Jeffrey Hamaoui

Managing Partner

Jeff Hamaoui is an internationally known expert and thought leader in the social enterprise field. His opinions and innovations have been sought after by leaders of multinational corporations, social ventures, foundations, government agencies, civil society organizations and international institutions. As a connector of both concepts and people, he has been instrumental in advancing partnerships in the global social enterprise arena, including his involvement with the World Business Council for Sustainable Development (WBCSD), a coalition of 175 international companies united by a shared commitment to sustainable development via the three pillars of economic growth, ecological balance and social progress. As an attractor of capital and other resources, he has been responsible for the disbursement of millions of dollars into sustainable livelihoods projects. Jeff’s early experiences as a teacher, setting up a school for children with learning disabilities and working in the private sector, combined with his later experiences helping to build and run a foundation and think tank helped shape his core business ideology which is centered around doing well financially and doing good socially and environmentally. Founding Origo Social Enterprise Partners in 1999 as a global center of excellence in social enterprise design was a natural next step in Jeff’s career. Today, he leads a team of highly accomplished professionals who are dedicating their lives to the creation and promotion of smart business design and cross-sector collaboration. He has advised a variety of civil society organizations such as the World Wildlife Fund (WWF), the World Economic Forum, the Global Exchange for Social Development (GEXSI) and Charity Bank, and a number of bilateral and multilateral donor agencies.

In 1994, Jeff worked with industrialist and “green billionaire” Stephen Schmidheiny to help setup the AVINA Foundation in Mallorca, Spain to invest in sustainable development projects in Spain and the Mediterranean basin in partnership with leaders of civil society and the business sector. While at AVINA, he established a think tank devoted to research in the area of leadership for sustainable development. As of 2003, AVINA’s financial commitments have exceeded $280 million. Prior to AVINA, Jeff had a management role in the creative department at Spafax, a leading in flight entertainment and communications company. He began his career in 1990 as a teacher at Collegio Internacional de Caracas in Caracas, Venezuela and then at Laurentian International College in Quebec, Canada. While in Quebec, he setup Northside House, a school for children with learning difficulties.

Jeff serves on the Board of Directors of Elements International, a sustainable development services company that was organized and staffed by faculty and students from Cambridge University. He also serves on the board of Television Trust for the Environment (TVE) in London, an independent nonprofit production and distribution company specializing in films and other broadcast programs on the environment, development, and health and human rights issues. He holds a BA in literature and philosophy from Swansea University and a MA in education from London University where he also had an Associate Fellowship. Jeff speaks three languages and has lived and conducted business in more than a dozen countries.

Eliot Jamison

Partner

As a former investment banker, Eliot Jamison has a strong background in corporate finance, project financing and due diligence, financial forecasting and analysis, mergers and acquisitions, and capital raising. Working across market sectors, Eliot is an expert in developing innovative financing strategies and investment structures to meet client needs. His contributions to industry-wide research on financing sources and mechanisms for social enterprises are highly regarded. Eliot is currently playing a leading role in a major research effort with the World Business Council for Sustainable Development that is identifying financial resources — and the strategies for accessing those resources — available to corporations engaged in socially beneficial business activities in emerging markets.

Prior to joining Origo Social Enterprise Partners in 2003, Eliot was involved in the financing and operation of social enterprises through his work with the New York Community Investment Company (NYCIC), where he evaluated venture capital investments from a financial perspective and from a social impact perspective. In NYCIC’s case, the social mission is to promote business development in low income areas and among under-represented population groups. He continued this activity as the founder of Added Values Investment Advisors (AVIA), which he established to create new investment funds allowing socially motivated individual investors to participate in the emerging fields of community development and environmental venture investing. Before entering the field of social enterprise investing, Eliot was part of a small team that selected, structured and managed private equity investments for Bessemer Partners & Co. (now Lindsay Goldberg & Bessemer), a New York-based private equity investment firm with available capital of $3 billion and aggregate returns in excess of 35% annually. Before joining Bessemer, he provided financial and strategic advice to medium and large sized corporations as part of the mergers and acquisitions group at Merrill Lynch. His industry expertise ranges widely from healthcare services to asset management to the energy sector.

Eliot is the co-author of a paper on the implications of using expended measures of economic output that give credit to health improvements and other typically unmeasured sources of welfare. His other areas of research include the relationship between education and economic growth and links between corporate social responsibility, socially responsible investing and social entrepreneurship. In the area of charter school finance, he advised both San Francisco High Tech High (SFHTH) and Leadership Public Schools on financial planning and fundraising. Eliot holds a BA, magna cum laude, in economics and philosophy from Columbia University and an MBA from the Haas School of Business at the University of California, Berkeley.

