The Boryana Damyanova Program for Corporate Responsibility Recipients

Shaharris Beh, EPIIC'02, is the Founder of HackerNest. HackerNest is a nonprofit organization and movement that builds local tech communities around the world whose mission is economic development through technological proliferation, to give everyone the opportunity to get into tech so they can afford to be healthier and happier. HackerNest produces epic hackathons like Construct (Canada's largest hardware hackathon) and Disruption By Design (Deloitte Canada's very first hackathon). It is best known for DementiaHack (http://hackernest.com/dementiahack), the world's foremost dementia hackathon series. DementiaHack Toronto 2015 was presented by Facebook, supported by the UK government, the Public Health Agency of Canada, and the Ontario Ministry of Health and Long-Term Care.

Allister Chang is the Executive Director of Libraries Without Borders, overseeing all operations of the organization in the United States.Libraries Without Borders is a leading international organizations working in culture and knowledge-based development around the world. Understanding that access to knowledge is a key factor in social and economic development, LWB supports local initiatives in more than 20 countries by creating libraries, training librarians, distributing books, supporting local publishing, designing library networks, promoting cultural heritage, and reducing the digital divide. He is an alumnus of the Institute's Synaptic Scholars program.

Neil Blumenthal, an alumnus of the EPIIC "Global Inequities" year, is the co-founder of Warby Parker, the transformative lifestyle brand that sells prescription eyeglasses and sunglasses at affordable prices, while leading the way for socially-conscious businesses. For every pair of glasses it sells, Warby Parker distributes another in the developing world, in partnership with VisionSpring, where Blumenthal began his career. Founded in 2010, Warby Parker has successfully distributed more than one million eyeglasses to people in need. In this interview with Tufts Admissions from July 2014, Neil talks about founding Warby Parker and the impact of EPIIC.

Kate Konschnik is a Lecturer on Law and the founding Director of Harvard Law School’s Environmental Policy Initiative of the Environmental Law Program, a policy shop providing real-world legal analysis of front-page energy and environmental issues. EPI seeks to advance discussion and propose solutions with its research, sharing findings in policy-relevant talks and products. Konschnik and EPI attorneys and students have presented to leading state and national organizations including the National Research Council, the National Governors’ Association, the federal EPA, Groundwater Protection Council, the Midwestern Power Sector Collaborative, and the United States Secretary of Energy’s Advisory Board. Prior to joining Harvard Law School, Konschnik was Chief Environmental Counsel to U.S. Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-R.I.), and directed his staff on the Oversight Subcommittee of the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee. From 2002 to 2009, Konschnik also served as an environmental enforcement trial attorney in the Environment and Natural Resources Division of the United States Department of Justice.

Michael H. Posner is the Jerome Kohlberg Professor of Ethics and Finance and a Professor of Business and Society at NYU's Stern School of Business, where he is working to launch the first-ever center on business and human rights at a business school. Prior to joining NYU Stern, Posner served from 2009 to 2013 in the Obama Administration as Assistant Secretary of State for the Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights and Labor at the State Department. From 1978 to 2009, he led Human Rights First, a New York-based human rights advocacy organization. Posner is recognized as a leader and expert in advancing a rights-based approach to national security, challenging the practice of torture, combating discrimination, and refugee protection. He is a frequent public commentator on these issues, and has testified dozens of times before the U.S. Congress. As Assistant Secretary, Posner traveled extensively, representing the U.S. Government to foreign officials and representatives of civil society in countries of strategic importance to the United States, including China, Russia, Egypt, Burma, Bahrain, Nigeria, Afghanistan, and Pakistan, among many others. Throughout his career, Posner has been a prominent voice in support of human rights protections in global business operations in the manufacturing supply chain, the extractives industry, and the information and communications technology sector. As a member of the White House Apparel Industry Partnership Task Force in the mid-'90s, he helped found the Fair Labor Association (FLA), an organization that brings together corporations, local leaders, universities, and NGOs to promote corporate accountability for working conditions in the apparel industry. He was a founding member of the Global Network Initiative, a multi-stakeholder initiative aimed at promoting free expression and privacy rights on the Internet, and has spoken widely on the issue of Internet freedom. Posner spearheaded the U.S. Government's efforts to enhance the effectiveness of the Voluntary Principles on Security and Human Rights, which works to improve human rights around oil, gas, and mining operations. Posner played a key role in proposing and campaigning for the first U.S. law providing for political asylum, which became part of the Refugee Act of 1980, as well as the Torture Victim Protection Act, which was adopted in 1992. In 1998, he led the Human Rights First delegation to the Rome conference at which the statute of the International Criminal Court (ICC) was adopted.

Listen to Mr. Posner's talk here

Bob Massie is the President and CEO of the New Economics Institute. An ordained Episcopal minister, he graduated from Princeton University and Yale Divinity School. He received his doctorate in business policy from Harvard Business School in 1989. From 1989 to 1996 he taught at Harvard Divinity School, where he served as the director of the Project on Business, Values, and the Economy. His 1998 book, Loosing the Bonds: The United States and South Africa in the Apartheid Years, won the Lionel Gelber prize for the best book on international relations in the world. He was the Democratic nominee for lieutenant governor of Massachusetts in 1994 and a candidate for the United States Senate in 2011. Over his career Massie has created or led three ground-breaking sustainability organizations, serving as the president of Ceres, the co-founder and first chair of the Global Reporting Initiative,the world's leading standard for corporate sustainability, and is the initiator of the Investor Network on Climate Risk, which currently has over 100 members with combined assets over $11 trillion. His autobiography, A Song in the Night: A Memoir of Resilience, was published in 2012.