The Skoll Foundation is proud to announce Cheryl L. Dorsey, President of Echoing Green, as its newest Board member.
Echoing Green is a global organization that finds and supports emerging social entrepreneurs and invests deeply in their ideas and leadership as they work to solve the world’s toughest problems. Prior to leading Echoing Green, Cheryl was a social entrepreneur herself and received an Echoing Green Fellowship in 1992 to help launch The Family Van, a community-based mobile health unit in Boston. She became the first Echoing Green Fellow to head the social venture fund in 2002 and has been a bridge-builder between emerging entrepreneurs, change leaders, and funders.
In addition to her expertise in the social impact space, Cheryl also has extensive public sector policy experience. She served in two presidential administrations as a White House Fellow and Special Assistant to the U.S. Secretary of Labor (1997-98), Special Assistant to the Director of the Women’s Bureau of the U.S. Labor Department (1998-99), and Vice Chair for the President’s Commission on White House Fellowships (2009-2017).
“I am incredibly honored to join the Skoll Foundation Board and team, especially in this unprecedented moment of need and opportunity,” said Dorsey. “Having spent the last 18 years leading and building Echoing Green, I know that a collaborative, alliance-based approach between the Skoll Foundation and other social innovation players to make our collective work more inclusive, equitable, and sustainable is essential—now more than ever.”
“Cheryl is a leader I’ve admired for a long time,” said Jeff Skoll, founder and chairman of the Skoll Foundation. “We welcome her deep expertise on social innovation, reducing barriers to capital for leaders of color, and her ever-positive belief in entrepreneurship as a method for achieving a better world for all.”
Cheryl has been a tireless and dynamic advocate for driving true transformational change through social entrepreneurship as well as racial justice and equity in philanthropy. She has advocated for equitable funding for leaders of color from boardrooms to public stages like the Skoll World Forum, the World Economic Forum, and more.
In 2020, Cheryl co-authored a research report in partnership with The Bridgespan Group, Racial Equity and Philanthropy: Disparities in Funding for Leaders of Color Leave Impact on the Table. The report takes a close look at how the persistent barriers between capital and leaders of color can be broken down and how philanthropic capital can be distributed equitably, reaching problem-solvers who have the lived experience and understanding of the challenges so critical to the development of sustainable solutions.
“Cheryl has been one of my teachers for a long time. Her incredible work leading Echoing Green has paved the way for us to begin to address funding disparities for leaders of color who are driving transformational change,” said Don Gips, CEO of the Skoll Foundation. “As the Skoll Foundation embarks on a journey to work with proximate change leaders across sectors to help advance racial justice and equity, I can’t think of a more collaborative, humble leader for us to learn from.”
Cheryl’s expertise across sectors and disciplines, including medicine, will be invaluable in helping the Skoll Foundation and its partners respond as swiftly and strategically as possible to support solutions to the COVID-19 crisis and so many other urgent and interrelated global challenges.
Cheryl’s board service has included the Harvard Board of Overseers and the SEED Foundation. She has a medical degree from Harvard Medical School and her Master’s in Public Policy from Harvard Kennedy School. She earned her Bachelor’s degree in History and Science magna cum laude from Harvard-Radcliffe Colleges.
Cheryl has received numerous awards for her commitment to public service, including the Pfizer Roerig History of Medicine Award, the Robert Kennedy Distinguished Public Service Award, and the Manuel C. Carballo Memorial Prize. She has been featured as one of “America’s Best Leaders” by US News & World Report and the Center for Public Leadership at Harvard Kennedy School and is a Schwab Foundation Social Innovation Thought Leader.
