Molly Melching is the founder and Creative Director of the Tostan Community Empowerment Program (CEP). Tostan is a non-governmental organization (NGO) headquartered in Dakar, Senegal whose mission is to empower African communities to bring about sustainable development and positive social transformation based on respect for human rights. Her website, Tostan.org, states "Tostan implements a holistic, three-year empowering education program in African national languages that has engaged over 3,500 rural communities in eight African countries on themes of democracy, human rights, health, literacy, and project management skills". These themes include the abandonment of female genital cutting, the abolishment of child/forced marriage, and female empowerment in leadership positions such as leadership positions in countries across West and East Africa.
Ann Lesley Cotton OBE is a Welsh entrepreneur and philanthropist who was awarded an Order of the British Empire (OBE) in the 2006 Queen's New Year Honours List. The honour was in recognition of her services to education of young women in rural Africa as the founder of Camfed.
The Skoll Foundation is a private foundation based in Palo Alto, California. The foundation makes grants and investments intended to reduce global poverty. Jeffrey Skoll created the foundation in 1999.
Indrani Pal-Chaudhuri is an Indian artist, film director, and photographer.
Lakshmi Pratury is an entrepreneur, curator, and speaker. She is the founder and CEO of INK. She also is the host and curator of live events and inktalks.com.
Health Leads is a non-profit organization based in Boston with a vision of "health, dignity, and well-being for every person, in every community." The organization runs community-based programs and learning initiatives across the U.S. that focus on addressing social, racial, and economic factors impacting health.
Educate Girls is a non-profit organization in India, established in 2007, founded by Safeena Husain, that works towards girls' education in India's rural and educationally backward areas by mobilising communities.
Jeroo Billimoria is an Indian social entrepreneur and the founder of several international NGOs. Her work has been featured in several books. Her most recent initiatives include Child and Youth Finance International (CYFI), which Jeroo founded in 2011, Aflatoun, Childline India Foundation and Child Helpline International. Her most recent initiative is Catalyst 2030.
Jane Marie Chen is the co-founder of Embrace, a social enterprise that invented and distributes a low-cost infant warmer, that gives premature and low-birth-weight infants a better chance at survival. The Embrace infant warmers / incubators have now helped to save over 700,000 babies in 25 countries. Jane served as the first CEO of Embrace, the non-profit arm of the organization, before stepping into the chief executive officer (CEO) role of Embrace Innovations, the for-profit social enterprise that was spun off in 2012.
The Mulago Foundation is a private foundation focused on high impact philanthropy: they fund high-impact organizations mostly through grants, sometimes with debt or equity. The foundation was originally envisioned by Rainer Arnhold, a San Francisco pediatrician and philanthropist, who taught at Mulago Hospital, Uganda. The foundation was officially created by his brother Henry Arnhold after Rainer Arnhold's death in 1993.
SPARK Schools is an independent school network in South Africa. SPARK Schools was founded by Stacey Brewer and Ryan Harrison in 2012. Their schools use a blended learning model with adaptive software and individualised learning to accelerate learning and increase student achievement. SPARK Schools uses a hybrid funding model, having attracted funding from both non-profit foundations focused on high impact philanthropy and from for-profit impact investors.
Dame Margaret Anne Brimble is a New Zealand chemist. Her research has included investigations of shellfish toxins and means to treat brain injuries.
Saundarya Rajesh is an Indian entrepreneur who is the founder and president of Avtar Group. She is known for her efforts in promoting second career opportunities for women in the corporate sector in India. She runs Project Puthri, an initiative to empower underprivileged girls to secure employment. She was awarded the ‘100 Women Achievers of India’ in 2016 by the Minister of Women and Child Development for her work. She received the Women Transforming India Award from the NITI Aayog and the United Nations in 2016.
The Womanity Foundation, or Womanity, is an independent private foundation headquartered in Geneva, Switzerland, and was established in 2005 by Swiss entrepreneur and philanthropist Yann Borgstedt. Guided by a vision of a world, where all women and men have equal and full social, economic and political rights.
Cheryl Sew Hoy is an entrepreneur, speaker and angel investor, best known for being the founding CEO of the Malaysian Global Innovation and Creativity Centre (MaGIC), a government-funded agency to support entrepreneurship in Malaysia and ASEAN.
Sabrina Stierwalt is an American extragalactic astrophysicist who studies gas dynamics and the formation and evolution of galaxies through surveys utilizing x-ray, ultraviolet, optical, infrared, submillimeter, and radio wavelengths. She is experienced in science communication and advocating for equality and equity for underrepresented groups in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) fields.
Winnifred Kyei Selby is a young Ghanaian social entrepreneur and the president of the EPF Educational Empowerment Initiative based in Kumasi, Ashanti Region of Ghana. She co-founded the Ghana Bamboo Bike Initiative with Bernice Dapaah at the age of 15. And At age 17, she established another business, the Afrocentric Bamboo Initiative. In 2018, she became the first Ghanaian to be inducted into the Royal Institute of Singapore.
Nicola Galombik is a South African social entrepreneur and businesswoman, known for founding Harambee Youth Employment Accelerator, an award-winning South African nonprofit. She currently serves as the executive director of Yellowwoods, an investment holding company based in South Africa. Her career has included developing policy for the government of Nelson Mandela, and creating the education strategy for South African Broadcasting Corporation.
Quratulain Bakhteari is a Pakistani social entrepreneur and community organizer known for founding the Institute for Development Studies and Practices.
Molly Barker is an American educator, triathlete and social visionary. She is best known as the founder of Girls on the Run.
