Center for Social Innovation

Published: November 04, 2011

Jacqueline Novogratz (MBA '91), founder and CEO of the Acumen Fund, has been recently named to Foreign Policy’s list of Top 100 Global Thinkers and The Daily Beast’s 25 Smartest People of the Decade. In this keynote, she shares how she came to found a nonprofit global venture fund that uses entrepreneurial approaches to solve the problems of global poverty. Beginning with her childhood in Detroit, which brought her in contact with issues of race and inequity, she highlights a career that has taken her into microfinance, business, philanthropy, and cross-sector collaboration as means of addressing some of the world’s most intractable challenges. She emphasizes the importance of “patient capital” ­­–– investing that does not demand immediate returns –– particularly in the developing world. Novogratz highlights the work of one of the companies Acumen supports, in particular, d.light, a startup that is producing low-cost LED and solar-based lighting products that replace kerosene lanterns in some of the poorest places on the planet.

Speaking at a community dinner celebrating the Stanford Graduate School of Business's 40-year commitment to educating socially and environmentally conscious leaders, Novogratz affirms that the world these many decades later is indeed a better place, with more resources, technology, and imagination at our disposal to carry us through these especially turbulent times. She rallies her Stanford business graduate peers to reach out and support the new generation of energetic problem solvers by contributing to a more collaborative social market place based in personal ethics.