The Skoll Fund, created in 1999, is a supporting organization associated with the Silicon Valley Community Foundation of San Jose, California. The private foundation, the Skoll Foundation, was launched in 2002. Each entity is governed by its own Board of Directors. The two entities share grantmaking, program, and administrative resources.
Founder and Chairman Emeritus
Founder and Chairman Emeritus
Jeff Skoll is an entrepreneur devoted to creating a sustainable world of peace and prosperity. Over the last 17 years, he has crafted an innovative portfolio of philanthropic and commercial enterprises, each a distinctive catalyst for changing the trajectory of issues that most affect the survival and thriving of humanity. This portfolio includes the Skoll Foundation, Skoll Global Threats Fund, Participant Media, and Capricorn Investment Group—all coordinated under the Jeff Skoll Group umbrella. The Skoll entrepreneurial approach is unique: driving large-scale, permanent social impact by investing in a range of efforts that integrate powerful stories, data, capital markets, technology, partnerships, and organized learning networks. Operating independently from one another yet deeply connected through a shared vision, Skoll organizations galvanize public will, influence policy, and mobilize resources to accelerate the pace and depth of change. Jeff was the first full-time employee and President of eBay, where he experienced firsthand the power of combining entrepreneurship, technology, and trust in people. His work today embodies those fundamental lessons. All of Jeff’s organizations rely on the premise that people are fundamentally good, and that given the opportunity to do the right thing, they will.
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Skoll Foundation Board of Directors
Jim DeMartini is the Chairman of Seiler LLP. In his role as a trusted advisor, Mr. DeMartini counsels clients in matters including income, estate and gift tax planning, wealth management, all facets of real estate, and charitable gift planning.
Currently, Mr. DeMartini is a member of the Board of Directors of the Skoll Foundation and the Stupski Foundation. Mr. DeMartini was also Founder and Member of the Board of Directors of Sports Association for Youth, a non-competitive baseball league that currently benefits more than 1,000 Bay Area youths annually. Additional past community activities include Notre Dame de Namur University Trustee, Executive Committee Member, and Chairman of the Audit Committee; Sisters of Notre Dame de Namur of California Advisory Board; Santa Clara University English Advisory Board; Lucile Salter Packard Children’s Hospital at Stanford Capital Campaign Committee; Stanford University Medical Center Friends of Orthopedics; Chair of the Santa Clara University Men’s Golf Committee; and Skoll Global Threats Fund board member.
From 1999-2004 Mr. DeMartini served on the Board of Directors of Mid-Peninsula Bank, a member of the Greater Bay Bancorp group. He attended the University of California at Los Angeles and holds a Bachelor of Science Degree in Accounting from Golden Gate University. Mr. DeMartini pursued graduate studies in taxation and speaks on a variety of related topics. Mr. DeMartini is a member of the American Institute of Certified Public Accountants and California State Society of Certified Public Accountants.
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Debra is focused on achieving a more just and sustainable economic system through collaborative action, human centered design and transformational systems change. She serves on the Boards of the Skoll Foundation, B Lab, IDEO.org, Imperative 21 and the global advisory boards of the African Leadership University and the Wellbeing project. She also works as an advisor to social ventures around the world.
Pre-Covid, Debra was a faculty member at Stanford University's d.school where she co-founded the FEED (Food Entrepreneurship, Education and Design) Collaborative.
Pre-Stanford, Debra was a business executive at Hewlett Packard where the common threads in her broad, 22-year career were driving large scale change, creating new businesses and producing positive social impact and good business results concurrently.
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James Mwangi is the Executive Director of the Dalberg Group, a collection of impact-driven businesses that seek to champion inclusive and sustainable growth around the world, and a Partner with Dalberg Global Development Advisors. Mr. Mwangi founded and built up Dalberg’s presence in Africa, beginning with the Johannesburg office in 2007, Nairobi in 2008, and Dakar in 2009, and he served as Global Managing Partner and Chief Executive of Dalberg’s consulting business from 2010 to 2014.
