Our Team

Marina Kim, Founder and Executive Director
Marina leads Ashoka U, bringing together university partners from around the world to increase the quantity and quality of social entrepreneurship education. Having been at Ashoka for six years, Marina helped to found the University Network for Social Entrepreneurship, and more recently, Ashoka U. At Stanford University, Marina led both the Future Social Innovators’ Network and the Social Entrepreneurs’ Challenge, and co-founded the university’s first minor in social innovation. Her involvement with Ashoka dates back nearly a decade, when she spearheaded Ashoka’s first efforts to formalize outreach to universities. Marina has worked with the Nonprofit Enterprise Self-Sustainability Team (NESsT) and the Flora Family Foundation, and her work has been featured on Social Edge,                                change.org, and in the Chronicle of Higher Education and the New York Times

Erin Krampetz, Co-Founder and Community Director
As Community Director, Erin fosters the strategic development and growth of the Ashoka U community of practice with the goal of supporting colleges and universities everywhere to become hubs of social innovation. Before coming to Ashoka in 2008 to help launch Ashoka U, Erin served as Program Director for Escuela Nueva International, a partner of Ashoka Fellow Vicky Colbert, coordinating collaborative partnerships for the global expansion of Escuela Nueva. Prior to Escuela Nueva, Erin evaluated program effectiveness for MobileMetrix, a community-based data collection company in Brazil, and as an Eben Tisdale Fellow, contributed to Hewlett Packard’s Global Citizenship Program. During her undergraduate and graduate studies, Erin participated as a contributing author and researcher for the Stanford Study of Writing, a five-year longitudinal study of college writers. Erin holds a BA in International Relations and an MA in International Educational Administration and Policy Analysis from Stanford University.

Michèle Leaman, Changemaker Campus Consortium Director
Michèle works with faculty, administrators, and students to change complex institutional systems to become more supportive environments for social entrepreneurship and changemaking. Before joining Ashoka, Michèle spent six months backpacking in India, Bangladesh, Burma, Thailand, Laos, Malaysia and Indonesia. From 2006 to 2009, she worked at the Association of American Colleges and Universities managing Core Commitments, a national initiative promoting students’ development of personal and social responsibility through campus innovations. As a member of the Elon University Research Seminar on Teaching Democratic Thinking (2009-2011), Michèle created What moves you?, a travel curriculum for South and Southeast Asia that explores ethical questions related to global interdependence, and develops empathy skills. Michèle has worked for Siemens and other European corporations in Paris, France and Munich, Germany (where she grew up), and holds a B.A. in philosophy and economics from Messiah College, and a M.A. in philosophy from the Institute for Christian Studies in Toronto, Canada.

Beeta Ansari, Senior Associate for Communications and Operations
As Ashoka U’s Program Associate, Beeta supports all aspects of our programs, including social media outreach and tracking impact metrics. Introduced to Ashoka through Ashoka Travel Experience in Argentina to visit Ashoka Fellows, Beeta is committed to inspiring others to learn about social entrepreneurship through both stories and numbers. Beeta worked as a Procurement Manager at a tech startup and tutored students at KIPP Academy in Houston. Beeta graduated from Southern Methodist University with a BA in Economics.

Renata Chilvarquer, Atlas Corp Fellow
Renata joins the Ashoka U team bringing five years of experience working with entrepreneurial education and entrepreneurial leadership development. Renata spent three years at Endeavor in Brazil, where she supported small and medium entrepreneurs to grow sustainably and launched Endeavor’s national model for expanding entrepreneurship education at colleges and universities. Previously she has worked with AIESEC, an international youth leadership development organization. She holds a Bachelor degree in Law from University of São Paulo and a Bachelor degree in Business Administration from Fundação Getulio Vargas, in Brazil. Renata is very passionate about education, entrepreneurship and economic development and seeks to advance those areas in order to promote change in the world.