Reynolds Program Offers New Slate of Speakers and Service Challenges in 2007-08

By Robert Polner

Social entrepreneurship is a form of leadership that maximizes the social return on public service efforts while fundamentally and permanently changing the way problems are addressed. At NYU, the efforts to introduce students to the wide variety of creative approaches and practices among social entrepreneurs around the globe includes the work of The Catherine B. Reynolds Foundation Program in Social Entrepreneurship. In its second annual speaker series featuring major change makers, the foundation hosted Bangladesh Rural Advance Commission founder Fazle Hasan Abed, who kicked off the lectures in September at the Robert F. Wagner Graduate School of Public Service.

The speaker series on social entrepreneurship continues Oct. 30, with an appearance by J.B. Schramm, founder and CEO of College Summit. Additional speakers throughout the year will include Jacqueline Novogratz, CEO, Acumen Fund;  Karen Tse, founder and CEO, International Bridges to Justice; Jed Emerson, founder, Blended Value; and Paul Farmer, co-founder, Partners in Health.

All speeches are open to the entire University community and held at Wagner’s Puck Building, unless otherwise noted. The Reynolds Program, which provides scholarships and fellowships to undergraduates and graduates with a strong interest in innovating social change, is housed at Wagner and jointly administered by the school and the Office of the Provost.

The Reynolds Program and the nonprofit organization Youth Venture are also sponsoring the second annual “Be a Changemaker Challenge,” a program that last year involved more than 300 undergraduate students from across the University. Under the challenge, teams of NYU undergraduate students are eligible for up to $1,000 in seed grants to work on social ventures of their own making. The initiative asks students to devise action plans for addressing social issues of any kind that they consider critical. The best teams will be eligible for the grand prize of $10,000 and automatically entered as quarter-finalists in the Stern School of Business Social Track Business Plan Competition.  

“This is a great example of NYU’s commitment to being a private university in the public service, and the role that the NYU Reynolds Program plans in that effort,” said Gabriel Brodbar, director of the Reynolds Program.

For further information on the program and its undergraduate and graduate support, go to www.nyu. edu/reynolds.