CURRENT EVENT

2010 – Cheryl Dorsey, President, Echoing Green

Dr. Cheryl Dorsey is an accomplished social entrepreneur with expertise in health care, labor issues, and public policy. She has been president of Echoing Green since May 2002.

Dorsey says she entered the nonprofit sector because she "has a long-standing interest and concern about equity issues in society. Having grown up as an African American in our society, you become very sensitive to political, social, and economic inequities."

Although trained as a pediatrician, Dorsey sees social entrepreneurship as an "opportunity to work at a broader, more holistic, community level" rather than helping one person at a time. Dorsey is the first Echoing Green Fellow to head the social venture fund, which has awarded more than $28 million in start-up capital to over 450 social entrepreneurs worldwide since 1987.

She received her Echoing Green Fellowship studying medicine at Harvard University. With it, she launched the Family Van, a community-based mobile health unit that provided basic medical and outreach services to at-risk residents of inner city Boston neighborhoods.

As a public-policy innovator, Dorsey was selected as a White House fellow in 1997 serving for a year as a 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 a pay-equity initiative. Dorsey also served as the first director of public-health initiatives at Danya International Inc., a health communications firm, where she developed products and services aimed at substance-abuse treatment and prevention, child and family services, minority health and community outreach.

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.

Website: http://www.echoinggreen.org