Global Social Venture Competition

Brian Cayce 

(Principal, Gray Ghost Ventures)   
Actively involved in establishing the strategic direction of GGV’s impact-oriented venture capital investing, Brian currently leads the analysis, evaluation, execution and governance of venture capital investment opportunities for Gray Ghost Ventures. He manages a varied portfolio and has sourced, executed and performed governance roles for the following investments: MicroPlace (2006 – exit via acquisition by eBay in 2006); RentBureau (2006); ParaLife (2006); United Villages (2007); CellBazaar (2007); d.Light (2007); SourceTrace (2007); Suvidha BEAM (2008), Emergence BioEnergy (2008), iSend (2009), Movirtu (2009), mDhil (2009), and PharmaSecure (2009).

In addition to his corporate board service, Brian serves on the boards of local nonprofit organizations, and facilitates a financial management workshop for at-risk homeless families in the Atlanta area. Brian graduated Summa cum Laude from the University of Georgia, and earned an MBA in Finance from Georgia State University. He is a member of Phi Beta Kappa. Brian speaks Russian proficiently and knows basic Spanish, Turkish and Arabic.

Dan Cherian

(General Manager – Sustainable Business Lab, Nike)
Dan Cherian is the General Manager of Nike’s Sustainable Business Lab, a strategic investment program investing in and scaling up disruptive, sustainability-driven business models for the sports & fitness consumer industries.

The Lab’s focus is on new business models within the areas of ‘Closed Loop’ / Cleantech and Health & Wellness through physical activity. The Lab leverages open innovation to bring together investors, community organizations, multilateral institutions and governments, to multiply Nike’s support to entrepreneurs, who are designing new businesses models addressing the most pressing, systemic sustainability challenges. 

Before Nike Inc, Dan worked with Pfizer Inc and the Boston Consulting Group in New York. Growing up in New Delhi, he earned his degree in Architecture at the SPA, Delhi and then a Masters in City Planning at MIT. He now lives with his wife and daughter in Portland, OR.

Lance Fors

(Entrepreneur, Philanthropist)
Dr. Fors received his BA from UC-Berkeley and his PhD from the California Institute of Technology  in molecular biology. During school he also assembled a large real estate portfolio that he continues to own and manage. After receiving his PhD, he founded and built Third Wave Technologies into a leading DNA diagnostics company ($600 million cash sale to a Fortune 500 company).  Since Third Wave, Dr. Fors has focused on social entrepreneurship, founding and building a leading provider of special needs housing, and venture philanthropy.  In venture philanthropy, Lance currently serves as Chairman of the Silicon Valley Social Venture Fund (SV2), New Teacher Center, and Reading Partners; a director of Social Venture Partners International, Silicon Valley Childrens Fund and Jumpstart; and an advisor to a number of high-growth nonprofits.  He is also co-owner of Lance Construction Supplies, an inventor on dozens of patents, and received an Ernst and Young Entrepreneur of the Year Award. 

Victoria Hale, Ph.D.

(Founder of Medicines360 / Pharmaceutical Scientist / Social Entrepreneur)
Dr. Hale is the Founder of Medicines360, a pharmaceutical scientist and global health social entrepreneur. Her passion is the development of important new medicines for all of humanity, with the specific goal to reduce health inequities.  She is also Founder & Chair Emeritus of OneWorld Health, the first nonprofit pharmaceutical in the US. 

Dr. Hale earned her Ph.D in Pharmaceutical Chemistry from UCSF and established her expertise in biopharmaceutical drug development at the U.S. FDA and at Genentech.  Recent honors include membership in the Institute of Medicine of the U.S. National Academies of Science (2007) and being named a MacArthur Fellow (2006). She is internationally recognized as a senior social entrepreneur by the Skoll Foundation, Schwab Foundation, and Ashoka. The Economist awarded Hale its Social and Economic Innovation Award (2005) and she was named Woman of the Year by Glamour magazine (2007). 

Jackie Khor

(Managing Director, Imprint Capital Advisors)
Ms. Khor joined Imprint Capital Advisors in June 2008. Previously, Ms. Khor was an Associate Director at the Rockefeller Foundation. At Rockefeller, Ms. Khor co-led the Impact Investing program, a Foundation effort to extend loan guarantees and make program-related and private equity investments to attract private sector capital into underserved sectors and geographies that are aligned with the Foundation's grant-making activities. Ms. Khor has led the evolving work in impact investing for the past ten years, which has included over $20 million in 15 investments across the Foundation's primary grant-making sectors in the U.S. and east Africa. Prior to joining the Rockefeller Foundation, Ms. Khor was Director of the New York City Partnership's Employment Program.

