Marc Freedman

Marc Freedman is CEO and founder of Encore.org (formerly Civic Ventures), and a Visiting Scholar at Stanford University. He co-founded Experience Corps (now AARP Experience Corps), mobilizing Americans over 55 to improve the education of low-income children, and created The Purpose Prize, an annual $100,000 award for social innovators in the second half of life.

He is author of The Big Shift: Navigating the New Stage Beyond Midlife, which The New York Times calls “an imaginative work with the potential to affect our individual lives and our collective future.” His earlier books include Encore: Finding Work That Matters in the Second Half of Life; Prime Time: How Baby Boomers Will Revolutionize Retirement and Transform America; andThe Kindness of Strangers.

Freedman is a member of The Wall Street Journal's group "The Experts." He is also the recipient of numerous awards and honors, including The Skoll Award in Social Entrepreneurship and an Ashoka Senior Fellowship. Fast Company magazine selected him three years in a row as one of the nation’s leading social entrepreneurs. In 2012 AARP The Magazine named Freedman one of "The Influentials," the 50 people over 50 "affecting your life –and your future.” And he was selected recently by The Schwab Foundation and The World Economic Forum as a 2014 Social Entrepreneur of the Year.

A high honors graduate of Swarthmore College, Freedman has an M.B.A. from Yale University and was a Visiting Research Fellow of Kings College, University of London. He lives with his wife and children in the San Francisco Bay Area.