The 10 Most Successful Social Entrepreneurs
Many entrepreneurs have chosen to accumulate wealth in the private sector and become philanthropists later in life. Now, however, a growing number of entrepreneurs are working to solve social issues using their businesses.
Globally, a new business model has emerged that meshes businesses with government and social organizations. Nonprofits and for-profit businesses can team up to form a hybrid business model, led by a new generation of social entrepreneurs. These leaders successfully tackle social issues while generating profit for shareholders.
Widespread use of ethical practices such as impact investing, conscious consumerism, and corporate social responsibility programs facilitated the success of the following 10 social entrepreneurs.
Key Takeaways
- Social entrepreneurs look to establish new businesses that contribute positively to the greater social good.
- While many socially conscious companies are for-profit, they also focus on solving social problems.
- Such companies often contribute to their communities or help those in need.
- Social entrepreneurship is growing, with capital provided by investors looking at socially responsible investing and environmental, social, and governance criteria.
1. Bill Drayton
Bill Drayton is recognized as one of the pioneering social entrepreneurs of our time.
Drayton founded Ashoka in 1980. The company “envisions a world in which everyone is a changemaker.” It takes a multifaceted approach to finding and supporting social entrepreneurs globally. Its three priorities are:
- Social entrepreneurship: Selecting promising “Ashoka Fellows” around the world and providing them with the knowledge, finances, and logistical means to effect change.
- Empathy and young changemaking: Helping and inspiring the young along their journey to become changemakers.
- Organizing for changemaking: Partnering with businesses, schools, and business advisors to recast the standard business model so that it better engages people, nurtures potential, and creates opportunities to tackle problems.
Drayton also serves as chair of the board for Get America Working!, Youth Venture, and Community Greens.
2. Rachel Brathen
“Yoga Girl” is the name of Rachel Brathen’s New York Times best-selling book and her handle on social media, where she has over two million followers.
In addition to introducing viewers to life-changing practices for personal growth and community connections, Rachel hopes to connect teachers with people in the online community who need healing. She seeks to improve the lives of many by helping her followers find beauty in their own.
“What if social media could become a social mission?” asks Brathen. She runs two non-profits, Sgt. Pepper’s Friends, which is an animal rescue organization in Aruba, and Yoga Girl® Foundation, which provides for women and children in need.
Her online channel oneoeight.tv, which offered health, yoga, and meditation services, was transformed into her website and the company of which she is CEO. From there, she inspires yoga practitioners and many others across the globe to find balance, promote their inner healing, live life mindfully, and give back to their communities.
3. Shiza Shahid
As co-founder and global ambassador of the Malala Fund, Shiza Shahid manages business operations for Malala Yousafzai, the teenager who became the youngest winner of the Nobel Peace Prize in 2014.
Like Malala, Shahid was born in Pakistan. She initially reached out to Malala in 2009 and worked to organize a camp for her and other Pakistani girls. In 2012, Shiza flew to Malala’s bedside after she was targeted and shot by the Taliban for promoting education for girls.
Inspired by Malala’s desire to continue campaigning for gender equality and education, Shahid decided to help Malala strategize her campaign. Shahid created the Malala Fund, which helps empower women and girls by advocating and spreading access to education.
4. Blake Mycoskie
After a trip to Argentina in 2006, Blake Mycoskie became the founder and chief shoe giver of TOMS Shoes, using some of his own money to launch the company.
Originally, TOMS pledged to donate one pair of shoes for every pair sold. It expanded this One-For-One campaign to support water, sight, birth, and anti-bullying initiatives. Using the TOMS brand, Mycoskie has raised awareness about issues such as global poverty and health.
The company donated $10,000 to each of 10 nonprofit organizations in 10 different countries. The money was used to provide mental health services to those in need. And as of 2020, TOMS had given away 100 million pairs of shoes.
Today, TOMS’ expanded “Impact Model” calls for it to give away a third of the company’s profits for “grassroots good.” That means its money goes to cash grants and partnerships with nonprofits “working to create impact in three areas: mental health, access to opportunity and ending gun violence.”
In 2023, TOMS funded 39 organizations in 17 communities located in 11 countries around the world.
Social entrepreneurs often work with a focus on the 6 Ps. These are people, problem, plan, prioritize, prototype, and pursue.
5. Scott Harrison
Scott Harrison left a life of luxury in New York City and headed for the shores of West Africa to volunteer with a hospital ship charity named Mercy Ships.
The trip was a watershed moment, and in 2006 Harrison founded charity: water, a nonprofit with the goal of providing clean water to every human being on the planet who needed it.
As of 2022, it had provided safe and potable drinking water in 29 countries around the world. It had raised more than $750 million and fulfilled 152,000 water projects.
