported from Bombay for the Herald Tribune and The Times for four and a half years. He wrote about India’s transformation, Bollywood, corporate takeovers, terrorism, outsourcing, poverty and democracy. He was appointed a columnist in 2008, writing the “Letter from India” series, then the “Currents” column from 2009 to 2014, before starting the “Letter from America.” He first interned for The New York Times at age 17, writing two articles on money and politics under the tutelage of Jill Abramson. He moved to Bombay after college, in 2003, to work as a consultant for McKinsey & Company, where he served on projects advising the local government on urban development, a pharmaceutical company on organizational redesign and leadership development, and Indian and Chinese businesses on their internationalization strategies. He has appeared regularly on television and the radio in the United States and internationally, including on CNN, MSNBC, NPR, “The Daily Show” and beyond. He has lectured at Harvard, Stanford, Columbia, Yale, Princeton, the University of Michigan, the Sydney Opera House, the United Nations, the Asia Society, PopTech and Google. He has received awards from the Society of Publishers in Asia, the South Asian Journalists Association, and the Indo-American Society, and has been a Poynter Fellow in Journalism at Yale. In 2011, he was named a Henry Crown fellow of the Aspen Institute. He lives in Brooklyn, New York, with his wife, Priya Parker.

(Photo credit: Earl Wilson/The New York Times)