Professor J. Gregory Dees recently joined Portland State’s Impact Entrepreneurs, an organization that focuses on the power of business to effect social change.
Dees joins Impact Entrepreneurs
Professor J. Gregory Dees recently joined Portland State’s Impact Entrepreneurs, an organization that focuses on the power of business to effect social change.
“We are thrilled to have his guidance and support,” said Cindy Cooper, director of the Social Innovation Incubator (SII), an initiative of Impact Entrepreneurs. “He is a pioneer in the field and ever instrumental in creating the knowledge and conditions that foster entrepreneurial solutions to social and environmental problems.”
The first winner of the Aspen Institute’s Lifetime Achievement Award in Social Entrepreneurship Education, Dees is a professor of the practice of social entrepreneurship and co-founded the Center for the Advancement of Social Entrepreneurship at Duke University’s Fuqua School of Business.
Dees also taught at the Stanford Graduate School of Business, Harvard Business School and the Yale School of Management.
In addition, Dees serves on the board of the World Economic Forum’s Global Agenda Council for Social Entrepreneurship and the Bridgespan Group, according to a press release.
About Impact Entrepreneurs
Impact Entrepreneurs—which is run out of PSU’s business department—also partners with organizations such as the Center for Global Leadership and Sustainability, the Entrepreneurship Center and the Portland State Business Accelerator, according to a press release.
Impact Entrepreneurs is achieving its goal of “unleashing the power of business for social impact” by using three main initiatives—the SII, the Entrepreneurial Leadership Program and Social Enterprise Tours, according to its website.
Impact Entrepreneurs partners with the local chapter of Mercy Corps, and runs an Entrepreneurial Leaders Program through it.
According to Carolyn McKnight, director of Impact Entrepreneurs, the program will be taking a group of students to India to study social enterprise in December.
“[The students] will work in villages doing research and in the city consulting fledgling social enterprises,” she said.
Impact Entrepreneurs also runs the SII, a program dedicated to providing start up initiatives with advice and support.
Its third initiative, SET, provides an opportunity for students and community members to “experience on-the-ground social and economic impact with visits to social enterprises” in India and Nicaragua, according to a press release.
