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Bill Drayton

Founder
Ashoka

Bill Drayton is a social entrepreneur. As a student at Harvard, Oxford, and Yale Law School, he founded a number of organisations, including Yale Legislative Services and Harvard's Ashoka Table, a weekly forum with practical change leaders.

Bill served with McKinsey & Company for almost 10 years and contributed to the development of the public practice and industry strategy. After teaching at Stanford Law School and Harvard's Kennedy School, Bill served as Assistant Administrator of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, where he launched many reforms, including emissions trading - the basis of Kyoto. He went on leave in 1985 after unexpectedly winning a MacArthur "Genius" Fellowship prize, which allowed him to devote himself fully to Ashoka and other social ventures.

The corporate mission of Ashoka is to help entrepreneurs launch the most powerful new ideas, and tip the world's patterns with their best ideas. Concurrently, Bill is also chair of Youth Venture, Community Greens, and Get America Working!.

For his contributions and achievements, Bill has been honoured with numerous awards. He was selected by U.S. News and World Report and Harvard as one of "America's Best Leaders" and last May, he received an Honorary Doctorate of Humane Letters from Yale University.