Located in New York with pilot projects in Haiti and Brazil, Vendedy is creating a mobile marketplace that connects travelers to street vendors of the developing world. See: http://www.Vendedy.com
Operating from India, CareNx has introduced a lifesaving smartphone application with a medical device kit that enables pregnant women to perform medical tests and report them to a doctor remotely. See: http://www.carenx.com
Focusing on the urban poor in Africa without in-home water service, CityTaps has developed a prepaid smart water meter system that allows customers to spread out costs via micropayments with any mobile phone. Water utilities can access this new revenue with certainty while saving 15-20% on operating costs. See: http://www.citytaps.org
Headquartered in New York, Library For All is a digital library solution for individuals in developing countries with limited access to quality educational materials. The platform is optimized for low-broadband environments and designed to operate on devices already available in the developing world, including low-cost tablets and mobile phones. See: http://www.libraryforall.org
Starting in California, Reset is launching a network of campuses that repurpose criminal justice dollars with a program to keep young people out of prison altogether and surround them with the resources they need to transform their lives. The company provides education to enable high school graduation, enhance career readiness and improve social-emotional wellness for a generation of young people who might otherwise face prison time. See: http://www.theresetfoundation.org
Located in Kenya, ZanaAfrica is a hybrid social enterprise that equips East African females with vital feminine hygiene products and related health education to help them stay in school among other benefits. See: http://www.zanaafrica.com
Located in Guatemala, CASSA designs and builds self-sufficient social housing that provides its residents with clean water, clean energy and sanitation. The company builds customized and affordable homes out of natural building materials that integrate a suite of appropriate technologies to actively provide users with vital services. See: http://www.cassa.com.gt/en/
Located in England, Carbon Analytics is revolutionising business by bringing instant environmental impact assessment and management to every company directly from their accounting data. See: http://www.co2analytics.com/
Originating in India, Waste Ventures works with city and state governments to revolutionize Integrated Solid Waste Management in India. The company composts organic waste – turning it into soil conditioner to sell to farmers. This ‘table-to-farm’ approach averts 80% of waste from being dumped, employs waste pickers, reduces greenhouse gases, and creates much needed topsoil for farmers. See: http://www.wasteventures.com/
Kevin is an experienced software entrepreneur with a passion for applying technology for good. The inspiration for Fast Forward stems from Kevin’s hope that talented people can leverage software to create scalable solutions to some of the world’s toughest problems. Prior to founding Fast Forward, Kevin was an Entrepreneur in Residence at Matrix Partners, an early stage venture capital firm. Prior to Matrix he was a Senior Director in Adobe’s Strategy and Business Development group after the social marketing company he founded, Context Optional, was acquired by the firm. Barenblat holds a Bachelor’s degree in engineering from Stanford and an MBA from Harvard Business School.
Penelope has served as Executive Chair of Mission Hub LLC – the parent organization of Impact Hubs in San Francisco, Berkeley, Philadelphia, New York City, and Washington DC, and the annual SOCAP event. Penelope accepted an Artist in Residency for 2015-2016 with Yerba Buena Center for the Arts in California, where her topic of inquiry is Labor and the Value of our Work.
Penelope is also on the Boards of New Resource Bank and the Opportunity Finance Network, and is an Advisor to Halloran Philanthropies and Fund Good Jobs in Oakland, California. She is on the Advisory Board for Wells Fargo Bank’s New Markets Tax Credit Group and a Field Builder at RSF Social Finance. She is also a founding member of the Heritas Group, where she provides advisory services related to social finance. She currently serves as a Director of Startgrid, a young company which has built a powerful software platform for building enterprise-driven entrepreneurial communities.
Previously Penelope co-founded and served twelve years as CEO of Pacific Community Ventures with a mission to invest human, intellectual, and financial capital in small businesses for the benefit of economically underserved communities. During her tenure Pacific Community Ventures advised and invested in small businesses which provided thousands of good jobs and wealth building opportunities for lower-income workers. Penelope led investment funds totaling $60 million.
