Brief Professional Biography
Rob John is a UK-based independent consultant focused on venture philanthropy and social entrepreneurship. From 2005 - 2010 he was a Visiting Fellow at the Skoll Centre for Social Entrepreneurship at Said Business School in Oxford and Principal Advisor to the European Venture Philanthropy Association (EVPA). From 2011 Rob is Visiting Senior Fellow at the Asia Centre for Social Entrepreneurship & Philanthropy, NUS Business School, Singapore.
From 2009 his main focus has been co-founding a venture philanthropy network across Asia (AVPN).
Rob trained as a synthetic organic chemist at Bristol and Oxford universities and after a post-doctoral fellowship at Purdue University, Indiana, continued research and teaching at universities in Lausanne and Addis Ababa. His period in Ethiopia, researching the country’s unique medicinal flora brought him into direct contact with civil war and famine during the mid 1980’s.
After leaving chemistry in 1986 he spent the following 15 years in international development, managing humanitarian, refugee and microcredit programmes throughout Africa and Asia.
His period engaged in microcredit was with an organisation (Opportunity International UK) started up by a small venture philanthropy fund based in Oxford. After 5 years working in this ‘portfolio’ organisation he was asked to become the venture fund’s director. In this post he helped develop and grow the ideas of social entrepreneurs into sustainable organisations.
In late 2004 he went freelance, designed Ashoka’s strategy for the launch of its UK fellowship programme, became a Skoll Fellow and began a fruitful collaboration with the founders of EVPA. Since then has consulted with several venture philanthropy funds, social enterprises and a think-tank, and has written widely on the growth of new philanthropies in Europe.
Rob enjoys working in the start up and growth phases of smaller organisations.
Rob was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts in 2001 and has been an Oxford Business Alumnus since 2004.
Links: