The Schwab Foundation for Social Entrepreneurship

Foundation Board

The Board directs and oversees the activities of the Foundation
The Foundation Board currently consists of:

Hilde Schwab

President and Co-Founder Schwab Foundation for Social Entrepreneurship

Klaus Schwab

Co-Founder, Schwab Foundation for Social Entrepreneurship

Paulo Coelho

Best-selling author, Brazil

David Gergen

Director, Center for Public Leadership, John F. Kennedy School of Government, Harvard University, USA

Zanele Mbeki

First Lady of South Africa

Stephen Brenninkmeijer

Chief Executive Officer, Andromeda Fund BV, United Kingdom

Lord David Puttnam

Chairman, The National Endowment for Science, Technology and the Arts, UK

Muhammad Yunus

Managing Director, Grameen Bank, Bangladesh

"The most rewarding aspect of the Foundation has been for me to be able to identify and give a platform to so many outstanding social entrepreneurs who deserve to be better known in the world for what they are doing to improve peoples lives." - Hilde Schwab

"This Foundation has been a dream of ours for many years. My belief always has been that in the end, economic and social progress can only be achieved through entrepreneurship of all kinds. The Foundation enables us to encourage and foster entrepreneurs working for the public interest - to support them and provide them with access and funding to an international platform for experience exchange that they might otherwise lack.

We wanted to create a mechanism that works from the bottom up. This approach differs from the approach of the World Economic Forum, which I founded over 30 years ago. At the World Economic Forum we have built global communities that convene every year at Davos and also in different regions of the world, to search for joint solutions to crises or problems at the macroeconomic and geopolitical level. At the beginning of the 21st century, it becomes more evident that social progress cannot depend only on high level cooperation among global decision makers, but also requires community-driven social entrepreneurship on a broad scale." - Klaus Schwab

"As a mysterious chain of connections and contacts, there is a silent way about solidarity in that if you strive hard you put the right person in front of you at the right time. It is about the human being, solidarity, lighting a flame in the dark. It is about what you did and what you're doing. It is about perseverance, overcoming your fears and respecting your intuition which guides you, and keeping your expectations very, very high." - Paulo Coelho

"Imagine the transformation that could occur if these social entrepreneurs were allowed to implement their initiatives in one single developing country." - Zanele Mbeki

"The emergence of a global network of Social Entrepreneurs was one of the more exciting and constructive discoveries of the 1990's. For the most part they honestly didn't know each other existed. The Schwab Foundation was among the first initiatives to attempt to create a coherent network out of this explosion of individual energy. I'm very proud to be playing a small part in nurturing and developing a dynamic means of, quite literally, changing the world." - Lord David Puttnam

"If I were a venture capitalist, I would provide funding for each one of these entrepreneurs. If I were a Hollywood producer, I would make a film to tell each one of their stories." - Muhammad Yunus

Hilde Schwab		President and Co-Founder Schwab Foundation for Social Entrepreneurship
Klaus Schwab		Co-Founder, Schwab Foundation for Social Entrepreneurship
Paulo Coelho		Best-selling author, Brazil
David Gergen		Director, Center for Public Leadership, John F. Kennedy School of Government, Harvard University, USA
Zanele Mbeki		First Lady of South Africa
Stephen Brenninkmeijer		Chief Executive Officer, Andromeda Fund BV, United Kingdom
Lord David Puttnam		Chairman, The National Endowment for Science, Technology and the Arts, UK
Muhammad Yunus		Managing Director, Grameen Bank, Bangladesh

		"The most rewarding aspect of the Foundation has been for me to be able to identify and give a platform to so many outstanding social entrepreneurs who deserve to be better known in the world for what they are doing to improve peoples lives." - Hilde Schwab

		"This Foundation has been a dream of ours for many years. My belief always has been that in the end, economic and social progress can only be achieved through entrepreneurship of all kinds. The Foundation enables us to encourage and foster entrepreneurs working for the public interest - to support them and provide them with access and funding to an international platform for experience exchange that they might otherwise lack. We wanted to create a mechanism that works from the bottom up. This approach differs from the approach of the World Economic Forum, which I founded over 30 years ago. At the World Economic Forum we have built global communities that convene every year at Davos and also in different regions of the world, to search for joint solutions to crises or problems at the macroeconomic and geopolitical level. At the beginning of the 21st century, it becomes more evident that social progress cannot depend only on high level cooperation among global decision makers, but also requires community-driven social entrepreneurship on a broad scale." - Klaus Schwab

		"As a mysterious chain of connections and contacts, there is a silent way about solidarity in that if you strive hard you put the right person in front of you at the right time. It is about the human being, solidarity, lighting a flame in the dark. It is about what you did and what you're doing. It is about perseverance, overcoming your fears and respecting your intuition which guides you, and keeping your expectations very, very high." - Paulo Coelho

		"Imagine the transformation that could occur if these social entrepreneurs were allowed to implement their initiatives in one single developing country." - Zanele Mbeki

		"The emergence of a global network of Social Entrepreneurs was one of the more exciting and constructive discoveries of the 1990's. For the most part they honestly didn't know each other existed. The Schwab Foundation was among the first initiatives to attempt to create a coherent network out of this explosion of individual energy. I'm very proud to be playing a small part in nurturing and developing a dynamic means of, quite literally, changing the world." - Lord David Puttnam