Speaker Bios

Jason Bauer, Director, Private Sector Development
Millennium Challenge Corporation

Jason Bauer is responsible for developing and overseeing the implementation of programs that create innovative and collaborative mechanisms to leverage MCC investments through private sector partnerships, increase private sector investment and trade opportunities produced by MCC investments, and generate opportunities for firms to leverage their corporate social responsibility funds. Previously at MCC, Mr. Bauer was an Associate Country Director for Namibia and The Gambia, and was responsible for assisting with project management and coordination throughout the Compact development and documentation process. Prior to joining MCC, Mr. Bauer was an associate with OTF Group, where he worked with private and public sector leaders on a range of strategy issues, including competitiveness building, and economic cluster initiatives. Previously, at the World Bank, Mr. Bauer worked in projects relating to microcredit, SMEs and rural finance. He also was a Peace Corps Volunteer in West Africa consulting on small enterprise development. Jason has a Postgraduate Certificate in Sustainable Business from Cambridge University. Mr. Bauer holds an M.B.A. from the Johnson School of Business at Cornell University as a Michael Torphy scholar. He earned a B.A. in Economics and Political Science from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

Mrim Boutla, Co-Founder
More than Money Careers

Dr. Mrim Boutla is a brain scientist turned career coach turned social entrepreneur. Mrim's career transition process blends her extensive knowledge of the brain (PhD and 10 years of experience in cognitive neuroscience with her 6 years of career coaching experience at an Ivy League University and a Top 15 MBA Program. Mrim is the co-Creator of the More Than Money League (with Dr. Mark Albion), a 6-week self-paced online course designed for working management professionals interested in competing for opportunities in corporate social responsibility, social enterprise, or non-profit management. Mrim also blogs on responsible careers for JustMeans.com. Mrim earned her Bsc in Psychology from the Université Catholique de Louvain (Belgium) and her MA and PhD In brain and cognitive sciences from the University of Rochester.

Alex Budak, Co-Founder
StartSomeGood.com

Alex is a social entrepreneur and travel writer. He’s the co-founder of StartSomeGood.com, a platform for helping social good initiatives raise funds and grow a community of supporters.

He received an MPP from Georgetown University and a B.A. from UCLA where he didn’t miss a single home basketball game.

Matt Cullinen, Senior Associate, Research & Intelligence
Carbon War Room

Prior to working with CWR, Matthew worked in electoral politics conducting policy and opposition research for several candidates, including Sen. Gillibrand, and most recently as deputy policy director for Reshma Saujani, candidate for U.S. Congress. In this capacity he directed political and opposition research activities, developed policy positions on local and national issues, composed policy literature for publication in a variety of mediums, provided briefings and advice to the candidate, and drafted legislation on a full range of issues including creation of a federal innovation fund to increase investment in renewable energy.

Previously, Matthew worked for a political and market research firm in New York on projects ranging from public opinion in Afghanistan for clients such as the Department of Defense, to studies on the effects of aquaculture in South Asia for World Wildlife Fund.

Matthew holds an M.A. in international relations from New York University where he studied Islamic radicalism in Western Europe and the rise of the far-right in European politics. While attending graduate school he was associate editor of the Journal of Political Inquiry. He received his B.A. in political science and philosophy from Indiana University - Bloomington.

Bill Drayton, CEO and Founder
Ashoka: Innovators for the Public

Bill Drayton, CEO and founder of Ashoka, has played a major part in defining social entrepreneurship, and has been a social entrepreneur himself since he was a New York City elementary school student. Influenced by the strong public service values that run deep in the history of both his parents’ families, the rich diversity and openness of life in Manhattan, and America's deep cultural concern with equity, which flourished during the Civil Rights years, Bill was motivated to plant Ashoka's earliest roots.

With depending commitments to civil rights and inequity throughout high school and college, once at Harvard and Oxford Bill asked "What can I do?" Fully appreciating how central to significant change ("development") entrepreneurs are, his answer was the Ashoka idea.

Founded in 1980 as a venture capitalist supporting change in the world with a global operating budget of US$50,000, Ashoka’s budget has risen to around US$40 million. Today, Ashoka is active in more than 70 countries and supports the work of over 2,000 Fellows – social entrepreneurs it helps from the start-up phase onward. The Ashoka community includes those who are now thoroughly proven social entrepreneurs, such as the Nobel Prize laureate and founder of Grameen Bank, Muhammad Yunus.

