Carol Grodzins

Carol’s professional life has been at the conjunction of international development, health and public policy. Carol first studied Russian language and literature at Indiana University – because Russia and the United States were two major powers on a collision course. After earning her B.A., she needed to experience the world outside America first-hand. Carol served in the Peace Corps as a primary school teacher in rural Sarawak, E. Malaysia, an experience that lead her to study how to create healthy communities. She pursued this interest first at the Massachusetts General Hospital, studying and practicing as a nurse and later as President of a statewide, nurse-led and owned non-profit organization promoting family-centric obstetrics. In the 1980s, Carol spearheaded the development of the Massachusetts Committee for a Nuclear Weapons Freeze, which educated citizens, lobbied Congress, and organized grassroots support for an end to new nuclear weapons testing, production, and deployment. She did this because she saw nuclear war as the number one public health threat. In 1989, Carol joined the Harvard Institute for International Development's macroeconomic and food policy group. Over the next eleven years, Carol co-launched the Program on NGO's and their role in international development as well as a new degree program, the Master of Public Policy in International Development at Harvard’s Kennedy School and completed a Master of Public Administration herself, concentrating on International Development and Health She directed all International Programs at the Kennedy School. Carol left Harvard in 2000 to join Ashoka as Vice President and Change Leader of the Global Fellowship. She is dedicated to nurturing the citizen sector and its leaders, the social entrepreneurs. Leaders in the citizen sector need recognition and support to increase their impact, spread their models of change, and bring others along. There must be a balance of power between government, business and citizens. Now retired, Carol has moved to Chiang Mai Thailand where she teaches social change, enjoys the friendship of Asian Ashoka Fellows and colleagues and her former students, travels throughout Asia and, instead of always engaging in action, practices just “being”. Her newest role is Grandmother, very rewarding!

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