Ashoka: Innovators for the Public, the global organization of leading social entrepreneurs, is thrilled to announce the return of Anamaria Schindler this month, based in Brazil. She joins Diana Wells (President), Sushmita Ghosh (President Emeritus and Ashoka’s Changemakers creator and leader), and Bill Drayton (CEO) on the Ashoka Leadership Team.

Anamaria Schindler first joined Ashoka in 1996, to launch a joint venture between Ashoka and McKinsey & Company, working to build bridges between the business and social sectors globally. It quickly became a cornerstone of the twenty-one Ashoka programs seeking to reunite the citizen and business sectors. She also provided global leadership for all the Business Social Bridge work and pioneered both a series of business/social competitions and key strategic partnerships in communications, law, and management. When she left in 2007 to deal with family needs in Brazil, it was after a decade of extraordinary service to the organization and as Global Co-President. There she launched the Instituto Arapyaú, a social impact investment venture; and she also played a key role in the 2010 Brazilian Presidential campaign.

Anamaria now has two chief leadership goals. The first is to build the movement that will enable South America to tip quickly and decisively to becoming an “Everyone a Changemaker™” continent.  This requires ensuring the rapid growth and integration of all the Ashoka programs including Empathy, Ashoka’s Youth Venture, Full Economic Citizenship, changemakers.com (and .net, .org), and Ashoka U.

Second (and building on this hands-on and model-building work), Anamaria will work to ensure that everyone in the broad Ashoka community shares and is contributing to the core “Everyone a Changemaker™” vision that drives and unifies Ashoka.

CEO Bill Drayton commented:  “Anamaria, to the core of her being, exemplifies the sort of leadership our ‘everyone an entrepreneur’ organization must have.  She helps everyone see the goal, and she helps everyone succeed in contributing at the highest possible level. She is the collegial entrepreneur’s quintessential collegial entrepreneur.”

President Diana Wells shared, “We are so lucky to have Anamaria back with Ashoka’s Leadership Team, especially as she has been so critical to building both long term perspective on the movement and the institution. I cannot resist pointing out that she is another in a growing trend of entrepreneurs who, having been part of Ashoka at earlier stages in their career, have returned to lead critical growth areas as we enter this next period of scale and impact.”

Ashoka addresses social problems through investing in social entrepreneurs, a uniquely effective approach that fosters and creates opportunities for wide-scale global collaboration and replication of innovation that facilitate high-impact social solutions. Over the past 30 years, Ashoka has helped launch more than 3,000 Ashoka Fellows in over 70 countries. www.ashoka.org

Ashoka: Innovators for the Public

Ashoka: Innovators for the Public

Ashoka is the global association of the world's leading social entrepreneurs - men and women with system changing solutions for the world's most urgent social problems. Since 1981, Ashoka has elected over 3000 leading social entrepreneurs as Ashoka Fellows, providing them with living stipends, professional support, and access to a global network of peers in more than 70 countries. Working with these social entrepreneurs, Ashoka builds communities of innovators who work collectively to transform society and design new ways for the citizen sector to become more productive, entrepreneurial and globally integrated. For more information, please visit www.ashoka.org.

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