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Samasource




Leila Janah
Founder and CEO

About Leila Janah

About Leila Janah

Leila is Founder and CEO of Samasource. Leila first developed the idea behind Samasource while working as a management consultant at Katzenbach Partners (now Booz & Co.), where her clients included global leaders in the outsourcing and telecom sectors and a number of prominent non-profits. She co-founded Incentives for Global Health and helped produce a plan for incentivizing the development of new drugs for neglected diseases. As an undergraduate, Leila authored background papers for the World Bank's Development Research Group and Ashoka on equity and social rights. Leila is a recipient of the Rainer Arnhold and TEDIndia Fellowships, and serves on the San Francisco board of the Social Enterprise Institute. She is a former Visiting Scholar at the Stanford Program on Global Justice and the Center for Applied Philosophy and Public Ethics at Australian National University. She holds a BA from Harvard.


Country:  United States
Region:  North America
Mission: 

We bring dignified, computer-based work to women, youth, and refugees living in poverty.


Sector:  Spotlight on Microwork
Year Founded:  2008
Website:  Samasource
Description: 

Work is at the core of human dignity. Samasource invented microwork—a new way to fight poverty by enabling capable, marginalized people to complete digital tasks in some of the world's poorest places. Our model provides direct income to thousands of people at a fraction of the cost of traditional aid programs and equips them with skills to succeed in the new economy. Samasource’s San Francisco-based sales and delivery teams work with clients to move large data projects to a proprietary online work distribution system, the SamaHub. Dedicated, full-time workers around the world access the SamaHub from delivery centers monitored by Samasource staff. Samasource account managers and QA professionals ensure quality, accuracy, and fast turnaround times.
 
Samasource derives its name from the Sanskrit word sama, which means equal, and was founded in 2008. The company’s board and management team includes experts in the fields of distributed work, economic development, and outsourcing.


Social Impact: 

Samasource has found simple computer-based work for over 1,200 people living in poverty in Kenya, India, Pakistan, Haiti, Uganda and South Africa. As of June, 2011, Samasource had paid out over USD 1 million in wages.


Samasource