PREP

Charlotte Ren is Professor of Practice in Strategy and Innovation and Faculty Director of Global Master of Public Administration in the School of Arts and Sciences, University of Pennsylvania. She’s also Senior Fellow at Wharton’s Mack Institute for Innovation Management. Dr. Ren earned a PhD in management and an MA in economics from UCLA, a bachelor’s degree in international politics and a minor degree in law from Peking University (China).

Chao Guo is Professor of Nonprofit Management in the School of Social Policy and Practice, and Associate Faculty Director of Fox Leadership International in the School of Arts and Sciences, both at the University of Pennsylvania. He has served as Editor-in-Chief of Nonprofit & Voluntary Sector Quarterly, the premier journal in the field. He has a Ph.D. in Public Administration from the University of Southern California, and a Bachelor’s degree in International Relations from Renmin University of China.

Chao’s interests are in nonprofit governance, collaboration within and across sectors, technology and nonprofit advocacy, and social entrepreneurship. His award-winning research includes the 2014 text, Social Entrepreneurship: An Evidence-Based Approach to Creating Social Value (Wiley; co-authored with Wolfgang Bielefeld), and the 2020 book, The Quest for Attention: Nonprofit Advocacy in a Social Media Age (Stanford University Press; co-authored with Gregory D. Saxton).

Tom is a social worker (LSW) and most passionate about addressing the problem of mass incarceration. As the Executive Director of the Penn Restorative Entrepreneurship Program (PREP), Tom conducts a class entitled Social Impact Entrepreneurship Meets Mass Incarceration, which provides a group of formerly incarcerated individuals intensive training on how to start a new business. Tom also teaches courses at SP2 on Research Methods and the History and Philosophy of Social Work. In addition, Tom teaches for Villanova University at classes held in SCI Phoenix, a maximum-security men’s prison. Tom completed his PhD and Master of Law and Social Policy degrees at Bryn Mawr College where he taught Social Policy and Social Theory. His dissertation topic was on the social construction of sexual identity, entitled, The Lowdown on the Down Low: Why Some Bisexually Active Men Identify as Straight. He also completed Master’s and Bachelor’s degrees in Psychology at Villanova University.

Tom recently retired from a long career in financial services industry where he served as First Vice President at Wells Fargo Advisors. He has taught courses in the summer university program at the Copenhagen Business School on Social Impact Finance and Investments. Tom also serves on the advisory council of the Social Justice Initiative at Bryn Mawr College wherein they advocate for community-based alternatives to youth incarceration. Tom and his wife, Janice, are the proud parents of two fine young men, Tommy and Sean.

Tessa began working with the Penn Restorative Entrepreneurship Program (PREP) in 2021 as a master’s student at the University of Pennsylvania School of Social Policy and Practice. As Director of Development, Tessa oversees PREP’s fundraising efforts and fosters meaningful partnerships to advance the program’s work.

Her PREP work aside, Tessa currently serves as the Assistant Director of Institutional Philanthropy at Action for the Climate Emergency (ACE), where she supports the development and implementation of ACE’s institutional fundraising program to advance the global climate movement. Before joining ACE, Tessa worked as a Director at Elevate, a nonprofit development consulting firm based in Washington, DC. She holds a Master of Science in Nonprofit Leadership from the University of Pennsylvania School of Social Policy and Practice and a Bachelor of Arts in Sustainable Development and Sociology from Columbia University.