Ashoka is guided by an International Board of Directors, primarily responsible for tracking Ashoka's overall progress and assessing the goals and direction of the organization. Another key responsibility of the Board is to review candidate profiles and the recommendations made by the Selection Panels, and then issue final approval for the election of new Fellows. Board members also travel to various countries to conduct Second Opinion interviews and Selection Panels each year.

William Drayton, Chair and the CEO

Ashoka: Innovators for the Public, USA

Bill Drayton is a social entrepreneur. As a student, he was active in civil rights and founded a number of organizations, ranging from Yale Legislative Services to Harvard’s Ashoka Table, an inter-disciplinary weekly forum in the social sciences. He graduated from Harvard with highest honors and went on to study at Balliol College in Oxford University, where he attained his M.A. with First Class Honors.

In 1970, he graduated from Yale Law School and began his career at McKinsey and Company in New York. From 1977 to 1981, Mr. Drayton served in the Carter Administration as Assistant Administrator at the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency where he launched emissions trading (the basis of Kyoto) among other reforms.

After his term at the EPA ended in 1981, he returned to McKinsey half-time and launched both Ashoka and Save EPA and its successor, Environmental Safety. At McKinsey, he helped the firm develop tax and regulatory design work and then its use of industry strategy (an increasingly useful first step to company strategy). With the support that he received unexpectedly when elected a MacArthur Fellow at the end of 1984, he was able to devote himself fully to Ashoka.

Mr. Drayton is currently the Chairman & Chief Executive Officer of Ashoka: Innovators for the Public. Ashoka is a global association of over 1600 leading ‘social entrepreneurs’, individuals who envision and implement pattern-setting social changes in the environment, education, human rights, and other areas of human need. Ashoka helps launch these major social innovations and the public entrepreneurs who drive them, helps them succeed over their fulllife cycle, weaves them together into a field far more powerful than the sum of its parts, and contributes to the design of the field’s overall architecture. He is also chair of 3 other affiliated organizations; Youth Venture, Community Greens, and Get America Working!

Mr. Drayton has won numerous awards and honors throughout his career. 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. In 2004, he received the National Wildlife Federation’s Conservation Achievement Award International.

William Kelly, President
Stewards of Affordable Housing for the Future (SAHF), USA

Bill took early retirement from his twenty-five year partnership at the law firm of Latham & Watkins to pursue his passion of preserving affordable rental homes for low-income people. An organizer of SAHF
and its first President, he is working to change the policy landscape and the marketplace to enable sophisticated non-profits to buy and operate affordable apartments in a way that serves as a platform for residents to improve their lives and is financially sustainable over the longterm. His earlier experience included serving as a law clerk to Court of Appeals Judge Frank Coffin and to Supreme Court Justice Lewis Powell, as Executive Assistant to the Secretary of Housing and Urban Development and to counsel in a wide array ofdomestic and international transactions.A life-long innovator inthe provision of pro bono legal services, he is working with Ashoka to develop a global network of pro bono counsel for Ashoka Fellows and other social entrepreneurs. Bill is the Director of the Washington Legal Clinic for the Homeless and the Governance Institute, as well as Chair of the D.C. Bar's Community Economic Development Pro Bono Project.

C William Carter , Consultant
USA
C. William Carter functions as an in-house advisor for Ashoka, offering assistance on a wide range of issues - from fundamental strategy, to human resources to new architecture opportunities for the emerging citizen sector. Bill has also led Ashoka's effort to elaborate and refine its Fellow search and selection criteria in light of the fast-changing nature of the field. Bill has consulted for the Harvard Advisory Group, where he worked with Indonesian government agencies as well as citizen sector
groups and for McKinsey & Company, where he served a range of public and private Sector clients.

From 1981-94, Bill was a senior manager, and then the Chief Operating Officer of Long Lake Energy Corporation. He also served Long Lake as a member of the Board of Directors. Prior to joining Long Lake Bill spent five years at the Environmental Protection Agency, where he held a series of senior management positions. In 1981, Bill helped to start Ashoka's Indonesia program. He is one of Ashoka's founding Board members, and has served continuously on Ashoka's International Board of Directors for twenty-five years. As an Ashoka Panel Chair, Bill has interviewed many hundreds of Ashoka Fellows throughout the world. He holds a Ph.D. from the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy.

