Organizing Team.
Co-Hosts
The Growing the Impact Economy summit was born at a session entitled "For-Benefit Business: Maximizing Mission and Profit" at the 2012 Social Enterprise Conference at Harvard Business School. The enthusiastic response to this session signaled the demand and need for more in-depth exploration and engagement around the topic. Due to the inter-disciplinary nature of the agenda, it has attracted collaboration across the business, law and government schools at Harvard, as well as the College. The Summit is co-hosted by the following groups:
Harvard Business School Social Enterprise Club
The Social Enterprise Club at Harvard Business School is one of the school’s largest student clubs with over 400 members. The Club creates a community of like-minded students that believe in using business solutions to solve the world’s pressing problems.
Harvard Kennedy School Social Enterprise Club
The Social Enterprise Club at the Harvard Kennedy School of Government is dedicated to serving social entrepreneurs on campus and cultivating a network of students who are passionate about social enterprise. The Club hosts targeted events, speakers, meetings, and innovation “pitch” contests, and it supports and participates in the Social Enterprise Conference in order to foster and strengthen the social enterprise community on campus and beyond.
Harvard College Social Innovation Collaborative
The mission of the Harvard College Social Innovation Collaborative (SIC) is to bring together Harvard undergraduates, graduate students and broader community members who are passionate about social innovation and its ability to create meaningful and sustainable social change through mixed-profit models. SIC seeks to create a productive, open dialogue about social entrepreneurship, foster and incubate innovative ideas, and promote collaboration. The organization hosts undergraduate-focused programming throughout the year, in addition to the Igniting Innovation Summit on Social Entrepreneurship, an annual conference that convenes over 250 students, professionals, and leaders in the field.
Harvard Law Entrepreneurship Project
The Harvard Law Entrepreneurship Project is a Harvard Law School organization that provides pro-bono legal research and analysis to entrepreneurs at Harvard and MIT. All projects are supervised by Boston-area lawyers who specialize in Start-Up and IP law.
Organizing Committee
The Summit is organized and lead by a dedicated team of students from across Harvard University, with support from expert advisors.
Jen Porter | Co-Chair
MBA Class of 2013, Harvard Business School
Jen is a second year MBA student at the Harvard Business School, studying for-profit social enterprise and serving as the chair of the Shared Value Interest Group of the Social Enterprise Club and the co-chair of the national LDS MBA conference. During her summer, she designed an impact assessment strategy for Next Street, a for-profit social enterprise focusing on providing financial and advisory services to inner city businesses. Prior to business school, she was on the founding team for the Pathways Fund at New Profit Inc, and directed marketing and operations for a US-based entrepreneurship training program. Jen holds a Bachelor of Science in Business with an emphasis in Organizational Behavior from Brigham Young University.
Kara Kubarych | Co-Chair
Harvard College Class of 2013
President, The Leadership Institute at Harvard College
Kara Kubarych a senior at Harvard pursuing a BA in Sociology and a minor in Government, with a special interest in private governance and social entrepreneurship. An entrepreneur herself, Kara co-founded Nika Water Co. (2009), a social venture whose profits ($350,000+ to date) to fund clean water projects around the world. At Harvard, she has been an active leader in the social impact community, Chairing the Igniting Innovation Summit on Social Entrepreneurship, the largest undergraduate-run conference on the topic, and Co-founding The Social Innovation Collaborative, the student organization Co-hosting the GIE Summit. She also served as the President of the Leadership Institute at Harvard College in 2012 and Co-Founder and Director of a summer leadership institute that trains and funds high schoolers to launch social ventures. Last summer, Kara interned at Innosight, a consulting firm that helps organizations create sustainable growth through innovation, where she will work full time after graduation.
Robert Yoskowitz | Co-Chair
JD Class of 2013, Harvard Law School
Robert is a third year JD student at Harvard Law School. His studies focus on the intersection of entrepreneurship and law, in particular on counseling entrepreneurs on pairing the best legal structure and business strategy to effectuate their goals. During his 2L summer he worked for Cooley LLP’s emerging company practice group in San Francisco. He co-founded ASK Investing upon graduating college – a hedge fund specializing in finding unique investing strategies grounded in quantitative and cyclical asset reallocation – and has continued to manage it during law school. He is also in the financing stage of Access2Access – a nonprofit dedicated to providing holistic resources to low socioeconomic status students to mitigate barriers to higher education posed by its “peripheral” costs – and is a member of the founding teams of two alternative energy ventures. He received his BA from Haverford College in 2009. He can’t resist talking to people about their ideas, so always feel free to derail him.
