2008 Skoll Awards for Social Entrepreneurship
Video Description
The 2008 Skoll Awards ceremony. Winners were Bill Strickland, Manchester Bidwell; Amazon Conservation Team, Michael Eckhart of ACORE, Connie Duckworth of Arzu, Jeremy Hockenstein and Mai Siriphongphanh of Digital Divide Data; Jenny Bowen of Half the Sky; Matt Flannery and Premal Shah of Kiva; Mitch Besser and Gene Falk, Mothers2Mothers; Paul Farmer of Partners in Health; Daniel Lubetsky of PeaceWorks; Mechai Viravaidya of Population and Community Development Agency; Cecelia Flores-Oebanda of Visayan Forum Foundation
Speakers
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Connie Duckworth founded ARZU, Inc. in 2004 and serves pro bono as Chairman and Chief Executive Officer. She is a retired Partner and Managing Director of Goldman, Sachs, & Co., where she was named the first woman sales and trading partner in the firm’s history during her 20-year career. The recipient of numerous awards for leadership and advocacy, Ms. Duckworth was named a 2008 Skoll Foundation Honoree for Social Entrepreneurship.
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Daniel Lubetzky is CEO of KIND Healthy Snacks, makers of award-winning healthy foods, and Chairman of PeaceWorks, pursuing both peace and profit through neighbors striving to coexist in conflict regions. He is also the Founder of the PeaceWorks Foundation's OneVoice Movement, empowering moderate Israelis and Palestinians to achieve peace, and Co-Founder of Maiyet, forging partnerships with artisans in developing economies to create a new luxury fashion venture. Lubetzky received a BA in Economics and International Relations (magna cum laude) from Trinity University, and a JD from Stanford Law School. He has received many awards, including the Peace Security and Reconciliation Award, the Peace Makers Award and the Skoll Award for Social Entrepreneurship. He was also selected as Entrepreneur of the Year by Entrepreneur Magazine. Lubetzky was selected by the World Economic Forum as one of 100 Global Leaders for Tomorrow in 1997 and later as a Young Global Leader.
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CEO, Solutions Journalism Network
David Bornstein is CEO and co-founder of the Solutions Journalism Network, which works to establish the practice of solutions journalism — rigorous reporting that examines responses to social problems — as an integral part of mainstream news. He has been a newspaper and magazine reporter for 25 years, having started his career working on the metro desk of New York Newsday. Since 2010, he has co-authored, with Tina Rosenberg, the “Fixes” column in The New York Times. He is the author of three books: How to Change the World: Social Entrepreneurs and the Power of New Ideas (2003, Oxford University Press), The Price of a Dream: The Story of the Grameen Bank (1996, Simon & Schuster), and Social Entrepreneurship: What Everyone Needs to Know (2010, Oxford University Press).
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Executive Director, United Nations Population Fund
On 1 January 2011, Dr. Babatunde Osotimehin became the fourth Executive Director of UNFPA, the United Nations Population Fund. Before this appointment, Dr. Osotimehin was Nigeria’s Minister of Health. Prior to that, he was Director-General of Nigeria’s National Agency for the Control of AIDS, which coordinates HIV and AIDS work in a country of more than 150 million people. Dr. Osotimehin qualified as a doctor from the University of Ibadan, Nigeria, in 1972, and went to the University of Birmingham, England, and got a doctorate in medicine in 1979. He was appointed Professor at the University of Ibadan in 1980 and headed the Department of Clinical Pathology before being elected Provost of the College of Medicine in 1990. Years later, he served in several organizations, including as Chair of the National Action Committee on AIDS, from 2002 to 2007. The Executive Director has participated in the Cairo Population Conference, Beijing Women’s Conference and United Nations special sessions on AIDS. Dr. Osotimehin received the Nigerian national honour of Officer of the Order of the Niger (OON) in December 2005. His interests include youth and gender, within the context of reproductive health and rights. He is married and has five children.
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CEO, Falk Advisors DGB
Gene Falk is one of the few people to lead major ventures in both Fortune 500 companies and the non-profit sector. With this background and a deep commitment to social change, Gene launched and leads strategic advisory firm Falk Advisors|DGB (FA). FA helps funders achieve the best results from their collaborations with NFPs, avoiding risks and pain points, and sidestepping the obstacles that can undermine their success and burn through money and time.
