The Skoll Centre Advisory Board

Alex Nicholls is the first tenured professor in social entrepreneurship appointed at the University of Oxford. He is also a Tutorial Fellow and Member of the Governing Body at Harris Manchester College. In 2004, he was the co-founder of the Skoll Centre for Social Entrepreneurship - for which he helped raise the core funding - as well as the co-founder of the Skoll World Forum on Social Entrepreneurship. He is the Editor-in-Chief of the Journal of Social Entrepreneurship, which he founded in 2010. 

Alex is the co-author of a major research book on Fair Trade (with Charlotte Opal, Sage, 2005) and the editor of the first scholarly collection of papers on social entrepreneurship (Oxford University Press, 2006, 2008). In 2015, he published a further co-edited volume on social finance and a new book on social innovation with NESTA. In 2019, Alex published a book examining the economic underpinnings of social innovation in the European Union, based on CRESSI.

Cheryl L. Dorsey is CEO and co-leader of Echoing Green, a global nonprofit that supports emerging social entrepreneurs and invests deeply in their ideas and leadership. She became the first Echoing Green Fellow to head the social venture fund in 2002. Prior to leading this social impact organisation, Cheryl was a social entrepreneur herself and received an Echoing Green Fellowship in 1992 to help launch The Family Van, a community-based mobile health unit in Boston. An accomplished leader and entrepreneur, she has served in two presidential administrations as a White House Fellow and Special Assistant to the U.S. Secretary of Labor (1997-98); Special Assistant to the Director of the Women's Bureau of the U.S. Labor Department (1998-99); and Vice Chair for the President's Commission on White House Fellowships (2009-2017). 

François is the Director of the Schwab Foundation for Social Entrepreneurship and Head of Foundations at the World Economic Forum, including the Young Global Leaders and Global Shapers. Dr Bonnici is a public health physician, university professor, social change practitioner, foundation leader and author of ‘The Systems Work of Social Change’, awarded the Best Non-Profit Management Book of 2022. His career is rooted in front-line medical and humanitarian work, and he has worked extensively with the public sector, civil society, business and philanthropy to build progressive and catalytic partnerships. He is also a Rhodes Scholar, Archbishop Tutu African Leadership Fellow, and Academic Fellow at the University of Geneva, and was the Founding Director of the Bertha Centre for Social Innovation & Entrepreneurship at the University of Cape Town. 

Garry Reeder is the Chief of Staff of The Skoll Foundation, advancing priorities, strengthening coordination among teams, and supporting the continued evolution of the organisation. He also oversees the Foundation's communications and evaluation activities. Gary previously served as Vice President for Innovation & Policy at the Financial Health Network. In addition to overseeing the nonprofit's public policy initiatives, he led the Financial Solutions Lab, a $60 million fintech accelerator program designed to cultivate, support, and scale innovative ideas that advance the financial health of low- to moderate-income (LMI) consumers and historically underserved communities. Garry was a member of the Treasury Department’s Auto Team, which managed the Troubled Asset Relief Program’s (TARP) auto investments.
 

Johanna Mair is the Director and Professor of Governance, Institutions and Societal Transformation of the Florence School of Transnational Governance (STG) at the European University Institute (EUI). Her research examines how organisations and institutions innovate to address complex societal challenges, with a particular focus on social innovation, governance, democracy, and sustainable development. She has served as Co‑Director of the Global Innovation for Impact Lab at Stanford University and has held academic appointments at INSEAD, IESE Business School, and the Harvard Kennedy School. She received the Progress Medal from the Society for Progress for pioneering research on social entrepreneurs and social innovation and was recognised by the Aspen Institute as a Faculty Pioneer for her contributions to education in this field. 

