Writing about Bill Drayton in a posting about the Harvard 100 made me realize that many folks will have no idea what his India connection is. So I am reproducing below an item sent to the SAJA Discussion List almost two years ago. Post your comments below.
--------- Forwarded message ----------
Date: Thu, 8 Dec 2005 07:10:29 -0500 (EST)
From: Sreenath Sreenivasan <ss221@columbia.edu>
To: SAJA E-mail Discussion List <saja-disc@lists.jrn.columbia.edu>
Subject: STORY IDEA: Bill Drayton & the Ashoka Fund for Social Entrepreneurs
From SAJA E-mail Lists; free sign-ups at http://www.saja.org
Here's a story idea about Bill Drayton, who was recently named one of America's
top 25 leaders by US News & World Report. He's got plenty of India connections
and his organization, DC-based Ashoka, is a fascinating model for how to create
world change. See below for a note from Venkatesh Raghavendra of Ashoka - he's
available to any journalists who'd like to follow-up. As it happens on
occasion, some major desi organizations find it easier to get more attention in
the mainstream press than in the ethnic press.
From: Venkatesh Raghavendra <vraghavendra@ASHOKA.ORG>
Subject: One of America's Best Leaders and his global social entrepreneurship movement have roots in India!
US News & World Report honors social entrepreneur pioneer Bill Drayton of Ashoka alongside Bill & Melinda Gates, Oprah Winfrey, and Colin Powell as one of America's top 25 leaders.
> From an early age, Bill Drayton, CEO and Founder of Ashoka, has
been influenced by the history and people of India. Inspired by
visionaries such as Mahatma Gandhi, Drayton witnessed firsthand the power
of the individual and impact of new ideas based on non-violence,
innovation and high ethical standards while traveling across India with
Vinoba Bhave as a young man.
Ashoka elected its first leading social entrepreneurs, Ashoka
Fellows, in India in 1981. Since then, Ashoka has identified and
supported over 1,600 Fellows in 60 countries, including more than 400
social entrepreneurs in Asia. For the past 25 years, India has served as
a testing ground for most of Ashoka's international Fellowship building
programs and other key initiatives.
Ashoka is named after the 3rd Century B.C. Emperor of India who
is remembered as one of the world's earliest and most impactful social
innovators. The organization Ashoka was founded in the spirit of Emperor
Ashoka's extraordinary creativity, global-mindedness, and tolerance. In
Sanskrit, Ashoka means "the active absence of sorrow".
Read the complete story below, and please contact Venkatesh Raghavendra,
Director, Global Partnerships for Asia at vraghavendra@ashoka.org for any
media follow-up.
U.S. News & World Report
Oct. 31, 2005
America's 25 Best Leaders
Bill Drayton: Entrepreneur For Social Change
By Caroline Hsu
Text of article below and on
http://www.usnews.com/usnews/news/articles/051031/31drayton.htm
Also see Q&A with Drayton:
http://www.usnews.com/usnews/news/articles/051022/22drayton.htm
In the summer of 1963, Bill Drayton witnessed the power of a simple idea
to effect vast social change. A Gandhian named Vinoba Bhave was walking
across India and persuading individuals and whole villages to legally
"gift" their land to him. Bhave then redistributed the land more
equitably to support untouchables and other landless people, thus
breaking an endless cycle of poverty. Drayton, just 20 years old and on
summer break from Harvard, drove a red-and-white Volkswagen van from
Munich to India to join him.
"Long before sunrise, we'd start walking across dividing paths of rice
fields, by the moonlight, stars, and a couple of kerosene lanterns," says
Drayton. At sunrise, thousands of surrounding villagers dressed in their
best clothes began appearing in the horizon. By teatime, local landowners
had voluntarily ceded their holdings to Bhave. Ultimately, 7 million
acres were peacefully redistributed, based on the ability of one leader
to turn a powerful idea into reality.
