Tag: Innovation Award Winner60
People Tag: Innovation Award Winner 42
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Aaron Hurst
Aaron is the CEO of Imperative and a globally recognized social entrepreneur. He is a close advisor to many global brands and frequent speaker and writer on the development of the Purpose Economy. He remains an active advisor to the Taproot Foundation where he has been the catalyst and lead architect of the $15 billion pro bono service market. He was the creative force behind the conception of the national Billion + Change campaign. Previously he worked in Silicon Valley developing the precursors to social media.
| Investors: | Website: http://www.taprootfoundation.org/ | Email: |
Person
Adam Neiman
Adam Neiman is the founder and CEO of No Sweat Apparel. The company was founded in 2000 and produces casual clothing and sneakers at union factories and worker owned co-operatives in the US, Canada and the developing world. No Sweat’s new line of organic cotton T-shirts are produced at a Palestinian owned sweatshop-free factory on Virgin Mary Street in Bethlehem, West Bank.
| Investors: | Website: http://www.nosweatapparel.com/ | Email: |
Person
Alan Ricks
Alan Ricks is the chief operating officer of MASS Design Group, which he co-founded with Michael Murphy in 2010. Alan’s work with MASS spans design, research, and policy, and he most recently gave a TED Talk, which chief TED curator Chris Anderson described as “a different language about what architecture can aspire to be.” Since designing and building the Butaro District Hospital for Partners In Health, MASS has expanded to seven countries, focusing on design innovation and health infrastructure development.
| Investors: | Website: http://massdesigngroup.org/ | Email: |
Person
Alejandro Velez
Back to the Roots was founded by Alejandro Velez & Nikhil Arora during their last semester at UC Berkeley in 2009. Inspired by the idea of turning waste into wages and fresh, local food, they experimented in Alex's fraternity kitchen, ultimately growing one test bucket of mushrooms on recycled coffee grounds. In 2011, they're on pace to help families grow over 250,000 lbs of fresh food at home, while diverting and reusing 1,000,000 lbs of coffee grounds from Peet's Coffee & Tea.
| Investors: | Website: http://backtotheroots.com/ | Email: |
Person
Ben Bohannon
Liz and Ben Bohannon, created Sseko sandals as a way to bless the makers - bright young Ugandan women who earn money to pay for college. Their stunning sandals have been featured by Martha Stewart, Redbook, Fitness, Shape and People Style magazines. Sseko shares their passion to serve the world’s vulnerable children.
| Investors: | Website: http://ssekodesigns.com/ | Email: |
Person
Brenda Palms Barber
Brenda developed an innovative social enterprise and job creation program called Sweet Beginnings, LLC, described in the section above. In addition to a business, Sweet Beginnings is a transitional jobs program that provides green collar jobs producing premium grade honey and honey-infused skin care products in an urban neighborhood setting.
| Investors: | Website: http://www.sweetbeginningsllc.com/ | Email: [email protected] |
Person
Brent Baker
Brent Baker is the CEO and founder of New York City based Tri State Biodiesel (TSB). Under Brent's leadership TSB is the first most well known and biggest biodiesel company in the region and a national leader in urban sustainable biodiesel. Brent is a pioneer of the biodiesel movement and has been a biodiesel educator and since the fuel emerged in the United States about 14 years ago. He is now a nationally known spokesman on biodiesel and related issues.
| Investors: | Website: | Email: |
Person
Chid Liberty
Chid co-founded Liberty & Justice, Africa’s first Fair Trade Certified™ apparel manufacturer, after a short career in technology and finance. He was born in Liberia, West Africa, but left as an infant when his father became the nation’s ambassador to the Federal Republic of Germany, with residence in Bonn. His family was later exiled in the United States. In 2009, Chid returned to Africa after 28 years abroad. Inspired by the Nobel Peace Prize winning Liberian Women’s Peace Movement, Chid co-founded Africa’s first Fair Trade Certified apparel factory to provide economic opportunities for internally displaced women, who on balance, were vulnerable to rampant unemployment and economic exclusion. He is currently leading L&J’s rapid expansion in Liberia and throughout the region.
| Investors: | Website: http://www.libertyandjustice.com/ | Email: |
Person
Chris Van Dyke
In 2004, Chris co-founded Nau, Inc. and was its President and CEO. At Nau, Chris and his team won numerous product and sustainability awards including awards from Time, The Social Venture Network, Outside Magazine and National Geographic Adventure. As CEO of Nau, Chris was a guest speaker at Harvard Business School, Stanford Business School, Hass School of Business, P&G, LOHAS, and the Social Venture Network. Chris continues to make valuable social and environmental impacts through innovative philanthropy. He is currently serving as SVP of Strategic Communications at the World Wildlife Fund.
