Microsoft’s Former Philanthropy Head Now Leads Social Impact Accelerator

“I felt like I’d won the edu­cational lottery when I was accepted to MIT,” says Akhtar Badshah SM '83, PhD '93, now an entrepreneur, author, and artist. “I studied architec­ture but discovered at MIT how all other factors impact form—such as social, reli­gious, and community. It gave me confidence to become a change-maker.”

Badshah, an expert on international develop­ment, applied this passion to leading Microsoft’s global philanthropic efforts for a decade and ran the com­pany’s global community investment and employee programs, including mon­etary grants, software and curriculum donations, and employee giving. He over­saw investments of $5 bil­lion to nonprofits across the world through company-sponsored giving and volun­teer campaigns.

“At MIT, I learned that if you have the will and the intelligence, you can make almost anything happen,” he says.

The goal, he says, was to encourage employees to give their time as well as their dollars. “When I left Microsoft in 2014, [employee donations] had crossed the $110 million mark and were supporting thousands of nonprofit organizations around the world.” During Badshah’s tenure, employ­ees also donated two million volunteer hours.

“We found that people want to give, and that these employees were much more valuable, productive, happier, and engaged,” he says.

Now founder of Catalytic Innovators Group, a con­sulting and training firm, he builds partnerships across the world with corporations, foundations, nonprofits, uni­versities, and international development agencies to turn good ideas into effec­tive solutions to global prob­lems related to poverty.

Badshah is chair of Global Washington, a Wash­ington state organization that supports international development to create a more equitable world. He also teaches social enter­prise and global business at the University of Washington, where he founded Accel­erating Social Transforma­tion, a certificate course for mid-career professionals. In addition, he wrote the book Our Urban Future: New Para­digms for Equity and Sus­tainability and coauthored Technology at the Margins— How IT Meets the Needs of the Emerging Market.

“At MIT, I learned that if you have the will and the intelligence, you can make almost anything happen,” he says. “It was an amazing amount of empowerment.”

Badshah lives in Seat­tle with his wife, Media Lab alumna Alka Gupta Badshah, SM ’87. They have three sons—Anish, Aseem, and Akash, who earned an MIT degree in 2014.

First published in May-June 2018 MIT Technology Review.