Bill has served as Assistant Administrator at the US Environmental Protection Agency, and served briefly also in the White House. He taught law and management at Stanford Law School and Harvard's Kennedy School of Government and is presently involved as board chair of Get America Working! and Youth Venture, both major strategic innovations for the public good. He has received many awards for his achievements and most recently in 2005, was selected as one of America's Best Leaders by U.S.News & World Report and Harvard's Center for Public Leadership.

Marguerite Farrell, Health Officer and the Private Sector Team Leader
USAID Global Health Bureau

Marguerite Farrell is a Health Officer and the Private Sector Team Leader in the Service Delivery Improvement Division, in USAID's Global Health Bureau, Office of Population and Reproductive Health. In addition to serving as the Chair of the Graduation Working Group, Ms. Farrell is the Agreement Officer Technical Representative (AOTR) for the Strengthening Health Outcomes through the Private Sector (SHOPS) Project. She is also AOTR for the Support for International Family Planning Organizations (SIFPO) projects with Marie Stopes International and Population Services International and for a Collaboration Agreement with Bayer HealthCare Pharmaceutical.

Ms. Farrell previously served as a Technical Advisor for the Commercial Market Strategies project and as a Senior Technical Advisor for HIV/AIDS and Family Planning for the Latin American and Caribbean Regional Bureau at USAID. She has worked for Development Associates, the Futures Group International, Project Hope and Margaret Sanger Center International on a UNFPA funded project in the Philippines, as well as Planned Parenthood. In addition to family planning and reproductive health, Ms. Farrell has worked in child survival and HIV/AIDS and has expertise in private sector health, health leadership and management, evaluation, and reproductive health training and quality assurance. She graduated from Brown University with a BA in International Relations and received her M.Sc. from Harvard University School of Public Health in International Health Policy and Management.

Heather Fleming, Founder, Chief Executive Officer
Catapult Designs

Heather Fleming is a designer, an engineer, and an entrepreneur motivated by social inequality. In 2005, she led a volunteer group of engineers and designers focused on humanitarian design projects via a professional chapter of Engineers Without Borders (EWB). Three years later she co-founded Catapult Design in San Francisco to make design and technical capacity accessible to entrepreneurs and organizations working within disadvantaged communities. Heather is a Pop!Tech Social Innovation Fellow, a program aimed at high-potential young leaders with new approaches for transformational impact and a World Economic Forum Young Global Leader. She previously worked in the Silicon Valley product development consulting world and has nine years of experience working with multi-disciplinary teams to design, develop, and deliver product solutions for a diverse range of companies. Heather was also previously an Adjunct Lecturer at Stanford University in the Mechanical Engineering department and a Senior Lecturer at California College of the Arts in the Industrial Design department. She serves on the Board of Directors of the Navajo Chamber of Commerce on the Navajo Nation and chairs a committee within ASME’s Engineering for Global Development initiative. Heather has a BS in Product Design from Stanford University.

Morgan Greenhouse, Founder and CEO
VerdeHouse

Morgan founded The verdeHOUSE, LLC to both enhance the urban fabric of Washington, DC, and to foster a more symbiotic relationship between creative and corporate communities. In her previous professional experience, she held diverse roles within architecture, interiors, space planning and sustainability consulting at Gensler, a global architecture and design firm. Morgan is a LEED accredited professional and is responsible for the overall growth and strategic direction of verdeHOUSE, maximizing effective impact on urban real estate and culture. Morgan, a native Washingtonian, is continually engaged with and committed to growing the local arts community. Her professional and social networks specific to the Washington, DC metro area, have been invaluable to the growth of verdeHOUSE. Morgan studied the history of art and architecture at the University of Pennsylvania.

Shirley Marcus Allen
Partner, Venture Philanthropy Partners

Shirley Marcus Allen has been a Partner with Venture Philanthropy Partners (VPP) for the past eight years. Venture Philanthropy Partners is a high engagement philanthropic investment firm which provides significant multi-year growth capital and strategic management support to nonprofits serving children and youth of low-income families in the National Capital Region. VPP has adapted the relevant principles of private investment firms and applied them for investing in the nonprofit sector. In her role as Partner, Allen has managed a multi million dollar portfolio of nonprofit organizations, conducted due diligence and analysis of investment criteria to select high performing philanthropic investments, assisted in the creation of growth-oriented business plans, structured investment parameters, and provided strategic advice designed to assist nonprofit organizations in achieving their proposed social outcomes. Most recently, she has worked directly with the President/CEO to advance VPP’s mission through development of strategic partnerships, and is responsible for on-going relationship management and the generation of match funding to support VPP’s Social Innovation Fund initiative, youthCONNECT.

