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All Bill Drayton wants to do is change the world—so, pretty
simple. In 1980 he founded Ashoka, a global association of
social entrepreneurs whose lagship program provides up
to three years of inancial and logistical support for proj-
ects with the potential to do good on a large scale. After
3,800 Ashoka fellows and one MacArthur Genius Grant, he’s
still inding ways to wield his inluence for the better.
Drayton began his career as a salary man, not a vision-
ary. He was a McKinsey & Co. consultant for a decade,
then a policy wonk at the U.S. Environmental Protection
Agency in the late 1970s. Roy Gamse, who ran the EPA’s
Oice of Planning and Evaluation, jokes about working
on Drayton’s staf—and under his exacting standards: “I
worked for Bill for eight years during the Carter adminis-
tration, which was only four years long.”
Drayton had a reputation as an around-the-clock worker,
but one with a creative streak. “Much of what he did was
very innovative and very controversial,” Gamse says. “A
lot of times my irst reaction would be, ‘This is
crazy. This has no chance of happening!’ And
then Bill wouldn’t let go.” He’s famous in pol-
icy circles for launching emissions trading,
otherwise known as cap and trade, whereby
companies can choose how to meet environ-
mental targets, by reducing their own emissions,
say, or paying another company with a better
environmental record for emissions “credits.”
Drayton always understood that good policy ideas often
come from entrepreneurs. An ideal Ashoka project isn’t
about a particular school or hospital; rather, it helps elim-
inate a systemic weakness. Ashoka fellows can be widely
inluential: Half have seen their projects incorporated
into national policy. By the mid-1980s, Drayton noticed
that almost all Ashoka fellows had had an entrepreneur-
ial experience as a young teen; even more striking, about
a third of their projects addressed youth issues. “So now
we had these two patterns together, both saying the same
thing—that putting young kids in charge is really, really
important,” he says.
Ashoka now runs a full slate of programs aimed at
teaching early teens leadership skills, including Youth
Venture, which provides kids who have ideas for social-
entrepreneurial projects with help getting started. So far,
it’s reached 15,000 kids in 40 countries. This year, Ashoka
is working with teacher training institutes, teachers’
unions, parents, and school districts to teach
them how to support budding changemakers.
“Once they’ve had an experience where
they’ve had an idea, built a team, and changed
their world, they have their Ph.D.s in the most
important skill in the world,” Drayton says.
“Life is no longer repetition and following
orders. They have the skill that society is des-
perate for. And,” he adds, “it’s fun.”
ILLUSTRATION BY SAM KERR
GAME CHANGER
Bloomberg Pursuits
May 14, 2018
b. 1943, Manhattan
-
Has taught at Stanford
Law School and the
Harvard Kennedy
School
-
Takes a three-week
backpacking trip
every year
The uber-social entrepreneur wants to raise a generation
of world changers. By Arianne Cohen
B I L L D R AY T O N
Bloomberg Businessweek
(USPS 080 900) May 14, 2018 (ISSN 0007-7135) H Issue no. 4569 Published weekly, except one week in January, February, April, June, July, September, and December, by Bloomberg L.P. Periodicals
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