Sam Fankuchen is the pioneering editor of Ahead of The Curve, the Innovation and Technology section of Engage . Outside Engage, Fankuchen holds Board and advisory positions with The Giving Platform Collaborative, Webby and Anthem Awards, Gates Greater Giving Summit, and GivingTuesday.
As Founder and CEO of Golden, Fankuchen launched a user-centered software ecosystem to make volunteering and donating more approachable, meaningful, and productive. Today, Golden is both the technology system of record for more than 50,000 organizations on six continents and the category-defining mobile apps for volunteering. The social enterprise has been named a FORTUNE Change the World Company, Fast Company World Changing Idea twice, multiple-time Webby and Anthem Award Honoree, and Meta Social Good App of the Year, among other distinctions.
Fankuchen was the first undergraduate student to major in Social Entrepreneurship & Innovation at Stanford University, where he also founded Pinwheel, his first social venture in the online volunteering space. As a graduate student in the Design School (the “d.School”), he wrote his Masters Thesis about recruiting, retaining and optimizing the lifetime value of volunteers and donors. He has lectured at Harvard Business School, University of Pennsylvania, University of Southern California, and the Stanford Graduate School of business on topics ranging from cross-sector collaboration, to entrepreneurship and crisis management.
Fankuchen collaborates with thought leaders on policy matters concerning artificial intelligence, data privacy, disaster relief, entrepreneurship, corporate strategy, and cross-sector collaboration. This work has been presented at The United Nations, The Association of State Service Commissions, Stanford Social Innovation Review, and The Congressional Commission on National, Military, and Public Service.
Earlier in his career, Fankuchen managed corporate innovation for a global transportation services enterprise and led a management consulting firm specializing in corporate transformation around connected device data ecosystems and frontier technologies. He avidly mentors startups and social ventures through the Haas Center for Public Service at Stanford University, CleanTech Open, LaunchpadLA, and AmplifyLA.