Prior to joining VPP, for eleven years she was the Vice President of Membership Services at the Child Welfare League of America (CWLA) with responsibility for six regional offices throughout the country and ensuring the connectedness of over 1,100 public and private member agencies through the development of numerous conferences, trainings, and convenings annually. After having spent a number of years in senior level positions in Maryland local and state government working on behalf of low-income children and youth, in 1988 she was appointed by the former Mayor of Baltimore City and the former Governor of the State of Maryland as the Director of the Baltimore City Department of Social Services. In that position, she was responsible for city-wide social services, income maintenance, and child support, managing a workforce of 2,500 employees and an operating budget of $400 million, serving over 200,000 low income and/or at-risk Baltimore City individuals. She has an undergraduate degree in sociology from Morgan State University and a graduate degree in public administration from the University of Baltimore. She is a member of the board of the National Human Services Assembly, National Advisory Committee for the Carrera Adolescent Pregnancy Prevention Program, and a member of the Morgan State University Board of Regents.

Manmeet Mehta, Program Officer
Global Giving

Manmeet Mehta builds new social sector partnerships and runs the Crowdsourcing Social Innovation program for GlobalGiving. This program invites social entrepreneurs to experiment with, deepen and integrate online fundraising strategies in their organizations' activities. This program includes new partnerships with youth social entrepreneurs. With a background in Economics and graduate degrees in Development as well as Business Administration, Manmeet has nearly 7 years of experience in the private and philanthropic sectors in India and the US. Between 2002 and 2005 she worked with HSBC, The Taj Group & the Khemka Foundation in India. She has previously worked with Ashoka in Washington, DC.

Clayton Ogg, Director of Conservation Economics and Finances
Defenders of Wildlife

Clay directs some of Defenders’ work on incentives to enhance ecosystems and prevent harm. This includes identifying incentive programs that currently work well as well as analysis of ways to improve agriculture programs and other programs to achieve measurable ecosystem outcomes. One focus includes research to support a strategic and transparent Gulf restoration process in response to the Deep Horizon Oil Spill in the Gulf. Prior to coming to Defenders, Clay worked at the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and at the U.S. Department of Agriculture on ways to modify agricultural programs to support wildlife and the environment. He conducted research that supported the design of major conservation programs for agriculture, staffed strategic initiatives, and worked on teams that developed some of the actual programs, including the Environmental Quality Incentives Program and the Conservation Reserve Program’s Continuous Sign-Up. Clay got his bachelor’s degree in economics at the University of Michigan and his Ph.D. in Agricultural and Applied Economics at the University of Minnesota.

Jeff Senne, Corporate Responsibility
PricewaterhouseCoopers

Jeff Senne is the Director of Environment and Marketplace for PwC. In this role Jeff leads the firm's efforts in terms of environmental conservation and promoting responsible business practices in the marketplace. Prior to joining PwC Jeff was the Director of Sustainability Performance for Sodexo Inc, a Senior Advisor for the African Development Bank and the Head of Communications on Progress and Participation for the United Nations Global Compact. In these roles, Jeff has worked with company, university, civil society and governmental representatives in creating value by continually improving their organization’s social and environmental impact.

Jeff takes a continual improvement, "manage what you measure," approach to organizational change by applying quality management methodologies to uncover value in systems and process improvements. While with the United Nations Jeff delivered trainings to over 1000 company staff and stakeholders from over 50 countries and developed tools and methods for measuring, evaluating and communicating on the progress companies are making to be sure their corporate citizenship commitments deliver strategic value.

Prior to joining the United Nations, Jeff spent nearly 15 years in management, where he was a "disaster recovery specialist." His work was to take over business operations that were underperforming and to redefine their business model and create sustainable and competitive company cultures. Creating, managing and motivating teams by defining shared goals, common values, and performance indicators were his forte. 

