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Jeremy Heimans

Co-Founder and CEO, Purpose

Jeremy Heimans is the co-founder and CEO of Purpose, a global organization headquartered in New York that builds and supports movements for a more open, just, and habitable world. Purpose has advised organizations such as the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, Google and UNICEF. He is co-founder of GetUp!, an Australian political organization with more members than all of Australia's political parties combined, and Avaaz, the world’s largest online citizens’ movement, now with nearly 50 million members worldwide. Heimans has been building movements since the age of 8 when, as a child activist in his native Australia, he ran media campaigns and lobbied leaders on issues like children's rights and nuclear non- proliferation. He is a recipient of the Ford Foundation's 75th anniversary Visionary Award for his work as a movement pioneer and he chaired the World Economic Forum’s Global Agenda Council on Civic Participation.

Heimans has been named one of Fast Company’s Most Creative People in Business, The Guardian has named him as one of the ten most influential voices on sustainability in the US, and The Monthly has observed that Heimans “might be the most influential Australian in the world”. With Henry Timms, Jeremy is co-author of the 2018 bestseller New Power, praised by the New York Times’ David Brooks as “the best window I’ve seen into this new world” and by The Guardian as “a manual on how to navigate the 21st century”. The book is a finalist for the 2018 FT & McKinsey Business Book of the Year. Heimans and Timms’ thinking on new power has been featured as the Big Idea in Harvard Business Review, as one of CNN’s “ideas to change the world” and Jeremy’s TED talk on the topic has been viewed more than 1.4 million times.

Heimans has been a keynote speaker at venues such as the World Economic Forum at Davos, TED, the Aspen Institute Ideas Festival, the RSA, Chatham House, the United Nations, Blair House, The Economist Big Rethink, The Guardian Activate and Social Media Week.

Jeremy was educated at Harvard University and the University of Sydney, and began his career with the strategy consultants McKinsey & Company. He lives in New York.

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