Gilad Babchuk

Gilad Babchuk has extensive experience establishing, developing and running various organizations, and has founded or co-founded over 15 social enterprises, academic programs, and NGOs both as an educator and social entrepreneur. Babchuk consults several international companies and institutions in the fields of e-learning and progressive education and does business development consulting for a multi-national biotech company.

In 2012 Babchuk co-founded the innovative alternative business school Groundswell and serves as its Executive Director. Groundswell pioneers a new way to support aspiring entrepreneurs and individuals who want to develop their ideas into sustainable social enterprises, taking a holistic approach to education by incubating the individual, not just the business idea, within an ecosystem of support.

Among his other roles, Babchuk currently sits on the Board of CCEC Credit Union, and the Vancouver Fix-It Collective, a zero-waste textiles venture in Vancouver. He serves on the Advisory Committee for the First Nations Technology Council, the Advisory Board of Diversity in Tech, and Youth Rites of Passage. Before moving to Canada in 2011, he was Executive Director of the Institute for Democratic Education, an organization that supports and advises administrators and educators in public and independent schools across Israel. Babchuk was a Strategic Adviser for several mayors in Israel, the head of the teacher training program in Kibbutzim College of Education, Technology & Arts, and the creator of a school principals training program with the Ministry of Education.

He lives in Vancouver with his partner Lilach and their five children.