NextBillion - An Initiative of the William Davidson Institute at the University of Michigan

Friday, March 11, 2016

Social entrepreneur Akanksha Hazari of India was honored with the Economic Empowerment Award at the 15th Annual Vital Voices Global Leadership Awards, at The John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, in Washington, DC, on Wednesday. Theranos founder and Chief Executive Officer Elizabeth Holmes presented the award to Hazari.

The awards meet saw a mammoth gathering of 1,200 guests who came together to celebrate four extraordinary women, each taking on the most urgent issues facing their communities and showing exceptional leadership in an insecure world.

“Akanksha is one of the rare, sole female tech founders in India,” said Holmes, at the meet. “She believes, like I do, that technology has an incredible role to play in solving some of the biggest problems we face.”

While working in rural India, Hazari realized even in areas where infrastructure and service delivery were inadequate, there was one tool nearly everyone had access to: a mobile phone. She decided to turn access to phones into access to social goods, including clean water, healthcare, education and energy.