Jane Leu

An Ashoka Fellow, the Founder of Smarter Good, Upwardly Global and
four other social sector start-ups, Jane Leu is intrigued by problems and their solutions. Known for strong vision and execution, Jane has more than twenty years of entrepreneurial leadership of social sector organizations.
Jane founded Smarter Good to help global social sector organizations start, sustain, and scale their impact. Smarter Good believes that by making a skilled team available to social sector innovators to support their fundraising, marketing and accounting and finance functions, they will have more time to focus on their
missions, and that will lead to more global impact. With offices in the US and the Philippines, the Smarter Good team has worked at the intersection of hundreds of funders and more than 80 nonprofits working in 30
countries, across a diverse range of issue areas from youth development to poverty alleviation.

As the Founder and CEO of Upwardly Global, Jane built a national organization that has advanced the integration of thousands of skilled immigrant professionals into the workforce, turning the brain drain into brain gain for the US. Upwardly Global works closely with the private sector to connect employers, from multinational corporations to small businesses, to the benefits of a globally diverse workforce.

Jane is a Lecturer in Social Innovation at the Stanford Graduate School of Business, helping MBAs find their place in the social impact sector. She is a Draper Richards Kaplan Foundation Venture Partner, a member of the Board of Directors of Welcoming America, and an advisory board member of Ashoka U, and the Peery Foundation. Jane’s contributions and leadership have been recognized by BYU Social Innovator of the Year Award, John F. Kennedy New Frontier Award, Draper Richards Kaplan Foundation for Social Entrepreneurship and the Manhattan Institute Social Entrepreneur Award, among others. She holds a MA from Columbia University’s School of International and Public Affairs and a BA from Tufts University.

Lesser-known facts about Jane include: she spends a lot of happy hours talking to her dog, she never cooks, and as a legacy of her Midwestern roots, she would eat entire meals comprised only of corn-on-the-cob if it was deemed socially acceptable.