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Lunchtime Delegate-Led Discussions

Wednesday, April 5, 2017

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Session Description

Grab a portable lunch and join peer-to-peer lunchtime discussions of subjects suggested by fellow Skoll World Forum delegates. Discussions begin at 11:45am.

Public Interest Journalism: Open Data, Trust, and Citizen Governance
WEST WING, LECTURE THEATRE 6
Over the last decade-plus, local newspapers and broadcast tv and radio stations have been fighting to survive in an environment of increasing consumer media choices and declining funding. In particular, local public media radio and tv stations are facing big funding gaps with threats of more cuts to come. How can public interest journalism be bolstered to continue to provide reliable and critical local information and news? What are the opportunities to build coalitions and cooperatives that could serve local, national, and global communities and renew trust among citizens, civil society, and government officials?
Pat Mitchell, Pat Mitchell Media

Understanding Each Other’s Impact
WEST WING, SEMINAR 1
Finding common ground in how we talk about, measure, and manage impact. How can we shape new norms for understanding impact expectations and managing performance?
Clara Barby, Bridges Ventures

Building the Conscious Consumer Meta-Movement
WEST WING, SEMINAR 2
Is it time to forge a grand alliance across responsible business networks, sustainability certification systems, consumer activation organizations, and activist movements? We’ll discuss next steps toward a visionary movement.
Paul Rice, Fair Trade USA

Defending Common Resources
WEST WING, SEMINAR 3
Deforestation is a “wicked hard” problem that still threatens tropical forests worldwide. How can we adapt and scale promising approaches that have reduced Brazilian Amazon deforestation by more than a third and preserve global rainforests?
Beto Verissimo, Imazon

Bridging Boundaries Through Access to Education
WEST WING, SEMINAR 4
Higher education is a key ingredient to advance peace and economic development. How can online educational tools support a new generation of global citizens struggling with socioeconomic, cultural, or other constraints?
Shai Reshef, University of the People

Funders: Opportunities Beyond Capital
WEST WING, SEMINAR 5
Come discuss ways funders can catalyze social impact beyond providing capital.
Jim Bildner, Draper Richards Kaplan Foundation

Addressing the Asset Financing Gap
WEST WING, SEMINAR 8
Join a discussion on barriers and emerging solutions to improve access to productive assets, such as as farm equipment, storage solutions, and solar energy systems.
Tim Rann, Mercy Corps

Adopting Global Development Innovations
WEST WING, SEMINAR 9
When designing innovations to solve humanity’s greatest challenges, what are best practices to test and enable adoption across the development industry? Share your insights and barriers, incentives, and cultural challenges.
Alexis Bonnell, US Global Development Lab

Leveraging the Power of Your Peers
WEST WING, SEMINAR 10
Building community in the impact space. How Tendrel, a new global association for social entrepreneurs, is creating greater connectivity and collaboration through a chapter network of peer forums and advocacy.
Alexis de Balloy, Tendrel

Please note: Accelerating Private Sector Sustainability Leadership with Mindy Lubber has moved to Thursday lunch.

