Anne Wojcicki

Anne Wojcicki is the co-founder and CEO of personal genomics company 23andMe. With a background as a health care consultant and health care investment analyst, she co-founded 23andMe in 2006. The company revolutionized the field of DNA testing, offering direct-to-consumer testing for ancestry analysis and health markers. It received a $300 million investment from GlaxoSmithKline in 2018, before going public in 2021. Anne has been a long-time philanthropist. She runs the Anne Wojcicki Foundation, is a co-founder and board member of the Breaktrough Prize, and in 2022 joined the Giving Pledge. Following a trip to South Asia in the 2000s, where she visited multiple Ashoka Fellows, Anne has been a longtime supporter of Ashoka’s work.

Bob Chapman

Bob Chapman is the CEO, Chairman, and visionary leader of Barry-Wehmiller Companies, a global manufacturing firm headquartered in St. Louis, Missouri. Having inherited the CEO role in 1975 at the age of 30, Bob grew the company from $18 million to $3 billion in revenue, combining a solid growth strategy focused on acquisitions with a culture centered on what he calls “Truly Human Leadership.” Over the past two decades, Bob has committed himself to spreading his leadership vision beyond Barry-Wehmiller. Through his book, “Everybody Matters: The Extraordinary Power of Caring for Your People Like Family,” and his work with business leaders and educational institutions, he aims to "humanize” our understanding of leadership as well as our education system.

 

 

Brian Kim

Kim Beom-soo, also known as Brian Kim, is the founder and chairman of South Korean tech giant Kakao. Growing up in a working class family, Brian started several companies, before founding KakaoTalk in 2010. The messaging app quickly grew to dominate the Korean market, being installed on 90% of the country’s smartphones. Building on this success, Brian grew the Kakao Corporation into a tech conglomerate with over $6 billion revenue and subsidiaries in entertainment, gaming, ride-sharing, finance, and other sectors. In 2021, Brian established his own foundation and was one of the first Koreans to join the Giving Pledge. In years prior, he worked closely with Ashoka Korea to co-create a multi-million dollar initiative focused on building the new field of "future education."

Illai Gescheit

Illai Gescheit is an entrepreneur, investor, and venture advisor who is passionate about bringing innovation to large and complex ecosystems, such as corporations or the global energy market. As a former Venture Partner with Siemens Energy Ventures and Entrepreneur-in-Residence at BP and Amazon, Illai excels at combining the power of start-ups and large corporations. He is particularly excited about their potential to jointly create innovative solutions to some of our greatest issues, including climate change. Illai has also founded multiple start-ups himself, and was part of the early team at Medingo, a medical start-up acquired by Roche. He runs a venture capital fund focused on climate solutions, holds over 20 patents, and is an active start-up mentor for Techstars, Google for Startups, Singularity University, and others.

 

James Rhee

James Rhee is a transformative CEO, investor, educator, and thought leader. A former high school teacher and private equity investor, James received widespread acclaim for saving the nearly bankrupt clothing retailer Ashley Stewart as a first-time CEO. His TED Talk, “The Value of Kindness of Work,” in which he shares this inspiring story, has received over 2 million views. Since leaving Ashley Stewart in 2020, James has been working on red helicopter, a movement he started with the aim of spreading his philosophy for building a better version of capitalism, based on “a combination of kindness and math.” In 2024, he published his book, “red helicopter – a parable for our times.” James is based in Boston and has strong ties in New York, D.C., and Hollywood.

Phil Villers

Philippe (Phil) Villers is a French-American serial entrepreneur, philanthropist, and political activist and donor. He founded Computervision, a former Fortune 500 computer-aided design and manufacturing company, as well as Automatix, an early industrial robotics firm, and Cognition, Inc. He is also the former CEO and current President and Board Member of GrainPro, a “not-only-for-profit" company whose products aim to improve food security, food safety, and small-farm income in developing countries around the world. In 1981, he and his wife co-founded and endowed Families USA, a non-profit organization that advocates for affordable health care and has been lauded by President Obama for their work on the Affordable Care Act. Phil also serves on the ACLU President's Committee, Amnesty International USA's Executive Directors Council, and has been a donor to Ashoka since 1993.

Wemimo Abbey

Wemimo Abbey is the co-founder and co-CEO of Esusu, a fintech firm that fosters financial inclusion for the millions of Americans without access to credit. Founded in 2018, Esusu collaborates with property managers, tenants, credit bureaus, and government institutions to include rental payments into renters’ credit scores and transform the credit system. In just five years, Esusu has helped its users access $13 billion in credit, the majority of which in mortgages, and itself reached a $1 billion valuation in its 2022 Series B. Its service is available in 4 million rental units across all 50 states. Prior to Esusu, Wemimo created a global social venture providing access to clean water for over 250,000 people, and founded data analytics company Open Aid Initiative, which was acquired in 2014.