Cheryl Dorsey, President

Cheryl Dorsey is President of Echoing Green, a pioneer in the social entrepreneurship movement. The mission of Echoing Green is to unleash next generation talent to solve the world’s biggest problems. Its signature program, the Echoing Green Fellowship, provides seed capital and support to the most promising social entrepreneurs with bold ideas for change. Dorsey, as co-founder of 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, received an Echoing Green Fellowship in 1992 to help launch the program. She is the first Echoing Green Fellow to lead this global social venture fund, which has awarded over $30 million in start-up capital to 500 social entrepreneurs worldwide since 1987.

Dorsey has served in two presidential administrations as a White House Fellow and Special Assistant to the U.S. Secretary of Labor (1997-98); Special Assistant to the Director of the Women's Bureau of the U.S. Labor Department (1998-99); and Transition Team Member of the Innovation and Civil Society subgroup of the Technology, Innovation, and Government Reform Policy Working Group (2008-09).

Dorsey serves on several boards including the Harvard Board of Overseers, the SEED Foundation,  and Northeast Bank. She also serves asVice Chair for the President's Commission on White House Fellowships;. Dorsey has received numerous public service awards and recognition for her work including the Leonard J. Siff Prize for best History of Science Senior Thesis (1985), Robert Kennedy Distinguished Public Service Award (1992), First Recipient, Jane Rainie Opel '50, Young Alumna Award, Radcliffe College Alumnae Association (1995), Henry Crown Fellow, Aspen Institute (2006), and Prime Movers Fellow, Hunt Alternatives Fund (2007). In 2009, Dorsey was named one of "America's Best Leaders" by US News & World Report and the Center for Public Leadership at Harvard Kennedy School. And in 2010, she was named as one of The Nonprofit Times' "Power and Influence Top 50."

Dorsey received her Bachelor's degree in History and Science magna cum laude with highest honors from Harvard-Radcliffe Colleges, her medical degree from Harvard Medical School, and her Master's in Public Policy from Harvard Kennedy School. She completed her pediatric residency at Children’s National Medical Center in Washington, DC.

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.