FA helps foundations/philanthropists and their portfolio organizations realize the greatest impact and most productive outcomes from their work together; it works with corporations to develop and hone their CSR initiatives and build successful cross-sector collaborations
Gene was a top executive at companies like HBO and Showtime when, changing courses, he moved to Africa to become co-founder/CEO of mothers2mothers (m2m), a just-launched, local NFP dedicated to preventing new cases of pediatric AIDS. Adapting business-world expertise to the NFP environment, Gene led m2m’s rapid growth from start-up to global leader, achieving some of the most sought-after outcomes in the social sector:
- Scale. Expanding to 800 sites in 10 countries with a $20 million budget, annually serving 2.5 million clients and saving hundreds of thousands of lives.
- Innovation. Recognition of m2m’s innovative business approach and program model as best practices in the global health and social entrepreneurship communities.
- Systems Change. m2m’s program model became an international standard through the UN’s global plan to eradicate pediatric AIDS.
For this work, Gene was honored by a wide variety of prestigious organizations, from the Skoll Foundation to the World Economic Forum to the Global Business Council. m2m’s many successful partnerships in social, public, and private sectors earned it a spot on the Financial Times/UN list of best NFPs for collaborations.
Gene has a BA from Williams and an MBA from Wharton.
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MBA student,
Gillian Langor is an MBA student at the Saïd Business School and an Associate Fellow at the Skoll Centre for Social Entrepreneurship. She is a mechanical engineer with a background in product design and is interested in using design methodologies to create social impact.
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Founder And Chairman Emeritus, Jeff Skoll Group
Founder and Chairman Emeritus
Jeff Skoll is an entrepreneur devoted to creating a sustainable world of peace and prosperity. Over the last 17 years, he has crafted an innovative portfolio of philanthropic and commercial enterprises, each a distinctive catalyst for changing the trajectory of issues that most affect the survival and thriving of humanity. This portfolio includes the Skoll Foundation, Skoll Global Threats Fund, Participant Media, and Capricorn Investment Group—all coordinated under the Jeff Skoll Group umbrella. The Skoll entrepreneurial approach is unique: driving large-scale, permanent social impact by investing in a range of efforts that integrate powerful stories, data, capital markets, technology, partnerships, and organized learning networks. Operating independently from one another yet deeply connected through a shared vision, Skoll organizations galvanize public will, influence policy, and mobilize resources to accelerate the pace and depth of change. Jeff was the first full-time employee and President of eBay, where he experienced firsthand the power of combining entrepreneurship, technology, and trust in people. His work today embodies those fundamental lessons. All of Jeff’s organizations rely on the premise that people are fundamentally good, and that given the opportunity to do the right thing, they will.
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A former screenwriter and independent filmmaker, Jenny Bowen founded Half the Sky (now OneSky for all children) in 1998 in order to give something back to China, her adopted daughters’ home country, and to the many orphaned and abandoned children then languishing behind institutional walls. Under Ms. Bowen's leadership, OneSky has grown into a global NGO whose mission is to train communities and caregivers to provide nurturing responsive care and early education that unlocks the potential hidden in our world’s most vulnerable young children. OneSky now works in Mainland China, Vietnam, Mongolia, and Hong Kong.
In China, OneSky (now through its local implementing partner, Chunhui Children’s Foundation) has transformed the lives of many thousands of marginalized children and helped China re-imagine its entire child welfare system. In Vietnam, OneSky has tailored its approach to address the needs of 1.2 million children of factory workers, opened the Da Nang Early Learning Center, and, in partnership with government, is now scaling its training for home-based childcare providers throughout the country. In Hong Kong, in 2020, OneSky opened its regional training base—the P.C. Lee OneSky Global Centre for Early Childhood Development—in order to build a better future for the disadvantaged children of Hong Kong and the Asia Pacific region.
Among other awards, Ms. Bowen has been named named the American Chamber of Commerce's Women of Influence Non-Profit Leader of the Year, received the Skoll Award for Social Entrepreneurship and was chosen by popular vote to carry the Olympic Torch on Chinese soil. She serves on China’s National Committee for Orphans and Disabled Children and on the Expert Consultative Committee for Beijing Normal University’s Philanthropy Research Institute. She is the author of the memoir, Wish You Happy Forever: What China’s Orphans Taught Me About Moving Mountains, published by Harper Collins.
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Jeremy Hockenstein is Co-Founder and CEO of DDD. Prior to DDD, Jeremy worked as a management consultant with McKinsey & Company and as an international nonprofit consultant. He graduated from Harvard with a BA in economics and earned an MBA from MIT's Sloan School of Management.
For its business success and remarkable social impact, DDD and Jeremy have been recognized with the prestigious Skoll Award for Social Entrepreneurship as well as awards from the World Bank Development Marketplace, the IFC Grassroots Business Initiative and the Global Knowledge Partnership.
Among other media acclaim, Jeremy and DDD were profiled in Thomas Friedman's The World is Flat as his "favorite example" of a social entrepreneur's initiative.