Earlier in her career, she was a Vice President in Lehman Brothers' public finance unit in New York and San Francisco, where she helped structure and complete over $2 billion in tax-exempt bond financings for several state, municipal, and infrastructure projects in the U.S. She also worked at a mergers and acquisitions advisory firm to the insurance industry. Ms. Khor chaired the New York City Acquisition Fund, a fund composed of $40 million in investments from New York City and five foundations (Rockefeller, Ford, MacArthur, F.B. Heron, Starr and Robin Hood) that leverages almost $200 million in bank financing to accelerate affordable housing development and preservation in New York City. She also serves on the Skoll Foundation's Investment Committee and has served on the Advisory Committee for Pacific Community Ventures I and III.

Ms. Khor has a B.S. in Business Administration from the University of California, Berkeley and a Master's degree in Public and Private Management from the Yale School of Management.

Jim Matheson

(General Partner, Flagship Ventures) 
Jim joined Flagship Ventures in 2000 and focuses on creating and funding new ventures in the sustainability, clean technology and special technologies arenas. Jim earned an MBA from The Harvard Business School, a Bachelor of Science (with honors) from the United States Naval Academy and retired as a Commander in the US Naval Reserves. Jim serves on the boards of Flagship portfolio companies Advanced Electron Beams, Black Duck Software, Frontier Energy, Mascoma Energy Corporation, Novomer and Oasys Water and is Chairman of the Board of Genstruct and Ze-gen. Jim is on the Board of New York-based hedge fund Black Horse Capital, Common Impact, and the Center for Women & Enterprise, and is actively involved in numerous entrepreneurial and venture capital organizations including the Department of Energy's Biomass Technical Advisory Committee, New England Clean Energy Council, the MIT Enterprise Forum, The Deshpande Center, and The Service Academy Business Network.

Jeremy Nicholls

(Chief Executive, SROI Network)
Jeremy Nicholls became the Chief Executive of the SROI Network in 2008. Starting out as an accountant, his work has increasingly focused on finding ways for organisations to better understand and then manage the social value they create. In 2000 he set up the Cat’s Pyjamas to support and advocate social enterprise and shortly after started working on the development of SROI. He wrote "There is No Business like Social Business" with Liam Black  and co-wrote the recent Cabinet Office supported "Guide to SROI".  He is the chair of Fair Pensions, a director of the FRC Group, a social business based in Liverpool, and a director of the BETA Model which provides analyses of the UK business population.

Sarah Olsen

(Founding Partner, SVT Group)
Sara Olsen founded Social Venture Technology Group (http://www.svtgroup.net) in 2001, which specializes in systems to measure, manage and communicate social and environmental value. SVT also does applied R&D into radically affordable and intuitive impact measurement using tools like geospatial mapping and network mapping. SVT-developed systems are currently used to measure the non-financial value of approximately $2Bn in social and environmental investments in 23+ countries.

Sara’s recent work includes a system to calculate the SROI of obesity prevention efforts of one of the largest children’s healthcare providers in the US; a system banks can use to demonstrate the difference between cannibalistic and beneficial financial products and services; and the Environmental Performance Reporting System used in CalPERS’ $800M environmental technology private equity portfolio.

Sara blogs at http://www.socialedge.org/blogs/svt-on-impact, is an advisor to Aflatoun: Child Savings International, Calvert Foundation’s Social Enterprise Fund, Environmental Capital Group, I3 Advisors, and Mobile Metrix, and in 1999 co-founded the Global Social Venture Competition. She holds an MBA from UC Berkeley and an MASW from the University of Chicago.

Brad Presner

(Metrics Manager, Acumen Fund)
Brad Presner is Acumen Fund's Metrics Manager. In this role, he manages the development of the Pulse social metrics platform and helps define Acumen Fund's performance assessment strategy. He joined Acumen Fund in July, 2008, having worked closely with the Pulse team while an employee of Google.org. He joined Google.org in December 2006, where he led M&E efforts that built a culture of rigorous, thoughtful, analytical impact assessment. He also worked with the portfolio teams to create and track metrics for their initiatives. Prior to Google.org, Brad worked at Google Inc. where he began, and later helped manage, the Business Analytics team in Google's Online Sales and Operations department.

