Obama Makes Social Innovation Real

The opening panel for the SVN member gathering saw SVN members Greg Nelson from the White House, Jonathan Greenblatt, Obama transition team manager and founder of Ethos Water, and Elliot Hoffman, co-founder of Just Desserts who runs New Voice for Business. In addition to talking about the need for a new political voice for progressive business, Jonathan announced some exciting and inspiring new initiatives the Administration is making in the field of social innovation.

Jonathan Greenblatt: What’s happening inside the Obama administration is completely aligned with what SVN members stand for. President Obama is big on civic engagement, national service, and social entrepreneurship. He emphasized the idea of social innovation, about looking for partnerships between non-profits and business to drive an agenda of change for the country.

One early idea of the Administration was to create a White House Office of Social Innovation, that could provide clear leadership and focus a consistent voice for change. This office was just created last week! The CEO, Sonal Shah, is a social entrepreneur herself who founded an organization sending service volunteers to South Asia, and who was also a CSR manager at large global firms like Goldman Sachs and Google.org. The office’s second in command is a fellow of Ashoka. These are people from this community who get it.