Can-do people

Ruth Shapiro attends an event in Beijing to share with Chinese readers her experience as a business consultant.[Photo/China Daily]

US business consultant writes about philanthropy in China in latest version of her book. Liu Zhihua reports.

To Ruth Shapiro, people who use their skills and resources to run a social enterprise or a nonprofit in a business-like manner for the larger good of society can be considered social entrepreneurs.

The US business consultant, who released the Chinese version of her book The Real Problem Solvers, in China last November, has interviewed five Chinese philanthropists in the fields of education, environment, healthcare, crisis management and poverty alleviation, to add seven new chapters to it.

Zhenzheng De Wenti Jiejuezhe is the Chinese title of her latest release.

Shapiro, in her 50s, came to work in China in 1996, and a year later she co-founded the Hong Kong-based Asia Business Council, an organization for business executives in Asia, and served as its first executive director until 2007.

Her original book, published by Stanford University Press in 2012, was born out of an experience she had in 2007, when she moved from Hong Kong to California.

After returning to the United States, she started to work for a charity and once organized a series of events where social entrepreneurs were invited to discuss philanthropy at the Commonwealth Club of California, a major public affairs forum in the US.

She took down notes from the series of talks, and got her book project－on charities in the US－going. Through it, Shapiro has given her readers insights into key social entrepreneurs and has written about trends at the forefront of social change in her country.