Bill Drayton

The uber-social entrepreneur wants to raise a generation of world changers.

- Arianne Cohen

All Bill Drayton wants to do is change the world—so, pretty simple. In 1980 he founded Ashoka, a global association of social entrepreneurs whose flagship program provides up to three years of financial and logistical support for projects with the potential to do good on a large scale. After 3,800 Ashoka fellows and one MacArthur Genius Grant, he’s still finding ways to wield his influence for the better.

Drayton began his career as a salary man, not a visionary. He was a McKinsey & Co. consultant for a decade, then a policy wonk at the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency in the late 1970s. Roy Gamse, who ran the EPA’s Office of Planning and Evaluation, jokes about working on Drayton’s staff—and under his exacting standards: “I worked for Bill for eight years during the Carter administration, which was only four years long.”