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Summer 2017 Deep-Dive Associates (Summer Internship Program) - Team Member Positions (Round 2)

The Opportunity

Ashoka Social Financial Services (SFS) believes that markets can be a powerful tool to improve the character and quality of people’s lives. For almost a decade, Ashoka SFS has searched for and identified leading social entrepreneurs with systems-changing new ideas that use the market to create social impact. A sub-set of these social entrepreneurs is showing us something new: we can achieve greater impact by shifting the market itself to align financial success with social impact. These innovations change what it takes to win, and have the potential to shape large-scale patterns of market activity to benefit everyone.

The Ashoka SFS team has embarked on a collaborative effort to understand and share with others what we believe is a new way of thinking about and designing how our markets work.

In Summer 2016, we launched the inaugural Ashoka SFS Summer associate internship program and welcomed the first cohort of “Deep-Dive Masters” associates. With this team of 6 outstanding associates, we investigated over 180 Ashoka Fellows to identify innovations that are changing the architecture of our markets. This work resulted in case studies that dive deep into 18 market-based innovations to show how they each create social impact in different areas of need – such as education, efficient energy markets, affordable housing, and financial inclusion. We are expanding this rigorous program to strengthen and maximize our team-of-teams at Ashoka SFS and reach higher levels of impact.

We are currently looking for innovative and dynamic entrepreneurial individuals to join our team as the next class of “Deep-Dive Masters” Associates for 10 weeks in Summer 2017 (June 12 – August 18).

Key activities will involve:

● Investigating cutting-edge structural innovations and social entrepreneurs;

● Identifying patterns to inform working hypotheses on trends and innovations driving social impact; and

● Independent and team-oriented reflection on broader implications of research for improving the quality and character of people’s lives by changing how our markets work.

All our team members are critical to our summer effort, and alongside team leads, other team members will act as our investigation experts, pattern-spotting gurus, knowledge-management strategists and conceptual entrepreneurs, and more.

Why Ashoka Social Financial Services?

● Great opportunity to work with a dynamic team that is incredibly passionate about unleashing the potential of markets to solve social problems

● Contribute to building an exciting new initiative for a leading organization in supporting social entrepreneurs

● Help support world-renowned social entrepreneurs all over the world

● Gain concrete experience researching new and innovative ways to improve the quality and character of people’s lives through the market

While positions are unpaid, this partnership offers a unique vantage point to combine learning from the most powerful social innovations around the world with cutting-edge thought leadership.

What we are looking for in a "Deep-Dive Masters" Associate team member?

We recognize the wide array of skills and knowledge that the candidate pool covers, and we are building teams of members who come with complementary expertise.

We do look for the following in all of our applicants:

● Entrepreneurial quality, and willingness to grapple relentlessly with many practical “how to” challenges.

● Determination, ambition, and passion for social and economic change at the level of systems;

● Capacity to move fluidly between rigorous research and quick turnaround evaluations of innovations; and

● Ability to analyze information at a conceptual and operational level, and creative in solving problems of large-scale.

Successful candidates will have experience with in-depth research and analysis as well as with the citizen sector (social sector, not-for-profit, social entrepreneurship).