Tag Archives: Ahmad Ashkar

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My Journey to the West Bank

Timing

As they say timing is everything, and the coincidences associated with my visit were uncanny. First, Ahmad’s mother was visiting their family home and his sister Suzy had just recently moved from Kansas to Tulkarm with her husband a few weeks earlier to raise their baby. Second, my trip was just several days before the UN vote on the resolution to curb Israeli settlements in the West Bank and West Bank politics were relatively quiet for that region while everyone was awaiting the outcome of the vote on the resolution.

Nablus

Getting to Nablus

First, you cannot just hop into any taxi and say “take me to the West Bank”, as the color of the license plate prescribes which roads you can travel on. To simplify matters, I asked the Waldorf concierge to reserve a driver. Polite and courteous, yet curious, he asked only a few questions, then proceeded to offer assurances of my personal safety while also cautioning me that conditions can change at any time.

Nablus is a northern city in the West Bank, 39 miles from Old Jerusalem with a population of over 125,000 which is predominantly Muslim, with small Christian and Samaritan minorities. Since 1995, the city has been governed by the Palestinian National Authority. We visited the Old City where there are a number of sites of archaeological significance, spanning the 1st to 15th centuries.

Arrived In Nablus

Suzy (who has an MBA degree), Ahmad’s sister, and Diana (an attorney), Suzy’s sister in law, met me in the city center. After hugs we made our first food stop…Turkish coffee to go. It was just starting to rain, so we quickly parked the car in the lot and headed out on foot to the Old City.

Food of Nablus

Until I arrived I didn’t realize that Nablus is such a gastronomic heaven. My father was a produce broker, so I was astounded by the abundance of inexpensive fresh fruits and vegetables. Nablus is known for its cheese, and we were indulged in warm cheese bread.

Sheryl and Diana eating cheese bread and coffee

As if that wasn’t enough, as we were passing through, the falafel man overheard us talking and offered me a free sandwich with freshly ground hummus.

Not that we were still hungry, but Nablus is famous for its kunafeh, a stringy, cheesy, crispy, sweet, gooey, delicious desert which defies definition, so we had to try it. Served in slabs eaten warm, we lined up and got our share, as the rest of the dish was divided up and sold to the locals.

A Special Tour

Still we couldn’t stay dry, as it was pouring rain, my sneakers were wet and squishy…and to be honest, we looked like three drenched lost women roaming the streets.

Then we encountered Moses, a Nablus local, who overheard us talking and simply put aside his daily work to escort us through the city, through the ancient Mosque, into the soap, candy, metal, and shoe factories.

Soap Factory

Candy Factory

Metal Maker

Moses our guide

We parted at the spice store, which had a big sign welcoming the USA, as he left to pick up his girls from school. Moses is not a tour guide, he is simply a kind, proud, local man who wanted us to have a good visit to his city.

On the Road to Tulkarm

Each of us were overwhelmed by the kindness we were shown, but now it was time to get on the road to meet Ahmad’s family for a late lunch.

There was a “small” hitch, though. The road, and there is only one road between cities, was blocked. There was an accident ahead, a Nablus Arab and a Jewish Israeli died in a collision. Diana, an attorney, had a special ID card allowing her to pass through, and Suzy and I had American passports, so we maneuvered our way to the head of the line, only to be told we could not pass. We carefully moved back in line…with cars honking at us…and some 30 minutes later the road opened…and we were practically first in line as we drove ahead to Tulkarm.

Tulkarm

Now only 30 minutes away, I was eager to meet Ahmad’s mother and was swept away as we came around a corner to see the Ashkar’s family estate. I say estate as there are multiple homes on the grounds, each connected through walking paths and patios.

The main home was recently constructed had a huge driveway and massive columns leading to the front door. As we walked through the door we were greeted by Ahmad’s mother with a huge smile and open arms.

