Ayllu Initiative
San Francisco, California
Melissa is the Founder and Executive Director of Ayllu, which provides critical support to social enterprises in emerging markets to scale their impact. Recently, in media partnership with Next Billion, Ayllu launched iuMAP, the world's largest directory of BOP social enterprises. Melissa previously worked for Ashoka: Innovators for the Public. She has worked on international development projects in Africa, Europe, the Middle East, and Latin America that include education, maternity care, conflict resolution, immigration, and minority rights. Melissa is a graduate of Duke University, and she currently lives and works in São Paulo, Brazil. Twitter @melissaricher
Juli Huang is currently a Ph.D candidate at the London School of Economics and Political Science and is Ayllu's lead for all India mapping. Juli is a nomad at heart. Originally from Saint Louis, USA, Juli spent her childhood living among Qashqa'i mobile pastoralists in the Zagros Mountains in southwestern Iran. Since then, Juli has lived in seven countries in seven years, studying in the US and the UK and conducting anthropological research and working in the Middle East, the Caucasus, Central Asia, and South Asia to understand the dynamics between states and tribes, globalization and local experience, sustainable development and entrepreneurship. Previously, Juli worked as Artemisia's India Coordinator, conducting research on the Social Business sector and connecting innovative Social Businesses with young entrepreneurial leaders from the AIESEC network.