Ashoka CEO Is NewDay Speaker

Bill Drayton, founder and CEO of Ashoka, the world's largest association of social entrepreneurs, will speak today (Feb. 2) on the uptown campus.

He will give a lecture at 5:30 p.m. in the Kendall Cram Lecture Hall of the Lavin-Bernick Center for University Life. The event is free of charge and open to the public.

Drayton's lecture is part of the Tulane New Day Social Entrepreneurship Distinguished Speakers Series, a yearlong effort to bring in leaders from across the field of social entrepreneurship to share their experiences, challenges, insights, thoughts and recommendations with students and the community.

Founded in 1980, Ashoka is a nonprofit organization dedicated to finding and fostering social entrepreneurs worldwide. Drayton, who also is chair of Youth Venture, Community Greens and Get America Working!, was named by US News and World Report as one of America's 25 Best Leaders in 2005.

The American Society of Public Administration and the National Academy of Public Administration jointly awarded him their National Public Service Award, and Common Cause gave him its Public Service Achievement Award. He also was named a Preiskel-Silverman Fellow for Yale Law School and is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.

The New Day Social Entrepreneurship Distinguished Speakers Series is part of Tulane Social Entrepreneurship Initiatives, which include the NewDay Challenge, a social venture competition for Tulane students, and the AshokaU Changemaker Campus Initiative, a student-led partnership with Ashoka to organize events that support social innovation and entrepreneurship on campus.