As you might imagine, she was busy in the kitchen cooking a special meal for us which consisted of fresh lemonade, warm yoghurt soup, rice with vegetables and spices, chicken, salads, sweet and spicy sauces and homemade fig cookies. Enchanted by the feast, we conversed as if we had met many times before and discussed the world, family, and our journey.

Back on the Road

Sadly, this was a short trip, and just as the rest of Ahmad’s aunts and cousins were coming to visit, it was time to go back to Jerusalem. Suzy presented me with a beautiful silver necklace and Ahmad’s mother filled my bag with treats. It was sunset when we headed for the checkpoint a couple of miles away. Promising to return, the taxi picked me up, and we headed back to Old Jerusalem.

Last Thoughts

Ahmad was honored that I traveled to the West Bank to meet his family, and I was honored he invited me. Open your heart, open your mind, open your soul. There are good people on the other side. Good people who may differ in their political ideology but with the same family values and welcoming kindness that we all can appreciate and would do well to emulate.

Three generations of women sharing the world we love!

Change Tomorrow Today – Maximize Human Potential Through Education

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Did you know that more than 100 million children under the age of six in developing countries currently fail to reach their potential in cognitive development? Can we be part of the solution and find innovative ways to deliver quality early education to millions of underprivileged children who desperately need to get education at the earliest ages in or near the world’s cities? This was the challenge put forth by President Clinton and Hult Prize to students from around the world.

Hult Prize and Clinton Global Initiative

President Bill Clinton – Hult Prize Finals NYC

The Hult Prize competition is a response to President Bill Clinton’s call to action for the world’s brightest minds to tackle the world’s most pressing issues. In the past, the Hult Prize Challenge tackled housing, energy, education, food security, and healthcare challenges on a global level, and the competition has yielded teams with powerful and transforming ideas. Winning teams managed to not only develop these ideas but also implement them in serving the greater good. In its 6th year, the Hult Prize challenge asks global university teams to find new sustainable social enterprise approaches to promote and increase early childhood development and help the not so privileged children access quality education. Student teams compete in five cities around the world for a chance to secure $1 million in start-up funding to launch a sustainable social venture. This year 20,000 applications were received from more than 500 colleges and universities in over 150 countries.

Hult Prize Judges

A key element of the story, and the power of Hult Prize, is answering the social enterprise challenge each year impacting the world. Another equally important part of the story is about the opportunity and gratification of being a judge. The judges are a diverse group of people from the ranks of corporate CXOs, non-profit leaders, and social entrepreneurs. When they participate as judges they join an extensive community established by Hult Prize and their partners: Hult International Business School, Clinton Global Initiative (CGI), and IXL Center. Many of us have never met before, yet we come together as a working team at the regional championships. Each of us is changed forever by being instrumental in helping to launch the next wave of social entrepreneurs.

Ahmad Ashkar CEO & Founder Hult Prize

This is my 3^rd year as a Hult Prize judge. I will be working with Ahmad Ashkar, Founder and CEO of Hult Prize, to create an alumni group of judges providing a unique opportunity to continue the experience and impact of being a judge, in addition to building a foundation upon which past and current judges can collaborate on providing a platform for extending the impact of social entrepreneurship. More to come in the next few months on this topic.

Hult Prize Regional Competition

Faces of Students

An international rolling judging process follows the sun starting at Hult campuses in Dubai, Shanghai, London, Boston, and finishes in San Francisco. At my location in San Francisco we had 4 groups, 4 judges for each group, and a morning and afternoon pitch contest, 7 in each session. One difference in the process this year was having peer group students listening to the pitch and providing feedback to the judges prior to the deliberation process. I facilitated the discussion between the students and my fellow judges and found that, while the day was longer than it had been in prior years, interacting with the students provided additional insight supporting the decision making process.

