My two week hiatus from blogging was consumed by a wonderful trip to Washington, DC and New York. I was on the road attending conferences on social innovation and promoting my business, International Transparency Solutions. Here’s a quick overview of my trip:

Panel Discussion at American University’s School of International Service

My first day in Washington, I spoke on a panel discussing Social Enterprise and Business in Development. I was joined by two wonderful new friends: Teymour Kooros and Kaakpema (KP) Yelpaala. Teymour has a really interesting background in the banking sector, having most recently worked for HSBC. He now has a consulting firm called Global Finance & Analysis and will soon begin work in London for South Africa’s Standard Bank. KP worked for the Clinton Foundation hopping across Africa launching new projects and now works as a consultant at Dalberg Global Development Advisors.

Our mission was to advance the understanding that the private sector can play a very instrumental role in effecting positive social change around the world. We’re at a crossroads in this space where the paradigm is shifting from the feel-good era of non-profits/aid/philanthropy to the era of sustainability and scale through the private sector. I hope that our discussion helped inspire students to look at the private sector as a viable means for doing good in the world.

Lunch with Dean Cowles, SIS

The following day I had a wonderful lunch with Dean Cowles of SIS. We discussed where the school is looking at going in terms of advancing social entrepreneurship and creating more opportunity for students interested in this field. It was very interesting for me to learn about the administrative challenges when it comes to creating something new within the university system. As with most good things, I believe the development of a strong program around social enterprise needs to start with the students.

Leadership for a Better World Conference

Through Twitter, I learned about the Leadership for a Better World Conference and managed to secure a last-minute ticket to the event. The conference served to kick-off the launch of the University of Maryland’s new Center for Social Value Creation. The morning Keynote speaker was Seth Goldman of Honest Tea – an awesome guy with an equally awesome business. It was really neat hearing his story about getting Honest Tea off-the-ground. One of the most important pieces of a product-based business is the distribution network. Honest Tea, in its early days, piggybacked off the distribution networks of what Seth calls the “3 C’s”: Cheese, Corned Beef, and Charcoal – all of which went to grocery stores and had extra room in their trucks. Eventually, they landed the “Big C”: Coca-Cola.

3 key points to take away were:

1. Pay attention to what resonates
2. Evolve / Adapt to the Market, and
3. Lead – Create the future you want!

My second favorite speaker was Rosabeth Moss Kanter, author of the book Supercorp. She shared stories of some of America’s vanguard companies built on core values and working for a higher purpose (or triple bottom line). I can’t wait to start reading her book!

Happy Hour with #SOCENTDC

For those that know me, I’m huge fan of Twitter and the communities/tribes that organically come together on the platform. As I was flying into DC I got a tweet from Chris Washington of SOLVE Coop about getting together while I was in town. Somehow, over the course of the next couple of days we managed to fuse multiple meet-ups into a gathering of DC-based social entrepreneurs (now known through the hash-tag #socentdc). We met up for happy hour at 6PM and before we knew it they were closing the bar around 11PM. It was one of those nights that reminds me of how much I love what I do!

In attendance were Ben Lyon from CreditSMS, Jospeh Scarantino from webstartAfrica, Allison Bassile of The Hub DC, Teymour Kooros of Global Finance and Analysis, and Christopher Washington of SOLVE Coop. If you’re a social entrepreneur in Washington DC, join the #socentdc gang on Twitter!

The Feast Conference

I took the bus from DC to NYC to attend All Day Buffet’s conference, The Feast. It was by far one of the best event’s I’ve been to yet! Jerri and Michael did an awesome job organizing the event. It was a very laid back and comfortable environments (something I think most conferences fail to achieve). I met so many amazing people, and just had a blast.

My favorite speakers included:

• Ken Banks (Kiwanja.net and FrontlineSMS)
• Matthew Bishop, Chief Business Writer of The Economist / Author of Philantrocapitalism
• Joshua Viertel, President of Slow Food USA
• Brian Bordainick, Founder of 9th Ward Field of Dreams

All of the video from the event can be found at: http://alldaybuffet.stream57.com/thefeast/

The Feast Kitchen Pitch Competition

On Friday I joined eight fellow social innovators in a pitch competition. It was a wonderful experience for me, and really awesome to see what other people are doing in the field! The winner of the event was Brett Beach of Madécasse Chocolates — a company that keeps the entire chocolate production value chain in the home country of Madagascar. This ensures that the country earns 4x what they would have earned had they just exported the cocoa beans as is normal practice elsewhere around the world. It’s an awesome business, and I wish him the best of luck! Anything I can do, I’m ready to extend my assistance!