Jonathan Michie OBE FAcSS is the President of Kellogg College and Professor of Innovation and Knowledge Exchange at the University of Oxford. An Honorary Norham Fellow in the Department of Education, Jonathan is also a member of the Department’s SKOPE research centre. Before returning to Oxford in 2008, he was Dean of Birmingham Business School; before that he held the Sainsbury Chair of Management at Birkbeck, University of London, where he was Head of the School of Management & Organisational Psychology; and before that, he was at the Judge Business School, Cambridge, where he was also Fellow & Director of Studies in Economics at Robinson College, a Research Associate of the ESRC Centre for Business Research, and Director of the ESRC Research Programme on Contracts & Competition. 

Mary is Senior Fellow in Management Practice. At the University of Oxford’s Saïd Business School, she has also served as Senior Research Fellow and Founding Programme Director of The Ownership Project and is currently a Skoll Centre Fellow and Co-Director of the Oxford Leading Sustainable Corporations programme. Mary is a Senior Associate of Oxford Net Zero, a member of the Jury of the IMD-Pictet Sustainability in Family Business Award, has also served as a World Economic Forum Global Futures Council Fellow and is Chair of the Board of B Lab UK. Her research explores how business affects our world and how leaders build strategy around the public good. She has a longstanding research interest in women in business. Her co-authored volume on sustainability leadership is slated for publication in 2023, and she serves as an advisor to several businesses on sustainability and impact strategy.

Professor Mette Morsing is Interim Dean and Professor at Said Business School, University of Oxford. Previously, she was the Director of the Smith School of Enterprise and the Environment and Professor of Business Sustainability at the University of Oxford. At the Smith School, Mette led a team of scholars committed to achieving Net Zero and the UN SDGs through interdisciplinary, international and impactful teaching and research. She also serves on numerous Councils and Advisory Boards Worldwide (USA, Europe, Asia, China, UK). She previously served at the United Nations in New York (USA), where she led Principles for Management Education, the UN’s largest initiative on management education, working with over 800 universities and business schools to transform leadership education towards the UN Sustainable Development Goals. Her research has won international awards and recognition, and she is an invited author, researcher and speaker globally.

Sebastien Lepinard is the co-founder, alongside his wife Julie, of NextWorld, a global organisation combining investments and non-profit activities. Investments are predominantly in private equity in the US and Europe, ranging from venture capital to stable long-term ownership positions. The flagship investment strategy is NextWorldEvergreen, a 100-year fund focused on the US consumer. On the non-profit side, Fondation Erol, a Swiss foundation, focuses on environmental issues and social justice, while 836m, a non-profit gallery, produces artistic and cultural events. All activities operate independently while sharing NextWorld’s purpose to leverage capital to create value for society.

Shivani Garg Patel is a Senior Strategic Advisor at the Skoll Foundation, and the former Chief Strategy Officer. With experience as a social entrepreneur, investor, and advisor, she brings a multi-sectoral and interdisciplinary view to her work. Before joining the Skoll Foundation, Shivani co-founded and led Samahope, a nonprofit that invested in local medical providers delivering critical care in low-income communities worldwide. Earlier in her career, Shivani was a strategy consultant and product manager in the private and public sectors. She has a B.S. in Electrical Engineering and Computer Science and a B.A. in Cognitive Science from U.C. Berkeley and an MBA from MIT Sloan School of Management.

Tara helps build entrepreneurial ecosystems all over the world. From delivering fundraising strategies to agricultural cooperatives in Angola to helping Arabian Gulf governments launch startup investment funds, she has dedicated most of her adult life to catalysing entrepreneurship, especially to growing enterprises in emerging markets and underserved communities in the U.S. Tara started her own company, which trained over 2000 entrepreneurs across Africa and Latin America. Tara shifted her focus to impact investing and is now the Director of Chemonics International, where she works in both strategy consulting and impact investing across Africa and the Middle East.

After a 15-year career building startup and impact ecosystems, Grace is now the Co-founder & CEO at Unravel Carbon, an AI-powered decarbonization platform that helps companies measure, reduce, and report their carbon emissions. Grace led a VC fund as a Kauffman Fellow and received her MBA from Oxford and a Masters in Organisational Change from INSEAD.