Board of Directors

Ashoka’s Board of Directors serves the specific needs of both Ashoka and the social entrepreneurship movement. Membership requires deep understanding of and commitment to our vision and values and to our “everyone a collegial entrepreneur” culture.

 

Over half the board members are social entrepreneurs, and the others possess mastery of designing, leading and managing institutions. The board works closely together to contribute to Ashoka’s strategy and institutional evolution into an Everyone a Changemaker™ institution. The board also exercises financial control oversight.

Gloria de Souza, India
Ashoka Fellow and Founder, Parisar Asha Environmental Education Centre

One of the first three Ashoka Fellows, Gloria de Souza turned down lucrative business career opportunities to teach. She found an educational system that deadened student’s creativity, motivation to learn, problem-solving capacity, and faith in India. Gloria created and introduced modern experiential education that challenged students to think and to solve problems together instead of chanting facts. Her core contribution has not been to invent modern education but to adapt it to make it attractive to everyone in non-Western settings. Her patient work of adoption, persuasion, training, and organizing spread her impact widely. Eventually the government of India introduced her work into other districts, and UNICEF asked her to help first in Sikkim and then beyond. Other areas of India, in Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, and the Middle East want Gloria to extend her program to their areas.

Bill Drayton, USA
Chair and CEO, Ashoka

Bill Drayton is a social entrepreneur with a long record of founding organizations and public service. As a student, he founded organizations ranging from Yale Legislative Services to Harvard’s Ashoka Table, an inter-disciplinary weekly forum in the social sciences. After graduation from Harvard, he received an M.A. from Balliol College in Oxford University. In 1970, he graduated from Yale Law School. After working at McKinsey & Company, he taught at Stanford Law School and Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government. From 1977 to 1981, while serving the Carter Administration as Assistant Administrator at the Environmental Protection Agency, he launched emissions trading (the basis of Kyoto) among other reforms. He launched Ashoka in 1981. He used the stipend 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. In 2005, 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. As one of three members of the Leadership Team, his special responsibilities are leadership of the new group entrepreneurship and social financial services programs as well as staff search and marketing functions. (photo: (c) Yusuke Abe)

Mary Gordon, Canada
Ashoka Fellow and Founder, Roots of Empathy
Mary Gordon grew up in a small community in Newfoundland. As a teacher in Toronto, she focused her attention on the important, urgent challenges facing education and society as a whole. She has introduced a series of profound changes. In 1981, she founded Canada’s first and largest school-based parenting and family literacy program which has been used as a best practice model throughout North America and internationally. More recently, Mary has developed a methodology that helps young children grasp empathy, taught by her organization, Roots of empathy. It has been highly successful in reducing bullying rates. Mary is now engaged vigorously in spreading this very successful, simple way of helping children develop critical social skills. She has written a widely appreciated book, The Roots of Empathy. She has helped her model spread to classrooms in every province in Canada. Australia is adopting it, as will New Zealand, and portions of Germany, and the U.S. are actively interested. Mary is a member of the Order of Canada and an Ashoka Fellow.

Roger Harrison, United Kingdom
Newspaper Executive and Journalist
Roger has had an extensive career as a journalist, manager, CEO and board member. His business careers have spanned local and national newspaper publishing, magazine publishing, broadcasting, and property ownership and development. Roger’s journalism career began in 1951 as a freelance writer. He worked full-time for The Times and in 1967 moved to The Observer. He served there as of Director, then as Chief Executive from 1984 to 1987. Roger also served as director at London Weekend Television and as the Deputy Chairman of Capital Radio. After his studies at Oxford and Harvard, Roger began his social service. He lived for several years in one of the poorest parts of East London helping with and later becoming chairman of a youth club and community center. From 1990 to 2002, he served as Chairman of Toynbee Hall, which serves a heavily Bangladeshi immigrant community. Roger also has also served as Chairman of Asylum Aid (helping asylum seekers in the UK), a council member of Goldsmiths College (a university in South London), and a trustee of many diverse charities. He is currently the Chairman of the Royal Academy of Dance (RAD), an influential dance education and training organizations that operates in 80 countries.

Fred Hehuwat, Indonesia
Ashoka Fellow and Founder, The Green Indonesia Foundation
As a student at the prestigious Bandung Institute of Technology, Fred was one of the founders of the nonparty student movement that played an important a role in ending the Sukarno era. After earning a Ph.D. in geology in Holland, for twelve years he directed the important National Institute of Geology and Mining. He expanded this role to include extensive development work. He was one of the co-founders of the first citizen environmental organization, the Green Indonesia Foundation, at the time a difficult and courageous initiative. Fred was one of the very early Ashoka Fellows. Fred chairs Ashoka Indonesia and has played many roles in Ashoka -- from selection panel chair to member of the board Executive Committee.

William Kelly, USA
President, Stewards of Affordable Housing for the Future (SAHF)
Bill took early retirement from his twenty-five year partnership at the law firm of Latham & Watkins to pursue his passion for preserving affordable rental homes for low-income people. An organizer of SAHF and its first President, he is working to change policy and the marketplace so that sophisticated non-profit organizations may buy and operate affordable apartments in a financially sustainable way. He began his legal career as law clerk to Court of Appeals Judge Frank Coffin and to Supreme Court Justice Lewis Powell, as Executive Assistant to the Secretary of Housing and Urban Development, and as counsel in a wide array of domestic and international transactions. A life-long innovator in the provision of pro bono legal services, Bill is working with Ashoka to develop a global network of pro bono counsel for Ashoka Fellows and other social entrepreneurs. Bill is a Director of the Washington Legal Clinic for the Homeless Governance Institute, and the International Senior Lawyers Project.

Kyle Zimmer, USA
Co-founder and President, First Book
Kyle has always worked at the intersection of policy, business and social issues. Early in her career, she served in the federal liaison office for Ohio Governor Richard Celeste. She later became a state and local issues advisor to Walter Mondale’s Presidential campaign. After graduating from The George Washington University National Law Center, Kyle entered legal practice and then served as Director of State Affairs for an innovative alliance between major consumer organizations and insurance companies. Kyle and two colleagues founded First Book in 1992, and Kyle serves as President of the organization. First Book recently celebrated the distribution of its 40 millionth book through its network in more than 3,000 communities domestically and is in the process of expanding globally. In addition, First Book has also successfully launched several new subsidiaries, including the First Book National Book Bank, First Artists, and the First Book Marketplace. First Book has received awards from a range of institutions, including Forbes Magazine, and the Monitor Group, the Cause Marketing Forum, and Oprah's Angel Network. In addition, the First Book Marketplace was awarded the grand prize in the Yale School of Management/Goldman Sachs Nonprofit Business Plan Competition in 2005. Kyle was elected an Ashoka Member.