| Investors: | Website: http://www.nau.com/ | Email: |
Person
Danny Kennedy
Kennedy serves as managing director of the California Clean Energy Fund a non profit dedicated to optimising the clean energy transition. He co founded Sungevity a rapidly growing residential solar power company3 and Powerhouse the primer solar incubator in Oakland. While at Sungevity Kennedy won a Planet Forward Innovator of the Year award4 from the PBS program Planet Forward.
| Investors: | Website: http://www.sungevity.com/ | Email: |
Person
Elizabeth Scharpf
Elizabeth is an entrepreneur who has spent most of her professional career starting up ventures or advising businesses on growth strategies in the health care industry. She has spent time as a strategic management consultant at Cambridge Pharma Consultancy as well as stints at the Clinton Foundation and the World Bank in Asia and East Africa, respectively. Elizabeth has an MBA from Harvard Business School, an MPA in international development from Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government, and a BA from the University of Notre Dame. Despite all the academic acronyms, she thinks her best education has come from talking with those sitting next to her on buses around the world.
| Investors: | Website: http://sheinnovates.com/ | Email: |
Person
Eric Greitens
After returning from Iraq, Eric donated his combat pay to found The Mission Continues, a national nonprofit organization that challenges veterans to serve in communities across America. As CEO, Eric has been recognized as one of the most effective leaders in America. In 2013, TIME magazine named Eric to their list of the 100 most influential people in the world, and most recently Fortune magazine recognized him as one of the 50 greatest leaders in the world.
| Investors: | Website: http://www.missioncontinues.org/ | Email: |
Person
Gregg Keesling
Gregg Keesling is familiar with the process of reinvention. He moved to Jamaica as a young man and spent decades in the Caribbean country. He opened a hotel, helped with community projects and enjoyed an ex-patriot lifestyle. But, ultimately, he returned to the United States, and Indianapolis, and founded RecycleForce.
| Investors: | Website: http://www.recycleforce.org/ | Email: |
Person
Jeannine Jacokes
Jeannine Jacokes was appointed CEO of Partners for the Common Good in 2001. Prior to coming to PCG, Jeannine served for more than six years as a senior member of the management team at the U.S. Department of the Treasury's Community Development Financial Institutions (CDFI) Fund, where she was a leader in designing and implementing the Fund's programs and operations. She went to the CDFI Fund after serving as a senior policy advisor at the U.S. Senate Committee on Banking, Housing and Urban Affairs.
| Investors: | Website: http://www.pcgloanfund.org/ | Email: |
Person
Jessamyn Rodriguez
Jessamyn W. Rodriguez is the Founder and Chief Executive Officer of the award-winning Hot Bread Kitchen. Since its inception in 2007, she has led the growth of the organization from a visionary idea to a thriving bakery and workforce development program. Hot Bread Kitchen won the 2009 “Best Small Business” for Queens from the NYC Department of Small Businesses and has become nationally recognized brand that has been covered in print (New York Times, Daily News, and Food & Wine Magazine), TV (Today Show & NPK), and Radio.
| Investors: | Website: http://hotbreadkitchen.org/ | Email: |
Person
Jonathan Lewis
Jonathan C. Lewis has had three successful careers: social entrepreneur, business leader and government policy executive. After retiring in 2002, he has devoted himself on a pro bono basis to global poverty issues and, in particular, microfinance. Jonathan is the Founder, Board Chair and CEO of MicroCredit Enterprises. MicroCredit Enterprises, which Mr. Lewis founded in 2005, is an innovative, not-for-profit microfinance social venture. Within two years, the organization had grown to $35 million in guarantees and $22 million in overseas lending capacity.
| Investors: | Website: http://mcenterprises.org/home.html | Email: |
Person
Karlene Hunter
Ms. Hunter has more than 25 years of experience working on educational and economic development on the Pine Ridge Reservation in South Dakota where Native American Natural Foods is based. Ms. Hunter holds an MBA from Oglala Lakota College and has received numerous awards including the Natural Foods Industry's prestigious 2010 Cliff Adler 'Heart in Business' Award and the 2007 SBA Small Business Woman of the Year for South Dakota and was also awarded the Indian Business Woman of the Year from the National Indian Business Association.
