January 17, 2023

Abby Falik is an award-winning social entrepreneur committed to launching the generation of leaders our world needs now.

In 2010 she founded Global Citizen Year, a non-profit that uses the transition after high school to teach the REAL 21st century skills: resilience, empathy, agency and leadership.  As CEO, she raised and deployed over $65M in scholarships and equipped thousands of diverse, emerging leaders to change the world — for good.

In 2022 she joined the Emerson Collective as an Entrepreneur in Residence to incubate new models to transform how young people learn, launch and lead. Using Global Citizen Year as a blueprint, she is on a mission to reinvent the “gap” year as an accessible, purposeful and transformative rite of passage.

A recognized expert on social innovation, leadership, and the changing landscape of education, Abby has been profiled by The New York Times, The Washington Post, NPR and The Chronicle of Higher Education.  Abby is a frequent speaker and has been featured at forums including the Aspen Ideas Festival, the Obama Foundation Summit, the Fast Company Innovation Festival, PopTech, and The Nantucket Project.  In 2018, Abby was named one of…