About the Fellowship

Years ago, the minds behind the AdR Fellowship recognized three things. The first is the urgent need to bring innovation to cross-cultural dialogue. Next is that a business mindset brings enormous value to making a tangible impact. Finally, there is an exciting opportunity to better expose social entrepreneurs to the knowledge and analytical frameworks offered by social sciences.

“Distinct fields such as dialogue and entrepreneurship cannot afford to exist in isolated ivory towers.” -Ariane de Rothschild

The continuing disconnect between social sciences and business prevents the emergence of sustainable solutions that would tackle the worlds’ most pressing problems. How can you solve a problem if you don’t understand the historical and political context of the people you are trying to help? And how can you do good without going broke?

“Business, academic scholarship, and empathy provide an extraordinary force for change.” -Firoz Ladak, CEO of the Edmond de Rothschild Foundations.

Thus, since 2009, the AdR Fellows use this unique design-thinking model to engage with a wide range of thinkers and practitioners from universities such as Columbia, Cambridge, the University of Montreal, the School of Oriental and African Studies, the London School of Economics and Cornell.

 

The AdR Fellowship is

The AdR Fellowship is about harnessing the entrepreneurial drive of social entrepreneurs from minority communities to build sustainable impact while nurturing their potential as leaders. 

  • Instrumental in providing the tools that allow the AdR Fellows to think ‘outside the box’ – using their analytical skills to unravel the real issues behind the challenges they face and applying a multidisciplinary approach to design solutions for their projects.
  • Conceptual in contributing to the understanding of global issues, reframing debates, and understanding history, politics, and business theory.
  • Transformative through capacity-building and personal development.