It's a model of change that Drayton calls social entrepreneurship--a term
he coined to describe individuals who combine the pragmatic and
results-oriented methods of a business entrepreneur with the goals of a
social reformer. Through his global nonprofit, Ashoka: Innovators for the
Public, based in Arlington, Va., Drayton aims to find change-making
leaders around the world, provide them with support and modest "social
venture capital," and watch as they transform ingrained institutions and
improve lives exponentially.
A slight man with wispy hair and rimless glasses, Drayton seems not quite
of this world. Conversations tend to wander off on arcane tangents--such
as a 20-minute lecture on the irrigation system of Bali--before heading
back to broader theories like the importance of empathetic ethics in a
multicultural world. Drayton always speaks in a library voice. "I was
taught by my parents that people who are loud don't have anything to
say," says Drayton, with his gentle smile. "I've found if you're
suggesting quite big changes, a quiet style may be reassuring."
He's also prone to long gaps in conversation. "He is a guy who will
literally sit in silence for a minute before he speaks," says Peter
Kellner, one of several young entrepreneurs who call Drayton a mentor.
Indeed, although Drayton is constantly in a bureaucrat's uniform of a
plain navy blue suit and a skinny tie, one can almost imagine him in
monk's robes, fascinated disciples at his feet.
Yet Drayton, like three of his heroes, Mohandas Gandhi, Thomas Jefferson,
and Jean Monnet (architect of European common currency), is a scholar and
political operator deeply rooted in the hows and whys of society. He
notes Gandhi's mania for organization, down to counting pencils. For
Drayton, social change isn't romantic. "It's not a poem; it's not like
Xanadu," he says. "There are many people who are creative and altruistic,
but they are never going to change a pattern across a continent." In
other words, a vision of Xanadu is nice, but it won't happen without a
transportation plan and a sewerage system.
Which is why Drayton named his organization after another visionary
pragmatist: Ashoka was a third-century-B.C. Indian emperor who waged war
to unite a huge swath of south Asia. He subsequently renounced violence,
adopted Buddhism, and dedicated his empire to tolerance, economic growth,
and social projects. Launched in 1980 with $50,000, the organization now
has a budget of $30.5 million and has funded 1,600 "fellows" in 60
countries. Fellows, who must undergo a rigorous testing and screening
process and numerous interviews, have done things like finding a way to
provide cheap electricity for Brazilian farmers, changing the Indian
school curriculum from rote to independent learning, and distributing
microcredit loans of as small as $60 for poor women in Bangladesh to
start businesses. That original program has set a new standard in
development work, and microfinance is now used all over the world to help
add to the ranks of the world's entrepreneurs. Within five years, says
Drayton, more than 50 percent of Ashoka fellows change national policy in
their respective countries.
Visionary. Early on, Drayton saw that while government can be inefficient
and the private sector motivated by profit, the nonprofit sector was ripe
to provide change. Indeed, this "third" sector, or so-called citizen
sector, as Drayton calls it, has exploded--70 percent of registered
nonprofit groups in the United States are under 30 years old. "More and
more people want to do this kind of work," says Drayton. "We are creating
the jobs; the salaries are going up. We are desperate for managers."
Much of the change in the citizen sector can be attributed to Drayton,
who made it his life's work to not only expand Ashoka but also develop
the field as a whole. "Bill was the pioneer; he really laid the
foundation for the rest of us," says J. Gregory Dees, professor at Duke
University's Fuqua School of Business. When Dees attempted to introduce
the first social entrepreneurship course in business school, he was
rebuffed. Nearly 15 years later, it is a common offering at leading
business schools like Harvard, Stanford, and the University of Chicago.
In many ways, Drayton's life has been a long road toward learning how to
change systems. At Harvard, he founded Ashoka table, where students could
ask government and industry leaders how the world really works. Drayton
continued at Oxford as a Rhodes scholar and graduated from Yale Law
School. Later, at the consulting firm McKinsey & Co., he learned about
public policy and industries. While advising New York City, he created
the nation's first nicotine tar tax. In the Carter administration, as
assistant administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency, he
pioneered the concept of emissions trading, in which companies or whole
countries can reduce their allotment of pollution emissions by selling
those allotments to others. During the Reagan years, Drayton successfully
used the media to stop the administration from dismantling the EPA.
