Founder and CEO, Be the Change, Inc.
Alan Khazei is a social entrepreneur who has pioneered ways to empower citizens to make a difference. Alan is the Founder and CEO of Be The Change, Inc., which creates bi-partisan national issue based campaigns to affect public policy and culture by organizing coalitions of nonprofits, social entrepreneurs, policymakers, private sector leaders, academics, and citizens. Be the Change has three campaigns: ServiceNation to promote a year of national service as a civic rite of passage; Opportunity Nation to promote social mobility, expand opportunity and fight poverty; and Got Your 6 to support Veterans from the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq and recognize them as civic assets and leaders. Service Nation played a leadership role in the enactment of the strongly bi-partisan Kennedy Serve America Act in April of 2009. Alan also serves with John Bridgeland, as the Co-Chair of the Franklin Project on National Service at the Aspen Institute. Alan is the Co-Founder and former CEO of City Year, an education-focused national service program that unites young adults, ages 17 to 24, from all backgrounds for an intensive year of full-time community service mentoring, tutoring, and educating children. City Year served as the model for President Clinton’s AmeriCorps program and now operates in 25 cities in America, London and Birmingham in the U.K. and Johannesburg, South Africa, with more than 2700 Corps Members serving more than 150,000 school children. Alan has served on the boards of leading national nonprofits and has received numerous awards, including the Reebok Human Rights Award, the Jefferson Award for Public Service, and the Schwab Foundation Social Entrepreneur Award. In 2014, Alan and his wife, New Profit CEO and Founder Vanessa Kirsch, were named to CNN Money/Fortune’s “World’s Greatest Leaders: 9 Dynamic Duos.” In 2006 U.S. News and World Report named Alan as one of America’s Best Leaders. Alan has been a candidate for the U.S. Senate in Massachusetts. He is also the author of Big Citizenship: How pragmatic idealism can bring out the best in America. Alan is an honors graduate of Harvard College and Harvard Law School and the recipient of several honorary degrees. He currently teaches a course on social entrepreneurship at Harvard’s John F. Kennedy School of Government. Alan lives in Brookline, Massachusetts with his wife, Vanessa Kirsch, and their two children.