Rochelle Beck

Rochelle Beck’s US and international work in both for- and nonprofit organizations reflects the values of a social entrepreneur long before that phrase was coined. As Founder of Culturas del Sol, Inc., she created and grew a profitable corporation for over 20 years with a “conscious capital” mission: to generate sufficient revenues in the US market to provide sustainable incomes to artisans in Latin America and Africa so they could continue their culture-driven skills and provide economic incentives to their children to improve their lives while maintaining their heritage. Beck leveraged Culturas to generate orders and incomes for more than 3,000 artisan families, who in turn provided steady sales and employment for over 24,000 related local businesses. In 2000, Beck was invited to compete in the World Bank’s Development Marketplace, and won from among 1,200 international juried entries. Her vision was to create, pilot, launch and market the Artisan Enterprise Network, an Internet-based, international micro- and small business information, training and mentoring program, reflecting her decades of experience in the field and her belief that the Internet could spur the democratization of information and access that would spell success for millions of enterprises.competing in the global marketplace. Beck received her doctorate from Harvard University in Social Policy Analysis in a joint program of the Graduate School of Education and the Kennedy School of Government. She currently lives in Miami, where she has been Vice President of the Everglades Foundation and mentors leaders on sustainable development, private-public policy and partners, strategic planning and mission marketing.