Kyle Zimmer, President
First Books, USA

Throughout her career, Kyle has worked at the intersection of policy, business and social issues. Early in her career, she served in the federal liaison office for Ohio Governor Richard Celeste and later became a state and local issues advisor in the presidential campaign of Walter Mondale. After graduating from The George Washington University National Law Center, Kyle entered legal practice and then served as Director of State Affairs for an innovative alliance between major consumer organizations and insurance companies. Kyle and two colleagues founded First Book in 1992 and three years later, Kyle began serving full time as President of the organization. First Book recently celebrated the distribution of its 40 millionth book through its network of more than 3000 communities domestically and is in the process of expanding globally. In addition, First Book has successfully launched several new subsidiaries, including the First Book National Book Bank, First Artists, and the First Book Marketplace. First Book is a highly celebrated social sector organization, having received awards from a range of institutions, including Forbes Magazine, Fast Company Magazine and the Monitor Group, as well as the Promotional Marketing Association of America, the Cause Marketing Forum, and Oprah's Angel Network. In addition, the First Book Marketplace was awarded the grand prize in the Yale School of Management/Goldman Sachs Nonprofit Business Plan Competition in 2005.

Dr. Vera Cordeiro, Founder
Association Saude Crianca Renascer, Brazil

Ashoka’s Board elected Ashoka Fellow Vera Cordeiroof Brazil to membership in 2005. She is the first to hold an experimental new seat designed to bring regular fresh representation from the fellowship. She is also the first member from South America. Ensuring that Ashoka’s global community grows and flourishes is its most important challenge. How can it continue to attract and provide the best, values-based home and network for the world’s best social entrepreneurs? Vera, who has been an active participant in the fellowship since her election in 1992,will help Ashoka meet this challenge.

Dr. Cordeiro, a pediatrician, could not stand to see the healing process for children from poor families commonly fail after they left the hospital. She and her organization, Renascer, work with the poor families of severely ill children returning from the hospital to ensure them adequate food, sanitation, and psychological support. This requires successfully addressing the root causes that had earlier prevented their families from providing adequate care, which in turn has required Vera to mobilize a wide range of professional and community volunteers and resources in a way that one hospital and community after another has been able to copy. Renascer’s methodology works, is now recognized as a model, and has inspired the establishment of 14 other associations across Brazil that are saving children’s lives —and their families.

She and her organization received, “20 Líderes Sociais do Brasil” Award (Top 20 list of social leaders in Brazil) – July 2001, Worth Magazine’s Best Charities (Renascer is internationally recognized as one of the 100 best charities in the world) –August 2001, and Global Development Network: First place in the Award category of Most Innovative Development Project –January 2003 –granted by World Bank, government of Japan and Merck Sharp & Dolme.

Richard Cavanagh, President and CEO
The Conference Board, USA
The Conference Board, a global research and business membership organization that connects some 3,000 enterprises in 67 nations, is the most widely-cited private source of business intelligence. It publishes the Consumer Confidence Index, the Leading Economic Indicators and other reports on economic trends and best management practices. More than 18,000 senior executives participate annually in The Conference Board's council, conference and meeting programs.

Mr. Cavanagh joined The Conference Board in November 1995 after serving for eight years as Executive Dean of the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard. Before his Harvard University position, he worked 17 years with McKinsey & Company,Inc., where he led the firm's public issues consulting practice. As a partner, Mr. Cavanagh directed a wide range of worldwide consulting projects for leading multinational corporations, emerging enterprises, governments, and nonprofit organizations.

Mr. Cavanagh was a key consultant in the creation of the New York City Partnership, the American Business Conference, and the Cleveland Tomorrow Group. He also led McKinsey's efforts to restructure and reorganize the nation's bankrupt railroads into Conrail—at the time the largest industrial reorganization in history.

During a two-year leave of absence from McKinsey (1977-1979) he held senior positions at the White House Office of Management & Budget. He led a Government-wide effort to improve cash management, instituting improvements that saved the Government $12 billion. He also directed the President's Reorganization Project for domestic programs, which yielded major management improvements approved by Congress and the President.