Jigar Shah, CEO
Carbon War Room

As CEO of The Carbon War Room, Jigar Shah is leading the organization to drive global emissions reductions by unlocking private sector solutions. Under his guidance, The Carbon War Room has become a catalyst to bring project finance and growth capital together with infrastructure entrepreneurs, corporations, governments and non-governmental organization (NGO) to identify and eliminate market barriers.

With barriers eliminated, the playing field is leveled so technologies can compete head to head. Plus a level playing field can engage entrepreneurs to deploy market-driven solutions to gigaton-scale climate solutions, and grow trillion dollar industries. This is why Shah believes that the biggest challenges of our time are the largest wealth creation opportunities of this generation.

Shah’s experience shows that the right business solutions can unlock existing technologies. He launched SunEdison in 2003 based upon a business plan he developed in 1999 for a university class. That plan became the basis of the SunEdison business model: Simplify solar as a service. This model changed the status quo, allowing organizations to purchase solar energy services under long-term predictably priced contracts and avoid the significant capital costs of ownership and operation of solar energy systems. Under Shah’s guidance, SunEdison pioneered the solar power services agreement (SPSA) model, which has turned solar services into a multi-billion dollar industry. SunEdison now has more solar energy systems and megawatts under management than any other company.

Shah holds a B.S. in mechanical engineering from the University of Illinois, Champaign-Urbana, and an M.B.A. from the University of Maryland. He sits on the boards of the Earth Day Network, SBNOW, and Greenpeace.

Catherine P. Sheehy
UL Environment

UMD Alumnus

At UL Environment, Catherine supports the development of its Sustainability Quotient (SQ) Program, through which UL provides organizational-level sustainability services based on auditable organization-level sustainability standards. Before joining UL Environment, a subsidiary of Underwriters Laboratories, Catherine was a manager with Accenture’s talent and organizational performance service line, where she also led the DC metro area Eco Team, a local extension of Accenture’s internal environmental program. Prior to working at Accenture, Catherine was with the Human Rights Campaign where she helped further develop the Corporate Equality Index, a tool that rates businesses and organizations on their treatment of gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender employees and consumers. Before that, Catherine worked for several years at the then-Investor Responsibility Research Center as director of the Corporate Benchmarking Services, where she provided social and environmental screening data, tools, and support to institutional investors, companies, and academic institutions. Catherine serves on the board of the Sustainable Business Network of Washington (SBNOW), whose mission is to transform the ways businesses appraise, engage, and enhance human, ecological, and financial resources in order to make the national capital region a better place to live, work, visit, and do business. Catherine has a BA from the University of Notre Dame and an MBA from the Robert H. Smith School of Business at the University of Maryland.

Kristen Sullivan, Partner
Deloitte & Touche LLP

Kristen B. Sullivan is a member of Deloitte’s Global Sustainability & Climate Change (S&CC) services group. She focuses on sustainability reporting and assurance matters, and is also a member of Deloitte’s Conflict Minerals Advisory Services team Kristen also leads Deloitte’s efforts in support of Social Impact Investing and advancing the Impact Investing industry infrastructure development, specifically focused on Deloitte’s services in support of the Global Impact Investing Rating System (GIIRS). Previously, Kristen worked closely with the deputy CEO of Deloitte LLP, focusing on regulatory and public policy matters for the firm. In this capacity, she engaged with representatives from the other large public company auditing firms in advancing progress in areas of common interest and importance for the public company auditing profession. She recently co-authored an article published in the International Journal of Disclosure and Governance, How and why an independent audit matters. Kristen began her career with Deloitte in the Audit and Advisory services practice, serving clients in the Manufacturing and Aerospace & Defense industries. She has also served in the firm’s National Office in several different capacities.

Nathalie Walker, Manager
Tropical Agriculture, Forests and Climate Project, National Wildlife Federation

Nathalie Walker is the Manager of National Wildlife Federation’s Tropical Agriculture, Forests and Climate Project and works with companies, NGOs, research institutions and commodity roundtables to promote solutions to deforestation driven by industrial agriculture. She has ten years of experience in the commercial drivers of tropical deforestation, working for Greenpeace International, Oxford University’s Department of International Development and Borealis Center for Environmental and Trade Research. Nathalie received her Ph.D. in ecology from the University of Durham, U.K. and her M.A. in ecology from the University of Cambridge, U.K.

More to come!