2009 Speaker Bios
Van Jones
Van Jones is the newly named special advisor for Green Jobs, Enterprise and Innovation at the White House Council on Environmental Quality, founding president of Green For All and a senior fellow with the Center for American Progress. He is also the author of The Green Collar Economy (Harper One 2008), which is endorsed by Nancy Pelosi, Tom Daschle and Al Gore.
Green For All is an organization that promotes green-collar jobs and opportunities for the disadvantaged. Its mission is to build an inclusive, green economy — strong enough to resolve the ecological crisis and lift millions of people out of poverty.
A champion for the toughest urban constituencies and causes, Jones has received numerous honors including selection as a TIME Magazine 2008 Environmental Hero; one of Fast Company’s 12 Most Creative Minds of 2008; and designation as one of the most influential/inspiring African Americans of 2008 by Essence Magazine. Earlier in his career, Van was also awarded the 1998 Reebok International Human Rights Award; the International Ashoka Fellowship; selection as a World Economic Forum "Young Global Leader;” and the Rockefeller Foundation "Next Generation Leadership" Fellowship.
In 2008, renowned author and New York Times columnist Tom Friedman profiled Jones in his bestselling book, Hot, Flat & Crowded.
Ophelia Dahl
For more than 20 years, Ophelia Dahl has worked tirelessly as an advocate for the health and rights of the poor. Dahl first traveled to impoverished central Haiti in 1983 at age 18 to volunteer at Eye Care Haiti, a small clinic where she met Paul Farmer. Since then they have worked to bring health care to the destitute sick, beginning with a few small villages in Haiti’s Central Plateau. The principle that motivated Dahl and her colleagues was simple: everyone, whether poor or affluent, deserves to benefit from the same high standard of medical care.
Partners In Health (PIH), a nonprofit organization based in Boston, Massachusetts and dedicated to addressing health inequities and social injustice, was formally founded in 1987. Dahl, a co-founder and trustee of PIH, currently serves as its executive director. She has also served as chair of PIH’s board since 1993.
Expanding on the work started in Haiti’s Central Plateau, Dahl has traveled to and supported the establishment of major PIH projects in Peru, Mexico, Guatemala, Russia, the urban United States, Rwanda, and most recently, Lesotho and Malawi. Today, PIH has a staff of 52 at its Boston headquarters and thousands of colleagues in programs that span four continents.
Under Dahl’s leadership, PIH has forged groundbreaking successes in treating the diseases of the poor and promoting health and human rights in areas of the world that have been ravaged by political conflict, poverty, and international neglect. Providing antiretroviral medications to AIDS-afflicted patients in places like Haiti used to be viewed as utopian and unrealistic by international health experts; today, the effectiveness of PIH’s community-based model has been lauded around the world, prompting an explosion in requests to the organization to share its expertise and to play a greater role in global health advocacy.
A graduate of Wellesley College and a writer herself, Dahl also serves on the board of her family’s foundation to honor the work of her father, the late writer Roald Dahl, and is engaged in philanthropic works in the United States and her native England.
Priya Haji 
Priya Haji is CEO and president of World of Good Inc., a company that buys and sells fair trade crafts. The goal of the company is to further the interests of free trade artisans worldwide, people who typically must subsist on extremely meager incomes.
Haji is an experienced social entrepreneur who first created social enterprises in high school. During her senior year at Stanford University she co-founded Free at Last, a broad-based substance abuse and social services organization in East Palo Alto. As the executive director, she grew the program to become a national model, serving 3,000 people per year, with 10 facilities, an annual budget of $2.5 million, and a staff of 60.
Leigh Blake
For more than 30 years, Leigh Blake has been an advocate, pioneer and creator of the arts — from music and film, to fashion and the visual arts.
In 2003, Blake officially founded Keep A Child Alive, (KCA) which provides vitally needed anti retroviral medicine to children and families with AIDS in the developing world. She created the organization to be the “iPod of charity,” reinventing and modernizing the old fashioned model of charitable organizations to create a new movement to be able to save lives in emergency mode.
Since its inception, KCA has worked closely with nine-time Grammy winner, Alicia Keys, who is a co-founder of the organization. Keys and Blake are a formidable team, with Blake providing her background in AIDS advocacy and Keys using her considerable talents to be the voice for those who have none in our world.
Milton J. Benjamin Jr.
Milton Benjamin is the founding president and CEO of the Initiative for a New 
Economy (INE). In a first for the New England region, a coalition of corporations, community organizations, and the City of Boston collaborated to launch a major new initiative designed to expand the opportunity for minority owned businesses. The INE is a nonprofit organization focused on investing strategically in minority business enterprises (MBE) to enable them to serve as suppliers to major corporations. INE is the first of its kind and highly successful advocate for a new model of supplier development — one company at a time. The results are the creation of hundreds of new jobs and millions in additional revenue for the MBE's working with INE, as well as satisfied institutional purchasers who have gained numerous new minority suppliers and increased the number and size of contracts, thereby, significantly improving supplier diversity.
Prior to joining INE, Benjamin served for more than a decade as president of the Massachusetts Community Development Finance Corporation (CDFC), an economic development investment corporation that provides debt and equity financing to small businesses and real estate development projects. CDFC has been the lead lender or asset manager for five additional funds capitalized by public, private and quasi-public investors.
A graduate of the Northeastern University School of Law, Benjamin was law clerk to the Honorable Frederick L. Brown at the Massachusetts Court of Appeals, general counsel and vice president for Economic Development at Lena Park Community Development Corporation where he managed the development of nearly 290 units of housing, and past chairman of the Commonwealth Enterprise Fund, an SBA licensed equity and mezzanine investment fund. Benjamin serves as trustee to the Dedham Institution for Savings, board member to MetroLacrosse and is a member of the Executive Committee of Black and White Boston.
Joseph Marchese
Joseph Marchese '03 is co-founder and President of SocialVibe, a web site focused on empowering people to raise money for charity by interacting with and sharing brands on social networks. SocialVibe recognizes that individual people hold the key to the attention and influence in social media that brands seek.
Prior to SocialVibe, Marchese built and led the online media strategy division at a boutique management consulting firm which provided research and online strategy development focused on digital media to Fortune 1000 clientele. Before consulting, Marchese began his career as a business analyst for Monster Worldwide, the parent company of Monster.com.
Marchese is a thought leader in the social media and advertising industry, including writing weekly for MediaPost publications. He has been the keynote presenter at various digital advertising and media summits including OMMA, iMedia and Digital Hollywood. In addition, he has provided expertise on new media to a number of national publications including BusinessWeek, the New York Post and the Boston Globe.
