In 2005 Drayton received the Yale Law School award of merit, the highest honor award, and was also selected as one of America's 25 best leaders. The overarching mission of Ashoka is to see "Everyone as a Change maker" and this has been done by connecting with individuals who are inspiring real change and networking together to become stronger influencers. Drayton's ability to inspire these key players to collaborate and support each other was the key to the tremendous growth and social change that Ashoka has contributed. Gloria de Souza Gloria de Souza's inspiring story begins when, in 1981, she became the first fellow (social entrepreneur) elected to Ashoka: Innovators for the Public, an organization founded by Bill Drayton specializing in collecting information about and supporting local reformers across the world. Ashoka's vision sought to answer the question, "Was it possible to create a system that would, with high reliability, spot major pattern-changing ideas and first-class entrepreneurs before either were born?" As an elementary school teacher in Bombay with big aspirations, Gloria de Souza could be thought of as Ashoka's "guinea pig," for India was the organization's first targeted country in the search for genuine social entrepreneurism. Her dream was to "transform education across India." After teaching for twenty years, she could no longer put up with the Indian schools' traditional ways of teaching. Author David Bornstein notes, "Nothing pained her more than to walk through a school hallway and hear students repeating in unison, 'Here we go 'round the mulberry bush.' To her, this rote learning—a holdover from the colonial era—was the very sound of minds being deadened." She knew she must do something. After attending a workshop on experiential and environmental education in 1971, she was inspired. With great excitement and vision, de Souza presented these revolutionary ideas to her colleagues, but to no avail; they continually turned her down. So, "she set aside her textbooks with their references to robins, bluebirds, and willow trees and took her students outside to learn about local birds and plants and explore questions such as: 'Why do monsoons come and go?'" Though other teachers criticized her, her students responded enthusiastically. She tried and failed many times over next five years to get the school to adopt her methods. When she met Drayton, she had finally made progress in persuading the teaching staff at her school and was working on spreading the