2010 Ashoka Globalizer Vienna Panelists

Marc Castagnet

Marc Castagnet, Director of ICS, holds MBA degrees from both France and USA. After a career in banking in New York and starting his business in China in 1989, he started SgT Group in the 1990s and sold it in 2009. SgT has been a pioneer in offering quality control and outsourcing supply chain services in the garment and fabric industry and first introduced value added services at logistic platforms 7 years ago. SgT has 24 offices in 15 countries (Northeast and Southeast Asia, Indian Subcontinent, Africa, Europe and USA) and was sold to a private equity group. Marc holds multiple directorships in entrepreneurial companies in Asia and Europe. ICS services is an investment vehicle company serving companies in Real Estate, Tourism, Education and Wine mainly in Europe, Asia and North Africa and USA.

Marc also holds several official positions at different trade and business organizations. Namely, he is a Member of Young President Organization International (YPO) and Chair of the North Asia Economic Development Network; he is an Executive Council Director of Global Maritime Logistics Council since June 2006 and he is an Associate Member of International Apparel Federation (IAF). He is also a regular speaker at different supply chain and logistics summits and conferences. He is also a member of the Hong Kong General Chamber of Commerce where he holds the Vice Chairmanship of the Europe and Asia-Africa committees.

Dermot Desmond

Dermot Desmond was born in Cork in 1950. His family moved to Dublin in 1956. He was educated at Scoil Mhuire in Marino and at Good Counsel College in New Ross. Before setting up his own company in 1981, he worked for Citibank, the Investment Bank of Ireland and as a banking consultant for Price Waterhouse Coopers in Europe. He founded NCB in 1981 and grew the business to become Ireland's largest independent stockbroker. In 1994 he sold NCB to the National Westminster Bank (now The Royal Bank of Scotland).

He is Chairman of International Investment & Underwriting (IIU), which he founded in 1995. IIU is a private company, operating from the International Financial Services Centre in Dublin, specialising in direct equity investment and underwriting, funds management and capital markets trading. Prior to founding IIU in 1995, he established a number of software companies serving the financial services sector. Through his private equity company IIU, he has investments in a variety of start-up and established businesses worldwide, in the areas of financial services, technology, education, information systems, leisure, aviation, health and sport.

He is Chairman of a charity called ‘Respect’, which was set-up by the Daughters of Charity to raise funds to develop their services to people with a mental and physical handicap.  He is a Board member of several companies, charities and educational bodies. He is also a trustee of the Chester Beatty Library. He is a sports enthusiast, an eclectic art collector and a keen golfer with aspirations!

Bill Drayton

As one of the world’s leading thinkers on social change, Bill Drayton has pioneered the field of social entrepreneurship. He is the CEO and founder of Ashoka, a global organization that elects over 2,000 leading social entrepreneurs as Ashoka Fellows, providing them with living stipends, professional support, and access to a global network of peers in more than 60 countries. Through Ashoka, Bill has introduced the world to a fundamentally new model of how ideas can change social systems across the globe, improving the lives of millions. In recognition of his achievement in the field of social entrepreneurship, Bill is the recipient of this year's Martin Essl Social Prize, which comes with a value of € 1,000,000 and will support the first edition of the Globalizer.

Bill has gained international acclaim and is recognized as a visionary. He was named one of America’s 25 Best Leaders by US News and World Report in 2005-2006. In 2004, he was renowned as one of Fast Company’s "Fast 50," a group of "idea elite" who are pushing their industries forward with the power of their vision. In 2002, Business Week named Ashoka’s approach to philanthropy as one of the eleven "most innovative" of the organizations it surveyed. Bill was also elected one of the early MacArthur Fellows for his work, including the founding of Ashoka. He has been a speaker at the World Economic Forum and has addressed audiences around the world.

Bill developed his ideas across an array of fields. As an Assistant Administrator at the United States Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), he successfully led a series of major innovations and reforms in the field, such as the introduction of emissions trading or the use of economic-defined incentives to remove the advantage of delaying compliance. During his time as a management consultant with McKinsey & Co, he gained wide experience serving both public and private clients, and built his understanding of how organizations operate. He also served briefly in the White House and taught both law and management at Stanford Law School and Harvard's Kennedy School of Government. He is a graduate of Harvard, Oxford, and Yale Universities.

Richard Fishman

Richard Fishman -- lawyer, technology executive and venture capitalist -- has recently become a member of Ashoka's senior leadership team. In 1972, fresh out of law school, Richard founded and directed the first Housing and Economic Development Law Program in the southern U.S. His success in developing innovative structures for financing low- and moderate-income housing and counseling minority business entrepreneurs led to his selection as Director of the American Bar Association's National Housing Law Program and Executive Director of the ABA-sponsored Commission on Housing and Urban Growth. In 1977, Richard became partner at the national law firm, Kutak Rock, and built one of the largest housing finance practices in the U.S., representing both state and local housing finance agencies and investment banks. Subsequently, at the international law firm, Milbank, Tweed, Hadley & McCloy, he headed the firm's Structured Finance practice, representing Wall Street investment banks in structuring and issuing corporate and asset-backed securities. He served as Managing Partner of the Washington, DC, offices of both firms. In 1994, Richard became President of Thinking Machines Corporation, which developed and manufactured the world's fasted supercomputers at the time. He reorganized and restructured Thinking Machines, selling its three core components to three major tech companies. As Thinking Machine's employees moved on to create new businesses in the early days of the Web, Richard was sought out as advisor and investor, and through three successive venture capital vehicles, had the good fortune to participate in nine IPOs. Richard has served on the boards of numerous publicly-traded and privately-held companies, and non-profit organizations.