William Drayton
William Drayton is a social entrepreneur. As a student at Harvard, Balliol College in Oxford University and Yale Law School, he was active in civil rights and founded a number of organizations, such as Harvard’s Ashoka Table, an interdisciplinary weekly forum in the social sciences.After graduating from Yale in 1970, he began his career at McKinsey and Co. From 1977 to 1981, Mr. Drayton served as an Assistant Administrator with the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.
In 1981, while working part-time at McKinsey, he launched Ashoka and Save EPA and its successor, Environmental Safety. In 1984, with support he received as a MacArthur Fellow, he was able to devote himself fully to Ashoka.
Mr. Drayton is currently Chairman & CEO of Ashoka: Innovators for the Public. He is also chair of Youth Venture, Community Greens, and Get America Working!. Mr. Drayton has won numerous awards and honors. In 2005, he was selected as one of America’s Best Leaders by US News and World Report and Harvard’s Center for Public Leadership.