| Investors: | Website: http://www.tankabar.com/ | Email: |
Person
Katherine Lucey
Katherine Lucey is the Founder and Chief Executive Officer of Solar Sister. After a 20 year career as an investment banker with expertise in the energy sector, Katherine retired from banking and turned her attention to finding a sustainable solution to the energy poverty that causes suffering to a quarter of the world’s population. Katherine determined that a practical, grass-roots, locally generated solution was needed. Katherine is an Ashoka Fellow and a Draper Richards Kaplan Foundation Entrepreneur. She currently serves on the board of Solar Light for Africa, a not-for-profit corporation that brings solar energy to rural communities in East Africa. She holds an M.B.A. from Georgia State University and a Bachelor’s Degree in Journalism from the University of Georgia. She is an alumna of the Global Social Benefit Incubator (GSBI) the signature social enterprise program of the Center for Science, Technology, and Society of Santa Clara University.
| Investors: | Website: http://www.solarsister.org/ | Email: |
Person
Kavita Shukla
Kavita is the Founder & CEO of Fenugreen a social enterprise taking on the massive global challenge of food waste with a simple innovation FreshPaper. Kavita holds four patents and has received several international honors as an inventor designer and entrepreneur including the INDEX Design to Improve Life Award the world s largest prize for design. Her work has been featured by CNN The New York Times The Washington Post Bloomberg Oprah Magazine Glamour and The Today Show. Kavita was also recently featured as one of the 7 Entrepreneurs Changing the World by Fast Company and on the Forbes 30 under 30 list.
| Investors: | Website: http://www.fenugreen.com/ | Email: |
Person
Kirsten Tobey
Kirsten and Kristin saw a huge opportunity to contribute to school efficacy and student health by improving the food offerings that schools made available to their students, particularly in low-income neighborhoods. Initially intended as a non-profit effort, they found that the non-profit structure did not allow start-up or growth capital to address the problem at a greater-than-boutique scale. They set up a company in 2006, Revolution Foods, to drive the impact they wanted to realize.
| Investors: | Website: http://revfoods.com/ | Email: |
Person
Lisa Tarver
Lisa Tarver is the Co Founder Chief Impact Officer at One World Futbol Project.
| Investors: | Website: http://www.oneworldfutbol.com/ | Email: |
Person
Liz Bohannon
Liz is the founder and Co-CEO of Sseko Designs. When she came to learn that many of those incredible young women were graduating from secondary school and struggling to find work to finance their university education, Sseko was born. It seemed so simple. She designed a sandal that she thought was really beautiful. She spent weeks, wandering around the city and the markets looking for the things she needed to make.
| Investors: | Website: http://ssekodesigns.com/ | Email: |
Person
Mark Hanis
Mark Hanis is the co-founder and President of the Genocide Intervention Network. As a grandchild of four Holocaust survivors, Mark has a deep understanding of individual persecution, and of hope and opportunity. Outraged by the international community's inaction when the Darfur conflict began, Mark began on a journey that still continues today.
| Investors: | Website: http:// | Email: |
Person
Mark Tilsen
Mark Tilsen is President of Native American Natural Foods and a longtime business partner with Karlene Hunter in Lakota Express, Inc., a direct marketing and customer care management company. Mr. Tilsen has more than 25 years of experience in nonprofit fundraising, marketing community development, and 18 years in special events marketing and productions. Mr. Tilsen has received numerous marketing awards and is a lifelong supporter of Native American causes. He co-founded several successful community organizations and businesses, including KILI Radio, the largest indigenous community-owned radio station in North America and The Black Hills Alliance. a coalition of Native and non-Native Americans that had a major impact on changing the environmental policies and practices in the Black Hills.
| Investors: | Website: http://www.tankabar.com/ | Email: |
Person
Michael Murphy
Michael Murphy is the executive director of MASS Design Group, which he co-founded with Alan Ricks in 2010. Since leading the design and construction of the Butaro Hospital in Rwanda, Michael has led MASS in expanding into ten countries and three continents. Michael regularly speaks to a variety of audiences on architecture and health care, and sits on the boards of the Clinton Global Initiative Advisory Committee, the Harvard Graduate School of Design Alumni Board, and the Center for Healthcare Design, among others.
| Investors: | Website: http://www.massdesigngroup.org/ | Email: |
Person
Michelle Kaufmann
Michelle Kaufmann is a leading architect and designer with Michelle Kaufmann Studio. Michelle is also a co-founder of Flux. In 2002, Kaufmann founded Michelle Kaufmann Designs, a full service architecture firm specializing in sustainable design. The firm designed and built single-family and multi-family green homes using prefabricated modular technology. The firm was closed in May 2009 and Kaufmann started a new design firm, Michelle Kaufmann Studio. Her firm offers customers a variety of prefabricated homes, as well as options for completely custom built homes as well.