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Jimmy Carter was born in rural Georgia in 1924 to a farmer/businessman and a registered nurse. Most of Carter’s childhood neighbors were poor African-Americans, and though his father supported segregation, many of Carter’s friends were the children of black farmhands. Early on, he learned of marginalization and unjust distribution of resources.
He attended public schools and graduated from the U.S. Naval Academy, rose to the rank of lieutenant, and served as senior officer of the pre-commissioning crew of the second nuclear submarine. After his father’s death, Carter returned to Georgia to run the family farm and business, and quickly became a community leader. He served in state politics and, as Georgia’s governor, advocated for civil rights. In 1977 he became the 39th president of the United States. He helmed peace treaties in the Middle East, crafted significant environmental protections, and created a new Department of Education.
He opened the Carter Center in 1982 to resolve conflict, promote democracy, protect human rights, and prevent disease. The Center spearheaded the international effort to eradicate Guinea worm disease—poised to be the second human disease eradicated in history. Every year since 1984, Carter has volunteered a week with Habitat for Humanity,
building and repairing thousands of homes in 14 countries. He has authored 31 books, ranging from personal history and fiction, to urgent polemics and poetry. As a clarion voice for the disenfranchised, he won the Nobel Peace Prize in 2002.
In recent years he has turned his keen and compassionate eye to what he calls the number one human rights abuse: systematic injustice against women and girls. “Women are key agents of the change we need,” he said recently. “When half the world’s population is not consulted on important decisions and policies, it is no wonder that so many problems persist.”
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Liliana Madrigal is co-founder of the Amazon Conservation Team (ACT), created in 1996 with Dr. Mark J. Plotkin. Previously, over a decade, she led conservation efforts with the Fundacion de Parques Nacionales de Costa Rica, Conservation International, and The Nature Conservancy.
Liliana is ACT’s Senior Director of Program Operations, and serves on its board. Her special mandate is providing the vision, strategic direction, and organizational leadership to advance ACT’s mission.
In 2006, Liliana won the Circle of Bridge-Makers Award from the Angeles Arrien Foundation. She and Dr. Plotkin were co-awardees of the Skoll Award for Social Entrepreneurship in 2008. In 2017, she was awarded a residency fellowship at the Rockefeller Foundation’s Bellagio Center.
A native of Costa Rica, Liliana lives in Arlington, Virginia with her husband Dr. Mark J. Plotkin. She is a graduate of the University of California at Los Angeles.
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LUIS SZARAN Artist for Peace of UNESCO
Musical Director of the Symphonic Orchestra of Asunción. Music studied then in Asunción in Santa Cecilia's Conservatory, Rome with Massimo Pradella, Piero Belluggi and he was perfected in international courses as: Theater Colón from Buenos Aires with Hans Swarowsky, Academia Chigiana of Siena with Franco Ferrara, Institute Francesco Cannetti with Luciano Berio. In recent seasons the Berliner Symphonikern, the Venice Philharmonic Orchestra and the Orchestra Sinfonietta of Paris play his composition’s. In the year 2002 received the Medal Vivaldi of the International Festival of Venice, being the first Latin American composer and recruit in the world in receiving it. He is Official Gentleman of the Italian Republic, Gentleman of the Science and the Letters of France, Skoll Award for Social Entrepreneurship for the Skoll Foundation in 2006. He is member corresponding of the Real Spanish Academy of the History: From the 2006 he is conducter and founder of the World Orchestra "Weltweite Klänge" in Nurenberg, Germany.
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Cecilia is a Skoll awardee in 2008 in Oxford. She considered an international expert in Human rights Activists and a Freedom fighter. She is the Founder of Voice of the Free is a hybrid organization that combines social care, social entrepreneurship, Advocating for policy reforms and mobilizing social movements to achieve lasting solutions.
Cecilia was appointed by the two Philippine Presidents to the Inter-Agency Council Against Trafficking and served for six years. AICAT is a high-level policy-making body duly constituted by law to oversee the implementation of the country’s anti-trafficking policies, programs, and services. Similarly, she was also a member of the Presidential Task Force Against Illegal Recruitment during the Aquino Administration. Just recently retired as the CEO of Voice of the Free, Cecilia is now serving as an Advisory Board of the global movement Freedom United based in London. She is also an Advisory Council of Telos Governance Agency based in London and in the USA.
Cecil also serves as a Jury of the Innovator Award of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in Cambridge, Massachusetts.
