Abby Falik, CEO of Global Citizen Year, Talks About Innovation

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Abby Falik presenting at the Harvard Business School Conference in March 2010.

Join us on Tuesday, June 12th when we'll have Abby Falik (http://globalcitizenyear.org/about/our-team/), founder and CEO of the San Francisco-based non-profit Global Citizen Year (http://globalcitizenyear.org/).

Presenter Bio:

Abigail Falik is the Founder and CEO of Global Citizen Year (http://www.globalcitizenyear.org), an award-winning social venture that is building a pipeline of emerging leaders who have the global skills to thrive in college and 21st century careers. Under her leadership, Global Citizen Year has developed a model to train a diverse corps of high school graduates through apprenticeships across Africa, Latin America and Asia during a transformative bridge year before college. Today, Abigail leads the global team: setting organizational strategy, securing resources and building the cross-sector partnerships to ensure that someday, an immersive global “bridge year” becomes the norm, rather than the exception.

Abigail has dedicated her professional life to unleashing young peoples’ potential as leaders and global citizens. Prior to founding Global Citizen Year, Abigail spent 10 years as an educator and entrepreneur working in communities across the US and around the world. Most recently, she designed and launched an initiative which empowers youth to overcome the challenges of global poverty, and today her model has become a flagship program of Mercy Corps.

Abigail is a frequent speaker on social innovation and global education, and her work has been featured at the Clinton Global Initiative, the Aspen Ideas Festival, Pop!Tech, and in the New York Times. For her achievements as a social entrepreneur she has been recognized as a Draper Richards Kaplan Entrepreneur, a Mind Trust Fellow, and a Harvard Social Enterprise Fellow.

Abigail holds a B.A. and M.Ed. from Stanford University, and an M.B.A. from Harvard Business School.

About Global Citizen Year:

Global Citizen Year sees the path to college as an extraordinary—and untapped—opportunity to unleash the potential of a new generation of global leaders. To harness this opportunity, each year Global Citizen Year recruits and trains a diverse corps of high-potential graduating high school seniors and supports them through an intensive 10-month “bridge year” of service learning and leadership training in emerging economies, before college. Through world-class training, mentorship and individualized apprenticeships, Global Citizen Year Fellows develop the skills and perspectives that prepare them for a lifetime of global citizenship. By nurturing a dynamic network of alumni over time, Global Citizen Year seeks to build a pipeline of new American leaders, and catalyze a paradigm shift in the way our nation’s youth prepare for success in college, careers, and 21st century challenges.

Today, 100 Fellows have successfully completed a Global Citizen Year in communities across Brazil, Ecuador and Senegal. In the next three years Global Citizen Year aims to engage an additional 500 Fellows and prepare for rapid scale. Ultimately, Global Citizen Year envisions a future in which a global bridge year before college is the norm, not the exception, in how young Americans prepare for success in college and the global economy.