| Investors: | Website: http://michellekaufmann.com/ | Email: |
Person
Natalia Muina
No Sweat was launched in October of 2002 by CEO Adam Neiman, his wife and V.P. Natalia Muina, and COO Anne O'Loughlin with an eye toward the fair marketing of solely union-made wear. Formed as an alternative to all the Nikes and Gaps out there, which are often criticized for labor practices, the company, which today employs four full-time workers, has attracted customers in all 50 US states, 36 countries and six continents solely by word of mouth, with no advertising or publicity.
| Investors: | Website: http://www.nosweatapparel.com/ | Email: |
Person
Ned Tozun
Ned Tozun and Sam Goldman founded D.light Design, an international consumer products company that serves customers without access to reliable electricity. The mission of D.light is to enable households without reliable electricity to attain the same quality of life as those with electricity, beginning with replacing every kerosene lantern with clean, safe, and bright light. D.light has sold tens of thousands of solar lanterns, providing bright light to over 300,000 individuals in India, East Africa and around the world.
| Investors: | Website: http://dlightdesign.com/ | Email: |
Person
Nikhil Arora
Back to the Roots was founded by Alejandro Velez & Nikhil Arora during their last semester at UC Berkeley in 2009. Inspired by the idea of turning waste into wages and fresh, local food, they experimented in Alex's fraternity kitchen, ultimately growing one test bucket of mushrooms on recycled coffee grounds. In 2011, they're on pace to help families grow over 250,000 lbs of fresh food at home, while diverting and reusing 1,000,000 lbs of coffee grounds from Peet's Coffee & Tea.
| Investors: | Website: http://backtotheroots.com/ | Email: |
Person
Peter Frykman
Peter is the Founder and CEO of Driptech. He received his BS and MS in Mechanical Engineering from Stanford University, where he focused on manufacturing and design. He is vitally concerned with the challenge of water scarcity, especially in developing countries. His professional interests include mechatronics, medical devices, and design for extreme affordability. He is an avid rower and two time national champion for Stanford.
| Investors: | Website: http://www.driptech.com/ | Email: |
Person
Peter Liu
Liu is financing environmentally savvy, resource-efficient ventures at the nation's first commercial bank aimed at green businesses, New Resource Bank in San Francisco. "Sustainability has become a major market force," says Liu, 41, the bank's founder and vice chairman. New Resource operates as a full-service community bank, and anyone is welcome to walk through its recycled-glass doors. But the deposits are used to finance loans for environmentally conscious projects, including alternative energy, clean tech, organic farming and sustainable home and more.
| Investors: | Website: https://www.newresourcebank.com/ | Email: |
Person
Phaedra Ellis-Lamkins
Before becoming a board member, Phaedra served as Chief Executive Officer of Green For All. Under her leadership, Green For All became one of the country’s leading advocates for a clean-energy economy, and one of its most important voices on the intersection of economics and environment. Phaedra led Green For All to several groundbreaking policy victories and innovative pilot projects at the federal, state, and local levels, while redefining the face of environmentalism through youth engagement and partnerships with popular artists.
| Investors: | Website: http://greenforall.org/ | Email: |
Person
Priya Haji
Priya Haji is the CEO and co-founder of World of Good, a company dedicated to building ethical shopping experiences with mainstream retail partners, including Whole Foods and eBay. Since the company began in 2004, it has created online and offline distribution channels for thousands of artisan producers in the developing world through more than 1,200 retail locations across the country and a brand new online marketplace, impacting the lives of more than 25,000 individuals in over 70 countries around the world. In 2007, Priya received a Social Innovation Award from the Social Venture Network for her vision to change the way the world does business.
| Investors: | Website: http:// | Email: |
Person
Ron Gonen
Ron is the Co Founder and Managing Director of Closed Loop Partners an investment platform that invests in sustainable consumer goods recycling and the development of the circular economy. Investors include many of the world s largest consumer goods companies and family offices interested in investments that provide strong financials returns and tangible social impact.Prior to the Closed Loop Fund Ron was the Deputy Commissioner of Sanitation Recycling and Sustainability for New York City. He joined the Bloomberg administration with the task of rebuilding NYC s recycling program managing NYC s paper metal glass plastic textile waste electronic waste organics as well as public policy and legislation.
