Matthew Bishop, The Economist's New York Bureau Chief, and co-author of the highly acclaimed book Philanthrocapitalism talks with Lauren Bush, of FEED Projects, Charles Best, of DonorsChoose.org, and Scott Harrison of charity: water.
The conversation aims to spark ideas on innovative ways to give this season.
Bio
Charles Best
Charles Best founded DonorsChoose.org at Wings Academy, a public high school in the Bronx where he was a social studies teacher for five years.
He thought up DonorsChoose.org during a lunch conversation with colleagues, and his students volunteered to help start the organization. DonorsChoose.org has been growing since.
Matthew Bishop
Matthew Bishop is the New York bureau chief and US business editor of The Economist and previously served as the magazine's London-based business editor. He is the author of several acclaimed books, most recently, The Road From Ruin: How to Renew Capitalism and Put America Back on Top and Philanthrocapitalism: How Giving Can Save the World, both with Michael Green. He has also written numerous special reports for The Economist on such topics as corporate governance and the private equity boom.
Before joining The Economist, Bishop was on the faculty of the London Business School. He was honored by the World Economic Forum as a Young Global Leader and served as chairman of the Forum's Global Agenda Council on Philanthropy and Social Investing. He has also been a member of the Sykes Commission on restoring trust in the investment system and the UN Advisory Group for the International Year of Microcredit.
Lauren Bush
Lauren Bush is the CEO, Creative Director and co-Founder of FEED Projects LLC. She also serves as the Chairman of the Board for the FEED Foundation. In 2004, Lauren became an Honorary Spokesperson for the UN World Food Program (WFP). As Honorary Spokesperson, Lauren has traveled to eight countries around the world visiting WFP operations, and helped start the Universities Fighting Hunger Campaign in the US.
For many years Bush was a fashion model, appearing on the cover of such publications as W, Australian Vogue, Glamour, Town and Country, and Tatler. Her involvement in the fashion industry lead to her interest in photography and fashion design, which she studied at Parsons in NY and Central Saint Martins College of Arts & Design in London. Bush graduated from Princeton University in 2006 with a BA in Anthropology and a Certificate in Photography.
Scott Harrison
Scott Harrison spent 10 years as a New York City party promoter, throwing fashion and music events at top nightclubs for the likes of MTV, VH1, ABC TV, Cosmopolitan, ELLE, Universal Records, Island Records, Bacardi, and Anheuser-Busch. In the fall of 2004, he returned to his childhood Christian faith and left nightlife to volunteer with a team of humanitarian doctors and surgeons onboard a hospital ship in Liberia, Africa. Armed with a pair of Nikons, Harrison spent eight months as the ship's volunteer photojournalist, documenting the incredible need he saw there.
Returning home to New York City a year later, he produced a large exhibition in Chelsea of more than 100 photographs and videos from the journey. The show gathered major media attention and brought in more than $96,000 in donations for medical procedures and freshwater well projects in Africa.
Following another six-month journey on the ship to West Africa, he returned to New York City to found the non-profit organization charity: water. Turning his full attention to the global water crisis and the 1.1 billion people without clean water to drink, he and a small team created exhibitions in galleries and outdoor parks, online campaigns, and nationally-aired public service announcements.
In three years, with the help of more than 60,000 donors from 200 countries and 300+ media mentions, charity: water has raised not only massive awareness, but more than $10 million, funding more than 1,400 water projects in 16 developing nations. Those projects will provide over 700,000 people with clean, safe drinking water.
Janera Soerel
Janera Soerel is the Founder and Publisher of JANERA.com. Born and raised on Curacao by Surinamese parents, Janera started college at Georgetown University in Washington, D.C. and finished her undergraduate degree at the London School of Economics. She then obtained a Masters in Monetary Economics from Erasmus University in Rotterdam.
Economics degree in hand, Janera Soerel worked in investment banking on cross-border corporate finance deals in Italy and The Netherlands. Realizing that finance was not her life's work, she enrolled at Columbia University, graduating with a dual MBA/MIA degree in business and international affairs.
She subsequently spent time at a communications and branding firm in New York, where she learned about the power of the Web, images, and design.
Piles of unread issues of The Economist triggered an idea to create an attractive multimedia, content-driven global community Web site with a unique perspective on global politics and culture, for the mix of urban, educated, global gamechangers.
Voluntary, organized efforts intended for socially useful purposes. Philanthropic groups existed in the ancient civilizations of the Middle East, Greece, and Rome: an endowment supported Plato's Academy (c. 387 BC) for some 900 years; the Islamic waqf (religious endowment) dates to the 7th century AD; and the medieval Christian church administered trusts for benevolent purposes. Merchants in 17th- and 18th-century western Europe founded organizations for worthy causes. Starting in the late 19th century, large personal fortunes led to the creation of private foundations that bequeathed gifts totaling millions and then billions in support of the arts, education, medical research, public policy, social services, environmental causes, and other special interests. SeeAndrew Carnegie; B'nai B'rith; Bill Gates; George Peabody; Rockefeller Foundation; Straus family.
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