Mission: Our mission is to launch leaders of social ventures. Our focus is on undergraduates, graduates, or recent alumni and the communities they serve as our ultimate clients. We engage faculty and established entrepreneurs and leaders from all sectors in our work, but the success of that engagement, ultimately, is measured by its impact on inspiring, informing and incubating the next generation of social entrepreneurs.

Programming: Our programs are a diverse and comprehensive mix of teaching, community building, research, publishing, and consulting. The program array includes both academic and experiential initiatives, both theory and practice, directed both inward at developing Mason’s resources and outward to prepare emerging entrepreneurs globally to solve real problems for real people. We believe in measuring our impact and our programs are continuously improved based on data.

University-Wide Charge: The Center was strategically created as a university-wide effort, reflecting a belief that solving the world’s complex problems requires interdisciplinary approaches. This positioning will allow us to infuse social entrepreneurship into the curriculum and practice of every department while engaging a large pool of students, faculty, and staff. For purposes of administration, our credit-granting programs may be housed within a specific school and department, but the overall work of the Center is guided and supported by leaders university-wide, most directly through the Mason Advisory Council.

Mason’s Culture: George Mason University’s tagline is “Where Innovation is Tradition” and the institution has made a concerted effort to build a brand that reflects its culture of entrepreneurial thinking and practice. In 2011 Mason was named the #2 “national university to watch” by U.S. News & World Report. Notwithstanding that Mason is Virginia’s largest institution by enrollment at some 33,000 students, it operates with both modesty and an appetite for risk-taking.

Location: Our Center’s prime location in the National Capital Region, a hub of global social innovation, world-class information technology, and federal policymaking, allows us to form and maintain crucial relationships with the business, social, and public sectors that are changing the world. This unique atmosphere of collaboration allows our programming to be informed by and contribute to relevant, pressing social issues.

People: The Center is led and advised by individuals with expertise in numerous and diverse fields, including an experienced professional staff, an internal advisory body composed of university leaders and a dynamic Global Advisory Board. Our team brings a breadth of knowledge, talents, and experience that allows our work to thrive in the cross-sector, multidisciplinary field of social entrepreneurship.