Sasha Dichter

Artist, Athlete, Blogger, Entrepreneur, Global soul, Idea generator, Jewish, Marketer, Parent, World traveler

I'm the Chief Innovation Officer at Acumen. We invest patient capital in businesses that deliver critical, affordable goods and services to the world's poor, improving the lives of millions. I speak and blog about generosity, philanthropy and social change, am the author of the Manifesto for Nonprofit CEOs and I helped create Generosity Day.I'm also proud that my Generosity talk was featured as a TED Best of the Web last year...talk about spreading an idea! (http://www.ted.com/talks/sasha_dichter.html) Before Acumen I worked at GE Capital, IBM, and Booz | Allen | Hamilton, and also had stints in Indonesia working for one of the world's largest microfinance institutions (Bank Rakyat Indonesia) and at the venture-backed startup, Navic Networks. Along the way I received a dual degree from Harvard Business School and Harvard Kennedy School in International Development.

Creating a world in which dignity is the norm; living generously; committing seriously to ending poverty in our lifetimes; storytelling and doing the work and living without a map.

What if we all worked at cultivating our capacity for being generous? If you wanted to do this, how would you start? I ran a generosity experiment: for a month, I said "yes" to everyone who asked me for anything - every beggar, every street musician, every nonprofit, everyone. It was a start for cultivating a new reflex, one in which I didn't hide behind the "smartest" thing to do as an excuse for inaction; one in which I stood and acknowledged each and every person standing in front of me. And then we launched Generosity Day on February 14th 2011 and it lives on in 2012 as a worldwide phenomenon.

Filling out website forms

Singing and break dancing to "Bust a Move."