David Green

Vice President, Ashoka

David Green has worked with many organizations to make medical technology and health care services sustainable, affordable and accessible to all. Green is a MacArthur Fellow, Ashoka Fellow and recognized by Schwab Foundation as a leading social entrepreneur. Green helped establish Aurolab (India), to produce affordable intraocular lenses (now with 8 percent of the global market share) and sutures. He has helped to develop high-volume, quality eye care programs that are affordable to the poor and self-sustaining via user fees, including Aravind Eye Hospital in India -- which performs 300,000 surgeries per year. A total of 70 percent of the care is provided free of charge or below - cost, yet the hospital generates substantial surplus revenue. Within this paradigm of humanizing capitalism, Green now works as an Ashoka vice president to create social investing instruments to support sustainable social enterprises (in eye care and solar energy). He graduated from the University of Michigan with a bachelor's in general studies (1978) and a master's degree in public health (1982). He is the recipient of the 2009 "Spirit of Helen Keller" award for humanitarian efforts in blindness prevention and is the recipient of the 2009 University of Michigan Humanitarian Service Award.