Randy is founder of The Gratitude Network (http://gratitudefund.org) and spends his time working on all things “entrepreneurial” and “mentor-like”. He is a well-known Silicon Valley angel, serial entrepreneur and venture capitalist. He established and ran an early-stage venture fund (www.outlookventures.com) in 1997. Forming his career at Apple Computer in the late 90’s, Randy later became the founding Vice President of Sales and Marketing at Yahoo; he has mentored 70 + startups since. He is also a Professor at UC Berkeley and U. Cambridge, teaching courses on New Venture Finance and Innovation/Creativity. Randy holds a BA in Organizational Management from Brown University, and MBA from Harvard. Randy also runs winery called Entrepreneur Wines (http://entrepreneurwines.com) which uniquely combines philanthropy with fine wine.
Paul is a serial entrepreneur who has also been a corporate venture capitalist in Silicon Valley for over 25 years. Hoping to leverage lessons from the startup world, he joined the Gratitude Network to pursue a dream of helping social entrepreneurs make a bigger impact. Paul led the 2015 Gratitude Awards process and found great inspiration in reviewing hundreds of applicants.
Beginning a career in product marketing for enterprise software companies, Paul also served in a variety of executive roles including business development, finance, corporate development, and general management for both venture backed startups and Fortune 500 companies. The common theme in all of his endeavors has been creating, funding and managing new businesses and products. As one example, Paul founded an innovative semiconductor material recycling business and built it to become a top supplier to the world’s largest computer chip companies.
Paul earned degrees from Claremont McKenna College (B.A.), Stanford (B.S., M.S) and Harvard (MBA).
Rick is Managing Director and Founder of Better Ventures. He thrives on solving customer development challenges for startups and spends most of his waking hours at the whiteboard. He has 18 years of technology, entrepreneurship and corporate venture capital experience with Oracle, Sun Microsystems, Computer Sciences Corporation, The Modem Shop (which he founded) and Kleiner Perkins-backed WineShopper.com (acquired by Wine.com). He holds a BA from Trinity College and an MBA from the Amos Tuck School at Dartmouth College. Rick believes passionately that technology should be used to address the world’s most important problems. Rick lives in Oakland, CA with his wife and two kids, is an avid cyclist and a craft beer enthusiast.
Julie believes that play and making a positive impact in the world is fundamental to authentic personal and community happiness. She applies her 14 years of experience in corporate philanthropy with those eager to create change and solve social challenges locally and globally. She works with emerging companies to design innovative integrated philanthropy programs where their product, services and people can provide resources that create lasting positive change.
As one of the founding members of the Salesforce.com Foundation in 2000 she inspired, but was more inspired by, the people who experienced their “aha” moments while “doing good”. As part of the Salesforce Foundation 1/1/1 model of integrated philanthropy, Julie launched the award winning employee volunteer program, designed the grant programs, managed the marketing, produced emotional videos, launched the Foundation in Asia, and developed and led the signature youth entrepreneur program, BizAcademy. In 2012 Julie was hired as the Executive Director of the Workday Foundation responsible for designing, developing and growing the corporate philanthropy programs at Workday.com.
Julie has a BA from Emory University and an M.Ed in early childhood education from Georgia State. She was a participant in THNK, International School of Creative Leadership in the inaugural Vancouver cohort of 2015.
Cory serves as Senior Director for World Vision, a global humanitarian agency, and leads the World Vision Innovation Fund. The Fund’s goal is to underwrite potential game-changing improvements in poverty programs in the nearly 100 countries where World Vision operates. Cory previously held senior roles at Opportunity International and trained in sales as a Marketing Rep at IBM. Cory received a BSBA in Business Administration from the University of Kansas.
Shikha is a former top 100 WTA Tour tennis player and Indian Icon 2015. Today, she is the co-founder of Indi.com India and a social entrepreneur using the mediums of sport/fitness and media to incite change.
She launched her media and lifestyle company, SDU Seva, Inc. in 2013 and is currently creating and producing international social issue television shows. She speaks internationally at various diplomatic conferences on female empowerment through sport and is becoming a face and force for female empowerment and women’s leadership in India. She sat on the board of directors of the World Economic Forum’s “Global Shapers Initiative” for Bhopal and serves as a trustee and advisor to various NGOs and social enterprises.
Shikha earned her bachelor’s degree from Princeton University majoring in Anthropology and minoring in South Asian Studies. She graduated with high academic standing while winning Princeton’s prestigious Kit Harris Memorial Award for Leadership and Ethics.