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Leila Chirayath Janah is the founder of Samasource, a social business that connects people living in poverty to microwork -- small, computer-based tasks that build skills and generate life-changing income.

Before coming to Samasource, she was a visiting scholar with the Stanford University Program on Global Justice and the Centre for Applied Philosophy and Public Ethics in Australia. She was a founding director of Incentives for Global Health, an initiative to increase R&D spending on diseases of the poor, and a management consultant at Katzenbach Partners (now Booz & Co.).

She has also worked at the World Bank and as a travel writer for Let’s Go in Mozambique, Brazil, and Borneo.

Janah serves on the boards of OneLeap and TechSoup Global and as an advisor to the mobile shopping app Revel Touch. She is a frequent speaker on social entrepreneurship and technology, and her work has been profiled by CBS, CNN, NPR, the BBC, the New York Times, and the New Scientist.

She received a BA from Harvard University and lives in San Francisco.

Presented by MBA in Design Strategy

Generous support for CCA public programs in San Francisco has been provided by Grants for the Arts / San Francisco Hotel Tax Fund.