ashoka-fellow
(4)
Emily Stone
Emily Stone is the founder and CEO of Uncommon Cacao, the first specialty cacao trader to publish verifiable prices for every transaction along its supply chain. From a base that started in the jungles of Belize and Guatemala, she built a Transparent Trade model that sources from more than 10,000 smallholder farmers across 15+ countries and supplies hundreds of craft chocolate makers worldwide. An Ashoka Fellow and Georgetown-trained sociologist, she is trying to decommoditize cacao by making farmers the protagonists of the chain rather than its afterthought.
Aditya Vishwanath
Aditya Vishwanath is the co-founder and CEO of Inspirit, a Palo Alto edtech company that brings virtual and augmented reality into middle and high school STEM classrooms. A Georgia Tech computer scientist turned Stanford learning-sciences PhD, he built Inspirit to be the bridge between cutting-edge academic research and the everyday teacher. Before Inspirit he co-founded MakerGhat, a network of makerspaces for youth in low-income Mumbai neighborhoods. He is a Knight-Hennessy Scholar, Schmidt Futures Fellow, Ashoka Fellow, and a Forbes 30 Under 30 honoree in education.
Edith Elliott
Edith Elliott is the co-founder and co-CEO of Noora Health, a global nonprofit that turns hospital waiting rooms into classrooms and trains family members to care for their loved ones after discharge. What started as a Stanford design class project at a Bangalore hospital in 2012 has grown into an organization that has trained more than a million family caregivers across India, Bangladesh, Nepal and Indonesia. A TED speaker, Audacious Project winner and Skoll awardee, Elliott has built her career at the intersection of research, policy and design, betting that the most overlooked resource in any health system is the people already sitting at the bedside.
Jason Aramburu
Jason Aramburu is the cofounder and CEO of Applied Carbon, a Houston-based climate tech company building the world's first mobile, in-field biochar production machines that convert agricultural crop waste into permanent carbon storage - and improved soil - in a single pass. A Princeton-trained ecologist who first encountered biochar during field research in Panama, Aramburu has spent two decades building at the intersection of soil science, robotics, and carbon markets. Before Applied Carbon, he founded re:char (smallholder biochar in Kenya, backed by Gates Foundation) and Edyn (smart irrigation, Y Combinator W14), then invested in AI and energy startups at Baidu Ventures and Saudi Aramco Energy Ventures before returning to his original mission. Applied Carbon raised a $21.5M Series A in July 2024, backed by Microsoft Climate Innovation Fund, Congruent Ventures, and the Grantham Foundation, and won the $500,000 Wilkes Climate Launch Prize in September 2024.