Speaker: Lisa Nitze, Vice President for the Global Engagement Team, Ashoka

Discussion Topic:
Economic insecurity, the looming threat of climate change, global acts of terror, many challenges around us suggests a growing uncertainty and imbalance in the world. Amidst these global conditions, social entrepreneurship and social enterprise become even more effective, practical and potent tools for social change.   In fact, social entrepreneurs individually and collectively offer one of the best value propositions in these challenging times.   Why?

Ashoka, a global association of the world's leading social entrepreneurs - men and women with system changing solutions for the world's most urgent social problems, will provide Net Impact members a first-hand look social entrepreneurship, its global trends, how corporations, foundations, universities and governments are turning to social entrepreneurs for partnerships and answers and how wealthy families are finding investments in social entrepreneurship to offer critical opportunities for defining and implementing shared values and service goals.

This will build from a previous Net Impact panel conversation on whether social enterprise is hype or reality.  Ashoka's evolving framework not only demonstrates that social enterprise is a successful reality in maximizing social impact on a global scale, it is a critical new paradigm in moving forward in today's society, breaking down economic silos and leveraging the full set of resources in society available for social good.

About the Speaker:

Lisa Nitze is Vice President for the Global Engagement Team at Ashoka, facilitating connections between social and business entrepreneurs around the world. She spent more than a dozen years as a consultant, often developing public-private partnerships. As Executive Director of the New Jersey Governor’s Commission on the Preservation and Use of Ellis Island, she developed a restoration and reuse plan for the island. Ms. Nitze also created Prosperity New Jersey, a statewide economic development initiative. As Executive Director of the World Trade Center Baltimore and World Trade Center Institute in Maryland, she attracted foreign investments to the state. She worked as a teacher in Lebanon during its civil war and wrote for a business magazine while living in Thailand.

Ms. Nitze is on the board of directors of the American University of Cairo. She has received a specialist grant from the U.S. State Department to speak on public/private partnerships throughout India and a grant from Inter-American Development Bank to conduct a workshop for its Latin American managers on partnering with ‘socially inclusive’ businesses.  She is a member of the Committee Encouraging Corporate Philanthropy’s Excellence in Corporate Philanthropy Awards Selection Committee and speaks regularly on why supporting social entrepreneurship is good business for business.  She holds an M.B.A. from Stanford University and a B.A. from Harvard University.

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