Cordes Fellows
Learn More About Our Past Fellowship
From 2010-2019, the Cordes Fellowship program provided annual scholarships for 50 of the world’s most promising emerging social entrepreneurs to participate as full delegates in the Opportunity Collaboration (OC), an annual gathering in Mexico of 400+ global leaders building sustainable solutions to poverty and injustice.
The OC brings together social entrepreneurs, innovative nonprofit executives, grantmakers, impact investors, corporate and academic field-leaders, and aligned media working around the world to solve common challenges and spark new opportunities. The purpose of the Cordes Fellowship is to open doors, minds and networks for emerging social entrepreneurs and nonprofit executives; enrich the OC with new, emerging leaders; and infuse the collaborative discussions with a diversity of perspectives. Learn more here.
Successful Cordes Fellowship applicants are high-impact, innovative, entrepreneurial for-profit and nonprofit organization executives with a demonstrated commitment to economic justice and poverty alleviation. Like all OC delegates, fellows are catalytic leaders who by their actions and accomplishments evidence pragmatic vision, passionate tenacity, multi-sectoral thinking, adaptive leadership skills, non-ideological activism and a strong ethical grounding. Since 2010, the OC has welcomed 573 Cordes Fellows from 77 different countries.
“The Cordes Fellowship has been invaluable to me as a social entrepreneur and for my nonprofit Remake, that is igniting a conscious consumer movement to make fashion a force for good. I am beyond grateful for the donor support, strategic advice and mentorship and connections to partners to help grow our movement.”
– Ayesha Barenblat, Founder and CEO, Remake
“The Cordes Fellowship connected me with a global community of social impact enthusiasts who have opened new doors of opportunities for us and shown appreciation for our mission to build a vibrant movement of girls. The fellowship and new relationships built helped me to look at social issues from an analytical point of view that has greatly influenced our strategy and thought process of how we need to get to the next level of impact.”
– Monica Nyiraguhabwa, Executive Director, Girl Up
“I’ve grown so much from The Cordes Fellowship. I was able to meet incredible mentors and peers who have been an invaluable support network. SHOFCO’s programs in Kenya have greatly benefited from being a part of Cordes and I look forward to staying connected and collaborating to achieve our mission of building urban promise from urban poverty.”
– Kennedy Odede, Co-Founder, SHOFCO
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