Ananth Raj
MPA Class of 2014, Harvard Kennedy School
Ananth Raj is currently pursuing Masters in Public Administration at Harvard Kennedy School. Ananth has been involved in the development sector for several years, with experience in agriculture and ICT for development sector. He previously worked with TechnoServe and was leading their agriculture value chains projects. He has experience of working with both multilateral organizations and private sector. He was also leading the Stanford University-RDVP led initiative “Villages in Development and Learning Foundation (VIDAL).” At VIDAL he led the social innovation and enterprise wing and worked on creating new information services through the “Computer on Wheels” project. Prior to joining VIDAL, Ananth worked in the Child Education department at Naandi Foundation, where he started the ICT for Education project. Ananth was also part of the prestigious “National Agriculture Innovation Project,” wherein he developed a method to measure the “Depth of food security in Villages.”
Ananth is a gold medalist in MBA from KIIT University, India. He has done his MBA in Rural Management, specializing in Social Entrepreneurship, Livelihood development and Micro Finance. He also holds a degree in Engineering in Telecommunication from Visweswariah Technological University, Bangalore.
Heerad Sabeti | Special Advisor
Co-Founder and Convening Trustee, Fourth Sector Network
As a serial entrepreneur and systems thinker, Heerad Sabeti is devoted to pursuing systemic solutions to complex social, environmental and economic challenges. For over 20 years, he has been working toward the development of a fourth sector of organizations at the intersection of the public, private and nonprofit sectors. The fourth sector is comprised of for-benefit enterprises that are designed to seamlessly integrate public purposes with business means, harnessing entrepreneurial energy to shape a more sustainable, inclusive, and resilient economy. To accelerate the fourth sector’s development, Sabeti has been a driving force behind numerous national and international initiatives. He advises governments, corporations and NGOs on multi-sector collaboration, sustainable economic development, and market-based solutions to societal challenges. Sabeti serves or has served on the advisory boards of the Clinton Global Initiative, Center for International Business Education and Research at Duke University's Fuqua School of Business, and the Aspen Institute's Intersectoral Relations Initiative.
Bari Saltman
Harvard College Class of 2014
President, The Harvard College Social Innovation Collaborative
Bari is a junior at Harvard College studying Sociology and Psychology. She was a member of the founding board of the Harvard Social Innovation Collaborative and served as the Chair of the Igniting Innovation Summit, a student-run conference devoted to social entrepreneurship that brought together over 250 undergraduates, academics, and leaders in the field. Bari has worked with Youth Represent, an organization that serves young people involved in the criminal justice system, and with the Crimson Summer Academy, an innovative academic program for high-achieving Boston youth. At Harvard, she currently serves as co-director of Youth Prison Tutoring, which provides one-on-one mentorship to incarcerated young adults.
Justin Kang
Campus and Youth Organizer, Opportunity Nation
Co-Chair, Social Investment Council, Echoing Green
Justin Kang manages 125+ campaign advocates in 45 states for Opportunity Nation, a bipartisan, cross-sector national campaign made up of more than 250 non-profits, businesses, educational institutions, faith-based organizations, community organizations, and individuals all working together to expand economic opportunity and close the opportunity gap in America. Prior to this role, he supported dozens of entrepreneurs at two nationally recognized business accelerators as an Associate at MassChallenge and as an Associate Director at the Unreasonable Institute. In his spare time, he serves as the Co-Chair of the Social Investment Council for Echoing Green and volunteers for Big Brothers Big Sisters.
Advisors and Support Team
Katie Aronat, Angie Fu, Matthew Manos / verynice | Design Support
Josh Bedell | Alumni Advisor (JD, Harvard Law School)
Marilia Bezerra | Commitments Advisor
Tami Kesselman | Alumni Advisor (MPA, Harvard University)
Nathaniel Millett, Patrick McCabe | Video Production
Meredith Sandiford | Event Coordination