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Mai Siriphongphanh received her MBA from the Australian Graduate School of Entrepreneurship in 2002. In 2004 she participated in the Global Social Benefit Incubator Program. In 2008, she received the Skoll Foundation Award for Social Entrepreneurship. When joining DDD, Mai took the spirit of leadership, refining its social enterprise model, focusing on human development and re-innovating it as a mechanism for training a new generation of leaders.
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Dr. Mark J. Plotkin has led ACT and guided its vision since 1996, when he co-founded the organization with his fellow conservationist, Liliana Madrigal. He is a renowned ethnobotanist who has spent almost three decades studying traditional plant use with traditional healers of tropical America.
Among his many influential writings, Dr. Plotkin may be best known for his popular work Tales of a Shaman's Apprentice (1994), which has been printed continuously and has been published in multiple languages. Other works include the critically acclaimed children's book The Shaman's Apprentice - A Tale of the Amazon Rainforest, illustrated by Lynne Cherry, and Medicine Quest: In Search of Nature's Healing Secrets. His most recent book, The Killers Within: The Deadly Rise of Drug-Resistant Bacteria, coauthored with Michael Shnayerson, was selected as a Discover Magazine book of the year.
Dr. Plotkin has received the San Diego Zoo Gold Medal for Conservation; the Roy Chapman Andrews Distinguished Explorer Award; an International Conservation Leadership award from the Jane Goodall Institute; and, with Liliana Madrigal, the Skoll Foundation’s Award for Social Entrepreneurship. In 2010, he received the honorary degree of "Doctor of Humane Letters" from Lewis and Clark College in Portland, Oregon. Dr. Plotkin was educated at Harvard, Yale and Tufts University.
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Co-Founder, Kiva / Branch International Inc.
Matt began developing Kiva in late 2004 as a side-project while working as a computer programmer at TiVo, Inc. In December 2005 Matt left his job to devote himself to Kiva full-time. As CEO for 10 years, Matt led Kiva's growth from a pilot project to an established online service with partnerships in 80 countries and over 700 million dollars lent to low income entrepreneurs.
More recently, Matt has dived back into the startup world by creating Branch International. Branch is a for profit, Android-based "branchless bank" for Africans just launched in 2015. In just six months, Branch has made tens of thousands of loans in Kenya.
Matt is Skoll Awardee and Ashoka Fellow and was selected to FORTUNE magazine's "Top 40 under 40" list in 2009. In 2011, Matt was chosen for the The Economist "No Boundaries" Innovation Award. He graduated with a BS in Symbolic Systems and a Masters in Philosophy from Stanford University.
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Mechai Viravaidya began his non-profit work in 1974 to address the unsustainable population growth rate in Thailand. A variety of humorous and innovative methods were utilized in conjunction with mobilizing and educating a network of rural schools and village communities to make contraceptives available throughout Thailand. When HIV/AIDS first appeared in Thailand in the mid-1980s, similar methods were used to launch a major prevention program.
Following his success at promoting family planning and HIV prevention, Mechai has aggressively approached the problem of rural poverty by empowering the poor to build sustainable entrepreneurial capacity, community empowerment for health, and income generating activities at the village level.
In 2008, he established the Mechai Bamboo School in Northeast Thailand, to re-engineer rural education. The school acts as a life-long learning center for all members of the surrounding communities as well as a focal point of social and economic advancement. Through partnerships with the private sector, the Bamboo School assists over 50 rural schools to become centers for community development.
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Professor, University of Maryland School of Public Policy
Michael Eckhart is Clinical Professor for Sustainable Finance at University of Maryland and Adjunct Professor at Columbia University. Previously, he was Global Head of Environmental Finance at Citigroup where he led the banking industry’s development of the Green Bond Principles. Earlier, he was founding President of the American Council on Renewable Energy and President of the SolarBank Initiative in Europe, India and South Africa. Earlier, he had a 20-year career in power generation and renewable energy. He served in the U.S. Navy Submarine Service. He holds a BSEE degree from Purdue University and an MBA from Harvard Business School.
