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In this panel, Amber Nystrom, founding and executive director of the social entrepreneur incubator Social Fusion, introduces three mavericks who are leading the charge for social innovation. Paul Fletcher talks about how the private equity fund Actis is investing billions in the world’s poorest countries. Nic Frances discusses the efforts of Easy Being Green to promote individual and family carbon reduction. Dan Whaley shares how Silicon Valley–based Climos is using oceanographic technologies to reduce global warming.
This is part 1 of a two-part session on Capital Change. listen to part 2 here.
Paul Fletcher is responsible for Actis’s business activities worldwide and plays an active role in Actis’s investments. Prior to that, he was CEO of CDC Capital Partners, head of emerging markets strategic planning for Citibank in London, and general manager for Citibank in East Africa. Paul also spent eight years working as a corporate finance professional in New York, Tokyo, and London. He began his career trading commodities for Cargill in Minneapolis/London before joining the commodities division of Bankers Trust. Paul is a director of the Emerging Markets Private Equity Association (EMPEA).
Dan Whaley is the founder and CEO of Climos, a San Francisco-based company that is commercializing the use of large phytoplankton blooms in the ocean to reduce atmospheric CO2. In 1994, he built the online ordering system for Waiters On Wheels, which handled perhaps the first e-commerce transactions ever made. That year, Whaley founded the Internet Travel Network (ITN), later renamed GetThere.com. He led GetThere.com to an IPO in 1999 and to its eventual sale in 2000 to The Sabre Group for $770 million - the largest all-cash deal for an Internet company. In 1996, he was recognized by Business Travel News as one of the industry's top 25 most influential executives.
Nic Frances left a successful private sector career to found the Furniture Resource Center, a British public charity that grew into a leading profit-generating social enterprise. He then moved to Australia, where from 1999 to 2004 he headed the Brotherhood of St. Lawrence (BSL), one of Australia's leading welfare and social policy organizations. In 2004, Frances left BSL to launch Easy Being Green, which in 12 months saved its customers $30 million ($AUD) on their electricity bills. He holds an MBE from the British government, and is a frequent international speaker on the convergence of business, personal ethics, and social innovation.
Amber Nystrom (moderator) is the founding and executive director of Social Fusion, a leading incubator that supports positive businesses and in emerging markets. She is a recognized international expert in the field of social entrepreneurism and integrated or triple bottom–line line investing. Nystrom frequently speaks at Yale, Stanford, Berkeley, and international venues; serves on the boards of the Tallberg Foundation and the Triple Bottom Line Investment Group; and consults to the World Bank, Ashoka, and Actis.
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This program is from our Stanford Discussions series.
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