Social Entrepreneurship Initiative

Moses Lee     

Moses Lee is an Academic Program Manager and Lecturer at the Center for Entrepreneurship at the University of Michigan (UM), where he manages the Social Entrepreneurship Initiative. He teaches two courses: Social Venture Creation and Intro to Social Entrepreneurship. In addition, Moses supports the curriculum and teaching responsibilities in UM's Multidisciplinary Design Minor Global Health Design Specialization.

Moses is currently working on UM's Safe Male Circumcision Project, which received a Gates Foundation Grand Challenges Explorations grant. He is developing the feasibility plan for low-cost, mass production distribution of the medical devices.

Previously, Moses was a Manager at the William Davidson Institute and the Managing Editor of NextBillion.net, the premier online resource for information on social enterprises in the developing world. He was also a co-founder of www.globalens.com, an e-commerce website for higher educational material at the University of Michigan. In 2007, he started the social venture fund, Rain Capital, with a UM alumni.

Moses also worked in investment banking at Citigroup Corporate and Investment Bank and in financial services at General Motors and Ernst & Young. He graduated with high distinction from the Ross School of Business at the University of Michigan with a BBA and MA. While attending Ross, Moses was also the Editor-in-Chief of the Monroe Street Journal, the business school newspaper. He is also a Certified Public Accountant.

Recent Publications: "Better Vision for the Poor." (Stanford Social Innovation Review | Spring 2011)

Nick Tobier     

Prior to his appointment at the School of Art & Design in 2003, Tobier spent four years as assistant professor at the School of Art at Alfred. From 1996 to 1998, he studied landscape architecture at Harvard's Graduate School of Design and subsequently worked as a landscape architect. During the mid-1990s, he served as project manager for Storefront for Art and Architecture, writing critical essays, facilitating public projects and coordinating international competitions as he conducted broad-thinking explorations of architecture and urban space beyond expected function.

As a native New Yorker, Nick Tobier is a lifelong participant-observer of street life and the social life of public places. These inherently layered scenarios are at the core of his work as artist and educator, and Tobier's practice and pedagogy reflect his belief in the power of social dynamism and the fundamental role of artist as catalyst and conduit in this relationship.

Through individual and collective work, Tobier's interest in the potential of public places has manifested itself in built public projects and actions in San Francisco, Detroit and New York, internationally from Toronto to Tokyo, and performances on the stage and in the streets from Milan to Paramaribo, Suriname and at The Edinburgh, Minneapolis and Philadelphia Fringe Festivals. His short performance films have been shown across the world. He is also the author of a series of critical and speculative writings on city space, itinerant entertainment, and forms of public entertainment as radical social strategy.

In his current research and teaching, Tobier focuses on the integration of art and society, and actively challenges artists to expand their self-definitions and scope. These efforts have included partnerships with artists and farmers; critical and celebratory involvements between artists, art students and broad communities; lectures as performances and vice-versa; and a growing commitment to lasting partnerships working with creative individuals and communities from Detroit to Copenhagen.