Twitter Cofounder Biz Stone & Ashoka Founder/CEO William Drayton to Speak at Babson College Commencement Ceremonies

WELLESLEY, Mass., May 13, 2011 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- Twitter cofounder Biz Stone & Ashoka Founder/CEO William Drayton will speak at Babson College Commencement ceremonies on May 14, 2011.

Stone will address the audience at the undergraduate ceremony.  He will receive an honorary Doctor of Laws.

Drayton will address audiences at both the undergraduate and graduate ceremonies.  He will receive an honorary Doctor of Humane Letters at the graduate ceremony.

Commencement info is available at http://www3.babson.edu/Events/Commencement/default.cfm.

Tickets are required to attend the ceremonies.

William Drayton
As the founder and CEO of Ashoka: Innovators for the Public, Bill Drayton has pioneered the field of social entrepreneurship, growing a global association of nearly 3,000 leading social entrepreneurs who work together to create an 'Everyone a Changemaker' world.

Drayton has been a social entrepreneur since an early age--during his years as an undergraduate at Harvard and a law student at Yale, he launched a number of organizations, including Yale Legislative Services and Harvard's Ashoka Table, an interdisciplinary weekly forum in the social sciences. In 1970, he began his career at McKinsey and Company in New York. From 1977 to 1981, Drayton served as Assistant Administrator at the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, where he launched emissions trading (the basis of the Kyoto Protocol) and other reforms. In 1981, while working part-time at McKinsey and Company, he founded both Ashoka and Save EPA, the predecessor to Environmental Safety. With the support that he received when elected a MacArthur Fellow in 1984, he was able to devote himself fully to Ashoka. In addition to his current role as Chairman and CEO of Ashoka, Mr. Drayton is the chair of Youth Venture, Community Greens, and Get America Working!

Drayton has won numerous awards and honors throughout his career. In 1996, he was elected a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in recognition of his leadership in public service.  In 1999, Common Cause awarded him its Public Service Achievement Award.  In 2005, he received the National Wildlife Federation's Conservation Achievement Award and was selected as one of America's Best Leaders by U.S. News & World Report and Harvard's Center for Public Leadership. In 2006, he was recognized as being one of Harvard University's 100 "Most Influential Alumni." In 2007, he received the Duke University Center for the Advancement of Social Entrepreneurship's (CASE) Leadership in Social Entrepreneurship Award, the University of Pennsylvania Law School's 2007 Honorary Fellow Award, and the Goi Peace Foundation's Peace Award. In 2009, he was named Honorary Fellow at Oxford's Balliol College and was awarded an Honorary Doctorate of Humane Letters from Yale University. And in 2010, he received an Honorary Doctorate from NYU, as well as the Essl Social Prize, for his work creating and building the field of social entrepreneurship.

Biz Stone
Biz Stone is an American entrepreneur and author best known for co-founding Twitter. A progenitor of social networking and blogging, Stone has been developing large scale systems that facilitate the open exchange of information for more than a decade. Having started out as an artist, Stone stresses creativity, learning from mistakes, and celebrating the triumph of humanity over technology.

In 2010, The International Center for Journalism in Washington, D.C. honored Biz with the Innovation Award for outstanding work in the field of real-time information networking which he accepted on behalf of Twitter. Stone is an Associate Fellow at Oxford University and a Visiting Scholar at Yale. Together with his wife, Livia, Stone has founded and operates a private charitable foundation.

Stone has been named Entrepreneur of the Decade by Inc Magazine, one of the most influential people in the world by TIME magazine, Nerd of the Year by GQ, and one of Vanity Fair's Top Ten Most Influential People of the Information Age. Along with his wife, Livia, Stone was named a Huffington Post Game Changer for their work and impact in the field of philanthropy and public service.

Stone is an advisor to several companies and organizations ranging from tiny startups and non-profits to publicly traded international companies. In 2011, Biz accepted a role as Social Impact Advisor at AOL.

As a guest lecturer, Stone is highly sought after and often welcomes the opportunity to inspire both students and businesspeople worldwide. Major cities in Mexico, South America, The Middle East, Asia, and Europe are annual stops for Stone.

An adamant believer that when we help others, we also help ourselves, Stone supports a new way of doing business with a higher level of ambition, and a better, more altruistic way to measure success. Beyond immediate needs, Stone advocates selflessness; insisting we follow this path in order to deliver deeper meaning in our work and in so doing, place value before profit.

Babson College is the educator, convener, and thought leader for Entrepreneurship of All Kinds™. The College is a dynamic living and learning laboratory, where students, faculty, and staff work together to address the real-world problems of business and society--while at the same time evolving our methods and advancing our programs. We shape the leaders our world needs most: those with strong functional knowledge and the skills and vision to navigate change, accommodate ambiguity, surmount complexity, and motivate teams in a common purpose to create economic and social value. As we have for nearly a half-century, Babson continues to advance Entrepreneurial Thought and Action™ as the most positive force on the planet for generating sustainable economic and social value.

Babson College in Wellesley, Mass., is recognized internationally as a leader in entrepreneurial management education. Babson grants BS degrees through its innovative undergraduate program, and grants MBA and custom MS and MBA degrees through the F.W. Olin Graduate School of Business at Babson College. Babson Executive Education offers executive development programs to experienced managers worldwide. For information, visit www.babson.edu.

This news release was issued on behalf of Newswise™.  For more information, visit http://www.newswise.com.

SOURCE Babson College