Selecting the San Francisco Regional Winner

Athollo San Francisco Winning Team

After hearing the presentations of the final 8 teams, the 16 judges convened in a tent at Levi Center to vote on the San Francisco regional winner. You would think that after a long day of judging (over 10 hours) that we would exhausted from the long day. Instead, each of us came to the room initially voting for the team we had brought to the final selection process. Via deep discussion about the winning criteria, which included innovative idea, clear business plan, partnerships, and a line of sight to execute against their vision, we concluded and selected Athollo, University of Tampa, to move to the New York finals. Their tag line – Maximizing Human Potential Through Education. Their vision, provide top quality early childhood education for children living in urban slums of developing nations through the utilization of mobile phones of female micro-entrepreneurs. In doing so, they endeavor to alleviate the inaccessibility of education around the world. It will be interesting to see how their idea matures through the summer Hult Prize accelerator program.

Call to Action

Pam McNamara IXL and Sheryl Chamberlain

So, how are you going to change the world? Is the time right for you to work with the students and help them on this amazing journey? I invite you to join our community committed to social innovation and entrepreneurship. This year Hult Prize brought back the online challenge round, which gives all of the entries a second chance to make it to NYC as our “sixth” regional winner. The online round runs from March 16 – May 8. Join us there http://www.hultprize.org/en/compete/online-challenge-2015/overview/

Together, I am confident we can make a difference.

Honorable Mention

Amanda Boyek, San Francisco Regional Director, Hult Prize

Amanda Boyek, San Fran Regional Director, Hult Prize

Kicking off the San Francisco regionals was Amanda Boyek, 2014 finalist and after graduating SF Regional Director, Hult Prize. She was on Team Monterey, the team my group of judges selected. We are now connected forever with our shared passion for social entrepreneurship and the Hult Prize. For me Amanda, young, bright and passionate is already showcasing the impact of her leader’s legacy.

Cricket Flour Power Wins 2013 Hult Prize

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President Bill Clinton

The Hult Prize competition is a challenge to business school students from around the world to develop a feasible plan to solve a global problem while creating a viable, scalable business at the same time. Endorsed by President Clinton’s Global Initiative, the program is founded on an endowment for an annual million-dollar prize, which is used by the winning team to launch their new social enterprise. Equally important, all of the finalists receive a full one-year membership into the Clinton Global Initiative and support from its members to continue to develop their social business ideas.

Hult Prize CGI Award Dinner

The Hult competition has taken on huge social issues – education, housing and the water crisis. Through crowdsourcing, training, mentorship, and funding, the competition seeks to launch the next wave of social entrepreneurs. This year, student teams were selected from over 11,000 applicants representing 350 colleges and universities to pitch their innovative social ventures for solving the Global Food Crisis at one of five Regional Final events. Teams were then selected to participate in regional finals held in Boston, San Francisco, London, Dubai, Shanghai, and online. Six of these teams then won the right to attend the Hult Prize Accelerator for startups and then pitch their social business ideas to President Clinton at the Clinton Global Initiative (CGI) Annual Meeting in New York City.

The world’s largest student competition for social good chose the global food crisis because while the world produces enough food to feed everyone, more than 1/3 is lost or wasted. While this is not a new problem and is believed to be the world’s most solvable challenge, still today 25% of the children in the world are hungry.

Hult Founder and CEO of the Hult, Prize Ahmad Ashkar

CEO and Founder of the Hult, Prize Ahmad Ashkar, explained why feeding the world was slected as the this year’s issue in his FOX News interview. “Food is the easiest challenge to solve in the world. It is really a concept of distribution.” According to Ashkar, the world produces enough food to feed all of its inhabitants and the key is to figure out how to shorten supply chains, make food more efficient, bring costs down and make it accessible to those living in the urban slum. Listen to the full interview on Fox News.

Students Hult Prize Boston Finals

As a judge in the Boston Finals, I was fortunate to be interviewed by Living on Earth’s Managing Producer, Helen Palmer. We met at the reception, where Helen said “ There were no crickets to eat – but I did find one of the judges. Sheryl Chamberlain works for the EMC Corporation, and she said it had been hard to choose a winner.” Here is an excerpt from that interview that was played on NPR this summer.

