Roshan Paul has spent his life questioning the status quo, and built a career around connecting global citizens to solve social problems across boundaries. He co-founded Amani Institute in 2010 with these values in mind, and co-led the organization from an idea to an award-winning social enterprise with offices in Kenya, Brazil and India and projects in more than 30 other countries around the world. Amani Institute has, to date, helped nearly 10,000 people from 65 countries step into or accelerate their careers in social impact. It has also supported more than 250 organizations, from large global UN departments to small local businesses, and everything in between, to increase staff capacity, motivation, and impact. He stepped down as CEO in 2021, but remains an active Board member. Based on this work, he co-authored the Amazon #1 bestseller The New Reason to Work: How to Build a Career that will Change the World in November 2021.
The seeds of Amani Institute were cultivated while Roshan worked with Ashoka for a decade, where he designed and launched five new programs and managed two other global projects, supporting over 500 social entrepreneurs (‘Ashoka Fellows’) around the world. He is currently an adjunct professor at Lynn University and Minnesota College of Art and Design, and a strategy consultant for several foundations and other social impact organizations.
Raised in Bangalore, India, Roshan has a Master’s in Public Policy from the Harvard Kennedy School, a Bachelor’s in International Political Economy from Davidson College (a degree he self-designed), and a certificate in Creative Leadership as a founding participant of THNK: The Amsterdam School for Creative Leadership. He has guest-lectured or spoken at conferences at over fifty universities and other institutions around the world, including Harvard, Dartmouth, the World Bank, and the White House. He has also conducted dozens of workshops at leading organizations from Vodafone to Oxfam, and Deloitte to UNICEF.
In addition to Amani Institute, Roshan also serves on the Board or Advisory Council of several innovative education organizations worldwide, including Design-a-thon Works (Netherlands), School of Future and Mithra Trust (both India), and Watson University and TechChange (both USA). He also served a term on the World Economic Forum (WEF) Global Future Council on Behavioral Science (2016- 2018), was awarded a Leadership in Education award by the World Education Congress in 2017, named one of the Asia Society’s “Asia 21 Young Leaders” in 2018, and both a BMW Foundation ‘Responsible Leader’ as well as one of the DO School’s Top 25 Influential Leaders in Purposeful Organizations in 2019.
He delivered the Commencement (graduation) speech at the University of San Diego in May 2015 and TEDx talks at TEDxAmsterdamEd and TEDxBangaloreSalon. His writing has been published in Forbes, the Stanford Social Innovation Review, MIT’s Innovations Journal, India Today, and the India Development Review. He has been interviewed or quoted in Fast Company, Vanity Fair, Forbes, The Huffington Post, and CNBC Africa, among others.
Roshan has studied and worked on every continent (bar Antarctica). He is the author of two other books, Such a Lot of World, a novel, and Your Work Begins at No, a collection of essays on social impact education, as well as a book chapter in the anthology Dream of a Nation: Inspiring Ideas for a Better America. He also created the ‘Acting Global’ project on Facebook and Instagram, which tells stories of people living and working beyond boundaries in a closing world.