What an event yes­ter­day night. My wife and I were for­tu­nate to visit the Google Cam­pus and attend the Sixth Annual North Amer­i­can Fel­low­ship Induc­tion Pro­gram of Ashoka: Inno­va­tors for the Pub­lic, a social ven­ture fund where we have been involved for a num­ber of years, and thanks to which (thanks Michele!) my wife and I met in the first place.

18 new Ashoka Fellows/ social entre­pre­neurs were elected, and after a fun cock­tail recep­tion the cer­e­mony began. Sergei Brin (Google Co-founder), Sheryl Sand­berg (who helped launch Google Foun­da­tion and google.org), Salar Kaman­gar (the mind behind AdWords) gave intro­duc­tory remarks. Salar explained how he first heard of Ashoka (through the book How to Change the World, by David Born­stein) and how he saw tremen­dous sim­i­lar­i­ties between Ashoka and Google: both 1) see and sup­port indi­vid­u­als as forces of dis­rup­tion, give them the free­dom to grow and exper­i­ment, while they make sure to “get out of their way”, 2) once the ideas and mod­els grow, they help cre­ate the right con­nec­tions to help scale.

Other speak­ers included Anousheh Ansari, entre­pre­neur and “first female pri­vate space explorer”, Mas­ter of Cer­e­monies Don Shalvey, founder of Aspire Pub­lic Schools, Tra­bian Short­ers, Ashoka US Co-Director, and James Jensen, ED of the Jen­e­sis Group, the foun­da­tion that helped Ashoka launch its US chap­ter in 1999. James deliv­ered a very touch­ing a pas­sion­ate wel­come to the new fel­lows, call­ing them “mer­ci­ful mav­er­icks that moti­vate the human heart” and “whose main com­pass is impact and compassion).

Then, of couse, we had the lux­ury to hear Bill Dray­ton, Founder and CEO of Ashoka, entre­pre­neur and vision­ary, who helped launch the field of social entre­pre­neur­ship 25 years ago.  Some of his remarks (may not be ver­ba­tim, but close)
– (About the new Ashoka Fel­lows) “based on our his­tor­i­cal data, we can pre­dict that 18 out of the 18 entre­pre­neurs we are wel­com­ing today will still com­mited to their fields in 5 years, that over 90% of them will see their projects repli­cated by third-parties nation­ally and inter­na­tion­ally, and more than 50% will have influ­enced national pol­icy in 5–10 years.“
– “We are liv­ing a his­toric moment, where the monop­oly of ini­tia­tive by a few is being replaced by the new adage that Every­one Is a Change­maker, where every per­son can be a full cit­i­zen“
– “The busi­ness sec­tor has been so suc­cess­ful for cen­turies because it has moti­vated and rewarded change­mak­ers very well. The cit­i­zen sec­tor is now under­go­ing the same process“
– “This new atti­tude is not easy. Lead­ing change is more com­plex than learn­ing how to ride a bike; it requires team­work, plan­ning, per­se­ver­ance. Teenagers and young adults must be offered the oppor­tu­nity to prac­tice and prac­tice, as early as pos­si­ble, which is why we launched and are so excited about Youth Ven­ture “
– Busi­ness and Soci­ety are com­ing together. Today there are mul­ti­ple exam­ples of “hybrid value chains’ in which com­pa­nies and cit­i­zen orga­ni­za­tions part­ner in order to accom­plish their goals more suc­cess­fully
– “We all must give our­selves per­mis­sion to find the answers, con­nect to our dreams, and pre­pare a bet­ter world for the chil­dren of tomorrow”

Some pre­vi­ous related posts:
Micro­fi­nance, and a very sharp brain

The joy of giv­ing, and the Cog­ni­tive and Emo­tional Health Project

Brain and Mind Fit­ness Pro­grams: resiliency, on top of atten­tion, memory…

Exec­u­tive Func­tions and MacArthur “Genius Grants”

On being positive

In our view of the world, each of these social entre­pre­neurs are very very sharp brains. Enjoy,ÂÂ

Alvaro

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