Richard Mueller

Partner

In a career spanning 25 years, Richard Mueller helped build two multibillion-dollar financial services companies, a venture capital firm, and three prominent consulting firms. He is a recognized leader in the design and implementation of compelling strategic roadmaps for organizations facing complex challenges, and has successfully guided several organizations through watersheds in their evolution.

Prior to joining Origo in 2004, Richard was an officer and shareholder of R.J. Rudden Associates, Inc., a leading provider of strategic, economic and management consulting services to the world’s energy markets. Before joining Rudden in 1998, Richard advised CEOs and boards of public and private sector organizations as President of Mueller & Company. From 1986 to 1991, he was Managing Director of Commercial Scientific Corporation, a venture capital firm with domestic and overseas investments in information services, technology, manufacturing, and science-oriented companies. Richard’s early work was in the financial services industry where he earned an international reputation as a pioneer in the application of computer technology to financial markets. In 1984, he joined the founding management team of First Deposit Corporation (now Providian, a division of Washington Mutual, Inc.), a consumer banking and financial services firm. Richard began working with financier Harvey Baskin in 1982 to build CDx, the first real-time computerized exchange for money market instruments, which achieved $1 billion in annualized trading volume in its first eight months of operation. He started his career in 1980 with Bankers Finance Corporation, the investment advisor to the Government Investors Trust (GIT) family of mutual funds.

Richard is deeply involved in nonprofit management and organizational capacity building. He currently serves on the Board of Directors of Resource Development Associates, Inc., a strategic consulting and research firm specializing in strengthening public and nonprofit efforts to promote social and economic justice for vulnerable populations. He is also a board member and Immediate Past Chairman of Family Service Agency of San Francisco, the oldest and largest private nonprofit human services agency in the Bay Area. With a strong personal belief in the shared responsibility for social and economic outcomes, Richard has been effective at coalition building and devising collaborative solutions to community-wide problems.

Active in the field of business economics, Richard counsels U.S. and foreign government officials on a wide range of economic and public policy-related issues. He facilitated the 1987 acquisition, merger, and reorganization of Wharton Econometric Forecasting Associates and Chase Econometrics to form the WEFA Group (now Global Insight, Inc.) as one of the largest economic research and financial information companies in the world. He served as Senior Advisor to WEFA’s Chairman for more than 10 years and helped expand the firm’s consulting, software and publishing divisions. He also served as Senior Advisor to renowned economist Laurence Meyer before President Clinton appointed Meyer to the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve in 1996. Richard served on the Board of Directors of the National Association for Business Economics (NABE) in Washington, D.C., and is Past Chairman of NABE’s Corporate Planning Roundtable and Past President of NABE’s San Francisco Bay Area Chapter. He is a member of the Silicon Valley Roundtable and the Sacramento Economic Roundtable. Richard’s undergraduate studies were in economics at the George Washington University.

Molly Hoyt

Partner

Molly Hoyt brings extensive private sector experience in Information and Communications Technology (ICT), having worked for industry leaders such as Vodafone, Hewlett Packard, Airtouch Communications, and Openwave. Prior to joining Origo, Molly was the Director of Partner Programs for Vodafone, where she led the development of Vodafone’s global program to attract and manage 3rd-party software developers. This program brought thousands of partners into successful working relationships with Vodafone operating companies around the world.

Molly has worked extensively in Eastern and Western Europe, and Asia. As she began her telecom career in 1994, Molly worked on the launch of the first private GSM operator in Spain. She later helped launch an Internet Service Provider in Portugal, and managed a public-private partnership bringing telephony to rural Romania. Molly has a passionate interest in economic development in emerging markets. Molly has an MBA, cum laude, from the University of Notre Dame.

Jenna Feldman

Associate

Jenna Feldman comes to Origo with extensive experience developing cross-sector partnerships between the corporate and nonprofit sectors. Jenna's work has included crafting strategic philanthropy programs for leading corporations and brokering innovative partnerships between large companies and nonprofits, with a particular focus on the arts. Jenna worked at Arts & Communications, a philanthropic, public relations and sponsorship consulting firm in Canada, providing consulting services to ATI Technologies. Jenna successfully led the Ontario Science Center's fundraising campaign to expand museum access to low-income and community groups. As the Toronto International Film Festival's sponsorship manager, Jenna was responsible for business development and relationship management with the Festival Group's corporate partners, including: VISA, Volkswagen, Amazon.com, and Viacom. Jenna has also served as a board member of Autumn Leaf Performance in Toronto and volunteered her time at Canadian Business for Social Responsibility.