6. Muhammad Yunus
Professor Muhammad Yunus is renowned for the popularization of microfinance and microcredit, which serve as the cornerstones of the Grameen Bank, founded in 1983.
In 2006, Yunus was awarded the Nobel Prize for creating the Grameen Bank, which is based on the principles of trust and solidarity to empower villagers with the funding to pull themselves out of poverty.
According to the Grameen Bank, as of May 2022, 90% of its about nine million borrowers are women, who pay their loans back at a rate of 97%—a recovery rate higher than any traditional banking system.
This renowned professor has received international awards such as the U.S. Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2009, the Congressional Gold Medal in 2010, and the Olympic Laurel in 2021.
7. Jeffrey Hollender
Jeffrey Hollender is well known as the former chief executive officer (CEO) and co-founder of Seventh Generation, a popular business offering natural products.
He is now a leading consultant, speaker, and activist for corporate social responsibility. He has written seven books including “How to Make the World a Better Place.”
Hollender is also co-founder and CEO of Hollender Sustainable Brands, which sells sustainable products for sexual and personal health, such as condoms, tampons, lubricants, and pads, among other things.
Hollender is an adjunct professor at New York University and co-founder and board chair of the American Sustainable Business Council. He is a board member of various other organizations, including Greenpeace USA, Health Care Without Harm, and workers’ rights organization Verité.
8. Xavier Helgesen, Christopher “Kreece” Fuchs, and Jeff Kurtzman
These three co-founders of Better World Books—a B-Corp online bookstore that funds global literacy—all deserve recognition as successful social entrepreneurs. The founders met at Notre Dame University, where they tutored the football team and started collecting unwanted books to sell on the internet.
Helgesen is the co-founder of Off Grid Electric, which provides renewable energy to homes in the off-grid world.
Fuchs went on to become the Chief Operating Officer at Trek10, a company that helps clients use Amazon Web Services.
Kurtzman previously held the CEO position at Aid Through Trade, a company that distributes handmade accessories from Nepal to the U.S. He was responsible for a 125% growth in sales. He also co-founded the nonprofit Operation Incubation, which delivers low-cost, low-maintenance incubators to the developing world.
Since 1998, the Schwab Foundation has awarded social entrepreneurs for their efforts to address major issues facing global societies. It established a new category for its 2025 awards, the “Collective Social Innovation Award.” This was inspired by the collective model that social entrepreneurs developed to tackle the wide-spread, systemic issues that can be solved only when organizations work together to achieve lasting change.
9. Marc Koska
Marc Koska re-designed medical tools and introduced a non-reusable, inexpensive syringe that can be used in underfunded clinics. This innovation safeguards against the transmission of blood-borne diseases.
Koska founded the SafePoint Trust in 2006, which delivered four billion safe injections in 40 countries via his auto-disable syringes.
The Schwab Foundation Social Entrepreneurs of the Year in 2015 cited Koska for his pioneering solution to a world health issue. The World Health Organization (WHO) announced a global policy on safe injections in February 2015.
10. Sanjit “Bunker” Roy
Sanjit “Bunker” Roy had a privileged upbringing in India. When Roy visited some of his country’s rural villages, he had a life-altering experience and decided to find a way to improve the socioeconomic inequities in his country.
He founded Barefoot College in 1972, a grassroots-organized, solar-powered college for the poor with the mission of helping rural communities obtain basic services and solutions and become self-sufficient and sustainable. Roy describes Barefoot College as “the only college where the teacher is the learner and the learner is the teacher.”
In 2017, Princeton University awarded Roy with a doctor of law degree, citing his activism and ingenuity as the force for so many vital benefits to India’s poorest communities. These included innovation, prosperity, security, empowerment, self-sufficiency and hope.
What Is Social Entrepreneurship?
Social entrepreneurship is a concept that relates to a company founded with a mission to promote social good. These are often for-profit ventures that leverage technology and ingenuity to solve serious problems of societal importance such as hunger, disease, lack of water and other basic necessities, inequality, as well as environmental issues.
What Is Socially-Responsible Investing?
Who Was the First Social Entrepreneur?
While there have been many businessmen focused on social issues throughout history, the first person to coin the term “social entrepreneur” was Bill Drayton, founder and CEO of Ashoka, in 1980. Today he is known by some as the “father of social entrepreneurship.”
The Bottom Line
These 10 inspiring social entrepreneurs use business to both generate profit and solve some of the world’s most daunting social problems. Innovation takes many forms, and it’s wonderful when insightful ideas can be put to work to address global social issues. Social entrepreneurs take the road less traveled to build flourishing hybrid businesses with triple-bottom lines.
