Cheryl Dorsey, President

An accomplished social entrepreneur with expertise in health care, labor issues, and public policy, Cheryl Dorsey was named President of Echoing Green in May 2002. She is the first Echoing Green Fellow to lead this global nonprofit, which has awarded more than $28 million in start-up capital to over 450 social entrepreneurs worldwide since 1987.

Cheryl received her education at Harvard-Radcliffe Colleges where she earned a degree in history and science in 1985. In 1992, while training to be a pediatrician at Harvard Medical School, she received an Echoing Green Fellowship. With it, she launched the Family Van, a community-based mobile health unit that provides basic health care and outreach services to at-risk residents of inner-city Boston neighborhoods.

As a public policy innovator, Cheryl served as a White House Fellow from 1997-1998, serving as Special Assistant to the U.S. Secretary of Labor, advising the Clinton Administration on health care and other issues. She was later named Special Assistant to the Director of the Women’s Bureau of the U.S. Labor Department, where she helped develop family-friendly workplace policies and spearheaded the labor secretary’s pay equity initiative.

Cheryl was most recently appointed Vice-Chair of the President’s Commission on White House Fellowships, after serving as a team member of the Innovation and Civil Society subgroup of the Obama Presidential Transition's Technology, Innovation, and Government Reform Policy Working Group. She was named one of "America's Best Leaders" in 2009 by US News & World Report and the Center for Public Leadership at Harvard Kennedy School. Cheryl serves on the board of City Year (national), DonorsChoose.org, Green City Force, and Freelancers Insurance Company, Inc., a for-profit insurance company and subsidiary of Working Today. She also serves as an advisory board member of the Action Tank for Social Entrepreneurs, America Forward, and the Lex Mundi Pro Bono Foundation. Dorsey is a 2006 Henry Crown Fellow through the Aspen Institute, a 2007 Prime Movers Fellow through the Hunt Alternatives Fund, and a member of the John F. Kennedy School of Government’s Visiting Committee.

Cheryl has received numerous awards and honors for her commitment to public service, including 2009 U.S. News America's Best Leader, the John C. Whitehead Social Enterprise Award, Pfizer Roerig History of Medicine Award, the Robert Kennedy Distinguished Public Service Award and the Manuel C. Carballo Memorial Prize. She holds a B.A. in History and Science from Harvard-Radcliffe Colleges, an M.D. from the Harvard Medical School and an M.P.P. from the John F. Kennedy School of Government. She writes and speaks widely on minority affairs, social justice, social entrepreneurship, and maternal and child health issues.

Why do you do what you do?

wdydwyd sign: Champion Change!

We are at a moment in history where we truly have all of the resources we need to take on and solve some of our toughest social problems. We also have a cadre of committed social change agents, such as the Echoing Green Fellows, who are fully dedicated to leading the charge to end poverty, homelessness, educational inequity, global warming, etc. They are leading a quiet revolution, a revolution for positive social change and I truly believe that in my lifetime, we'll see the end of some of these terrible afflictions that rob people of equal opportunity and hope.