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Dr. Mitch Besser is an obstetrician and gynaecologist. His professional career has been dedicated to the public health needs of women. In 1999, Besser joined the University of Cape Town's Department of OBGYN, assisting with the development of services to meet the needs of pregnant women living with HIV and to prevent the transmission of HIV from mothers to their children (PMTCT). Besser recognized the need for an education and psychosocial support program that would contribute to PMTCT services achieving the best medical and social outcomes. To fill this void, he founded mothers2mothers (m2m), in which mothers living with HIV are employed to work in health centers and communities, educating and supporting pregnant women and new mothers with HIV; reducing the workload of doctors and nurses and increasing the effectiveness of interventions that reduce the number of babies born with HIV and keep mothers healthy and alive to care for their families. Since 2001, m2m has provided care to nearly 1.5 million mothers living with HIV in nine countries in Africa; and is currently providing service in over 600 program sites in seven countries in Africa. m2m’s programs have evolved to address the needs of HIV negative women, adolescent girls, young women and children; striving for comprehensive and sustained health benefits for mothers and their families. In 2014, Besser launched AgeWell, dedicated to the needs of older persons living in communities. Applying a peer-to-peer model of support, AgeWell employs and trains independent older people to provide companionship and promote well-being and wellness among less able older people. The program has been piloted in Cape Town, the U.S. and will soon launch in Ireland. Besser has received Skoll Award for Social Entrepreneurship, Presidential Citizens Award of the United States Government, and is an Ashoka and Schwab Fellow. He has presented at TED and has given a Friday Evening Discourse at the Royal Institution of Great Britain.
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Medical anthropologist and physician Paul Farmer has dedicated his life to improving health care for the world's poorest people. He is Co-founder and Chief Strategist of Partners In Health (PIH), an international non-profit organization that since 1987 has provided direct health care services and undertaken research and advocacy activities on behalf of those who are sick and living in poverty. Dr. Farmer and his colleagues in the U.S. and abroad have pioneered novel community-based treatment strategies that demonstrate the delivery of high-quality health care in resource-poor settings.
Dr. Farmer holds an M.D. and Ph.D. from Harvard University, where he is the Kolokotrones University Professor and the Chair of the Department of Global Health and Social Medicine at Harvard Medical School; he is also Chief of the Division of Global Health Equity at Brigham and Women's Hospital, Boston. Additionally, Dr. Farmer serves as the United Nations Special Adviser to the Secretary-General on Community Based Medicine and Lessons from Haiti.
Dr. Farmer has written extensively on health, human rights, and the consequences of social inequality. He is the recipient of numerous honors, including the Margaret Mead Award from the American Anthropological Association, the Outstanding International Physician (Nathan Davis) Award from the American Medical Association, a John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation Fellowship, and, with his PIH colleagues, the Hilton Humanitarian Prize. He is a member of the Institute of Medicine of the National Academy of Sciences and of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.
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Co-Founder & President,
KivaPremal helps lead Kiva.org —a crowdfunding website that connects people through lending to alleviate poverty. Since 2005, over $1B in philanthropic loans has been crowdfunded to millions of underserved entrepreneurs in 90 countries — with a 96% repayment rate. The site has been named as one of Oprah's Favorite Things and a Top 50 Website by TIME Magazine. Premal's inspiration came while volunteering in India while on leave from PayPal, where he had been an early employee. Premal began his career as a management consultant and graduated from Stanford University. He’s passionate about making it easier for anyone to discover their own power to make real impact. He serves on the Board of VolunteerMatch.org & Watsi.org — a crowdfunding for developing world health care site. For his work as a social entrepreneur, Premal was named a Young Global Leader by the World Economic Forum and selected to FORTUNE magazine’s “Top 40 under 40″ list.
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Past President and CEO, Individual
As the first President and CEO of the Skoll Foundation, Sally Osberg helped 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, and as a board director of the Social Progress Imperative 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. Born in Boston, Sally grew up on the east coast but has spent most of her adult life in California. She now lives outside Philadelphia, in Wayne, Pa., within walking distance of her two grandchildren.
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Bill Strickland is the President and CEO of Manchester Bidwell Corporation and its divisions, Manchester Craftsmen’s Guild (MCG) and Bidwell Training Center (BTC), both founded in 1968, and National Center for Arts and Technology in 2005.
As president and CEO his duties include: developing and implementing major fund-raising plans of action; working with Boards of Directors and Industrial Advisory Boards; encouraging participation of corporate executive officials from major multi-national Pittsburgh corporations. Strickland has completed the development of a 40,000 sq. ft. production greenhouse, created for the development of Phalaenopsis orchids and hydroponics vegetables, and a 62,000 sq. ft. facility as a mortgage free asset for both MCG and BTC. The facilities include a 350-seat music/lecture hall, library, arts studios and labs, dining and meeting rooms, state-of-the-art award winning audio and video recording studios, serve as a demonstration site for Hewlett Packard and Steelcase equipment and are home to 25,000 Phalaenopsis orchids that are cultivated for wholesale distribution.
The National Center for Arts & Technology (NCAT) a division of the Manchester Bidwell Corporation (MBC,) was created to assist interested communities in opening and sustaining local educational organizations that replicate the MBC Model. There are currently nine operational centers in the United States and one center in Israel. Throughout his distinguished career, Strickland has been honored with numerous prestigious awards for his contributions to the arts and the community.
