Jeff Skoll started out as eBay’s first full time employee and went on to become the first president of the company. He contributed so much to the company in his time there by developing their inaugural business plan and led their first successful public offering. He is now the founder and chairman of the Skoll Foundation, Participant Media and the Skoll Global Threats Fund. He recently received the Tech Awards James C. Morgan Global Humanitarian Award which is an award that honors individuals who use their broad vision and leadership to help overcome humanity’s greatest challenges. Skoll received this award “for his leadership and broad vision to build a more just, equitable planet.”
In 2009, Skoll set up the Skoll Global Threats Fund to help provide support against the issues of climate change, water scarcity, pandemics, nuclear proliferation and conflict in the Middle East. In 2004 he founded Participant Media, which is a studio intended to produce films about issues that Jeff Skoll personally considers to meaningful. Participant Media released the film An Inconvenient Truth in 2006 which received an Academy Award for Best Documentary Feature and Best Original Song. The studio has also recently release the film The Help which become a very popular film worldwide. Skoll has been a long time member of the Forbes Billionaires list and founded the Skoll Foundation in 1999 to offer support to social entrepreneurs and in Skoll’s words, sought out people defined as “society’s change agents, creators of innovations that disrupt the status quo and transform our world for the better. The foundation currently funds 81 social entrepreneurs who are pursuing their business ventures in over 100 countries across the globe.
Jeff Skoll is a hero in the business world for his work as philanthropist and using his own money and resources to help better the lives of less fortunate individuals around the world. The studio he has founded has produced multiple movies that have helped to shape the way people view global problems and have enlightened many people throughout the world. More than just his environmental and humanitarian awareness, Jeff Skoll has had a very positive impact on the business world by offering support and resources to entrepreneurs that have the same mindset and intentions as Skoll himself has had, which will potentially create more people in the world with the same humanitarian impact on plant Earth as Jeff Skoll has had himself.
--Michael Lorimer
4 comments:
It's so nice to hear a story about an average joe making his way up the chain of command and becoming something great. I also think it's wonderful that he is so proactive in his beliefs. It's always good when someone with so much influence uses their resources and advantages for a good cause, and it's even better when it's something they themselves believe in.
-- ^^kaitlin
You don't see enough leaders of these multimillion corporations giving back to the community. We need more role models like Skoll and Bill Gates because too many companies just pocket their profits. Considering the state of our economy Skoll is really showing the difference a good heart can make.
-Eddie Nemeth
Good article. It seems that corporate social responsibility is going to be huge in our future.
Ryan Luginbuhl
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