Jenna holds a BA with Distinction in psychology and economics from the University of Manitoba, a BA (Hons.) from the Richard Ivey School of Business at the University of Western Ontario, and an MBA from the Haas School of Business at the University of California, Berkeley. Jenna currently serves on the Membership Task Force of the Berkeley Art Museum / Pacific Film Archive.

James Macove

Senior Consultant

With over twenty years experience in corporate and entrepreneurial markets, Jim brings a seasoned understanding of business strategy, marketing management and new product development practices to Origo. His career engagements have involved building and managing development products in consumer packaged goods, media/entertainment, technology-based e-business, hospitality, and art markets. He has worked as both an employee and a retained consultant for companies of all sizes, and has a passion for helping organizations leverage their business, organizational and human capital assets to exploit unrealized opportunities.

At Time Warner, Jim held responsibility the development and management of Time Inc.’s online news operation, and as the group’s Vice President retained strategic responsibility for expanding the company’s presence in the online news arena. Prior to joining the News group, Jim was Director of Marketing and Business Development for the company’s magazine publishing editorial services group, where he had responsibility for developing new business using the company's vast publishing resources—including the 22 million image Time Inc. Picture Collection, its photography and text syndication group, the Time LIFE Photo Lab and the LIFE Gallery of Photography. He also had responsibility for expanding the business base for the Time Inc. Research Center, the group responsible for providing editorial/story development and business research to the company’s publishing and business operations.

Prior to joining Time Warner, Jim founded an educational arts company dedicated to producing and marketing craft and activity products to encourage creative and social development in developmentally challenged children. This work followed several years in Account Management at Grey and Interpublic-Lintas advertising agencies overseeing packaged goods and service business accounts, including Kraft General Foods, MasterCard, and NFL Properties. He has also been retained independently to develop business plans for several blue-chip clients and start-up ventures, including authoring the business plan and development strategy for the American Heart Association’s current HeartCheck consumer products certification and licensing program. The HeartCheck program today is widely deployed and successful.

Jim graduated in 1983 with a B.S. in Marketing from Miami University, Oxford, Ohio.

Michael Kleeman

Senior Consultant

Michael Kleeman is a technology industry strategist whose particular skill is in bridging technical and business issues. For over 30 years he has been involved in the technology industry in engineering, planning, management and advisory roles. He has also worked with a number of start-up firms and been an executive manager in both the consulting and technology industry.

He is an independent consultant working with major global equipment manufacturers (HW and SW) and global carriers as well as smaller firms in the services and optical products areas. He has also worked on alternative energy, energy management and sustainability issues, and served as an advisor to Project California of the California Council on Science and Technology, examining commercial and economic impacts of energy policies. He is currently at UCSD working with the Supercomputer Center and the California Institute of Telecommunications and Internet Technology (CALIT2) on complex modeling, wireless technology applications and complex visualization systems. Formerly a Vice President at The Boston Consulting Group, Director at Arthur D. Little, and executive at Sprint, Mr. Kleeman has been involved with numerous technology companies in North America as advisor and executive. He has most recently served as the Co-founder, Vice President and Chief Technical Officer of Cometa Networks, a nationwide 802.11 firm, and before that Aerie Networks, a US nationwide long distance fiber optic carrier and was also the founding CTO of Global Telesystems Group.

He holds an MA from the Claremont Graduate School, an undergraduate degree from Syracuse University, He serves as the National Chair of Strategy for the American Red Cross and on the Boards of Equal Access, a not-for-profit providing digital satellite radio services to developing nations and the Marine Mammal Center in Sausalito. He is also on the advisory council for the San Diego Technology Council. Previously he was a visiting fellow at University of California Berkeley (BRIE) and a fellow of the BIOS Institute, a firm specializing in Complex Adaptive Systems and served on the Board of Science Foundation Ireland.

Jesse Patel

Analyst & Entrepreneur in Residence

Jesse Patel is a product designer by training who serves multiple roles within Origo. In addition to standard work doing research and writing for Origo projects and proposals, Jesse works with Origo's support on several projects of his own design. Jesse received a B.S. in Mechanical Engineering from Stanford University in 2003, where his studies focused on human centered product design.

