Diana

Dr. Diana Wells is the President Emerita and current Leadership Team members of Ashoka, a global non-profit which launched the social entrepreneur movement and is building an everyone a changemaker world. She has a PhD in Anthropology from New York University where she was both a Fulbright and Woodrow Wilson Scholar. Her ethnographic research and dissertation, “Between the Difference: The Emergence of a Cross Ethnic Women’s Movement in Trinidad and Tobago,” explored how social change happens as a local articulation of a global social movement. As President of Ashoka from 2005 to 2018, Dr. Wells led Ashoka's global expansion, significantly increasing the number of Ashoka Fellows worldwide. She also designed and implemented one of the first tools to measure the impact of social entrepreneurs and systems change. She has also taught anthropology at Georgetown University.

Wells has received numerous awards including Brown University’s Williams Rogers Award, its highest distinction for graduates and New York University’s Graduate School of Arts and Sciences Alumni Achievement Award. Diana is a Trustee Emerita of Brown University, and previously served on the Advisory Board for the Center of Advancement of Social Entrepreneurship (CASE) at Duke University's Fuqua School of Business, GuideStar International’s Board, among others.