There is nothing more appetizing than the smell of fresh baked goods in the morning. Breakfast pastries like donuts or croissants are a major factor of how some start their days. They provide people with the energy and satisfaction they need to take on the day. Dominique Ansel is someone that shares a passion for these delicious foods. Ansel was born in 1978, and was raised in the town of Beauvais, which is located just north of Paris. When he was in high school, he worked at various local restaurants, mastering the art of food preparation. This later resulted in landing him a job at Fauchon, which was a high-class restaurant in Paris. After working there for eight years, and eventually leading the company’s international expansion, Ansel decided to move to New York City to take on a job offer at another upscale restaurant there: Daniel Boulud’s French Restaurant. It was while working here that Ansel earned his first four-star New York Times rating. He continued working at Daniel Boulud’s for six years, until a team made up of him and four other employees started Ansel’s first food shop, the Dominique Ansel Bakery, in Soho New York City. This shop was an instant classic among locals in the area, being ranked one of the best bakeries in New York. Two years after opening his shop, Ansel made a revolutionary creation. It was a cross between a doughnut and a croissant, called a Cronut. Just hours after marketing his Cronut online, it went viral, gaining international attention. Up until today, the Cronut continues to sell out every single morning at the Dominique Ansel Bakery. It even ended up on TIME Magazine, being named as one of the 25 Best Inventions of 2013. For Ansel, this means that his business with prosper, and his Cronut will be enjoyed by many for years to come. Ansel’s success is a perfect example of how a little innovation can cause an insane amount of attention.

If you have ever watched the news, you know that all too often, the only topics that are mentioned are the ones that are negative. Negative stories get the most attention, so news companies use them to attract viewers. However, there are tons of positive stories that news companies fail to mention simply because they might  not return as much of a profit. Emerson Spartz noticed this trend in news, and saw it as a problem that needed to be fixed.

Emerson Spartz was born on February 17, 1987 in LaPorte, Indiana. He has home schooled up until college when he attended the University of Notre Dame. He graduated in 2009, and went on to start his first company, Gives Me Hope, with his future wife, Gabby. Gives Me Hope was an online company that enables users to share inspiring stories from their lives. It promoted uplifting stories rather than negativity.

Gives Me Hope was the stepping stone to Spartz’s next major milestone in his career, which was the development of Dose Media. Dose is a media company that uses algorithms to find interesting, uplifting news on the web, and broadcasts it to users. The company has grown to have over 50 million users monthly, and profits from digital ads. Dose has been extremely successful since it’s launch, and it enlightens people every day.

Something that every student stresses about is how they are going to pay for college. With how expensive college is, it is very unusual for a student to pay for his or her schooling without some sort of financial aid. However, filling out scholarships can be time consuming and sometimes unrewarding. Christopher Gray recognized the problem of paying for college when he was trying to do so himself. Growing up in Alabama, his family didn’t have the money for college, so he needed to find a way to pay for it himself. For seven months during his high school career Gray spent twelve hours a week filling out scholarship applications. Eventually, he was able to attend Drexel University and pay for all four years with the scholarship money he earned. After college, Gray went on to volunteer at local schools in an effort help students find scholarship opportunities and pay of their college. After volunteering for two years, Gray started his company, Scholly, with his its co-founders, Bryson Alef and Nick Pirollo. This company was based within an app that used an algorithm to match individual students with scholarship opportunities that they were eligible for. The app has had wild success since its release, saving 600,000 students a total of $20,000,000 in scholarships. While the app is only compatible with private universities currently, Gray says the next upgrade will enable students to get scholarships from public universities as well.

To be a social entrepreneur, one must have a passion, a calling, and a lot of determination. Nonprofit organizations often rely on other people’s giving to fund an idea, and in order to run a nonprofit, one must have the charisma that is necessary in order to inspire consumers to give to a cause. One social entrepreneur that has this ability, and has been running one of the world’s largest nonprofits for the past decade is Scott Harrison. Harrison is the founder of charity: water, which is a charity whose main goal is to provide clean drinking water to countries where it is scarce.