W. Robert de Jongh

Senior Consultant

W. Robert de Jongh is a leading global social and environmental entrepreneur and the co-founder of Origo where he continues to serve on the advisory board. Robert is currently the Regional Director for Latin America for the Netherlands Development Organization– a leading development advisory and technical services provider affiliated with the Dutch government. For over a decade, he has been dedicated to accelerating the impact of organizations, bi-lateral development agencies, social entrepreneurs and companies dedicated to catalyzing environmental and social change in emerging markets. As a strategist, business developer and innovator, Robert has worked to develop winning strategies that have generated over US$60 million in new revenue and streamlined business processes that have cumulatively saved at least US$10 million in costs -- while ensuring the protection of the some of the world’s most endangered places and resources and securing the livelihoods of communities that depend upon them. Robert is also known for integrating business principles into non-profit management, and has pioneered the development of a series of performance management, knowledge management and financial and technology solutions for the sector.

Robert worked for a decade at the World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF) where he played a leadership role in establishing WWF’s field presences in Latin America and the Caribbean and ensuring their sustainability by securing over US$35 million of revenues from European sources. In addition, he developed WWF’s initial strategies for the engagement of the private sector which included an advisory role with the UN Secretary General’s Office through the UN Global Compact. Robert also worked for The Nature Conservancy, where, as Division Director, he laid the foundation for a long-term enabling environment for conservation through multiple $10 million dollar debt-for-nature swaps, the single largest private investment in conservation in one of the region’s most biologically diverse areas, and the first-ever, locally-financed bail-out strategy for a leading environmental organization in the region. As President and Chief Operating Officer of Origo, Robert played an instrumental role in business design and development, product development, sales and marketing and secured Origo’s path toward profitability and social impact. Robert was also the principal for several high-profile consulting engagements, including the World Economic Forum and the World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF) and consortia that included the Soros Foundation, Rockefeller Philanthropy Advisors, the Schwab Foundation for Social Entrepreneurship, Foursome Investments, Deutsche Bank, PriceWaterhouseCoopers and Bain & Company among others.

Robert’s early career involved included positions at the US Chamber of Commerce, the Washington College of Law, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) and the World Bank. Robert holds two Bachelors of Arts degrees in Economics and International Affairs with a specialization in international economic development from the American University in Washington, DC and completed EU policy studies at the University Libre de Bruxelles in Brussels, Belgium. Robert speaks eight languages and has lived and worked in over 25 countries in the Americas, Europe, Africa and Asia.

Veronica Medina-Ross

Consultant

Veronica Medina-Ross has strong international and multidisciplinary professional experience. In her 15 year career in the environmental and sustainability fields she has been an educator, researcher, consultant and government environmental management official.

Veronica brings wide experience in Corporate Social Responsibility consulting having worked at the organization Business for Social Responsibility (BSR). As a Project Manager at BSR she coordinated and carried out consulting projects for mining multinational corporations operating in Latin America such as Gold Fields, Newcrest Explorations and Antamina.

Veronica also has extensive experience in environmental management and policy development having worked at the National Institute of Ecology (NIE) of the Mexican the Ministry of the Environment. There, in her role as Deputy Director for OECD affairs she managed environmental policy projects related to the Organization of Environmental Co-operation and Development (OECD). She helped to organize Mexico's Environmental Performance Review carried out by the OECD in 1997. During this time, Veronica was also involved in the development and evaluation of environmental policies and regulations directed to industries. She was also in charge of coordinating environmental research projects developed in collaboration with international institutions. For example Veronica supervised a research project carried out in collaboration with Environment Canada to monitor personal exposure to air pollutants in Mexico City.

Veronica is an accomplished researcher having developed a Ph.D. project. This research project was carried out at the School of Environmental Sciences, University of East Anglia (Norwich, U.K). Her Ph.D. thesis entitled “Environmental Management in the Mexican Chemical Sector: Drivers, Obstacles and Implications” is a policy-relevant and empirically-based research project that evaluated the types of voluntary environmental management initiatives implemented by chemical companies operating in Mexico City. It also analyzed the implications of these initiatives on future environmental management and sustainability in Mexico.

After completing her Ph.D. Veronica worked as a research assistant for a project carried out for the UK Department for International Development (DFID). The project called "Institutional Mapping Project: Identifying Key Institutions Working on Latin American Development Strategy Themes" identified key Latin American organizations doing work in the areas of governance, poverty alleviation and gender equality.

Veronica’s early career included teaching positions in Mexico City, first as a Chemistry and Biology teacher. Later, as an environmental educator, she designed and taught an environmental education program directed to elementary and secondary level students.

