HimalayanTechies - CEO & Founder
http://www.himalayantechies.com

Nepal

Ellie Skeele is a social entrepreneur strongly committed to private sector practices for public good. Eight years ago Ellie founded HimalayanTechies to create jobs for educated but less privileged Nepalis who would otherwise have to leave their country, culture and families in order to achieve meaningful employment. In addition to providing great service and software to its clients, HimalayanTechies has been intimately involved with with the One Laptop per Child program and its Open Learning Exchange spinoff. HT housed OLE Nepal for over a year, contributing pro-bono development and management while the organization started its work in writing the educational software needed for the laptops. Her company is now involved in the first pilot in Nepal. Ellie is also working on a new job creation venture, to scale up harvesting and processing of wild Himalayan nettle into sustainably and responsibly produced fabric for upscale eco-fabric markets. Her goal is 10,000 new jobs; she’s aiming high, with the profits from sales to be plowed back into the production-facing component of the venture.During her ten years in Nepal Ellie has worked relentlessly for children’s and women’s rights. In one capacity, she has collaborated with and advised the Women’s Entrepreneur’s Association of Nepal (WEAN), an organization with a breadth of activities that includes microfinance.Ellie’s career has alternated between corporate and self-employment. She has worked for and learned from three of America’s most interesting companies: IBM, JPMorgan and Novell. She also started and run two successful companies and spent eight years as a strategic marketing consultant, advising startup and large American and Japanese IT companies on how to redefine markets and create stakeholders in order to attain market dominance.With a bachelor’s degree in Political Philosophy from Mt. Holyoke College in the United States, Ellie has also studied Business at New York University and Fine Arts at the University of Utah. In addition, she has completed a condensed version of Harvard Business School’s finance curriculum in training for what was to have been her career as a corporate lending officer with JPMorgan.