Seattle, WA, March 24th – VillageReach, the Seattle-based social enterprise that increases access to quality healthcare for the most underserved communities, today announced President Allen Wilcox has been has been selected as a 2014 Social Entrepreneur of the Year by the Schwab Foundation for Social Entrepreneurship, in partnership with the World Economic Forum. The 37 winners—who represent a number of sectors including education, health, environment and enterprise development—were selected in recognition of their innovative approaches and potential for global impact.
Allen has served as VillageReach president since 2008, after a successful legal career as Associate General Counsel of Microsoft Corporation. Wilcox is recognized on behalf VillageReach’s sustainable business model and development of proven health system innovations that address key barriers to quality healthcare for low-resource communities: health worker capacity, data availability and infrastructure. “Social entrepreneurs are an integral and increasingly sought after community of the World Economic Forum. We are seeing greater appetite among business, government and civil society leaders to learn from the innovative models of social entrepreneurs and collaborate with them in novel ways,” says David Aikman, Schwab Foundation’s Managing Director and Head of the New Champions Communities. “We welcome the 2014 Social Entrepreneur of the Year Awardees who epitomize the best this sector has to offer.”
The Schwab Foundation annually honors a select community of social entrepreneurs leading models of sustainable social innovation achieving large scale, systemic change. Past awardees include leaders of BRAC, Dimagi, Landesa and PATH. “I’m thrilled to see VillageReach recognized for its commitment to health system innovation,” said Allen Wilcox, President at VillageReach. “Driving innovation is core to our belief that there are new approaches to improve global health effectiveness and efficiency. It is through strong collaboration with both public and private sector partners, and the communities in which we work, that make change possible.
We are excited by this opportunity to exchange ideas, learn, and partner with others to extend the reach of quality healthcare to all communities, no matter how poor or remote.” The awardees will become part of the broader Schwab Foundation community of Social Entrepreneurs, which includes 250 outstanding social entrepreneurs from 60 countries. Schwab Foundation Social Entrepreneurs are fully integrated into the events and initiatives of the World Economic Forum. They contribute actively to and benefit from peer-to-peer exchanges with other social entrepreneurs as well as interactions with top leaders in business, government, civil society and the media.
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About VillageReach
VillageReach transforms health care delivery to reach everyone, so that each person has the health care needed to thrive. We develop solutions that improve equity and access to primary health care. This includes making sure products are available when and where they are needed and primary health care services are delivered to the most under-reached. Radical collaboration with governments, the private sector and other partners strengthen our ability to scale and sustain these solutions. Our work increases access to quality health care for 46 million people in sub-Saharan Africa.
For press inquiries: media@villagereach.org