Getting Beyond Business as Usual: Paving the Way for Social Progress

Speaker(s):

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  Michael Green

  CEO, Social Progress Imperative

  Michael Green is Chief Executive Officer of the Social Progress Imperative. An economist by training, he is co-author (with Matthew Bishop of ‘The Economist’) of Philanthrocapitalism: How Giving Can Save the World and The Road from Ruin: A New Capitalism for a Big Society. Previously Michael served as a senior official in the U.K. Government’s Department for International Development, where he managed British aid programs to Russia and Ukraine and headed the communications department. He taught Economics at Warsaw University in Poland in the early 1990s. His TED Talks have been viewed more than three million times. His 2014 Talk was chosen by the TED organisation as one of the ‘most powerful ideas’ of 2014 and by The Telegraph as one of the 10 best ever.

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• 
  Michael Porter

  University Professor, Harvard Business School

  BSE (Hons) in Aerospace and Mech. Eng., Princeton Univ.; MBA (Hons), Harvard Bus. School; PhD in Business Economics, Harvard Univ. Bishop William Lawrence Univ. Prof., Harvard Bus. School. Authority on company strategy, the competitiveness of nations and regions, and strategic approaches to societal problems. Chairs Harvard Bus. School's progr. for newly appointed CEOs of multibillion dollar corporations. Adviser to business, government and the social sector. Active role in US economic policy. Founder: The Initiative for a Competitive Inner City; Center for Effective Philanthropy; FSG. Author of 19 books and numerous articles. Awards and honours.

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• 
  Darren Walker

  President, Ford Foundation

  Darren Walker is President of the Ford Foundation, the nation’s second largest philanthropy, and for two decades has been a leader in the nonprofit and philanthropic sectors. He led the philanthropy committee that helped bring a resolution to the city of Detroit’s historic bankruptcy and chairs the U.S. Impact Investing Alliance. Prior to joining Ford, he was Vice President at the Rockefeller Foundation where he managed the rebuild New Orleans initiative after Hurricane Katrina. In the 1990s, as COO of Harlem’s largest community development organization, the Abyssinian Development Corporation, Darren oversaw a comprehensive revitalization program of central Harlem, including over 1,000 new units of housing. He had a decade long career in international law and finance at Cleary Gottlieb Steen & Hamilton and UBS. He is a member of the Commission on the Future of Riker’s Island and serves on the boards of Carnegie Hall, New York City Ballet, the High Line, the Arcus Foundation and PepsiCo. Educated exclusively in public schools, Darren received the “Distinguished Alumnus Award,” the highest honor given by his alma mater, the University of Texas at Austin. In 2016, TIME magazine named him to its annual list of the “100 Most Influential People in the World.” He is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and the recipient of ten honorary degrees and university awards.

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• 
  Astrid Scholz

  Chief Everything Officer, Sphaera

  Dr. Astrid J. Scholz is the CEO of Sphaera, a for-purpose, for-profit tech company dedicated to accelerating the pace of change. By making it easy and rewarding to share, innovate, aggregate, measure, and finance solutions across what is currently a highly fragmented social innovation landscape, Sphaera and its partners are building a global infrastructure for mobilizing innovations and capital at the scale required to achieve the Sustainable Development Goals by 2030. Astrid was previously President of Ecotrust, where Sphaera was incubated in partnership with the Rockefeller Foundation, Mercy Corps, Oxfam, the Island Institute and other likeminded organizations. She has served on several advisory bodies for public-private partnerships for conservation and social outcomes, including the State of California’s Marine Life Protection Act Initiative. Astrid is a founding board member of the XXcelerate Fund, a revolving loan fund created for and by women entrepreneurs that is piloting in her home state of Oregon, USA. She serves on the boards of Habitat Media, Living Oceans Society and COBI (Communidad Y Biodiversidad), and is a speaker on social innovation, the business of philanthropy, and the role of technology for world-positive change. She is a co-author of the Zebra Manifesto, a call to action for companies that build ambitious technology for systemic change, and co-convener of the first gathering of zebra companies in the fall of 2017. Astrid holds degrees from the University of St. Andrews, the University of Bristol, and the University of California, Berkeley.

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• 
  Marcela Manubens

  Global Vice President Social Impact, Unilever

  Ms Manubens is Global Vice President for Social Impact at Unilever. She leads the strategy and implementation of the new Enhancing Livelihoods ambitions of the Unilever Sustainable Living Plan, Including Women’s Empowerment and Fairness, including the implementation of the UN Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights. Marcela is Vice-Chair of the Global Agenda Council on Human Rights at WEF. She is a member of Hillary Clinton’s International Council on Women’s Business Leadership and a member of the Advisory Group on Human Rights to UK Foreign Secretary. Marcela participated in initiatives to eradicate sweatshops and advance human rights. She was a member of the Fair Labour Association (FLA) Board of Directors and its Executive Committee and chaired the Board of Global Social Compliance Programme (GSCP) for three years. Marcela gave testimony in the US Congress as an expert witness upon the invitation of the Congressional Human Rights Caucus and represented US business in the launching of the Global Report on Child Labor by the ILO at the UN. Marcela taught Business and Human Rights at Columbia University, and Macroeconomics at the Business School of Universidad de Belgrano, Argentina. She has been a lecturer and guest speaker at numerous national and international conferences.

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• 
  Alexis Bonnell

  Chief, Applied Innovation & Acceleration, US Global Development Lab

  Over her career, Bonnell has developed and delivered over a billion dollars of humanitarian and development programming in over 25 conflict, post-conflict and emergency countries, in almost every sector from education to stabilization, for more than 30 international bilateral donors, 10 U.N. agencies, the military and the private sector. She has held positions with every side of development including: implementers, donors, policy makers and beneficiaries. With more than 20 years of experience in management and communications, Bonnell has worked with: Wall Street and “dot.coms,” and on projects such as the Middle East Peace Plan, Afghan and Iraqi elections, tsunami response, Pakistan and Haiti earthquakes, construction projects, and major logistics operations. After years of working overseas, Bonnell returned to the United States with USAID as the senior adviser on business transformation and knowledge management. She then served as the Chief of Engagement for the Office of Education, where she helped shape the USAID education strategy. Bonnell was a founding senior member of the U.S. Global Development Lab at USAID. Most recently, Bonnell served as the Division Chief for Applied Innovation and the Office Director for Engagement and Communications in the Lab. She has supported over 9 Grand Challenges and Prizes, Development Innovation Ventures, many prize, hackathon, and other internal and external innovation approaches. Bonnell was the creator and founder of the Global Innovation Exchange and Global Innovation Week. Bonnell has been recognized by teams inside USAID, across the Interagency, development and the private sector for actively building coalitions around innovative approaches. Bonnell believes that first and foremost innovation is "A voracious appetite for excellence" and it is the job of every person to innovate. She is honored to work hand in hand evryday at USAID with some of the most innovative people on earth.

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