Bill Drayton, C.E.O. and Founder

Bill Drayton has been a social entrepreneur since he was a New York City elementary school student. He was born to a mother who emigrated from Australia as a young cellist and an American father who, also unafraid to step into the unknown, became an explorer at an equally young age. Public service and strong values run through the stories of both parents' families -- including several of the earliest anti-slavery abolitionist and women's leaders in the U.S. These family influences, the rich diversity and openness of life in Manhattan-as well as America's deep cultural concern with equity, which flourished during the Civil Rights years-all interacted with one another and with Bill's temperament to plant Ashoka's earliest roots.

In elementary school, Bill loved geography and history and was equally unmotivated in Latin and math. His real passion in those years went to sailing, and starting and running a series of newspapers in his school and beyond. In high school he created and built the Asia Society into the largest student organization. By high school he was also a NAACP member and actively engaged in and deeply moved by civil rights work. At Harvard he founded the Ashoka Table; and, at Yale Law School, he launched Yale Legislative Services which, by the time he graduated, engaged one third of the student body in helping key legislators throughout the northeast design and draft legislation.

Bill's deepening commitments to Asia, especially South Asia, and to civil rights were closely linked. Martin Luther King, Jr. followed Mahatma Gandhi's way, and anyone concerned with inequity within the U.S. could only be more disturbed by the greater inequalities between the world's North and South.

Once focused on such a chasm, any entrepreneur would have to ask: "What can I do?" At Harvard and Oxford, Bill did ask. Fully appreciating how central to significant change ("development") entrepreneurs are, his answer was the Ashoka idea.

Bill is also a manager and management consultant - choices that also grow from his fascination with how human institutions work. Although he loves and thinks first in historical terms, he is trained in economics, law, and management, the three key-interventionist disciplines. He was a McKinsey and Company consultant for almost ten years, gaining wide experience serving both public and private clients.

For four years, he was Assistant Administrator at the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, where he had lead responsibility for policy, budget, management, audit, and representing the environment in Administration-wide policy development, notably including budget, energy, and economic policy. He successfully "intrapreneured" a series of major innovations and reforms in the field, ranging from the introduction of emissions trading to the use of economics-defined incentives to remove the advantage of delaying compliance. Later he founded and led Save EPA, an association of professional environmental managers that helped Congress, press, administration, citizen groups, and public understand and the block much of the radically destructive policies proposed by the Administrator Ann Gorsuch and others. Bill also founded and led Environmental Safety which helps develop and spread better ways of implementing environmental laws.

He also served briefly in the White House, and taught both law and management at Stanford Law School and Harvard's Kennedy School of Government.

He is currently significantly involved as board chair of Get America Working! and Youth Venture, both major strategic innovations for the public good.

Bill has received many awards for his achievements. He was elected one of the early MacArthur Fellows for his work, including the founding of Ashoka. Yale School of Management gave him its annual Award for Entrepreneurial Excellence. The American Society of Public Administration and the National Academy of Public Administration jointly awarded him their National Public Service Award, and the Common Cause gave him its Public Service Achievement Award. He has also been named a Preiskel-Silverman Fellow for Yale Law School and is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. Most recently in 2005, he was selected one of America's Best Leaders by US News & World Report and Harvard's Center for Public Leadership. In the same month he was the recipient of the Yale Law School's highest alumni honor, The Yale Law School Award of Merit- for having made a substantial contribution to Public Service.

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Anamaria Schindler, Co-President

Anamaria joined Ashoka ten years ago. She has built new models that are helping reconnect the estranged business and social sectors. In 1996, she launched the Ashoka/McKinsey Center for Social Entrepreneurship, a pioneer joint venture between Ashoka and McKinsey in Brazil. She has since spread it to Mexico, Argentina, the Andes, and now beyond. It is a cornerstone of the 21 Ashoka programs seeking to reunite the citizen and business halves of the world’s work. Prior to coming to Ashoka, Anamaria pursued doctoral studies in sociology at the University of São Paulo, where she focused on “new forms of philanthropy” in Brazil. She also worked for 12 years on civil society issues and human rights.

Diana Wells, Co-President

Diana joined Ashoka in the 1980s after graduating from Brown with a BA in South Asian Studies. Her intrapreneurial drive quickly led to the creation of Fellowship Support Services, which links Ashoka social entrepreneurs to one another and to a wide array of information and supports. After a leave to pursue a Ph.D. in anthropology, she returned — and has provided her characteristic quiet, strong leadership ever since. She tactfully but firmly strengthened Ashoka’s leadership in a number of countries. She helped systematize management of the key Fellow selection process as the number and types of selections increased. She also conceived and developed Ashoka’s widely respected Measuring Effectiveness program.

Sushmita Ghosh, President Emeritus

Sushmita Ghosh completed a five-year term as President and continues as a member of Ashoka’s Leadership Team. She directs the highest levels of Ashoka programs for top business entrepreneurs and leads both the Global Academy for Social Entrepreneurs and Changemakers. Sushmita currently splits her time between Arlington, Virginia and Calcutta.

Sushmita graduated at the top of her class at the University of Dehli. She served as Sub-editor, Research Director and Executive Director of Maneka Gandhi's national Indian news magazine Surya from 1979 to 1982. She then started her family and moved on to a successful career as a freelance journalist. She freelanced for a number of major newsmagazines and newspapers in India, including The Times of India, The Hindustan Times, Business Standard, and Sunday Magazine.

Sushmita served as Ashoka's country representative for India from 1989 to 1997. During that time, she helped Ashoka launch its new programs in Latin America and direct its European fundraising efforts. Sushmita also founded Changemakers, a magazine for social entrepreneurship in 1992, now Changemakers.net website. Subsequently, Sushmita became International Vice President of Ashoka and Executive Director of Changemakers and then Ashoka President. Sushmita is a board member of several non-profit organizations in India, including the Consumer Unity and Trust Society, the Energy Environment Group, and Gender Action and Advisory, and a council member at the American India Foundation.