Rick Aubry, Ph.D., is the President of Rubicon Programs Inc. one of America’s pre-eminent non-profit organizations that has had a significant and measured impact on the lives of over 40,000 people confronting homeless, poverty and the challenges of living with mental health disabilities. Rubicon is a five time winner of the Fast Company Magazine “Social Capitalist Award" for its impact and innovation in addressing these issues. Rick has been Rubicon’s leader since 1986, overseeing the growth of the agency from a staff of 12 serving a handful of clients with a $980,000 annual budget to an organization serving more than 4,000 people annually with over 250 full time staff and over $16 million in annual revenues in 2007.
Rick is a faculty member and Lecturer in Management at the Stanford Graduate School of Business where he is also a fellow of Stanford’s Center for Social Innovation. He is one of the co-authors of Generating and Sustaining Nonprofit Earned Income (Jossey Bass, 2004). Rick has also authored several Stanford case studies on social entrepreneurial organizations.
He has lectured on social entrepreneurship at Stanford, UC Berkeley, the London Business School, Bainbridge Graduate School, The Indian Institute of Planning and Management in Delhi and at numerous conferences including, Net Impact (Palo Alto 2007), Grant Makers for Effective Organizations (Atlanta 2006), Caisse de Depots (Paris 2003), Singapore National Conference on Nonprofits (2004), and others. Rick’s work at Rubicon has been cited in the Harvard Business Review, CNN, Time magazine, Fortune Magazine, the Brookings Institute Journal, and the New York Times.
Rick has been an advisor to the Yale Goldman Sachs Non-Profit Venture Competition, The Ashoka U.S. fellows program, The Lemelson National Collegiate Inventors and Innovators Alliance Sustainable Vision Grants, and numerous other cutting edge social innovation initiatives.
Rick was selected in 2001 by the World Economic Forum and the Schwab Foundation as one of the world leading Social Entrepreneurs as one of the inaugural Schwab Foundation Social Entrepreneur fellows. Since 2001 he has regularly presented the work of Rubicon, the Schwab Foundation and social entrepreneurs at the World Economic Forum Annual meeting in Davos. Rick’s work with the Schwab Foundation has helped build the field of social entrepreneurship including leading Stanford GSB service learning trips to meet social entrepreneurs in Brazil, Thailand, Cambodia and New Orleans.
Rick earned his BA from Syracuse University, MA in Psychology from West Georgia University, and Ph.D. in Psychology from The Wright Institute in Berkeley, CA. Rick is a graduate of the Stanford Graduate School of Business Program for Nonprofit Leaders. He lives with his wife and two sons in the San Francisco Bay Area.
