Speakers: 10th Anniversary Lunch & Forum

Lunch Keynote Speaker: Gururaj “Desh” Deshpande
“In the Sandbox: Using Philanthropy to Create Social Innovation”

Dr. Gururaj “Desh” Deshpande is a world-class venture capitalist, entrepreneur, and philanthropist. He currently acts as the President and Chairman of Sparta Group LLC and Chairman of A123 Systems (AONE), Sycamore Networks (SCMR), Tejas Networks and HiveFire. Prior to co-founding Sycamore Networks, he was founder and chairman of Cascade Communications. Desh serves on the boards of MIT, The Indus Entrepreneurs (TiE) Global Board, Akshayapatra and several other non-profit organizations.

Among Desh’s innovative philanthropic contributions is the Deshpande Center for Technological Innovation at MIT, which has worked for a decade to increase the impact of MIT technologies in the marketplace. Following the success of the Deshpande Center at MIT, Desh and his wife Jaishree have helped establish three other innovative centers around the world: Deshpande Center for Social Entrepreneurship in India, Merrimack Valley Social Entrepreneurship Sandbox in Massachusetts, and Pond-Deshpande Center at the University of New Brunswick in Canada.

In 2010, Desh was appointed Co-Chair of the National Advisory Council on Innovation and Entrepreneurship by President Barack Obama to develop policies that foster entrepreneurship, create jobs and drive economic growth.

Session I: Scott Rozelle
“Multiplying Impact in China: How to Change the Lives of Millions by Investing in Thousands”

Scott Rozelle is the Helen F. Farnsworth Senior Fellow and the co-director of the Rural Education Action Project in the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies at Stanford University. REAP takes on the twin challenge of the higher education gap in China – addressing both the social need of providing assistance to the rural poor and the absence of academic research that can aid scholars and policymakers to understand the problem and come up with creative policy solutions.

Rozelle received his BS from the University of California, Berkeley, and his MS and PhD from Cornell University.

Previously, Rozelle was a professor at the University of California, Davis and an assistant professor in Stanford’s Food Research Institute and department of economics. He currently is a member of several organizations, including the American Economics Association, the International Association for Agricultural Economists, and the Association for Asian Studies. Rozelle also serves on the editorial boards of Economic Development and Cultural Change, Agricultural Economics, the Australian Journal of Agricultural and Resource Economics, and the China Economic Review.

His research focuses almost exclusively on China and is concerned with: agricultural policy, including the supply, demand, and trade in agricultural projects; the emergence and evolution of markets and other economic institutions in the transition process and their implications for equity and efficiency; and the economics of poverty and inequality, with an emphasis on rural education, health and nutrition.

Session II: Sebastien Marot
“Replication: Models that Work Across Multiple Asian Countries”

Sebastien Marot is the founder and Director of Friends International, a social enterprise started in 1994 to reintegrate homeless children in Phnom Penh, Cambodia back into society. Since then, Friends International has brought its model of education, job training and small for-profit enterprises to Indonesia, Laos and Thailand and will soon expand to Myanmar and Honduras.

Born in France, Marot holds a degree in political science and served two years in the French Consulate in Japan. He returned to Asia in 1994 to visit Cambodia. Shaken by the luxury vehicles speeding past sleeping homeless children on the streets of Phnom Penh, Marot and his traveling companions soon decided to open Friends, a shelter for disadvantaged Cambodian children that served as a place for transition and reintegration into society.

Since founding Friends, Marot and the organization have helped hundreds of thousands of children across Southeast Asia.

CONTACT US

Email: rsvp@give2asia.org
Twitter: @give2asia
Anniversary Hashtag: #g2a10

Our Promotional Partners