My Story
Annie Makela is a social impact entrepreneur and education leader, and the founder and executive director of Opportunity Education Global (OEG). She is also Chief of Staff and Head of Education at IDEA SF (Ideas Collaborative) and an EdD candidate in Entrepreneurship Education at the University of Pennsylvania's Graduate School of Education.
For eight years Annie was the founding executive director of the Scott Center for Social Entrepreneurship at Hillbrook School, the first social entrepreneurship center in a U.S. K-12 school. She grew a $1.5M founding endowment into more than $1M in annual operating revenue and 100+ local and global partnerships. The Center’s success led the Scott Foundation to invest $10M+ in a second campus, a social-impact-focused high school in downtown San Jose, and her 8th grade Social Impact and Leadership course is now taught at schools across the country and abroad.
Before that, Annie was Associate Director of the Center for Social Impact Learning at the Middlebury Institute of International Studies, where she led Frontier Market Scouts and Ambassador Corps and embedded monitoring and evaluation across 18+ campuses in the U.S. and abroad. Since 2010 she has led youth programming at Opportunity Collaboration, a global convening of social entrepreneurs, educators and funders, where she launched the Education Affinity Group. Since 2012 she has worked with the Aspen Institute on the Aspen Challenge, from its launch in Louisville to its growth with districts across the country, and on the Aspen Ideas Festival.
Annie has partnered with mayors in San Jose and Louisville and the Governor of Kentucky on education initiatives, has presented at Microsoft Build, NAIS and the Aspen Ideas Festival, and serves on the boards of SOLA, Thrive Global Partners, Mountain Goat Movement and the Middlebury College Center for Social Entrepreneurship. A graduate of Middlebury College, where she was named Most Innovative Alum Under 30, she began her career as a second grade teacher at Greenwich Country Day School. She is a certified Executive Functioning Coach and holds certifications from Echoing Green, Ashoka and the Hoffman Process.
Today, Annie is focused on what it means to invest in and create meaningful community. Her two creative projects are a book, The Modern Village®, and a podcast, Built Not Found, which she is launching with her friend and housemate, Tori Horton. Stay tuned for more in 2027!
Her work is guided by two questions she asks every young person and leader she works with: What matters to you? And what are you doing about it?