Ashoka
Bill
Bill Drayton is a social entrepreneur with a long record of founding organizations, bringing big change, and service. As a student, he founded organizations ranging from Yale Legislative Services to Harvard’s Ashoka Table, an inter-disciplinary weekly forum on how society truly works. After graduation from Harvard, he received an M.A. from Balliol College in Oxford University and his J.D. from Yale Law School. Over ten years at McKinsey & Company, he brought significant structural changes to policy and organizations. He also taught at Stanford Law School and Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government. He served in the Carter Administration White House and as Assistant Administrator at the Environmental Protection Agency, where he launched emissions trading and many other lasting reforms. He launched Ashoka in 1981. He used the stipend he received when elected a MacArthur Fellow in 1984 to devote himself fully to Ashoka. Bill is Ashoka’s Chair and Chief Executive Officer. He is also chair of three other organizations; Youth Venture, Community Greens, and Get America Working!
Bill has won numerous awards and honors throughout his career. He has honorary doctorates from Yale, NYU, and others; and he is a Fellow of Balliol College, Oxford. He is a member of the American Philosophical Society, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and the Council on Foreign Relations. He was selected one of America’s Best Leaders by US News & World Report and Harvard’s Center for Public Leadership. Other awards include the Yale Law School’s highest alumni honor, the National Wildlife Federation’s Conservation Achievement Award International; and the National Academy of Public Administration National Public Service Award.
Bill is an avid backpacker. He especially loves long, off trail, above the tree line immersions.
As Ashoka’s CEO, Bill brings history-based vision and a deep grasp of how things work to help Ashoka keep learning and keep changing big time so that it and its community can make the truly big contributions it can and must. He has overall management responsibility and, as one of three members of the Leadership Team, has special responsibilities for Purpose Teams (e.g. Young People, Climate), “Jujitsu” Partners and Metro Areas, Frame Change/Communications, organizational evolution, and Search/Talent.
(photo: (c) Yusuke Abe)
Bill Drayton and Sally Osberg on Growth and Transformation of Social Entrepreneurship
What are social entrepreneurs? What are the unique ways in which they work to achieve lasting solutions to the enormous problems facing humankind? What makes social entrepreneurship different from other approaches to social change? Bill Drayton, Founder and CEO of Ashoka, and Sally Osberg, President and CEO of the Skoll Foundation, sat down with Skoll’s Director of Public Engagement Suzana Grego to discuss these questions, and to talk about why they continue to be excited by the social entrepreneurship movement as it grows and transforms.
Ashoka insight
Once we recognize the power of social entrepreneurs to create massive change for the better, the next question is, as Bill Drayton asks: “How do we build a community that enables entrepreneurs, the great entrepreneurs for the good of all, to work together?” This has been the focus of Ashoka and the Skoll Foundation.
There’s no denying it, the problems we face are enormous, and things often seem to be going in the wrong direction. But Sally Osberg finds reasons for hope: “the degree of fearlessness and determination that social entrepreneurs bring to these challenges is I think exceptional.”