Social Edge Team

Victor d'Allant - Executive Director, Social Edge

As Executive Director of Social Edge, Victor d’Allant is responsible for building a global online community where social entrepreneurs, nonprofit professionals and other practitioners of the social sector connect to network, learn, inspire and share resources.

Victor is a global media executive and cultural anthropologist who has worked for large corporations, international organizations and entrepreneurial startups in many parts of the world.

His executive positions have included Chief Executive Officer of Ascribe, a public interest newswire, and Vice President - Business Development of AudioBasket, a provider of personalized audio news on the Internet. He was also Advertising Sales Director for Reader's Digest in Europe and Managing Director of San Francisco magazine.

Before his involvement in digital media, Victor built and ran his own international media consultancy, helping communications companies and technology-based ventures expand their global operations. His clients included Newsweek, Bloomberg, Nokia Innovent, Wired, Outside magazine and Deloitte & Touche.

His work as a cultural and business anthropologist included field research on French truck drivers working in the Middle East, mental health issues in India for the World Health Organization and agricultural development in Burkina Faso for the World Bank.

He started his career as a Paris-based photojournalist reporting on economic and social issues from Brazil, India, Turkey, Yemen, Burkina Faso and Bangladesh. He received the Air France Award for Photojournalism and his work was exhibited at the Museum of Modern Art, Paris.

Victor served for four years on the Advisory Board of the Women’s Technology Cluster in San Francisco. He currently serves on the Board of Directors of the French American International School in San Francisco.

He has a B.A. and an M.A. in social anthropology from the Sorbonne in Paris and an M.B.A. from the Haas School of Business at the University of California at Berkeley. He was interviewed by Global X while attending the 2007 Skoll World Forum.

Jason Clark - Web Manager, Social Edge

As Web Manager for Social Edge, Jason Clark is responsible for developing and implementing new functionality to enable social entrepreneurs, social benefit organizations and other interested parties to connect with one another and to share their experiences and knowledge with the community at large. He also keeps a blog on Social Edge called Untangled.

Prior to joining Social Edge, Jason developed, implemented and managed a wide variety of Web sites, including Ingram Micro’s first B2B commerce extranet and the RosettaNet community’s portal site. RosettaNet.org enabled the standards body’s partners to collaborate on the development of XML-based e-business transaction standards and business processes, as well as the sharing of implementation resources and data between partners. Additionally, he built an innovative but short-lived celebrity news and biography site, PublicFigure.com, and worked with the Web development team at Arbonne International to streamline business and technical processes.

Jason’s primary area of development interest is in collaborative technologies and their impact on the creation and/or enablement of virtual communities.

In previous positions, Jason worked as a technical support specialist, graphic designer, art director, editor and bookseller.

He has a B.A. in anthropology with a minor in English from the University of California, Irvine.

Jill Finlayson - Web Marketing Manager, Social Edge

As Marketing Manager for Social Edge, Jill Finlayson is responsible for increasing the online community's visibility on the Internet to provide better access to tools that help social entrepreneurs launch and scale social benefit ventures.

Before joining the Social Edge team, Jill worked for a number of Internet startups, including eBay, where she ran the Toys Category for nearly five years.  Jill was a member of the first governance committee for the eBay Foundation.  She has developed online and offline educational materials for small business owners and is the coauthor of two books for McGraw Hill: ­ Fundraising on eBay and How to Make Money Online with eBay, Yahoo! and Google

Jill previously worked for the Learning Company, a premier educational software company, where she developed programs to help children achieve and learn at their own pace.  Jill began her marketing career at the University of California at Berkeley, where she held several positions including Campus Emergency Preparedness Officer, Program Marketing Manager for the International House and Project Liaison for the University Research Expeditions Program (UREP).
 
She has traveled around the world and participated in an archaeological dig in Tanzania and a cultural project in Ecuador.

She earned a Bachelor of Arts degree in political economy of industrialized societies from the University of California at Berkeley.

Social Edge Alumni

• Keely Stevenson
• Phil Collis
• Vas