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Plenary Discussion SpeakersUniversity for a Night's opening plenary will set the stage for the evening's discussions. Moderated by Synergos' Founder and Chair Peggy Dulany, it will feature Fazle Hasan Abed, Wangari Maathai and Jeff Skoll.
Under Abed's leadership, BRAC has grown into one of the world's largest nonprofit organization with over 100,000 staff members and an annual budget of more than US$430 million, 78% of which is self-financed. BRAC's microfinance program, with 6 million borrowers, has cumulatively disbursed US$4 billion. More than 1.5 million children are currently enrolled in 52,000 BRAC's schools and over 3 million have already graduated. BRAC's health program reaches over 100 million people in Bangladesh with basic healthcare services and programs for TB, Malaria and HIV/AIDS. BRAC has, in recent years, taken its range of development interventions to Afghanistan, Sri Lanka, Tanzania, Uganda and Southern Sudan. Mr. Abed has received numerous national and international awards for his achievements in leading BRAC, including the Ramon Magsaysay Award for Community Leadership (1980), UNICEF's Maurice Pate Award (1992), Olof Palme Award (2001), Schwab Foundation Social Entrepreneurship Award (2002), Gates Award for Global Health (2004), UNDP Mahbub ul Haq Award for Outstanding Contribution in Human Development (2004) and the Henry R. Kravis Prize in Leadership (2007). He is recognized by Ashoka as one of the "global greats" and a founding member of its prestigious Global Academy for Social Entrepreneurship. He has received several honorary degrees including a Doctorate of Humane Letters from Yale University. Abed is featured in three films by Ashoka's Global Academy: Innovator for the Poor: the story of Fazle Hasan Abed and the building of BRAC, Thinking Big and Scaling Up and Achieving the Millennium Development Goals. PBS featured BRAC's health program in its documentary feature Rx for Survival. John A. Quelch and Nathalie Laidler of Harvard Business School have written two teaching case studies on BRAC and its chain of retail craft stores, Aarong. In addition, IESE in Barcelona has carried out research and written a case study on BRAC. For more information, visit www.brac.net.  Martin Rowe photo After becoming the first woman in East and Central Africa to earn a doctoral degree, Maathai taught veterinary anatomy at her alma mater, University of Nairobi. While active in the Maendeleo Ya Wanawake (the National Council of Women of Kenya), Maathai founded the Green Belt Movement, a grassroots organization that encourages Kenyan women to plant trees to counter erosion and deforestation, to provide sustainable fuel, and to empower themselves. Since the foundation of the GreenBelt Movement, over 40 million trees have been planted in Kenya and similar programs have begun in several other African countries. In 2002, she was elected to Parliament, representing the Nyeri District of Kenya. She has been Assistant Minister in the Ministry of Environment, Natural Resources and Wildlife since 2003 and was elected as the first president of the African Union's Economic, Social and Cultural Council in 2005. For more information, visit www.greenbeltmovement.org.
In 1998, Skoll encouraged eBay to create the eBay Foundation, whose mission is "to contribute to the economic and social well-being of local communities." One year later, he created the Skoll Foundation which invests in, connects, and celebrates the world's most promising social entrepreneurs. His production company, Participant Media is a "pro-social media company," that has produced features and documentaries like An Inconvenient Truth, North Country, The Kite Runner, Good Night and Good Luck, Charlie Wilson's War and Syriana to address social and political issues and promote change. Jeff Skoll is currently the Chair of Participant Productions and of the Skoll Foundation. For more information, visit www.skollfoundation.org. 
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Fazle Hasan Abed, Founder and Chairperson of BRAC, was educated in Dhaka and Glasgow Universities, before qualifying as a Chartered Accountant in London. He returned home in the late 1960s to work as an executive with Shell Oil. Abed gave up his corporate career to join Bangladesh's liberation movement and thereafter started BRAC in 1972. 
Jeff Skoll is an entrepreneur, philanthropist, and social activist who uses his economic success to inspire social change. After creating the business plan of eBay and acting as the company's founding President, Jeff Skoll turned his attention to making the world a better place by developing businesses and foundations that embody his entrepreneurial spirit while promoting social advancement.