Want to change the world?  Interested in learning more about social entrepreneurship? Do you have an innovative solution that you wish to develop, or are you interested in working with others who do? Join us for an interactive workshop exploring the meaning of social entrepreneurship.  

Learn the basics of designing your own social venture focused on social or environmental issues you care about, and discover programs and resources at Duke and that can help! Last year, students learned about designing business models for social entrepreneurship, examined case studies from successful entrepreneurs, and heard from students involved in their own projects at Duke.

The workshop is open to all Duke students.  Continental breakfast, sandwich lunch, and refreshments provided.  Space is limited to 50 participants so be sure to sign up soon!

Tuesday, September 16th, 2014
5:45p.m., Fuqua School of Business, Lilly Classroom
Light reception to follow
RSVP at https://duke.qualtrics.com/SE/?SID=SV_eLmdqBrevDcRp3v

An estimated 15% of drugs sold in the world are fake—in Africa and Asia this figure can range from 10% to 30%, compromising 10% of the global medicine market. In addition to therapeutic failure and drug resistance resulting from counterfeit medications, anywhere from 30 to 2,500 patients have died from individually recorded instances of counterfeit drug sales every year. Further counterfeit drugs decrease incentives for pharmaceutical companies to enter markets, potentially limiting access to needed drugs.
Sproxil is a U.S.-based company that provides world-class brand protection in emerging markets through software and services that work anywhere there are mobile phones.  Sproxil allows consumers to verify product genuineness within seconds through SMS texts.  This technology allows patients to ensure at the moment of purchase that their drugs are from reputable providers; limiting the chance of negative health impact of counterfeit drugs and products.  To date, Sproxil has verified over 6 million products, giving everyone along the supply chain the power to quickly and confidently verify the authenticity of a drug at each step, ensuring patient safety.  For more information about Sproxil, visit http://sproxil.com/
Speaker Alden Zecha serves as CFO and Strategist of Sproxil, where he is responsible for the overall strategy, finance and administration of the company, Zecha brings to the role more than 25 years of broad-range executive expertise in operations, strategy and finance, and vast experience from work in more than 20 countries. Prior to joining Sproxil, Zecha co-founded and served as CFO of ultra-luxury travel company PrivatSea and as CFO of Rethos, a sustainability and corporate social responsibility social media website. Zecha received his MSE and BSE with honors in chemical engineering from Princeton University, where he was a United Technologies Scholar, and holds a certificate in finance from the University of Virginia’s Darden School of Business.

The 2nd Annual SEAD Summit brings together leading healthcare innovators from around the world for an intensive three day accelerator focused on scaling proven healthcare solutions.  This year's Summit will take place at Duke University from April 2-4, 2014 in Durham, North Carolina.  All SEAD innovators are invited to send one participant to attend the full training which provides an opportunity to meet CEO's of leading healthcare innovations, work with leading professors from Duke's Fuqua School of Business and Duke Medicine, network with undergraduate and graduate students, participate in roundtables with USAID and other healthcare funders and showcase their innovations to the broader Raleigh-Durham community.  While the accelerator portion of the SEAD Summit is closed to SEAD innovators, the general public is invited to attend the SEAD Symposium taking place on Friday, April 4th with registration found here.

For more information, please visit our main SEAD Summit and Symposium site.

Ron Garan
Colonel, United States Air Force (retired)
Former NASA Astronaut

Ron Garan, a highly decorated Fighter Pilot and Test Pilot, describes himself as an Explorer, Entrepreneur and Humanitarian who believes that appropriately designed and targeted social enterprise can solve many of the problems facing our world. To date, as a NASA astronaut he traveled 71,075,867 miles during 178 days in space and 27 hours and 3 minutes of EVA during four spacewalks. Ron is also an aquanaut and participated in the joint NASA-NOAA, NEEMO-9 mission, an exploration research mission held in Aquarius, the world's only undersea research laboratory.

Working in partnership with the US Agency for International Development (USAID), Ron is leading an effort called Unity Node to develop a universal, open source, collaborative platform to enable humanitarian organizations around the world to work together toward their common goals and is also leading an effort to establish the Applied Research Projects Agency for Development (ARPA-D) program for USAID.

Outside his work with the US government, Ron is also a serial entrepreneur and has founded multiple business enterprises and social-impact focused startups including Manna Energy Ltd. Manna also developed a four million person program operating in Kenya, completely funded by carbon credits and is currently working on a three million person program in Rwanda.