Jonathan Greenblatt

Jonathan Greenblatt is an American social entrepreneur, corporate executive and the sixth National Director and CEO of the Anti-Defamation League (ADL).^[1] Prior to heading ADL, Greenblatt served in the White House as Special Assistant to Barack Obama and Director of the Office of Social Innovation and Civic Participation.^[2]

Education and early career

Greenblatt graduated from Tufts University in 1992, receiving a Bachelor of Arts with Honors.^[3] After graduating from Tufts, Greenblatt worked in Little Rock, Arkansas on Bill Clinton's first successful presidential campaign in 1992. Greenblatt went on to join the administration as an aide in the Clinton White House and the Department of Commerce where he developed international economic policy with a focus on emerging markets and post-conflict economies.^[4]

Greenblatt also holds a Master in Business Administration from the Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern University.^[5]

Entrepreneurship

Ethos Water

In 2002, Greenblatt and his business school roommate, Peter Thum, founded Ethos Water, a premium bottled water social enterprise.^[6] The company sought to help children around the world get access to free water by donating a portion of their profits to finance water programs in developing countries. Unlike other socially responsible brands such as Newman's Own and Ben & Jerry's, Ethos pioneered the idea of linking cause to consumption.^[7] This model later was adopted by other brands such as Toms Shoes and Warby Parker. In 2005, Starbucks Coffee Company acquired Ethos Water, making it one of only a handful of non-coffee businesses the company has purchased in its 40-year history. Following the acquisition, Greenblatt served as Starbucks Vice President of Global Consumer Products, scaling Ethos across the US. Greenblatt also co-founded Ethos International and served on the board of directors of the Starbucks Foundation where he developed Ethos’ global investment strategy that has invested millions of dollars to bring clean water to communities in need around the world, including Bangladesh, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Ethiopia, Honduras, India and Kenya.^[8]

All for Good

Greenblatt also founded All for Good (AFG), the open source platform developed to enable more Americans to serve.^[9] AFG is the largest aggregation of volunteer opportunities on the Web and is supported by a coalition of leading companies, nonprofits and government agencies, all of whom shared a vision of using open data to increase the number of Americans that participate in service and volunteerism. Craig Newmark, the founder of Craigslist, helped to sponsor the organization and the open-source code was utilized by [serve.gov].^[10] In 2011, AFG was acquired by the Points of Light Institute in a strategic partnership designed to help the organization scale.^[11]

Good Worldwide

Greenblatt was formerly the CEO of GOOD Worldwide, LLC..^[12] He led GOOD's transition from a publishing company to a diversified media company. Its products include the popular website GOOD.is and the award-winning GOOD Magazine.^[13][14] As CEO, Greenblatt pushed a number of innovations at the company, including the launch of the GOOD Sheet, a broadsheet product distributed exclusively at Starbucks and a name-your-own-pricing scheme that the company ran as an experiment. It is not clear whether this strategy was successful.^[15][16]

Impact Economy Initiative

Greenblatt founded the Impact Economy Initiative at the Aspen Institute to help policy makers create an enabling environment for the emerging market of social enterprise and impact investing. The Initiative worked with thought leaders across impact sectors, including co-convening the Impact Economy Summit at the White House in October 2011.^[17]

Other ventures

Greenblatt served as an operating partner at Satori Capital, a private equity firm focused on conscious capitalism, and was an active angel investor.^[18] He also served as a member of the faculty at the UCLA Anderson School of Management^[19] where he developed and taught its coursework on social entrepreneurship.

Obama administration

In the fall of 2011, Greenblatt was appointed to serve as Special Assistant to the President and Director of the Office of Social Innovation and Civic Participation in the United States Domestic Policy Council.^[20] As Director, he leads the Office’s efforts to utilize human capital and financial capital to bring attention to community solutions. The Office focuses on issues such as national service, civic engagement, impact investing, and social enterprise.^[21]

In his role as Director of SICP, Greenblatt has taken an active role in supporting AmeriCorps,^[22] engaging the philanthropy community,^[23] supporting social entrepreneurs,^[24] and working with the G8 taskforce to support social impact investment.^[25] Greenblatt has been involved in a number of administration priorities, including preventing gun violence^[26] and #GivingTuesday.^[27]

Awards and recognition

Member of the Pacific Council on International Policy^[28]

Henry Crown Fellowship, Aspen Institute 2007^[29]

Wildlife Trust Award Recipient, 2009^[30]

Named to the Global Agenda Council of the World Economic Forum, 2011^[31]

Delivered the 2013 Lyon & Bendheim lecture at Tufts University^[32]

Served as a senior fellow at the Wharton School of Management in 2014.^[33]

Has served on numerous corporate and non-profit boards, including the African Leadership Foundation, the Jewish Community Foundation of Los Angeles, Kevita, KaBOOM! and Water.org.^[34]

Personal life

Greenblatt is married to Marjan Keypour Greenblatt, an Iranian Jewish immigrant to the United States. They have three children.^[35][36]

References