Brad began his career as a mechanical engineer at a Silicon Valley hardware company, later working at multiple start-ups in business analytics roles. Brad holds a BS degree in Mechanical Engineering from Stanford University.

Peggy Reid

(Foundation Consultant)
Peggy currently provides fundraising, strategy, and operations support to SPOON Foundation and the Lemelson Foundation. From 2008-2010, Peggy served as Program Director at the Lemelson Foundation, where she was responsible for grantmaking and investing, evaluation and learning systems, and strategic planning efforts. From 2001-2008, Peggy was Director of the Public Management Program at Stanford GSB’s Center for Social Innovation. In 2005, she designed and launched Stanford’s Service Learning Program, enabling hundreds of MBAs to work on-the-ground with social enterprises. Peggy has also worked in the private sector in technology, consulting and finance. Peggy has served on numerous boards including the Global Fund for Women, UCSF Center of Excellence in Women’s Health and Juma Ventures.  She has been a judge for several social venture competitions and Coro Fellows, and is a member of Social Venture Network. She has published in the NY Times and MIT Press’ Innovations journal. She earned her MBA from Dartmouth College, a Master’s degree in Theological Studies from Harvard Divinity School, and a Bachelor’s degree from Wellesley College. 

Drew Tulchin

(Founder and Managing Partner, Social Enterprise Associates)
Andrew ‘Drew’ Tulchin is Founder and Managing Partner of Social Enterprise Associates (http://www.socialenterprise.net), a registered B-Corp company providing triple bottom line management consulting.  He has consulted in more than 30 countries.

Previously, he was Program Officer for Grameen Foundation, staff lead of the Capital Markets Group.  He has been Director of the U.S. microfinance organization, ECDC/Enterprise Development Group, serving immigrants and low-income people. He has written dozens of socially responsible business plans, including co-writing Prisma Microfinance's plan, a Global Social Venture Competition award winner, used to raise $1.2 million in venture capital. Tulchin completed his MBA from the University of Washington (Seattle).

He finished his BA, Cum Laude, History from Washington University (St. Louis). He currently serves on the Boards of the Permaculture Credit Union, Better World Credits, Global Social Enterprise Competition, and Santa Fe Community Foundation’s Future Santa Fe. His interests include ultimate frisbee, hiking, local food and bad jokes.

Douglas P. White

(Sr. New Business Development Director Corporate Ventures & Business Development, Dow) 
Doug White is a 24 year veteran of Dow.  Doug’s career consists of product and business development leadership roles from the early stage of product inception through commercialization. He has managed and directed new business ventures for Dow in many industries including Automotive/Transportation, Textiles, Polyurethane Products, Advanced Ceramics/Materials, Medical Devices, Defense, Energy, and Water Treatment.  In his current role, he is responsible for directing the Global Corporate Ventures and Business Development front-end pipeline of early stage ventures derived from both internal and external opportunity sources.  Current interest focus is on effective tech scouting and collaborative models for efficient early opportunity screening and engagement. This corporate venturing group practice a variety of open innovation models within their portfolio including JDA,  licensing, strategic alliances/JV, and equity investments.  Personal interests of Doug include native plants, and he is a certified Master Gardener Volunteer.  Doug has a BS in Chemical Engineering from Michigan Technological University and an MBA from Rice University.

Andrew Williamson

(Director, Physic Ventures)
Andrew Williamson is a Director at Physic Ventures, a San Francisco based Venture Capital firm investing in consumer-directed Health and Sustainable Living.  Andrew’s investment practice is focused on companies developing technologies, products and services that enable consumers to adopt more sustainable lifestyles.  He is interested in companies developing renewable energy and energy efficiency solutions, green building technology, water technology, and bio/sustainable materials.  Among the investments managed by Physic Ventures, Andrew is a member of the boards of Chromatin, EnergyHub, Halosource, Impinj and Novomer.

Prior to joining Physic Ventures, Andrew spent 10 years leading materials science research at the Department of Energy’s National Renewable Energy Laboratory and Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory.  Andrew has published over 50 papers and 2 patents.  He holds a BA and Ph.D. in Physics from the University of Cambridge and a MBA from the Haas School of Business at the University of California, Berkeley.