Social Entrepreneur

When you visit a hotel, do you ever wonder what happens to the small piece of soap you leave behind? The average hotel generates somewhere from three to six tons of solid soap waste per year. What if that soap could be diverted from the landfill and used to lift people out of extreme poverty and prevent sex trafficking? Well, that’s what Stefan Phang of Sealed Air’s Soap for Hope program is doing.

Soap for Hope was piloted in Cambodia in October, 2013...

You may have seen shea butter as an ingredient, especially in high-end beauty products. But did you know that in Africa, shea butter is called “women’s gold”?

Funlayo Alabi and her husband share a common problem, dry skin. They have a son who had kidney problems, and he also had very dry skin. Their second son had a severe case of eczema. After trying several over the counter and prescription remedies, they found no relief...

Tonya Surman is a master gardener of social innovation. Tonya’s journey began when she was four years-old. Her mother left and her father became the sole parent. Tonya, her father and sister struggled with poverty. She says “My father raised us on love and not food.” She points to this experience as the source of her resilience, strength and a need to create an impact.

At the age of 19, Tonya left University and traveled the world...

MyRain distributes efficient irrigation equipment to small plot farmers in India. It is not an innovation of technology; drip irrigation has existed and been a proven technology for many years. By using drip irrigation, you can increase crop yield by 50% to 100% and decrease water consumed between 20% and 50% when compared with flood irrigation. Increasing yields can drastically improve the quality of life for small plot farmers...

When I say “early stage entrepreneur,” whom do you picture? A hungry young person in a hoodie, eating Raman noodles and cranking out code? While this might be the prototype, more and more social entrepreneurs are looking more like Jim Smith. Jim is an academic and a scientist. He spends most days in deep research and in the classroom at the University of Virginia...

Roger L. Martin has spent his career attacking models that don’t produce the desired results. I first became aware of Roger L. Martin’s work when I was the Global Head of Learning & Development for Diversey, Inc. My CEO at the time, a former Proctor & Gamble executive, taught me Roger’s cascading choices framework as a method for setting and maintaining strategy. He had first learned it from A.G. Lafley, the CEO of P&G. Later, Roger Martin partnered with A.G...

When Devin Thorpe was 11 years old, he volunteered to clean up in the aftermath of a flood that devastated an Idaho town. This experience left an impression on him and a craving to be of service to others. Over the years, Devin had held a number of positions, working in banking, financial planning and as a Chief Financial Officer.

After Devin lost his job in 2011, he took the opportunity to move to China and to teach...

David Gluckman’s career as an entrepreneur started when he was 8 years old and worked in a market booth in Johannesburg. But growing up in South Africa, he could not escape the obvious inequality of society. By the time he reached university in Cape Town, he became determined that he wanted to be part of changing the system.

After a short career in banking and as a consultant for EY, David decided to take a break from corporate life and return to Cape Town...

When Pedro Domingos was growing up in Lisbon, he loved to read and to learn. In fact, when he was 13 years old, he decided that he wanted to learn everything that there is to know. It did not take him long to decide that it might be a little more useful to, instead of knowing everything, to become deeply knowledgeable about a few topics.

His university studies led him to computer science in the 1980s, just as personal computers were beginning to catch on...