Social Entrepreneurship: Experiences from Around the World
In 2006, Professor Muhammad Yunus won the Nobel Peace Prize for empowering millions of people to lift themselves out of poverty in Bangladesh. He defines a Social-Business (or social entrepreneurship) as a “non-dividend company created to solve a human problem”. Since then social entrepreneurship has impacted the lives of tens of millions of people around the world, and has been replicated at large companies like Intel, Toyota, Uniqlo, BASF, and many others.
Are you interested in making a positive impact on society while running a successful business? Do you want to learn from experts on the field who have successfully merged purpose and profit? If so, we invite you to our upcoming virtual entrepreneurship event.
Participants will learn more about how to use sustainable business models to make impact directly from experts and entrepreneurs who have been working on the field enabling a positive transformation in our world.
They will discuss the advantages and disadvantages of social entrepreneurship models to create positive long lasting impact in our communities and the environment. You’ll learn where to start, how to grow your impact, what kind of model is best for you and your company, as well as best practices applied in different parts of the world.
FEATURING
Moderator
Andrés Parraguirre
Founder, Foundation for the Global Benefit
Andrés Parraguirre, Founder and Director of Operations at the Foundation for the Global Benefit, believes that everyone can contribute to making the world a better place. In the last 10 years as a changemaker, his projects and initiatives have supported more than 5,000 people, mostly in Mexico, and Asia-Pacific. Serving in diverse trainings, workshops, conferences, consulting, and advising roles, Andrés is avid to support leaders to achieve their most desired visions for social good. He has focused on social innovation capacity building in all sectors with a focus on entrepreneurial development, personal leadership development, sustainable development, people-centered design, and liberating structures. In a nutshell: how to advance the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals indicators through Yunus Social Businesses. In addition, he has started and committed different projects, and participated in different programs worldwide, in Mexico, Chile, Singapore, Hong Kong, Japan, Thailand, Afghanistan, Bangladesh, India, and now Vietnam. Andrés has held leadership positions in the private, academic, and non-profit sectors; and he is also affiliated with more than 10 international networks and communities in the context of sustainability, development, and social empowerment. Now in Mexico, he is dedicated to applying what he has learned and contributing to his country to work with the problems of inequality and poverty that we currently face.
Panel
Dr. Faiz Shah
President, Yunus Thailand Foundation and Executive Director, Yunus Center AIT
Dr. Faiz Shah is executive director of the Yunus Center at the Asian Institute of Technology (YCA) and founding president of the Yunus Thailand Foundation (YT). With affiliation to the AIT School of Business, Policy and Development, he chairs the steering committee of AIT’s Yunus Masters in Social Business & Entrepreneurship, co-directs the Professional Masters in ESG at AIT, and as Professor in the School of Business and Social Sciences at Albukhary International University, stewards emerging Social Business initiatives. Dr. Shah is a visiting professor at the College of Innovation at Thammasat University, and the Faculty of Management at Kasetsart University.
In a 40-year international change management and capacity-building career, Dr. Shah has worked in academia, business, government, and the UN system. He has overseen more than 400 development projects and mentored over 5,000 grassroots changemakers in diverse communities from Afghanistan to Timor Leste. He is recognized in the sporting goods industry for pioneering a socially responsible business model for the world’s largest soccer ball industry. Dr. Shah has published on enterprise-led development and social innovation in pro-poor technologies, His recent publication is the authorized Urdu edition of “The Three Zeros” by Professor Muhammad Yunus.