While Scott Harrison is a successful and inspiring entrepreneur today, he never planned to be. He grew up New Jersey with his mother and father in a suburban neighborhood. His mother was exposed to carbon monoxide in their home, and because of this, she grew very ill. Harrison spent much of his childhood taking care of his mother, since her immune was very weak. He has mentioned in interviews years later that taking care of his mother is what sparked his interest in helping people in need. When Harrison was eighteen, he enrolled at New York University. He majored in communications, however he never really knew what he wanted to do as a career after college. Harrison didn’t take college very seriously, earning mostly C’s and spending most of his time causing trouble rather than doing his work. After college, he started his career as a nightclub promoter in New York City. He spent the following decade throwing parties for big-name companies like VH1 and MTV, earning a small fortune. This lifestyle ultimately led Harrison to become involved with hard drugs such as ecstasy and cocaine.

When Scott Harrison was twenty-eight, he went on a vacation to Uruguay, where he had something of an epiphany. While he was there, he realized that the lifestyle he was living was selfish and worthless. In later interviews, he has mentioned that during this time in his life, he felt like he was the absolute worst person that he knew.

When Harrison got back to the United States, he quit his job, and started volunteering as a photojournalist for Mercy Ships, which is a Christian organization which provides free healthcare for those in need. Through Mercy Ships, Harrison got the opportunity to travel all around Africa on mission trips. While on these trips, he was exposed to the harsh conditions of those countries, and was especially shocked by the lack of drinking water that some countries had. It was through being exposed to these intensely harsh conditions that Harrison found God’s calling for him. He concluded that he would devote all of his time into starting an organization to help these countries obtain clean drinking water.

In order to start this organization, which he would eventually name, charity: water, Harrison quit volunteering at Mercy Ships, and returned to his apartment in New York City. On Harrison’s thirty-first birthday, he threw a massive party at the Tenjune Nighclub in New York City in order to raise money to start charity: water. He charged each guest twenty dollars to get into the club, and in that single night, he raised a total of $15,000. Ever since that night, charity: water has grown to become a massive nonprofit that helps thousands of people in foreign countries every year. Since its establishment, charity: water has provided nearly six million people with clean drinking water.

Scott Harrison never expected to work as a missionary, to start a charity that would help millions, or even become an entrepreneur. However, through listening to God’s calling for him, he was able to acheive all of these things, and do them in a way that brought glory to God. Harrison is still working as the founder of charity: water, and on the side, he speaks to people around the world, telling his story. Through being a powerful social entrepreneur, Scott Harrison has changed the world in a positive way.

In America, food is possibly the most common asset to our daily lives. No matter where we turn, there is always food, and because of this, we take it for granted. We fail to realize that in other areas of the world, food is at an extreme shortage. This could be because of a variety of factors including poverty, bad soil, an imbalanced climate, or a combination of all three. This is especially a problem in the country of Guatemala, where people are slowly dying of starvation every day. There, 70% of farmers live in poverty, and 79% are farming on degraded soil. Because of this, malnutrition has become a prominent issue in the country.

A man by the name of Curt Bowen saw the problem in Guatemala, and started looking for a solution. He co-founded Semilla Nueva in 2010 as a company whose mission was to “rebuild” rural Guatemala. One major stride the organization has made was the implementation of a pigeonpea seed that grows between crop rows and doesn’t need fertilizer to be healthy. In the year 2014 alone some 1,400 families planted pigeonpeas. Through Curt Bowen’s work, Semilla Nueva has made amazing strides in making Guatemala a healthier and richer country.

Now Curt Bowen is the Executive Director of Semilla Nueva, and the organization is still working in Guatemala. Not only did Bowen make a difference in Guatemala, but he also is making a difference in America. Through his work, he has gained attention to Guatemala, and the needs of the country. He has inspired others to volunteer in other countries to make improvements in the world. Curt Bowen has truly earned the title of social entrepreneur.