Prior to Dalberg, Mr. Mwangi worked at McKinsey & Company. He is a 2009 Archbishop Tutu Leadership Fellow of the African Leadership Institute, a 2013 Young Global Leader of the World Economic Forum and a member of the Young Presidents Organization. He also currently serves as a member of the Global Entrepreneurs Council of the UN Foundation. Mr. Mwangi holds an AB Hons Degree in economics from Harvard University.
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Lindsey Spindle is President of The Jeff Skoll Group. Working for global change-maker and renowned entrepreneur Jeff Skoll, Lindsey helps oversee and connect Mr. Skoll’s network of philanthropic, commercial, and personal interests including Participant, Capricorn Investment Group, and the Skoll Foundation where she also serves as a Board director.
Lindsey has dedicated her career to shaping progressive organizations and campaigns that improve people’s lives, particularly women and children. Lindsey was Chief Communications and Brand Officer of Share Our Strength, a national nonprofit focused on ending childhood hunger in America through its groundbreaking No Kid Hungry campaign. Under her leadership, The No Kid Hungry campaign won PR Week’s prestigious Non-Profit Campaign of the Year in 2015, increased participation in federal meal programs by several millions year over year, and helped elevate childhood hunger from an issue few cared about to being a top 10 issue the general public identified as “solvable.”
Before focusing on domestic hunger eradication, Lindsey spent nearly 20 years in health care communications, policy, and government relations working for some of the nation's most respected commercial and non-profit organizations. These include Georgetown University, Brookings, Avalere Health, and Porter Novelli. Throughout her career, Lindsey has shaped major national campaigns such as the groundbreaking ‘truth’ campaign that curbed youth smoking by 30% in one year; increased patient safety through reduced medical errors; defended vaccine safety; educated the public on the Medicare prescription drug benefit; and secured bipartisan Congressional funding for improving health care safety and quality.
Lindsey is a Board director at World Central Kitchen and on the Next Generation Council of the Shoah Foundation. Proud wife, mom, and mentor to new mothers, Lindsey is a book-a-week reader, and fanatical about ice hockey and Thanksgiving.
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Skoll Fund Board of Directors
Jim DeMartini is the Chairman of Seiler LLP. In his role as a trusted advisor, Mr. DeMartini counsels clients in matters including income, estate and gift tax planning, wealth management, all facets of real estate, and charitable gift planning.
Currently, Mr. DeMartini is a member of the Board of Directors of the Skoll Foundation and the Stupski Foundation. Mr. DeMartini was also Founder and Member of the Board of Directors of Sports Association for Youth, a non-competitive baseball league that currently benefits more than 1,000 Bay Area youths annually. Additional past community activities include Notre Dame de Namur University Trustee, Executive Committee Member, and Chairman of the Audit Committee; Sisters of Notre Dame de Namur of California Advisory Board; Santa Clara University English Advisory Board; Lucile Salter Packard Children’s Hospital at Stanford Capital Campaign Committee; Stanford University Medical Center Friends of Orthopedics; Chair of the Santa Clara University Men’s Golf Committee; and Skoll Global Threats Fund board member.
From 1999-2004 Mr. DeMartini served on the Board of Directors of Mid-Peninsula Bank, a member of the Greater Bay Bancorp group. He attended the University of California at Los Angeles and holds a Bachelor of Science Degree in Accounting from Golden Gate University. Mr. DeMartini pursued graduate studies in taxation and speaks on a variety of related topics. Mr. DeMartini is a member of the American Institute of Certified Public Accountants and California State Society of Certified Public Accountants.
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Cheryl L. Dorsey is the president of Echoing Green, a global nonprofit that supports emerging social entrepreneurs and invests deeply in their ideas and leadership. A social entrepreneur herself, Cheryl received an Echoing Green Fellowship in 1992 to launch The Family Van, a community-based mobile health unit in Boston. Cheryl has served in two presidential administrations and currently serves on several boards including The Bridgespan Group and Skoll Foundation. She has received numerous awards, including the Pfizer Roerig History of Medicine Award, the Robert Kennedy Distinguished Public Service Award, and the Manual C. Carballo Memorial Prize. Cheryl has been named one of "America's Best Leaders" by US News & World Report and the Center for Public Leadership at Harvard Kennedy School and one of The Nonprofit Times' "Power and Influence Top 50." She has a medical degree from Harvard Medical School and her master's in public policy from Harvard Kennedy School.
