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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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