When emerging social entrepreneurs meet with Cheryl Dorsey, the president of Echoing Green, they not only get the benefits of talking to an accomplished physician with a masters in public policy from Harvard, a former White House Fellow, and a former business executive but they get an empathetic ear. In the early 1990’s she got a fellowship from Echoing Green to launch the Family Van, a community-based mobile health unit that provides basic medical and outreach services to at-risk residents of inner-city Boston neighborhoods and, in 2002, Dorsey became the first Echoing Green Fellow selected to lead the organization in its nearly 20-year history.

Her daunting challenge—to continue to build on the impressive track record of one of the world’s leading investors and supporters of worldwide social change. Since 1987, Echoing Green has invested nearly $25 million in seed and start-up grants to more than 400 social entrepreneurs who have launched organizations in 30 countries on five continents to address issues related to education, youth development, health care, housing, the environment, and the arts, just to name a few. By providing a unique combination of funding and direct support for emerging social entrepreneurs, Dorsey and her team continue to seed the world with visionaries intent on fundamentally making the world a better place.