Though he characterizes himself as a moderate introvert, Drayton has the
innate charisma of great leaders. Former Indiana Rep. Lee Hamilton, who
cochaired the 9/11 commission, recalls that he had misgivings when the
21-year-old Drayton volunteered to help on his House campaign in 1964.
"He looks like a scholar, and I said to myself, 'How will he fit in with
Hoosiers--with Indiana farmers?' " Drayton was able to charm local party
operatives as well as farmers, and he helped Hamilton win.
The charisma stems from genuine interest and skillful listening. Kyle
Zimmer, a board member of Ashoka, remembers meeting Drayton when they
worked on Walter Mondale's presidential campaign in 1984. "It was
tremendously empowering to be around Bill. You felt as if when you talked
your ideas were considered." Zimmer describes similar scenes at Ashoka
meetings. "The first time I sat at a meeting, an intern raised a hand,
and I thought, 'You have got to be kidding; that's someone with moxie.'
But it happens repeatedly. Bill appreciates people who are thinking and
engaged and he doesn't care if it's someone very influential in
Washington or a tribal leader in some very remote area of the world."
Publisher. Entrepreneurship came early to Drayton. As a child, he made
crafts and set up a store in his bedroom. And he had no problems
recruiting helpers. A one-page newspaper he started in the third grade
quickly turned into an ad-supported 64-page publication staffed with
elementary school children. "I can't tell you how excited I was to get
this mimeograph machine," says Drayton. "It's amazing how supportive my
parents were. There were 64 piles of mimeographed paper that had to be
collated and stapled, and it never occurred to me this might be
inconvenient to my family."
Even now, Drayton's enthusiasm for a project has a way of sweeping up
bystanders who question how they end up laboring in the eye of his storm.
Julien Phillips was working in Venezuela in the early '80s when Drayton
came for a weeklong visit. "He had asked me in his soft way if I could
arrange some appointments with people interested in making changes," says
Phillips, a friend from McKinsey who runs his own nonprofit organization.
He tried to oblige but soon realized that Drayton, who spoke no Spanish,
had expected him to analyze the social structure of Venezuela, find the
top 25 change makers, and arrange interviews with at least 10. "He
imagined I would drop everything. It's never clear to me whether he's
aware that he's making some fairly unreasonable requests or whether he's
entirely oblivious to all that--and he relates to a lot of people in that
way."
But Phillips and others say they tolerate and even admire his demands
because they are not driven by ego. "His actions and his ethics are well
integrated," says David Bornstein, author of How to Change the World:
Social Entrepreneurs and the Power of New Ideas. Drayton lives modestly,
in an apartment near his office. For years, he did not take a salary at
Ashoka. Sushmita Ghosh, president of Ashoka, remembers first meeting
Drayton 17 years ago at a hotel in Calcutta, where she estimates the
rooms cost about $12 a night. "One of Ashoka's policies is never to do
anything that is not compatible with the lifestyle of the fellows," says
Ghosh.
Although Drayton's energies are stretched, he is continually moving
forward with new projects. His latest, Youth Venture, comes from his
belief that children are a great untapped resource in social
change--correctly leveraged, they have the power to "flip" society very
quickly. He likens their marginalized position to what was once
considered a natural secondary place for women and minorities.
"We would like to have every middle and high school become a place where
there will be lots of examples of youth competence and confidence," says
Drayton. "You can be a cog in society if you've learned enough, but
you'll never be a powerful person."
Like Vinoba Bhave, Drayton is in his own way walking through the world
and trying to persuade as many people to sign over their rights as a cog
and join him. "Right now, 2 or 3 percent of people control changes," he
says. "Imagine a world where everyone is really a change maker."