He is the co-author (with Donald K. Clifford. Jr.) of The Winning Performance—How America’s High –Growth Midsize Companies Succeed, a best-selling book published in 13 national editions. Mr. Cavanaghis a Trustee of The Peter F. Drucker Foundation and the Educational Testing Service. He serves as a corporate director of the Airplanes Group, Aircraft Finance Trust, Arch Chemicals, The Black Rock Mutual Funds, The Fremont Group and The Guardian Life Insurance Company. He received his B.A. from Wesleyan University (where he is a Trustee Emeritus) and his MBA from the Harvard Business School.

Gloria de Souza, Founder
ParisarAsha, Environmental Education Centre, India

One of the first three Ashoka Fellows elected in 1982, Gloria de Souza founded ParisarAsha, an Education Centre envisioned to offer the Environmental Studies Approach to Learning (ESAL–pronounced ‘ease-all’). Parisar Ashais a non-profit Trust registered with the Charity Commissioner, Mumbai, Maharashtra.

The ESAL, designed to provide a systemic alternative to deeply entrenched rote-learning, offers learning processes that are environment-related, experiential and problem-solving.The mission of Parisar Ashahas been, and is, to provide quality educationfor all. For, what contributes to the most agonizing disparity between India’s ‘haves’ and ‘have-nots’ is a mindless system that further marginalizes the ‘first-generation learner’ who joins the ocean of confused dropouts and frustrated unemployed.

During its fledgling years, Parisar Asha got a much-needed boost from CRY, the TataTrusts, UNICEF and the Aga Khan Foundation.The steadily increasing demand for its services, especially since 1994, has made it possible for Parisar Ashato be self-sustaining, (i.e., with no external inputs through grants sought from funding organizations.)

Through twenty-two years of learning growth and organic evolution, its clientele has grown thanks not only to governmental acceptance but, most of all, the morale-boosting recommendation of perceptive parents and appreciative educators. An authentic approximation of the teacher and student population covered through its services in urban and rural India, thus far, is 58,000 teachers and 3,394,000 students.

What is now in the pipeline, thanks to supportive interest from The Sir Dorabji Tata Trust, is the macro-leap that Parisar Asha must now take to answer, not only a strong all-India demand for its services, but also requests from Bangladesh, Sri Lanka and the Middle East.

Fred Hehuwat, Co-Founder
The Green Indonesia Foundation, Indonesia

As a student at the prestigious Bandung Institute of Technology, Fred was one of the founders of the nonparty student movement that played so important a role in ending the Sukarno era. After earning a Ph.D. in geology in Holland, he quickly became one of the most skilled professionals in the field and for twelve years directed the National Institute of Geology and Mining. He expanded this role to include extensive development work. He was one of the co-founders ofthe first citizen environmental education organization, the Green Indonesia Foundation, at the time a difficult and courageous initiative.

Roger Harrison, Newspaper Executive and Journalist, United Kingdom

Born in Ireland, Roger has had an extensive career as the chairman or non-executive director of public and private companies in the UK and US mainly involved inlocal and national newspaper publishing, magazine publishing, and property ownership and development.

Roger began his career in 1951 as a freelance writer, writing mainly for The Times, where he took up a full-time position in 1957. In 1967 he joined The Observer where he held the positions of Director and Joint Managing Director. He was Chief Executive from 1984-1987. Roger also served as director at London Weekend Television and the Deputy Chairman of Capital Radio.

After his studies at Oxford and Harvard and mandatory military service, Roger lived for several years in one of the poorest parts of East London helping with and later becoming chairman of a youth club and community centre. Subsequently, he became Chairman of Toynbee Hall from 1990-2002, where in the 19th century, graduates from Oxford were the first to live and offer help in one of the most deprived areas of London. Toynbee was responsible, over time, for many social initiatives including free legal aid, citizens' advice bureau, and the child poverty action group. It was one of the progenitors of the welfare state and the free National Health Service.

Roger also has also served as Chairman of Aslyum Aid (a charity helping asylum seekers in the UK), a council member of Goldsmiths College (a university in South London), and a trustee of other charities involved in youth work, prisons, the environmentand organic farming, oil depletion, the theatre and the arts. Presently, he is the Chairman of the Royal Academy of Dance (RAD), one of the largest and most influential dance education and training organizations operating in 80 countries worldwide.