2021 Frontiers of Social Innovation: Reading List and Recap

How will the social innovation community respond to a world struggling with a global pandemic, continued racial injustices, and assaults on democracy? The 2021 Frontiers of Social Innovation Conference: “People, Power, Resources: Enacting an Equitable Future” brings together senior leaders of nonprofit organizations, philanthropy, academia, business, and government to discuss, debate, and develop ways to build more just societies.

Ahead of the event, SSIR’s editors have assembled a list of articles exploring topics related to each session.

Speakers: Francois Bonnici of the Schwab Foundation for Social Entrepreneurship, Cynthia Rayner of the Bertha Centre for Social Innovation at the University of Cape Town Graduate School of Business, René Parker of RLabs, and Clarita Arboleda of Fundacion Escuela Nueva.

Speakers: Sara Horowitz, founder of the Freelancers Union, former labor lawyer, and former chair of the board of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, and Eric Nee, editor-in-chief of SSIR.

Speakers: Heather Hurlburt of New Models of Policy Change at New America and Blair Glencorse of Accountability Lab.

Speakers: Edgar Villanueva of Decolonizing Wealth Project and Liberated Capital, and Hilary Pennington of the Ford Foundation.

Speakers: Kim Syman of New Profit, Wizipan Little Elk of REDCO Ecosystem, and Gerry Roll of Foundation for Appalachian Kentucky

Speakers: Ryan Easterly of the WITH Foundation, Carol Glazer of the National Organization on Disability, Diana Samarasan of the Disability Rights Fund and the Disability Rights Advocacy Fund, and Haftan Eckholdt of Understood.

Speakers: Cordell Carter of the Socrates Program at the Aspen Institute, Blair Palmer of UNICEF USA, and Stuart Campo of Data Responsibility and the UN OCHA Centre for Humanitarian Data.

Speakers: Hahrie Han of Johns Hopkins University and Arisha Michelle Hatch of Color Of Change.

Speakers: Jim Bildner of the Draper Richards Kaplan Foundation, Frank Aswani of Africa Venture Philanthropy Alliance, Abby Maxman of Oxfam America, and Jeroo Billimoria, a social entrepreneur who co-founded Catalyst 2030.

Speakers: Dana R. Fisher of the University of Maryland will moderate a discussion among the young climate activists Edgar Sánchez from Mexico, Isao Sakai from Japan, and Sophia Kianni from the United States.