Santa Clara Magazine

On October 19, social entrepreneurs from around the world convened on the Mission Campus. The occasion was the 2011 Tech Awards Nexus Conference, hosted by Santa Clara's Center for Science, Technology, and Society in the Locatelli Center. The goal of the conference was to bring together people pursuing the ideas and possessing the ambition to change the world for the better.

At the conference, keynote speaker Kristine Pearson, CEO of Lifeline Energy and 2005 Tech Award Laureate, shared an unabridged and unabashed reflection on her journey towards distributing more than 250,000 radios to developing sub-Saharan villages. In describing this “path with few signposts,” Pearson, as well as other speakers, shared admitted mistakes, but mistakes that would turn into well-earned nuggets of wisdom. Read more at The Center of Science, Technology, and Society blog.

The conference was paired with the annual Tech Awards gala, one of Silicon Valley's most high-powered social gatherings. The Tech Awards honors 15 social entrepreneurs and their organizations for the ideas and know-how they've put into practice. So far tens of millions of lives have been positively impacted. Santa Clara President Michael Engh, S.J., was there to welcome guests—SCU has long played a key role in selecting the tech laureates.

See a video recap of the Tech Awards here, including words from this year's Global Humanitarian honoree, Jeff Skoll. The first president of eBay, a philanthropist, and Hollywood producer, Skoll has devoted tremendous resources to fostering social change.

This is the stuff of best practices within the world of social enterprising. And it's one of the ways that CSTS hopes to meet director Thane Kreiner's goal of improving the lives of 1 billion people in the next decade.

2011 Tech Laureates

—Steven Boyd Saum and Jon Teel