Award-winning and internationally acclaimed humanitarian, storyteller, public intellectual, and disability practitioner Eddie Ndopu is a thought leader and advocate for social equity, sustainability, and disability-based innovation. Ndopu describes himself as a queer, Black, disabled individual, fighting for social equity and the environment, and his influence is felt worldwide. A Global Changemaker, he was appointed as one of the United Nations’ eminent advocates for the 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), and is a highly in-demand speaker for his insights about the intersections of disability, sustainability, and how we can best work together to make meaningful change for our planet’s future.
Ndopu is the Founder of A Billion Reasons, a groundbreaking social impact incubator established in partnership with the World Economic Forum to tackle the U.N.’s SDGs through a lens of universal design and disability-based innovation. He sits on the Boards of Imagine, The Valuable 500, Verizon’s high-level Advisory Board for Disability and Accessibility, the Board of Directors of the United Nations Foundation, and serves as a member of the WEF’s Global Future Council for Social Justice. Ndopu is writing his first book, a memoir, Sipping Dom Perignon Through a Straw. Featured in a profile by TIME, and recognized as one of Pacific Standard’s “Top 30 Thinkers Under 30,” Ndopu receives rave reviews after speaking events, and is sought-after for keynotes and conversations at venues such as Facebook, Amazon, Discovery Health, the COP26 Climate Change Summit, The World Economic Forum, the GlobalCitizen Summit, and Salesforce’s Dreamforce event, where he was described as, “one of the most powerful voices on the planet right now.”
