BRITE ’24 SPEAKERS: ASHEESH ADVANI

ASHEESH ADVANI

CEO, JA Worldwide
Co-author, Modern Achievement

Asheesh is a lifelong social innovator who has led JA Worldwide since 2015. During his leadership tenure, JA Worldwide has been recognized as one of the ten most impactful NGOs in the world in annual rankings.

As an alumnus of JA, Asheesh recalls how participating in a JA program as a teenager stayed with him during his entrepreneurial endeavors, which have involved leading two businesses from start-up to acquisition. Asheesh’s first venture helped pioneer the business of peer-to-peer finance and was acquired by Richard Branson’s Virgin Group in 2007 and rebranded as Virgin Money. Prior to joining JA, he served as CEO of a financial technology company that was acquired by Interactive Brokers in 2015 and rebranded as Interactive Advisors. His experiences as an entrepreneur and founder have been chronicled in case studies at Babson College and at Harvard Business School.

While running his first venture, Asheesh served as a columnist for Entrepreneur Magazine for five years and wrote two books about business finance which received positive reviews in the Wall Street Journal and Business Week. More recently, he has been a guest contributor for books on organizational leadership, including Leading in a Time of Crisis (Rosetta Books, 2020) and Work is Love Made Visible (Wiley, 2019). As a member of Marshall Goldsmith’s cohort of 100 Coaches, and has co-authored with Marshall the forthcoming Modern Achievement: A New Approach to Timeless Lessons for Aspiring Leaders (2024).

Asheesh is a member of the Young Presidents Organization (YPO) and is also actively involved in the World Economic Forum (WEF) as a stewardship board member of the Center for the New Economy and Society. He started his career as a consultant at Monitor Company (now Monitor Deloitte) and at the World Bank, where he conducted research on industrial clusters as a source of entrepreneurship and innovation in promoting economic growth.

In 2021, Asheesh received The Tony Hsieh Award as recognition for his leadership of JA Worldwide. In 2022, Asheesh was selected as an honoree from the United States for the YPO Global Social Impact Award.

Asheesh holds degrees from the Wharton School and Oxford University, where he was a Commonwealth Scholar. He and his family now live in the Boston area.