Team

David Bornstein
Founder and Editor
@dnbornstein
David started his career as a computer programmer in Montreal, Canada. Feeling restless, at 23, he set off for a year backpacking around Southeast Asia and the South Pacific, and discovered that he loved writing about people’s stories. He moved to New York, enrolled in journalism school at NYU, and wrote freelance articles for Newsday on crime, politics and city life. After hearing about the Grameen Bank from a friend, he borrowed money to travel to Bangladesh with the idea of writing a magazine article about the bank. He spent the next four years alternating between writing computer programs (to pay the bills) and writing a book: The Price of a Dream: The Story of the Grameen Bank. For his next book, How to Change the World, Social Entrepreneurs and the Power of New Ideas, he traced the work of Ashoka and social entrepreneurs in Brazil, India, Poland, Hungary, South Africa and the United States. His newest book, Social Entrepreneurship: What Everyone Needs to Know (written with Susan Davis) offers a brief overview of the field of social entrepreneurship and explores where it may be heading. David sees Dowser as an opportunity to report on thousands of social innovation stories, broadening and deepening the coverage of this field.

Anja Tranovich
Managing Editor
Anja Tranovich has reported on development issues from four continents and covered the United Nations for two press wires. She has been a writer and editor for magazines, dailies and radio productions, covering everything from torture in Afghanistan to luxury resorts in Curacao. She has also worked with foundations and NGOs working in women's rights, human rights and micro finance. Contact her at: anja@dowser.org

Vallabh Rao
Social Media Guru
@raovallab
Vallabh Rao from Bangalore, India is the social media consultant at Dowser. He works with Ashoka India as the Communications and Community Consultant. His interest lies in helping social and green enterprises communicate and market themselves better.




Blair Hickman
Digital Editor
@amandablair
Blair Hickman is a digital strategist and multimedia journalist, specializing in writing, social media and adapting journalism to the web. Before Dowser, she did freelance web work for PBS' Women War and Peace, and her work has also appeared in Jezebel, The New York Daily News, Mediaite, The Chattanooga Pulse, The Lost Girls and Prospect: An Anthology of Creative Nonfiction. She co-founded Casseroles for Cancer, a 12,000-mile philanthropic road trip in partnership with FOX-WDSI. She also lived for a while in Prague, cavorted around Guatemala, learned to scuba dive in Honduras and has been to every state except Alaska. She has a B.A. in Creative Nonfiction from Brown University and is currently pursuing a Master's in Digital Journalism and Web Innovation at NYU's Studio20.

Namita Mody
The Intern
@imanami13
Nami Mody is a junior at NYU's Stern School of Business pursuing a minor in Social Entrepreneurship. She has previously worked at Pencils of Promise and currently serves as the Marketing Design Chair of Net Impact's undergraduate chapter at NYU. She is interested in anything and everything that lies in the intersection of doing good and doing business.



Contributors


Esha Chhabra
@esh2440
Esha is a recent graduate of the London School of Economics where she served as a Rotary Ambassadorial Scholarship and completed her Master's in Global Politics. Through her association with Rotary, she's become deeply involved in the Global Polio Eradication Initiative, traveling to India numerous times for immunization rounds and writing about it for publications back home in the US.   In addition, she's a freelance writer and speaker who's been focusing on social enterprises, innovations in the third sector, and the power of technology for development.

Leora Fridman
Leora Fridman is a writer, translator and educator living in Massachusetts. Her recent poems, stories and nonfiction are included in Denver Quarterly, H_NGM_N,  Dowser, The Jerusalem Post, and others. Find out more at leorasf.wordpress.com.

Jen Haley
@JenHaley
Jen is a Knight-Bagehot Fellow at Columbia Business School. Prior to diving into 10Ks and estimating free cash flows, Jen was a business news producer for CNN for the past decade. She was involved with producing and directing daily and breaking news stories on the economy and how it affects people. She also reported and wrote articles and blogs for CNN.com and CNNMoney.com. For more information go to www.jenniferahaley.com.

Jonathan Kalan
@thebopproject
Jonathan Kalan, Founder of The (BoP) Project, is a photojournalist, writer, and (aspiring) social entrepreneur. A graduate of the University of California, Santa Barbara. In just 23 years he has traveled to over 33 countries, lived and worked in Asia and Africa, and simultaneously pursued careers in social business development and photojournalism.  He is currently based in East Africa, covering social enterprises, technologies, innovations, and BoP markets. Reach him at jonathankalan@gmail.com

Tamara Schweitzer
@tschweitzer
Tamara Schweitzer is a freelance journalist based in Brooklyn with a focus on social enterprise and sustainability in business. She also works with start-ups and social ventures as a communications consultant and strategist. Reach her at tschweit@gmail.com.

Rachel Signer
Rachel Signer is a freelance journalist and educator, with a background in sociocultural anthropology, based in Brooklyn, NY. Her interests include social entrepreneurship, design-thinking strategies, Africa, Latin America, and urban inequality.

Alumni

Manuel Rosaldo
Co-Creator
@mrosaldo
Manuel Rosaldo is a doctoral student in sociology at UC Berkeley, focusing on social innovation, social movements, and economic development. He is currently researching waste collector cooperatives in South America.





Emily Spivack
Co-Creator
@emspivack
Emily Spivack’s work spans social innovation, culture, and fashion. Prior to her current position as the editor-in-chief of PopTech, a network of world-changing people, projects, and ideas, Emily was the director of Dowser. She is the editor of Sentimental Value, an online collection of anecdotes people tell about clothing in eBay posts, and Worn Stories, a collection of stories about clothing and memory.  Emily founded Shop Well with You, a body-image resource for women with cancer.