Ambitious commitments have been made by governments and businesses to eliminate global poverty. Will new leadership at some of the world’s largest foreign aid institutions change global poverty alleviation efforts and how private sector leaders thinking about their own role? We’ll explore what a modern aid agenda might mean for social entrepreneurs, funders, and small businesses working on the ground in the developing world, and more generally, what’s working to reduce poverty sustainably.
Jacqueline Novogratz is the Founder and CEO of Acumen. Acumen is changing the way the world tackles poverty by investing in companies and leaders with character, competence and moral leadership. Acumen invests pioneering philanthropic capital in sustainable businesses addressing the toughest problems of poverty. Under Jacqueline’s leadership, Acumen has invested $128 million in 128 companies providing critical goods and services to more than 260 million low-income people across Africa, Latin America, South Asia and the United States. Acumen also has launched KawiSafi, an impact fund focused on off-grid solar in East Africa and is in the process of building several other for-profit facilities.
Acumen also cultivates a new kind of leader through its Fellows Programs and +Acumen, its online school for social change. To date, the organization has built a corps of 500+ Fellows. More than 450,000 individuals from 192 countries have taken +Acumen’s online courses. Acumen is now reimagining a global university designed to integrate the transformational depth of its fellowships with the scale of +Acumen to equip thousands of young changemakers with the tools and ecosystem to lead in today’s world.
Jacqueline sits on the board of the Aspen Institute. Her best-selling memoir The Blue Sweater chronicles her quest to understand poverty and bring dignity to the poor. In 2017, Forbes listed Jacqueline as one of the World’s 100 Greatest Living Business Minds.
President and CEO, U.S. African Development Foundation
C.D. Glin is President & CEO of the U.S. African Development Foundation, a U.S. government
agency dedicated to supporting African-led, African-driven development solutions. The USADF
approach prioritizes African investments and customized local technical assistance to African
grassroots communities and enterprises. Prior to joining USADF, Glin was the Associate
Director for Africa for the Rockefeller Foundation. From 2008-2010, Glin previously served as
a presidential appointee in the Obama Administration as the first Director of Intergovernmental
Affairs and Global Partnerships for the U.S. Peace Corps, and played a key role in Peace Corps’
50th anniversary. Glin worked for the State Department, USAID and the World Bank while
based in Ghana and Nigeria.
Glin also served as a volunteer in the first Peace Corps South Africa group during the
Presidency of Nelson Mandela. He holds a B.A. in Political Science from Howard University; a
Master’s in Business Management from Tulane University and Postgraduate Diploma in Strategy
and Innovation from Oxford’s Saïd Business School. Glin is life member of the Council on
Foreign Relations and in 2011, he was designated by the White House as a “Champion of
Change” for his commitment and contributions to international service and civic participation.
Wife of former British Prime Minister Tony Blair, leading lawyer and committed campaigner for women’s rights, Cherie set up the Cherie Blair Foundation for Women in 2008 to help women build small and growing businesses in developing and emerging markets so that they can contribute to their economies and have a stronger voice in their societies.
As well as fighting for human rights in her professional career, Cherie is an active campaigner on equality and human rights issues. In addition to founding her own charity, Cherie remains closely involved with charities with a special emphasis on women and children.
Cherie was an Ambassador for London 2012, supporting the bid to host the Olympics in the UK and was awarded a CBE in the 2013 New Year's Honours List for services to women's issues and to charity in the UK and Overseas.
Global Vice President Women's Economic Empowerment, Coca-Cola Company
As The Coca-Cola Company's Global Vice President for Women's Economic Empowerment, Charlotte is leading the development and implementation of the Company's global strategy in this important area. This includes the ambitious 5by20 initiative to enable the economic empowerment of 5 million women entrepreneurs by 2020.
During her tenure at Coca-Cola, Charlotte has had a series of leading roles in Marketing, Public Affairs & Communications, and General Management. She brings significant worldwide experience to her role having risen through national and international roles in Europe, North America and the Pacific.
Charlotte is a member of the International Leadership Team for Business in the Community, a Fellow of: The Marketing Society, The Institute of Grocery Distribution and the Royal Society for the Encouragement of Arts; a member of the Marketing Group of Great Britain and Women in Advertising and Communications in London. She is listed among Marketing Week’s “Vision 100”, Fast Company’s “Most Creative People in Business 1000” and “League of Extraordinary Women” and Newsweek’s “150 Women Who Shake the World”. Charlotte is a founder member of the Women's Leadership Council of The Coca-Cola Company.
Ray Suarez is co-host of the weekly radio program "World Affairs," presented by the World Affairs Council of Northern California and KQED FM. He has just completed an appointment as the McCloy Visiting Professor of American Studies at Amherst College in Massachusetts.
Suarez has hosted programs for Al Jazeera America, PBS, and NPR. He has authored three books, "Latino Americans: The 500-Year Legacy That Shaped a Nation"; "The Holy Vote: The Politics of Faith in America"; and "The Old Neighborhood: What We Lost in the Great Suburban Migration." His series of interviews with historian Howard Zinn has been collected for a new volume from New Press this year, and he contributed a chapter to "The Good Fight," a collection of writing from historians and activists on the long struggle for equality in the United States.
During his years at the PBS NewsHour, Suarez was the lead correspondent for coverage of global health challenges, filing a vast array of stories from Africa, Asia, and Latin America, from the H1N1 pandemic in Mexico, to fighting HIV-TB co-infection in Southern Africa, to broadening vaccine access in Nicaragua, eliminating a major cause of child death.
Earlier in his career, Suarez was a Los Angeles correspondent for CNN, a reporter in London and Rome, and an editor and producer for ABC Radio News in New York. An active Episcopal layman, Suarez is a member of the governing body of Washington National Cathedral, the Chapter. He holds a BA in African History from NYU, an MA in Social Sciences from the University of Chicago, and 15 honorary doctorates from colleges and universities across the US.
Bart Houlahan, along with his partners, Jay Coen Gilbert and Andrew Kassoy, co-founded B Lab in 2006. B Lab is a non-profit organization serving a movement of people using business as a force for good. B Lab is redefining success in business by shining a light on leaders through a corporate certification (2500+ Certified B Corporations in 50+ countries), and then providing easy pathways for others to follow. B Lab encourages all companies to measure and manage their social and environmental impact using the B Impact Assessment (70,000+ companies engaged). And it works to create opportunities for companies to align their mission with their governance (Benefit Corporation legislation passed in 37 states and in process in 11 countries). Prior to B Lab, Bart was President of AND 1, a $250 MM basketball footwear and apparel company. Bart is a Henry Crown Fellow of the Aspen Institute; a recipient of both the 2014 Skoll Award for Social Entrepreneurship and the 2015 John P. McNulty Prize; and an advisory board member of the Duke University Center for the Advancement of Social Entrepreneurship (CASE).