Speaker(s):
  • Partner, Bridges Fund Management
    At Bridges Fund Management, Clara takes the lead on the fund’s Impact strategy throughout the investment cycle – from defining the strategy and process for selecting impact investments, to engaging with portfolio companies to create additional value through environmental and social factors, to tracking and reporting results to investors and other stakeholders. In addition to growing impact through our own funds, Clara leads Impact+, Bridges’ advisory efforts to promote the growth of the wider sustainable and impact investment sector. Prior to Bridges, Clara focused her career on investing in innovative high-impact businesses – most recently on the management team of AyurVAID Hospitals, an India-based healthcare chain and Acumen Fund portfolio company. Clara previously worked for Acumen Fund’s Capital Markets team in New York where she played a lead role in designing an innovative investment vehicle and later co-led the Acumen energy portfolio in India. Before Acumen, Clara worked in Bogota, promoting socially responsible investment. Clara holds a BA (Hons) in Greats from Oxford University and an MBA from INSEAD.
  • Founder and President, Pat Mitchell Media
    Pat Mitchell is a lifelong advocate for women and girls. At every step of her career, Mitchell has broken new ground for women, leveraging the power of media as a journalist, an Emmy award-winning and Oscar-nominated producer to tell women’s stories and increase the representation of women onscreen and off. Transitioning to an executive role, she became the president of CNN Productions, and the first woman president and CEO of PBS and the Paley Center for Media. Today, her commitment to connect and strengthen a global community of women leaders continues as a conference curator, advisor and mentor. In partnership with TED, Mitchell launched TEDWomen in 2010 and is its editorial director, curator and host. She is also a speaker and curator for the annual Women Working for the World forum in Bogota, Colombia, the Her Village conference in Beijing, and co-chairs the US board of Women of the World (WOW). She partners with the Rockefeller Foundation to curate, convene and host Connected Women Leaders (CWL) forums, focused on collective problem solving among women leaders in government and civil society. In 2014, the Women’s Media Center honored Mitchell with its first-annual Lifetime Achievement Award, now named in her honor to commend other women whose media careers advance the representation of women. Recognized by Hollywood Reporter as one of the most powerful women in media, Fast Company’s “League of Extraordinary Women” and Huffington Post’s list of “Powerful Women Over 50,” Mitchell also received the Sandra Day O'Connor Award for Leadership. She was a contributor to Enlightened Power: How Women Are Transforming the Practice of Leadership, and wrote the introduction to the book and museum exhibition, 130 Women of Impact in 30 Countries. In 2016, she received a Congressional appointment to The American Museum of Women’s History Advisory Council, and in 2019 was named to the Gender Equality Top 100 list of women leaders by Apolitical. Mitchell is active with many nonprofit organizations, serving as the chair of the boards of the Sundance Institute and the Women’s Media Center. She is a founding member of the VDAY movement and on the boards of the Skoll Foundation and the Acumen Fund. She is also an advisor to Participant Media and a member of the Council on Foreign Relations. Mitchell is a magna cum laude graduate of the University of Georgia and holds a master's degree in English literature and several honorary doctorate degrees. She is the author of Becoming a Dangerous Woman: Embracing Risk to Change the World. She and her husband, Scott Seydel, live in Atlanta and have six children and 13 grandchildren.
  • 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.
  • Senior Researcher, Imazon
    Beto Veríssimo is a senior research and co-founder of Imazon, an NGO think-and-do tank based in the Brazilian Amazon and founded in 1990. He holds a Master’a degree in Ecology from The Pennsylvania State University (USA) and graduate degree in Agriculture Engineer from the Federal Rural University of the Brazilian Amazon. He has published more than 170 scientific and technical articles and 25 books on conservation, natural resources management and public policies. His work has helped created about 25 million hectares of Conservation Units in the Brazilian Amazon and support forest management for more than 7 million hectares. In the last years he has worked on different strategies to reduce the level of deforestation and forest degradation in the Brazilian Amazon. He is also an AVINA Fellow and Ashoka Senior Fellow. In 2010 Beto received the Skoll Foundation Award for Social Entrepreneurship. In 2014 he was selected among the top 100 most influential people in Brazil by the Época Magazine. In 2015 he received the Globo Newspaper Brazilian Award on sustainability
  • CEO, Draper Richards Kaplan Foundation
    Jim Bildner is the CEO of the Draper Richards Kaplan Foundation. Jim is also an Adjunct Lecturer in Public Policy at the Harvard Kennedy School and a Senior Research Fellow at the Hauser Institute for Civil Society and the Center for Public Leadership at Harvard University. Jim is a trustee of The Kresge Foundation and Chair of its Investment Committee. He serves on the board of Public Citizen Foundation, CAST, Education SuperHighway, OpenBiome, Open Up Resources, The GroundTruth Project, Climate Central, Service Year Alliance, Education Pioneers, Landed, Inc., UpTrust, Healthy Americas Foundation, New Jersey Performing Arts Center, Dallas Symphony Association, Perez Art Museum Miami, Museum for African Art, The Africa Center, and on the Board of Advisors of the Hopkins Center at Dartmouth College. He is a Trustee Emeritus at Case Western Reserve University, an Overseer Emeritus of the Boston Symphony Orchestra, a member of the Board of Overseers of WBUR (Boston Public Radio) and a trustee emeritus of the Lizard Island Research Foundation in Australia. He is a member of Young Presidents/World Presidents Organization and a member of the Chief Executives Organization. In his board service, Jim serves on the Investment Committees of boards with aggregate endowments in excess of $4B as well as a member of numerous finance, investment and/or audit committees of these boards. Jim’s government service included an appointment by the US Secretary of Health and Human Services to the Advisory Panel on Medicare Education for the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services.
