Endeavor

9 ' 9 7 M I L E S TO N E Endeavor is co-founded by Linda Rottenberg and Peter Kellner. Stephan Schmidheiny of AVINA double matches the seed capital provided by Peter. Ò Meeting minutes from Endeavor's first- ever board meeting—sent via fax! In 1997, Linda Rottenberg and Peter Kellner sat down and, like many entrepreneurs before and after, sketched their vision on the back of a napkin. Peter had just returned from a Harvard Business School trip to China, where he had witnessed first- hand the boom in entrepreneurship that would transform that country. For Linda, the light bulb moment for Endeavor came in the back of a taxi cab in Buenos Aires. She struck up a conversation with the driver and was shocked to learn he had a PhD in engineering. She asked if he had considered becoming an entrepreneur instead of driving a taxi. "An empresario?" he said dismissively, using the Spanish word for a big businessman. It suddenly occurred to her that there was no Spanish word for "entrepreneur." Twenty years later, that "business plan" on a napkin has become a shared vision, cultivated and expanded by board members, staff and entrepreneurs around the globe. eir passion and commitment have created a movement and transformed Endeavor into something far bigger than the founders could have imagined. (And today, the word "emprendedora" is part of the Spanish lexicon, in large measure due to Endeavor's work!) e following pages tell the story of Endeavor's impact, past and present, and visions for the future, through the voices and faces of just some of these individuals in our worldwide network.

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