Global Tipping Points - Developing Emerging Economies: Strategy to help End Poverty

T. William & Patricia Ayers:

Global Tipping Points -

Developing Emerging Economies: Strategy to help End Poverty

Over 2 billion people—1 in 4 globally—earn less than $4 a day. This stark reality not only deepens the income divide but also poses one of the greatest risks to democracy and free enterprise. With massive youth unemployment and rising poverty driving migration to the southern borders of the U.S. and Europe, the need for innovative solutions has never been greater.

Join us on October 9th at 6 pm EST for the second installment of the T. William & Patricia Ayers Global Tipping Points series, featuring Marc Blumenthal, Executive Director and founder of the Social Ventures Foundation, a New Hampshire-based non-profit dedicated to reshaping international development through social franchising. Marc will share his unique approach to fostering “sustainable bottom-up” economic growth, focusing on grassroots ventures in Central America and the Caribbean that are transforming local economies, empowering communities, and creating long-term pathways out of poverty.

About the Speaker

Marc Blumenthal is a serial commercial and social entrepreneur. He participated in his first commercial start up as a Freshman at the University of Pennsylvania. After graduation he began his first social venture, an educational organization, that engaged over 2 million students and faculty in experiential education sponsored by the National Endowment for the Arts and Humanities. He then went on to do a series of deep technology startups working with MIT on the placement of a proposed nuclear fusion facility, the Ex Team-Physician of the New England Patriots on a medical device company and the communications scientist of the Voyager 2 satellite (the farthest probe from our planet) on a satellite communications company.

Marc also volunteered to work with Mohammed Yunis of microcredit fame which inspired him to begin work on the flip side of microcredit which he called “micro or social franchising”. Marc was asked by Bill Rosenberg, the Founder of Dunkin Donuts and the International Franchise Association to “kick start” his Chair in Franchising at the University of New Hampshire. Marc began the Social Ventures Foundation in 2017. In 2019 the Foundation won the New Hampshire Innovation Challenge for a social franchise that created jobs for unemployed youth, especially women, to deliver affordable social impact in the poorest nation in the Americas, Haiti. The Foundation has expanded its work in social franchise education and innovation and is forming a private equity Fund that will invest in the development and scaling of social franchises at the base of the pyramid.