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Pat Mitchell is the editorial director of TEDWomen. Throughout her career as a
journalist, Emmy-winning producer and pioneering executive, she has focused on
sharing women’s stories. She is chair of the Sundance Institute Board, chair emerita of
the Women’s Media Center board, and a board member at Participant. She is a trustee
of the VDAY movement, the Skoll Foundation and The Woodruff Arts Center. She served
as a congressional appointment to The American Museum of Women’s History Advisory
Council. She is the author of Becoming a Dangerous Woman: Embracing Risk to Change
the World and the host of the new "Dangerous Women: Leading Onward"
interview series on FINTECH.TV.
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Dr. Raj Panjabi is the CEO of Last Mile Health, and Assistant Professor of Medicine at Harvard Medical School and the Division of Global Health Equity at Brigham & Women’s Hospital. Raj grew up in Liberia but was forced to flee with his family when he was nine years old due to civil war. After returning to Liberia as a medical student, he co-founded Last Mile Health in 2007. Last Mile Health partners with governments to design and scale national community health workforces to bring life-saving primary healthcare to the world’s most remote communities. Last Mile Health and its partners are also building the Community Health Academy, a global platform that leverages the power of digital technology to modernize the training of community health workers and health systems leaders.
Raj has authored or co-authored over 50 publications. He currently chairs a global study with the Gates Foundation investigating lessons learned from exemplar community-based health care programs and has served as a reviewer of the World Health Organization’s Guidelines on Optimizing Community Health Worker Programs. For his work on building community health systems and responding to the Ebola epidemic in West Africa, Raj was named by TIME as one of the 100 Most Influential People in the World and one of the 50 Most Influential People in Healthcare. He has also been listed as one of the World’s 50 Greatest Leaders by Fortune. Raj is a recipient of the TED Prize, the Skoll Award for Social Entrepreneurship, and is a Schwab Social Entrepreneur with the World Economic Forum.
Raj is a graduate of the University of North Carolina School of Medicine and trained in internal medicine and primary care at Massachusetts General Hospital. He received a Master of Public Health from the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health.
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Lindsey Spindle is President of The Jeff Skoll Group. Working for global change-maker and renowned entrepreneur Jeff Skoll, Lindsey helps oversee and connect Mr. Skoll’s network of philanthropic, commercial, and personal interests including Participant, Capricorn Investment Group, and the Skoll Foundation where she also serves as a Board director.
Lindsey has dedicated her career to shaping progressive organizations and campaigns that improve people’s lives, particularly women and children. Lindsey was Chief Communications and Brand Officer of Share Our Strength, a national nonprofit focused on ending childhood hunger in America through its groundbreaking No Kid Hungry campaign. Under her leadership, The No Kid Hungry campaign won PR Week’s prestigious Non-Profit Campaign of the Year in 2015, increased participation in federal meal programs by several millions year over year, and helped elevate childhood hunger from an issue few cared about to being a top 10 issue the general public identified as “solvable.”
Before focusing on domestic hunger eradication, Lindsey spent nearly 20 years in health care communications, policy, and government relations working for some of the nation's most respected commercial and non-profit organizations. These include Georgetown University, Brookings, Avalere Health, and Porter Novelli. Throughout her career, Lindsey has shaped major national campaigns such as the groundbreaking ‘truth’ campaign that curbed youth smoking by 30% in one year; increased patient safety through reduced medical errors; defended vaccine safety; educated the public on the Medicare prescription drug benefit; and secured bipartisan Congressional funding for improving health care safety and quality.
Lindsey is a Board director at World Central Kitchen and on the Next Generation Council of the Shoah Foundation. Proud wife, mom, and mentor to new mothers, Lindsey is a book-a-week reader, and fanatical about ice hockey and Thanksgiving.
See full profile