Bill Drayton

Bill Drayton is the Founder, Chair, and CEO of Ashoka: Innovators for the Public, the global association of the world’s leading social entrepreneurs. Ashoka: Innovators for the Public supports individual social entrepreneurs – financially and professionally; brings communities of social entrepreneurs together to help leverage their impact, scale their ideas, and capture and disseminate their best practices; and helps build the infrastructure and financial systems needed to support the growth of the citizen sector and facilitate the spread of social innovation globally. Since 1981, Ashoka: Innovators for the Public has elected over 3,000 leading social entrepreneurs from more than 70 countries. Mr. Drayton also pursues his social entrepreneurship work through Ashoka’s Youth Venture and Get America Working!.

Mr. Drayton worked for 10 years as a management consultant for McKinsey & Co. and for four years as Assistant Administrator of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. He has taught at Stanford Law School and Harvard University’s John F. Kennedy School of Government.

Mr. Drayton is a graduate of Harvard University, Yale Law School, and the University of Oxford, where he was a Rhodes Scholar. He has received many awards for his achievements. Mr. Drayton was elected one of the early MacArthur Fellows for his work, including the founding of Ashoka. Yale University’s School of Management gave him its annual Award for Entrepreneurial Excellence. The American Society of Public Administration and the National Academy of Public Administration jointly awarded him their National Public Service Award, and Common Cause gave him its Public Service Achievement Award. He has also been named a Preiskel-Silverman Fellow for Yale Law School and is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. In 2005, he was selected one of ‘America’s Best Leaders’ by U.S. News & World Report and Harvard University’s Center for Public Leadership. In the same month he was the recipient of the Yale Law School’s highest alumni honor, The Yale Law School Award of Merit, for having made a substantial contribution to Public Service.

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How can anyone make a difference in a world marked by genocide, civil war, refugee crises, disease epidemics? With conscience, hope, and sweat equity, Dr. Zachary Kaufman and the other contributors to this book have offered aid, created organizations serving victims of human rights violations, and learned from set-backs and failures. Their insight into challenges of sustainable fund-raising, organizational design and management, and skepticism about young Western volunteers can inspire and instruct others who hope to address suffering and injustice through initiative, analysis, and commitment.”

Martha Minow, Dean of the Faculty of Law and Jeremiah Smith, Jr. Professor of Law, Harvard Law School; Author, Between Vengeance and Forgiveness: Facing History After Genocide and Mass Violence

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