| Investors: | Website: | Email: |
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Shannon Boase
Shannon Boase is founder and CEO of Earthcycle Packaging. Earthcycle has used the design brilliance of nature to develop innovative sustainable packaging made from a renewable resource, palm fiber, which composts in less than 90-days, turning into a healthy contribution to the soil. The reuse of palm fiber also eliminates the air pollution that results from the burning of the fibers. Having gained immediate momentum in the US and Canada, Earthcycle’s packaging is now currently available in select Wal-Mart, Publix, Safeway, Loblaw's, Kroger and Wegmans, among other retailers.
| Investors: | Website: http://earthcycle.com/ | Email: |
Person
Swaroop Samant
Swaroop Samant is the Co Founder of Fenugreen a social enterprise taking on the massive global challenge of food waste through its simple innovation FreshPaper. He has three patents pending. Swaroop is graduate of Yale University and holds an MD from the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine. Prior to founding Fenugreen Swaroop worked as a strategy consultant in McKinsey & Company's consumer insights practice.
| Investors: | Website: http://www.fenugreen.com/ | Email: |
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Tevis Howard
KOMAZA was founded in 2006 by Tevis Howard, who currently serves as Executive Director. Recognizing the unique social and environmental challenges faced by those living in semi-arid, drought prone regions, Tevis decided to focus on the hardest-to-serve families living in remote regions of Coastal Kenya, where rainfall is extremely low, soil is exceedingly infertile and few other organizations are on-the-ground.
| Investors: | Website: http://www.komaza.org/ | Email: |
Person
Tim Jahnigen
After much testing and refinement, the One World Futbol was finally ready for launch. In 2010, Tim and his wife, Lisa Tarver, started One World Futbol Project, a mission-driven, B Corporation that makes, sells and distributes the nearly indestructible One World Futbol. The company’s mission is to make a meaningful impact on youth around the world through the One World Futbol.
| Investors: | Website: http://www.oneworldfutbol.com/ | Email: |
Person
Tim O'Shea
CleanFish was founded in 2004 by Tim o’Shea, who has spent his career working with socially minded food business operations like Niman Ranch and Odwalla, and Dale Sims, a self-proclaimed ‘recovering commodity brokers,’ who sold millions of pounds of bass, and conventionally farmed salmon. The idea for the company was sparked by a growing awareness of the negative impact on the world’s oceans resulting from the destructive farming practices employed by large-scale fishing operations. The two founders met at a conference where o’Shea presented his vision for a novel seafood company that would link sustainable practices, health and the environment to obtain a market premium and the rest is history.
| Investors: | Website: http://www.cleanfish.com/ | Email: |
Person
Tim Prestero
Timothy Prestero is the founder and CEO of Design that Matters. He is co-inventor on three patents for cholera treatment devices, and has served on the board of directors of two for-profit technology startups. Timothy was a Peace Corps volunteer in Côte d'Ivoire, West Africa, and he has led design and global projects in 20 countries across Africa, Latin America and Asia. He received M.S. degrees in Mechanical and Oceanographic Engineering from the MIT, and a B.S. degree in Mechanical Engineering from the University of California at Davis. He is a Martin Fellow at the MIT Laboratory for Energy and the Environment, a Draper Richards Kaplan Fellow, and was named an Ashoka Affiliate in 2004. His awards include the 2007 Social Venture Network Innovation Award, and the 2009 World Technology Award.
| Investors: | Website: http://www.designthatmatters.com/ | Email: |
Person
Tom Szaky
Tom Szaky, 29, is the Founder and CEO of TerraCycle, Inc, one of the world’s foremost leaders in eco-capitalism and upcycling. In 2006, Inc. Magazine named TerraCycle, “The Coolest Little Start-Up in America!” That same year Tom was named the “#1 CEO in America Under 30″. However, the rapid growth and success of TerraCycle is no surprise to those who have known Tom his whole life.
| Investors: | Website: http://www.terracycle.net/en-US/ | Email: |
Person
Willy Foote
Social Entrepreneurship (SASE) in 2005, was named an Ashoka Fellow in 2007 and a Young Global Leader by the World Economic Forum in 2008, became a member of the Young Presidents’ Organization (YPO) in 2009, was listed as one of Forbes’ “Impact 30” in 2011, and is a Henry Crown Fellow (Class of 2012). Willy holds an M.S. in development economics from the London School of Economics and a B.A. from Yale University.
| Investors: | Website: http:// | Email: |