Her publications include articles, book chapters and contributions to professional documents. For example:

• Medina-Ross VM (2005), “La Gestión Ambiental Voluntaria en el Sector Químico en México” (“Voluntary Environmental Management in the Mexican Chemical Sector”), in Industria y Medio Ambiente, Jenkins R. and Mercado Garcia A. Eds., El Colegio de Mexico, México D.F.
• Medina Ross VM (2004), "Responsabilidad Social Corporativa en México: El Caso del Sector Químico" (Corporate Social Responsibility in Mexico: The Case of the Chemical Sector). Comercio Exterior
• Acutt NJ, Medina-Ross VM, with O'Riordan T (2004), Perspectives on Corporate Social Responsibility in the Chemical Sector: A Comparative Analysis of the Mexican and South African cases". U.N. Natural Resources Forum

Veronica holds a BSc. in biochemistry and pharmacology from the National Autonomous University of Mexico; a MSc. in Integrated Environmental Studies from the Center for Environmental Studies at the University of Southampton; and a Ph.D. in Environmental Management obtained at the School of Environmental Sciences, University of East Anglia.

Piper Kujac

Consultant

Ms. Kujac is a LEED-accredited sustainability designer serving Origo,Inc. as a developer of its Best House Ever business services. She has worked on multiple sustainable building projects and knows the ins and outs of the everyday reality of green building- from choosing materials and systems to finding creative ways to keep them in the project when budgets become tight. She is adept at qualifying systems and features when under the "value engineering knife", and is a wealth of knowledge in an ever-evolving building industry.

In addition to working as a design professional, Piper writes for Inhabitat.com, an online magazine noted for its ‘future-forward design for the world you inhabit’. Piper is actively involved in Emerging Green Builders and the local chapter of the USGBC, and will teach an upcoming course on sustainable project development at the UC Berkeley Extension in Spring '07. A practicing architectural designer since 1999, she obtained a B.A. in Architecture from the University of Oregon in 1998 and LEED accreditation in 2004.

Michael Chertok

Senior Consultant

Michael Chertok is a well-known leader in the education, technology, philanthropy and social enterprise fields. With a diverse range of public and private sector management experience, he is recognized internationally as an expert in harnessing business strategies for social change. Michael’s work focuses on strategy for funders of social enterprise including foundations, multilateral and bilateral donor agencies, as well as building the capacity of social enterprises in emerging markets. He has proficient knowledge of philanthropy in its many forms and is the co founder of a foundation that has supported information technology projects in 30 countries.

Michael advised foundations and development agencies on strategic program development and capacity building with grantees as founder and Principal of Social Change Consulting, the activities of which were absorbed by Origo Social Enterprise Partners when he joined the firm in 2004. He is co-founder and previously served as the Managing Director of Global Catalyst Foundation, a private foundation established by the principals of Global Catalyst Partners to improve peoples’ lives through the effective application of information technologies. He established the foundation’s reputation as an innovative pioneer, applying technology to international development and creating an engaged model of international philanthropy. He also initiated the foundation’s annual Small Tech Grants competition, engaging more than 100 international grassroots organizations and U.S.-based intermediaries, plus 50 new international philanthropists in a participatory grant-making program. Prior to his involvement with Global Catalyst, Michael helped start Schools Online, a nonprofit organization that has enabled students at more than 5,000 schools around the world to gain access and use the communication and information resources of the Internet for learning and cross-cultural dialogue, where he also served as Director of Marketing and Development. He previously managed a public-private partnership initiative to assemble a multimedia-based curriculum for at-risk youth at Computer Curriculum Corporation (now Pearson Education Technologies) the leading provider of educational software and services to the school market, and a unit of Simon & Schuster. Michael began his career as a math and computer science teacher in Elmsford, New York. He later became the Education Coordinator at the Computer Museum in Boston and then joined the research staff at the Institute for Research on Learning in Palo Alto, California.

Michael is the co-founder of svi2, the Silicon Valley Forum on International Development and Information Technology, an education and networking group for individuals in the civil society, foundation and corporate communities interested in how technology is being applied to the challenges of international development work. He currently serves as Chairman of the Board of Digital Divide Data in Phnom Penh, Cambodia, a social enterprise that employs, and provides educational opportunities for disadvantaged young adults in Southeast Asia. He also serves on the Board of Directors of Volunteers in Asia (VIA), a private, nonprofit, nonsectarian organization dedicated to increasing understanding between the U.S. and Asia by providing young Americans with an opportunity to work and live within an Asian culture. Michael holds a BA, summa cum laude, in Russian and East European Studies from Yale University and an MBA and a Certificate in Public Management from Stanford University’s Graduate School of Business. He was a Fellow in the Stanford Executive Program for Nonprofit Leaders.