Since 2010, the Cordes Fellowship program has 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.