Past Innovator Award Recipients

Warner P. Woodworth (2005)

Warner Woodworth serves as faculty of the Department of Organizational Leadership and Strategy, Marriott School, Brigham Young University. He teaches MBA-level courses in ethics, organizational change, effectiveness, international economic development, social entrepreneurship, and civil society. Warner received the Corporate Teaching Award at BYU in 1984 and was voted Outstanding Teacher by graduating students in 1986. Warner also received the Marriott School of Management's Outstanding Faculty award in 1989, and was chosen for BYU’s Karl G. Maeser Excellence in Teaching Award in 1995.

Dr. Woodworth has served as a consultant with global consulting firms such as Arthur D. Little, Inc. and Rensis Likert Associates. He has worked as a visiting scholar at the International Institute for Labor Studies in Geneva, Switzerland and the University of Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. He has also been a visiting professor at Wayne State University in Detroit, at the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor, and at BYU-Hawaii.

Warner helped to establish the new BYU Economic Self-Reliance Center (ESR Center). During 2003-2004, the ESR Center began to facilitate more faculty and student research, fund conferences and symposia, and help to synergize its impact in the fight against global poverty.

Christopher Dunford (2004)

Chris Dunford, President of Freedom from Hunger since 1991, holds a Ph.D. in Ecology and Sociology from the University of Arizona in Tucson. He joined Freedom from Hunger in 1984 as Director of the Arizona Program and later Regional Director for the United States and then Vice President for Programs. His previous work experience with the United Nations Environment Program in Nairobi and various rural development programs in Africa has been instrumental in the planning and management of Freedom from Hunger programs in Africa, Asia and Latin America as well as the United States. Dunford is one of the architects of Credit with Education, a strategy for providing self-financing poverty lending to rural women while simultaneously providing education on health, nutrition and better business practices. Dunford led Freedom from Hunger to focus on demonstrating that Credit with Education can empower hundreds of thousands of very poor rural women in developing countries—through linkage to financial institution credit and savings opportunities and to non-formal adult education opportunities—all the while recovering its recurrent costs. Dunford has been an invited speaker for the World Bank, USAID, the Microcredit Summit, the SEEP (Small Enterprise Education and Promotion) Network, the Thrasher Research Fund, FICAH (Food Industry Crusade Against Hunger), the Global Dialogue on Microfinance and Human Development in Stockholm, Sweden, and Brigham Young, Brown, Ohio State and Princeton universities, among others. He has published on ecology, cultural evolution, strategic planning, program design, and evaluation of rural development programs.

Sam Daley-Harris (2003)

Sam Daley-Harris is Founder and President of RESULTS Educational Fund. RESULTS Educational Fund is a 501(c)(3) international organization dedicated to mass educational strategies to generate the will to end world hunger. RESULTS Educational Fund organized the February 1997 Microcredit Summit held in Washington, DC. The Summit was attended by more than 2,900 participants from 137 countries and launched a plan to reach 100 million of the world's poorest families, especially the women of those families, with credit for self-employment and other financial and business services by 2005. Daley-Harris was Director of the Summit and directs its follow-up campaign.

Daley-Harris is also Founder and President of RESULTS, an international citizens' lobby dedicated to creating the political will to end hunger and poverty. There are 100 RESULTS groups in the U.S. and 40 more in six other countries. Mr. Daley-Harris is author of Reclaiming Our Democracy: Healing the Break Between People and Government, about which Jimmy Carter said, "[Daley-Harris] provides a road map for global involvement in planning a better future."

In 1995, Daley-Harris received The Temple Award for Creative Altruism from the Institute of Noetic Sciences and, in 1997, he received the Caring Award from the Caring Institute.

Mr. Daley-Harris has degrees in music, played percussion instruments in the Miami Philharmonic for 12 years, and is a songwriter. He is married and lives in Washington, DC with his wife Shannon, who is a consultant with the Religious Affairs Division of the Children's Defense Fund. Their son, Micah, was born in May 1998 and daughter, Sophie, was born in May 2001.

Kathleen Close (2002)

Ms. Close's responsibilities are numerous. She identifies herself as a "Visionary Leader" of MICRO-BUSINESS, USA. Her strengths in business, public relations and advocacy serve the entire field of micro credit both locally and worldwide.

A resident of Miami since 1974, Ms. Close previously owned and managed the Arts International Galleries in Beverly Hills, California for 10 years. During her career as an entrepreneur, she negotiated and secured funds to purchase art in Asia and Europe for her three galleries. Ms. Close was also involved in selling painting through commissaries on the U.S. military bases. Ms. Close lives in Miami, Florida and Las Vegas, Nevada.

Committed to her community, Ms. Close has and continues to serve with several social and civic organizations. They include:

• President of Partners for Self-Employment Inc., d.b.a. MICRO-BUSINESS, USA
• The Journal of Microfinance Editorial Board
• National Advisory Board of the George W. Romney Institute of Public Management of Brigham Young University.
• Advisory Board of Community Outreach Partnership Center (COPC) at Florida International University (FIU)
• Past President of the Florida’s Women’s Political Caucus
• Past President of the Cedars Medical Center Auxiliary
• Regional Coordinator for the Hunger Project
• Board of Directors, End World Hunger
• National Advisory Council – Marriott School of Business, Brigham Young University
• Board of Directors of Nevada Committee on Foreign Relations

Having taken her global experiences and converted them to addressing local issues, Ms. Close is one of the founding Board members of RESULTS, an international grass roots citizens’ lobby dedicated to alleviating hunger and poverty. She has been instrumental in nurturing the concepts of community food gardens in public housing in the United States through End World Hunger, a non-profit organization.

John Hatch (2001)

John Hatch has spent his entire professional career serving programs that assist the world's poor, first as a Peace Corps volunteer, regional director, and trainer; later as a consultant to USAID; and finally (since 1984) as the creator of the microcredit methodology known as "village banking" and founder of FINCA, a nonprofit microcredit agency with programs in 24 countries. Over the years, John has served as FINCA’s president and as chief of party for FINCA programs in Guatemala and El Salvador.

Before FINCA, Hatch was a community-development volunteer for the Peace Corps—Columbia, and a regional director for Peace Corps—Peru. As a graduate student at the University of Wisconsin, he won a Fulbright grant to conduct research on his doctoral thesis in Peru. In 1976, Hatch and two partners formed an independent consulting firm, Rural Development Services (RDS). To expand the reach of the village banking methodology, he taught village banking methods to numerous non-governmental organizations, which currently operate some 80 village banking programs in 32 countries worldwide. He has a BA and MA in history, a PhD in Economic Development, and has published four books on the farming practices of subsistence farmers.