Philip Gaskin is the vice president of Entrepreneurship of the Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation, where he is responsible for leading the Foundation’s comprehensive entrepreneurship portfolio – including grantmaking, operating programs, convening, research, and policy. Gaskin is charged with leading the team of more than 30 associates and providing vision, strategic thinking, and thought leadership to scale and deepen the impact of the Foundation’s entrepreneurship strategy. As a leader with deep expertise in developing diverse entrepreneurial ecosystems, Gaskin oversees the Foundation’s national strategy focused on eliminating systemic barriers to entrepreneurship and enhancing economic activity through inclusive entrepreneurship.
With deep experience in organisational management in a variety of organisational settings, Gaskin is responsible as vice president for the strategic planning, program execution, grants process, budgeting, and operations of the Entrepreneurship division at the Foundation. Gaskin previously served as senior director of Entrepreneurship at the Foundation, where he led the strategic implementation and execution of the Kauffman entrepreneurship strategy across the new entrepreneurial learning, ecosystems, entrepreneur support organisations, policy, and knowledge creation and research programs and initiatives. Prior to joining the Kauffman Foundation, Gaskin was chief operating officer for Impact Hub in the US, where he led organisation-wide initiatives to develop and scale a social innovation marketplace to support entrepreneurs and impact investors to build sustainable businesses that drive long-term social and environmental change. He served as lead partner to Impact Hub’s global association to promote interorganisational alignment, shape global business strategy, and advance strategic development efforts in developing regions of the world including Africa and Latin America.
Previously, Gaskin served as campaign director for national candidates, including Cory Booker for U.S. Senate and President Barack Obama, directing efforts in Pennsylvania for Obama for America. In these roles, he built and scaled grassroots ecosystems of volunteers who delivered historic results, aligning community, city, and state leaders to support policy initiatives. Prior, Gaskin held private sector executive leadership roles with BCD Group and Rosenbluth International, leading global firms providing travel management and strategic consulting to Fortune 500 companies. At BCD, Gaskin served as senior vice president for global business strategy and solutions where he led global operations, customer strategy, account and contract management, technology, finance, and business development for a 400-person business unit representing $1B in revenues. Gaskin led the industry’s first global service marketplace, an automated platform providing real-time service to corporate travelers in over 30 countries. A native of Los Angeles and with ties to Kansas City and Philadelphia, Gaskin attended Pennsylvania State University and graduated from California State University with a Bachelor of Science in marketing.