Event — America’s Path Forward: Conversations with Social Innovators on the Power of Communities Everywhere

The Georgetown University McCourt School of Public Policy, Ashoka, an international organization dedicated to promoting social entrepreneurship, and Frank McCourt, executive chairman of McCourt Global and Project Liberty, are pleased to invite you to a book release event for America’s Path Forward: Conversations with Social Innovators on the Power of Communities Everywhere a collection of interviews with 22 award-winning changemakers and social entrepreneurs who solve some of our biggest problems in new ways. 

Frank McCourt, executive chairman of McCourt Global and Project Liberty, and founding investor of the McCourt School, will open the event, before Konstanze Frischen, a member of Ashoka’s Global Leadership group, is joined by three Ashoka Fellows featured in the book, Sixto Cancel, Albert Fox Cahn and Rosanne Haggerty, for a conversation about their experiences redesigning child welfare, defending privacy in the digital age and tackling homelessness.

The event will take place on February 8, 2023, from 12:30-2:00 pm in Riggs Library at Georgetown University. Lunch will be served, and all attendees will receive a free copy of America’s Path Forward .

RSVP here

Speaker Chapter Titles

• It’s My Life: Sixto Cancel on Young People Redesigning Child Welfare
• You Are Being Watched: Albert Fox Cahn on Defending Privacy in the Digital Age
• Getting to Zero: Rosanne Haggerty on Communities Solving Homelessness

About America’s Path Forward

Published by Georgetown University Press , America’s Path Forward is a production of Ashoka , supported by McCourt Global’s Unfinished initiative , and the Unfinished Network , a community of institutions working toward a more just future in technology, democracy and the economy. Georgetown University and Ashoka are Unfinished Network partners. 

About the Speakers

Sixto Cancel grew up in, and aged out of, the child welfare system. His lived experience has powered a passion to transform the child welfare system so that all foster youth have conditions that allow them to heal, develop and thrive. He is the founder of Think of Us and, alongside his team, is committed to the total transformation of child welfare in the United States. Sixto is an Ashoka Fellow.

Albert Fox Cahn is the founder and executive director of the Surveillance Technology Oversight Project (STOP) and a fellow at Yale Law School’s Information Society Project. A lawyer, technologist, writer and interfaith activist, Albert began STOP in the belief that emerging surveillance technologies pose an unprecedented threat to civil rights and the promise of a free society. Albert is an Ashoka Fellow.

Rosanne Haggerty is the president and founder of Community Solutions and its Built for Zero network of cities committed to solving the complex housing problems facing their most vulnerable residents. She is an internationally-recognized leader in developing innovative strategies to end homelessness and a 2019 recipient of the MacArthur Foundation’s 100&Change award, a 0 million prize, to end homelessness. Rosanne is an Ashoka Fellow.

Konstanze Frischen is the head of Ashoka in North America and leads their new global initiative on Tech & Humanity. A social anthropologist and journalist by background, she founded Ashoka in her native Germany in 2003 and co-led Ashoka’s emergence and growth in Western Europe, introducing the then radically new concept of social entrepreneurship to the continent. She also co-founded the Globalizer, an initiative re-defining what we mean by scale. She worked for CNN and FAZ and was a board member for GLS Bank, Germany’s leading ethical financial institution, before moving to the US in 2015. She is on the advisory board of CASE at Duke University.