CHAMBERLAIN: That was the hardest part. It was listening to these amazing young people that have creative ideas and new ways of solving this problem that we’re looking at, making sure we can feed the world. It’s so hard to decide who should come first and make a decision.

PALMER: In the end, Chamberlain said, all the judges agreed on the McGill team and their small cricket farms in the slums.

CHAMBERLAIN: So the idea of taking crickets and using them for a food source going forward, farming those crickets, eating them whole, looking at different ways to use them, because they give protein in a different way that we have not considered before. So it’s really innovative and watch out – there’ll be crickets flying around your town, and we’ll be grabbing them and using them for sustainable food. Listen to Helen Palmer’s entire interview

Peter R. Russell, Director of Corporate Relations, Hult Business School, Akanksha Hazari 2011 Hult Prize Winner & Phillip Hult Co-CEO, EF Education First

Impressed by my role as a judge at the Boston Regionals, Peter R. Russell, Director of Corporate Relations, Hult Business School, North America invited me to attend the Hult Prize Global Finals and Awards Dinner on September 23, 2013, where President Bill Clinton was the host at the opening event of the Clinton Global Initiative (CGI) Annual Meeting in New York. The six finalists teams pitched their start-ups, in front of a world-class audience of political leaders, philanthropists, social entrepreneurs, and media luminaries. President Clinton and Muhammad Yunus along with Steve Andrews, CEO of Solar Aid, Erathrin Cousin, CEO of the World Food Program, Peter Sands, CEO of Standard Chartered Bank, Desh Deshpande, Chairman of the Deshpande Foundation, Kathy Calvin, CEO of the United Nations Foundation, and Premal Shah, Paypal co-founder and President and co-founder of Kiva, judged and selected the winner of the 2013 Hult Prize. The award of 1 Million USD to be used by the winning team as start-up funding, was donated by Swedish entrepreneur Bertil Hult and his family. The winning team was from Canada’s McGill University, a Boston Regional Final, who was featured in the following day’s plenary session.

Muhammad Yunus, 2006 Nobel Peace Prize winner and 2013 Hult Prize Finals Judge

Here is an overview of the winning solution in the team’s own words:

Apsire learned through research during the summer that food insecurity is not an issue of lack of food. The vast majority in urban slums do not go hungry. But they lack access to affordable nutrition. Many suffer from malnourishment and nutrient deficiencies despite being overweight or obese. Therefore, the problem of food security in urban slums is not one of food being expensive per se, but of nutritious food being unavailable or overpriced compared to cheaper, less nutritious offerings. While insects might not seem a common meal for Westerners, a new plan is being proposed by students from Montreal’s McGill University wherein edible insects can be produced at an industrial scale to provide nourishment for folks

Aspire, Hult Prize 2013 winning team from Canada's McGill University with President Clinton

Aspire, Hult Prize 2013 winning team from Canada’s McGill University with President Bill Clinton

Our disruptive social enterprise, Aspire, aims to improve access to edible insects worldwide. We develop and distribute affordable and sustainable insect farming technologies for countries with established histories of entomophagy, or insect-consumption. Our farming solutions stabilize the supply of edible insects year-round, drastically improving and expanding the economic ecosystem surrounding insect consumption in the regions serviced. Not only do our durable farming units create income stability for rural farmers, they have a wider social impact by lowering the price of edible insects. This is central to our mission of increasing access to highly nutritious edible insects amongst the poorest, and therefore neediest, members of society.

Hélène Barnekow EMC Senior Vice President, Worldwide Field & Partner Marketing and Sheryl Chamberlain

For next year’s challenge, President Bill Clinton asks teams to build sustainable and scalable social enterprises to address non-communicable disease in slums. I can only hope I will once again be asked to join my fellow esteemed judges at the 2014 Boston Regionals. I would look forward to witnessing the innovative proposals for addressing President Clinton’s challenge.