  • Founder & CEO, Fair Trade USA
    Paul Rice is Founder and CEO of Fair Trade USA, the internationally-acclaimed social enterprise and leading certifier of Fair Trade products in North America. He launched the award-winning nonprofit organization in 1998 after spending 11 years organizing farmers in the highlands of Nicaragua. There, he founded and led the country's first Fair Trade coffee export cooperative, which introduced him to the transformative power of market-based approaches to sustainable development. Paul then returned to the United States to obtain his MBA from Berkeley Haas with the dream of bringing Fair Trade to consumers, businesses and farmers worldwide. People called him crazy in the beginning, but Paul had a bold vision for Fair Trade: from his years in Nicaragua, he knew that farmers and workers could learn to navigate the global market and empower themselves on a journey out of poverty. He believed that business could become a major force for social and environmental change, creating “shared value” and sustainability with profitability. He envisioned a consumer awakening and recognition that everyday purchases can impact the world for the better. In short, Paul believed deeply that the FairTrade movement would have a major impact on the world and also help propel a much larger, lasting shift toward Conscious Capitalism. Twenty years later, Fair Trade has grown into a widely-known and increasingly mainstream consumer trend that is rapidly approaching an inflection point. In 2016, consumer recognition of the Fair Trade Certified label reached 67% and U.S. retail sales of Fair Trade products grew to an estimated $6 billion.
  • President, University of the People
    Shai Reshef is President of University of the People (UoPeople) – the world’s first non-profit, tuition-free, accredited American online university, which is dedicated to opening access to higher education globally. President Reshef is an educational entrepreneur, with over 25 years of experience in the international education market. President Reshef has been widely recognized for his work with UoPeople, including being named one of Fast Company’s 100 Most Creative People in Business; selected by OneWorld as one of its ‘People of 2009'; awarded an Ashoka fellowship; joined UN-GAID as a High-level Adviser; granted membership in the Clinton Global Initiative; granted an RSA Fellowship; selected by The Huffington Post as the Ultimate Game Changer in Education; nominated as one of Wired Magazine’s 50 People Changing the World; and selected as a Top Global Thinker by Foreign Policy Magazine. Recently, he was awarded the Prince’s Prize for Innovative Philanthropy by Prince Albert II of Monaco. Before founding University of the People, Reshef directed KIT e-learning, the first online university in Europe. His TED Talk: “An Ultra-Low-Cost College Degree” has been viewed by over 4 million people. More at www.uopeople.edu
  • Senior Advisor, Social Ventures, Mercy Corps
    I am an entrepreneur and investor focused on emerging markets with experience leading businesses and investment funds that endeavor to address major social inequalities and climate change. I bring over a decade of experience in the field with 30+ emerging markets startup investments across the capital continuum and four exits to-date. I am the Managing Partner at Mercy Corps Ventures, a seed stage impact fund that invests up to $500,000 (equity / quasi equity) in innovative start-ups. I manage the full investment cycle for our fund in Latam, SS Africa and SE Asia. My particular focus is on Agriculture, including AgTech, AgFinTech, Traceability / Provenance, Geospatial Tech, and Precision Ag. Prior to joining Mercy Corps to launch the fund, I led ventures in Cambodia, Vietnam, and Afghanistan, including Joma Bakery Cafe, Hagar Social Enterprise Group and Artillery Group. I also advised impact investment funds and social businesses in Southern Africa, East Africa and Southeast Asia, including Insitor Fund, Inkomoko, Bertha Philanthropy Fund and Uberis Capital. After 10+ years abroad, I am now based in Washington, DC.
  • CEO, Tendrel
    As the newly appointed CEO of Tendrel, Alexis is focused on serving social entrepreneurs by providing them with a vibrant global professional association. Frequent connection and open exchange allow Tendrel members to support each other and build the underlying advocacy infrastructure necessary to shape the way the world approaches social change. Alexis has over 15 years of experience starting and growing global Internet companies. He served as Chief Revenue Officer at Vinted, a social/mobile peer-to-peer clothing marketplace, Executive in Residence at Accel Partners, a leading venture capital firm, SVP at HomeAway, the world's leading online marketplace for the vacation rental industry, GM at Match.com and head of Business Development at eBay Europe. In addition, Alexis was the founder and CEO of Fotango, an online photo business acquired by Canon. Prior to joining Tendrel, Alexis was Entrepreneur in Residence at the Skoll Global Threats Fund, leveraging mobile technology and crowd participation to help prevent pandemics. Alexis started his career in manufacturing, working for Alcatel's optical fiber cable division in France and China. Alexis holds mechanical and industrial engineering degree from ICAM in France and an MBA from Stanford University. In his off time, Alexis can be found coaching a ski team, kiteboarding, advising early-stage internet companies or simply baking bread for his 4 children.

Time & Location

Time:
11:45 AM - 01:00 PM, Wednesday, April 5, 2017
Location:
Said Business School