Dr. Ashir Ahmed
Director, Social Technology Lab, Kyushu University, Japan and Executive Director, Social Business Academia Network, Japan Chapter
Dr. Ashir Ahmed is an associate professor at the faculty of information science and electrical engineering at Kyushu University in Japan. His research focuses on developing frugal technologies to achieve social goals, and he has established the Global Communication Center (GCC) within Grameen Communications in Bangladesh to pursue this mission. Dr. Ahmed’s research team at Kyushu University has developed numerous national and international projects, including GramHealth, a $300 portable clinic for unreached people, GramCar, a ride-sharing model for rural and urban female communities, GramAgri, an ICT-based farming and marketing platform, and GramClean, a sustainable community cleaning initiative. Dr. Ahmed is a core contributor to the Yunus and Shiiki Social Business Research Center at Kyushu University, where he promotes social businesses to Japanese organizations, and has assisted in creating a number of social businesses, such as Grameen Euglena and Grameen SunPower. He is also the founder and CTO of SocialTechJapan, a social business company that develops and deploys technologies to solve social issues. In addition, he has organized an international conference on “Healthcare, SDGs and Social Business” since 2017. Dr. Ahmed received his Ph.D. from Tohoku University in 1999 and has worked with Avaya Labs (formerly Bell Labs) and NTT Communications, in Japan. He has authored two books on ICT and social business in Japanese and co-authored over 100 scientific papers. Dr. Ahmed is a popular speaker at international events on digital health, ICTD, social business, reverse innovation, and post-SDGs. He has received numerous national and international awards since childhood and enjoys cooking, writing books on ICT for development and social business, and performing as an MC for cultural shows.
Dr. Mai Thai
Director, Social Business Creation, HEC Montreal, Canada
Associate Professor Mai Thi Thanh Thai is the founder and Director of Social Business Creation that uses gamification to teach university students social entrepreneurship and social business models that use market mechanisms to solve social issues. At HEC Montreal, she teaches social entrepreneurship, new venture creation, strategies in emerging markets, and qualitative methods. Her research focuses on the link between entrepreneurship and its socioeconomic, cultural, and political contexts. She was the editor-in-chief of the Journal of Small Business and Entrepreneurship from 2015 to 2020, during which the journal experienced unprecedented growth in terms of full-text downloads, manuscript submissions, and journal rankings. She has published over 50 articles in peer-reviewed prestigious journals, contributed several book chapters, edited two books, and made presentations at numerous academic conferences. She is a lifetime member of the Beta Gamma Sigma AACSB-Honor Society. Mai Thai has won many local and international awards for her performance and commitment in her different roles as a researcher, teacher, and entrepreneur throughout her career.
Sebastían Salinas Claro
Founder & Executive Director, Emprediem Latam and Founder, Balloon Latam
Through his entrepreneurship project, Balloon, Sebastián Salinas is forming agents of change in rural communities, youth, businesses, and the public sector—it supports local entrepreneurs from rural areas while forming young university students with a commitment to society. By creating links with regional governments, businesses, and people he has managed to consolidate his project and made it economically sustainable and lasting through time.
Brenda Villegaz
Head, Youth & Children, Ashoka Mexico, and Central America
Brenda leads the Children and Youth initiative for Ashoka Mexico, Central America, and the Caribbean, she is Co-founder and Director of Conciencias Unidas A.C. and is part of the global youth network “Global Changemakers”. She has a degree in Marketing and a Master’s in Educational Innovation for Sustainability. Brenda has represented the voice of youth in different organizations and movements at national and international events, she is a facilitator of learning experiences to promote change-making and her dream is a world where we have more spaces of hope that allow us to recognize ourselves and act as changemakers.
Yaniz Valadez
Founder, The Economy of Pope Francesco, Monterrey Chapter
Founder, Experiential Innovation Consulting
Founder IDASE (I Design as a Social Entrepreneur)
Coordinator, Yunus Center, UDEM, Mexico.
Yanniz Valadez Cortés, is an industrial designer, creative innovator and social entrepreneur. Born at Monterrey, Nuevo León, México. She is a creative, doer, passionate of economical, sustainable and social impact. On the past ten years she has work on the development of social impact projects. Founder of the social enterprise IDASE “I Design as a Social Entrepreneur” that conducts a program of experiential learning for young students of low income schools through design workshops, leadership, empowerment and social responsibility to strengthen the sense of ownership with the students to their schools. A creative innovator consultant where design tools help improve engagement on enterprises and social enterprises through disruptive innovation strategies. Coordinates the Yunus Innovation Pathway Center at the University of Monterrey seeking to create and impulse social businesses, following the philosophy of Professor Yunus, to alleviate poverty through the creation of social businesses. Committed to her community to improve social change through creativity and leadership skills.