Learn more: Bugs as an edible food source. Winner’s Blog, Clinton’s Global Initiative CGI and 2014 Hult Prize Challenge prize/2014-challenge/

President Bill Clinton and Sheryl Chamberlain at 2011RSA Conference

How Will You Change the World?

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Driven by a passion to build a sustainable, scalable social world, this year’s Hult Prize brings together global thought leaders committed to reducing food insecurity in urban slums by 2018. Almost a billion worldwide people need food security with urban slums representing almost 200 million. “The Challenge: Can we build sustainable, scalable, and fast-growing social enterprise to increase food security in urban slums by 2018?” It is clear this problem will get worse if nothing is done.

Hult International Students

Hult Prize, in its fourth year, is an innovative challenge called into action by global college and university students to develop solutions to the world’s most pressing social issues. There is thousands of student participants, representing over 250 universities from over 150 countries. Nobel Peace Prize Winner Professor Muhammed Yunus said at the 2012 Hult Prize, “If you can create a real business, the beginning of a protype, you can change the world.”

The Hult Prize annual challenge is the largest student competition, which unlike other competitions requires students to use business skills and to develop sustainable, scalable solutions through social enterprise. The overall challenge consists of 5 regional international competitions, an online competition, and a business incubator leading to the global final which will take place at the Clinton Global Initiative on September 23, 2013. The 5 regional competitions are held at Hult International Business School campuses in Boston, San Francisco, London, Dubai and Shanghai. The winner of this year’s challenge will be awarded USD $1 Million in seed capital to launch a pilot of their winning idea. All of the regional winners participate in two months of training through the Hult Accelerator program.

This year, I was invited to participate as a judge representing EMC Corporation at the Boston Regional Competition.

Fellow Judges: Peter Alto, Fidelity; Mitchell Leiman, Bain; and Ellott Seaborn, Arnold Worldwide

Fellow judges represented some of the world’s top companies and not only invest the day in the judging process but also provide student mentorship, fostering growth of our next generation of leaders. The Hult Prize Founder, Ahmad Ashkar was on site along with Ron Jonash – Hult Prize Case Writer & Senior Partner, IXL Center. Ron shared his vision for the Hult Prize in this short video.

So what is it like to be a judge? First, I have to thank Peter Russell, Jr. the Director of Corporate Relations, Hult North America. His passion for the program is only surpassed by his attention to detail, ability to build teams and the associated community ensuring continued collaboration. Every element of the judging process is considered from the moment you sign up, engagement with fellow judges, student delivery, deliberation, decision and celebration. Also, and even more importantly everyone is a winner. While our goal as a judge it to determine the finalist in the regional competition, it is clear to me no one loses. Joining the Hult community is a lifetime and life long experience, one that will ensure that together we can make the world a better place.

Peter R. Russell, Jr. Director Corporate Relations, North America Hult International Business School

But it doesn’t stop here. There are other amazing programs. Two come to mind. First of which is the Hult Action Projects. International students compete to deliver high-impact ideas and strategies for clients’ most pressing business issues. Led by experienced management consultants, student teams will focus nearly fulltime on one of two key objectives over 6 weeks: Competitive Intelligence in “Competing for the Future” and “Innovation & Growth in “Innovation Olympics”. In each program the teams make three competing presentations to the client sponsor at which point they receive feedback and direction from the client on where to focus their next level of pursuit. EMC China, through the personal support of YIng Li VP and GM EMC China, is participating in this program. The second, which is near and dear to my heart, is the Hult Women in Business event on April 20, 2013. This was presented to me by Dina Samra, Corporate Relations Coordinate, Hult Boston. As I look ahead, and consider my personal investment in Hult I, too, am committed to the success of this powerful community committed to sustainable, scalable social change. I hope you will join me ion my journey.

Rahul Joshi and Prabhu Gopalakrishnan Hult International Business School MBA Students

Learn more about the Boston Regionals from fellow judge Deidre White, CEO , CDC Development Solutions by reading her blog: Hult Prize Champions Insect Protein To Fight Hunger

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