Special Section
The Next Generation: Emerging Leaders Under 40
Diversity Executive Staff, 05-10-2009
Continued from 2 Article Beginning
– Deanna Hartley
Priya Haji, 38
CEO and Co-Founder
World of Good Inc.
Priya Haji has long been a social entrepreneur. When she was in high school, she helped her father with his free health clinic in their hometown in Texas. During her senior year at Stanford University, Haji co-founded Free at Last, a nonprofit agency based in East Palo Alto that works to “reduce the spread of HIV; break the cycle of addiction and incarceration; and rebuild families” among other things, according to the agency’s Web site.
As the executive director of Free at Last, Haji grew the program to become a national model serving 3,000 people per year with 10 facilities and an annual budget of $2.5 million.
After finishing her MBA at the University of California Berkeley’s Haas School of Business in May 2003, she traveled for six months in Asia and Latin America. After her trip, Haji wanted to connect artisans from around the world to the U.S. marketplace. As a result, in 2004 she co-founded World of Good, a company that buys and sells fair trade crafts such as scarves, jewelry and housewares.
According to its Web site, the nonprofit organization’s mission is to build strategies to substantially improve economic and social conditions for millions of artisans and their families living on less than $4 per day. World of Good also promotes fair trade practices and invests in fair trade artisan communities around the world and works to educate U.S. consumers and corporations about the benefits of engaging in ethical trade practices to bridge the gap between the global North and South.
“We’re trying to get consumerism to be a force for good,” Haji said of World of Good in a 2008 Fast Company article.
Haji was recognized in 1998 as one of America’s 10 Most Outstanding Young Leaders by the Do Something Foundation, MTV and Mademoiselle magazine.
– Lindsay Edmonds Wickman
Jared Isaacman, 26
Founder and CEO
United Bank Card
Like many creative new business ideas, the concept for United Bank Card came during a low-key brainstorming session in someone’s basement. Unlike many creative new business ideas, however, the idea generator was a New Jersey high school student named Jared Isaacman.
In 1999, Isaacman was working in the IT department of a credit card company. During the course of his work, he recognized the need to speed up credit card transaction times. So he recruited friends and family — and used $10,000 in stock his grandfather had given him as start-up capital — to found United Bank Card (UBC), according to BusinessWeek.
One of the first payment processing services for credit, debit, gift and other card transactions, UBC today processes more than $9 billion transactions from more than 100,000 merchant locations each year. Isaacman, now 26, serves as CEO for the company, which in 2007 was named one of Deloitte & Touche’s Technology Fast 50 for New York, New Jersey and Connecticut, and the same year ranked on the Inc 500 list of the fastest-growing private companies in the U.S. for the third consecutive time.
Isaacman has been named one of America’s Best Entrepreneurs by BusinessWeek, was a finalist for the Ernst & Young “Entrepreneur of the Year” award in 2006 and the same year was named second on Inc’s list of the 30 Entrepreneurs Under 30.
Some might argue Isaacman’s greatest achievements aren’t actually in the business arena, however. That’s because he’s a major player in philanthropic endeavors and donates to various charities. He launched a program called Pennies for Humanity that allows UBC clients to contribute a portion from every credit card transaction to their preferred charitable organization. Isaacman also recently flew around the world for the Make-A-Wish Foundation, setting 17 world records and raising almost $60,000.
– Agatha Gilmore
Saru Jayaraman, 34
Co-Director
Restaurant Opportunities Centers United (ROC)
With degrees from UCLA, Harvard and Yale, Saru Jayaraman likely could have written her own employment ticket, but she began a career dedicated to service before she ever entered the workforce.
While still an undergraduate studying political science at UCLA, she began working with homeless families in Los Angeles. She found many of those families were led by single mothers, and she wanted to provide them with more options.
“We started working with middle school girls, which in LA was the age a lot of people’s lives were starting to change,” Jayaraman said. “We set up the mentoring program in LA first. I built it up through graduate and law school and then left it in the hands of the young women at the end of my schooling.”
W.I.S.E. (Women in Youth Supporting Each Other) now has more than 10 chapters nationally, and the organization earned praise from former President Clinton.
After Yale law school, Jayaraman started a program at a workers center in Long Island, where she helped low-wage, factory, custodial and restaurant workers learn their rights and collectively act on them. She left after Sept. 11but went back when the union from Windows on the World, the restaurant on top of the World Trade Center, called asking for help supporting its displaced workers.
Jayaraman started a new support center that quickly evolved when she realized how dire conditions were for these workers.
“Less than 1 percent of all workers have a union,” she explained. “They’re largely immigrants and workers of color, and there’s a lot of discrimination, exploitation and abuse on the job.”
So began ROC New York, which has grown during the past seven years.
After starting ROC New York, Jayaraman left it in the hands of restaurant workers and started a national organization that has created ROC affiliates in Chicago, Detroit, New Orleans, Maine and Miami since January 2008.
“Our philosophy is to hire from the membership because we believe workers have to lead their own struggle,” she said. “Our role is to set up the organizations in these locations, let them grow and thrive and then bring them together for some voice on the federal level.”
Jayaraman said federal legislation, publishing national research, having a voice on the national scale and ultimately developing solidarity and formal ties with restaurant-worker organizations globally are next on her agenda.
“We have a long way to go to have equal opportunity for people of color in this country. It’s super important for there to be diverse leadership and almost more important for leadership to reflect the membership and the masses,” Jayaraman said.
“I clearly have degrees, and I’m privileged in many ways. So my role is to facilitate more leaders developing from the base to take over, as I’ve done in every organization I’ve founded. Diversity happens when people either seize leadership and force their way in, or people who are wise step aside and make room for more leaders to grow.”
– Kellye Whitney
Mona Jhaveri, Ph.D., 38
Founder and CEO
Foligo Therapeutics
