Andrew Youn

Why you should listen

Andrew Youn has lived in rural East Africa for more than 12 years, learning from the world's largest group of people living in poverty: smallholder farmers. In 2006, he was inspired after meeting two farmers in Kenya working similar plots of land. One family was going hungry and one was thriving, harvesting four times as much food. He began asking questions.

Today, the organization Youn cofounded, One Acre Fund, directly serves more than 1.3 million farm families in sub-Saharan Africa, providing them with the quality farm products and training they need to harvest more food and grow their way out of poverty.

Youn is also the cofounder of D-Prize, an organization that funds early-stage startups that are innovating better ways to distribute proven life-enhancing technologies. He received his BA from Yale and MBA from the Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern University.