Dr. Al Hammond, an experienced social entrepreneur and one of the founders of the Base of the Pyramid strategy for market-led social change, will join Ashoka as a member of its Leadership Group. Dr. Hammond will join a team of social entrepreneurs advancing Ashoka’s Full Economic Citizenship initiative by creating partnerships between private companies and citizen sector organizations to unleash competitive low- income markets on a global scale. Dr. Hammond will focus primarily on the health care and rural connectivity sectors.

Dr. Hammond was recently Vice President for Innovation and Special Projects at the World Resources Institute, where among other activities he led efforts to stimulate use of business approaches and new technologies to alleviate poverty in developing countries; was principal author of a major research study of low income markets (The Next 4 Billion: Market Size and Business Strategy at the Base of the Pyramid) as well as numerous articles in major thought-leader publications; and led the creation of nextbillion.net, an award-winning site that reports on and supports sustainable business models that address the needs of the world's poorest citizens. Dr. Hammond’s activities over the past 10 years have been aimed at helping to conceptualize and build the entire field of social enterprise by strengthening business rigor and market-based approaches. Dr. Hammond is also a serial entrepreneur; has advised major companies, private foundations, and government and international organizations; and has published more than a dozen books. Prior to the World Resources Institute, Dr. Hammond worked for his own consulting firm and for the American Association for the Advancement of Science.

“Ashoka is giving me the opportunity to take the work I have been doing on rural connectivity and healthcare to scale. Its belief in entrepreneurship and its global network of Ashoka Fellows and funders are wonderful assets to help catalyze the sector transformations that I and my colleagues at Ashoka are striving for.”

About Ashoka
Founded in 1980, Ashoka is the world’s working community of more than 2,000 leading social entrepreneurs. It champions the most important new social change ideas and supports the entrepreneurs behind them by helping them get started, grow, succeed, and collaborate. As Ashoka expands its capacity to integrate and connect social and business entrepreneurs around the world, it builds an entrepreneurial infrastructure comprised of a series of global initiatives that supports the fast-growing needs of the citizen sector. Ashoka’s vision is to create change today, for an everyone a changemaker society to become the reality of tomorrow. For more information, visit www.ashoka.org.