Abby Falik is an award-winning social entrepreneur, education innovator and movement-builder, envisioning an education higher than higher ed.

Named one of the “Most Creative People in Business,” by Fast Company, and selected as one of Goldman Sachs’ “Most Intriguing Entrepreneurs” four times, Abby’s work has been profiled by The New York Times, The Washington Post, NPR, PBS, The Chronicle of Philanthropy and The Chronicle of Higher Education. She was named one of America's Top 25 Philanthropy Speakers by The Business of Giving, and is a frequent speaker at prominent global forums from the Aspen Ideas Festival to the Milken Institute Global Conference. For her achievements as a social entrepreneur she has been recognized as an Ashoka Fellow, a Draper Richards Kaplan Fellow, and a Harvard Business School Fellow.

After winning Harvard’s Pitch for Change in 2008, Abby founded Global Citizen Year, an acclaimed Fellowship that used the transition after high school to help young leaders find their purpose and their power to drive change. As CEO she raised and deployed over $65M in scholarships and equipped thousands of diverse, emerging adults to experience and impact their world. In 2022, she joined the Emerson Collective as an Entrepreneur in Residence to design a blueprint to take this model to scale. 

A proponent of finding power in life’s transitions, and an outspoken advocate for learning on purpose (at any age), Abby spent 2023 as an Entrepreneur in Residence with the Emerson Collective, exploring radical educational models around the world with her family in tow.

In 2024, she launched The Flight School to transform how young people learn, launch and lead. Combining proven models with pioneering technologies, The Flight School is re-inventing the ‘gap year’ as an accessible, aspirational and rebellious rite of passage – to equip a critical mass to change the world, for good.

Abby serves on the Advisory Boards of World Learning, Teach for All, and Harvard Business School, and is a member of Fast Company’s Impact Council.

She received a B.A. in International Relations and an M.A. in International Comparative Education from Stanford University, and an M.B.A. from Harvard Business School.  She is currently a Visiting Fellow at Stanford.

She lives in Oakland with her husband and young sons.