Dr. Scott Sherman is an award-winning social entrepreneur, and founder of the Transformative Action Institute (TAI) in Los Angeles, California. TAI is devoted to training a new generation of social entrepreneurs, innovators, visionaries, and problem solvers for the 21st century. Its innovative model of social change builds on the ideas of Mohandas Gandhi and Martin Luther King, Jr.
Sherman has worked on nonviolence and social justice projects from the war-torn island of Sri Lanka to the inner city ghettoes of America. He is an expert on the most effective ways that grassroots citizens succeed in activism. Recently he documented 60 cases where communities succeeded in fighting for environmental justice. He is the author of the forthcoming work, How David Conquers Goliath: The Power of People to Overcome the World's Largest Corporations and Governments.
Sherman's work on nonviolent social change projects has been praised by such Nobel Peace Prize Laureates as the Dalai Lama and the late Mother Teresa. He is also a nationally recognized speaker on environmental regeneration and transformative action. He has won the outstanding teaching award from the University of California at Berkeley. In 2004, he was nominated for the National Society of Collegiate Scholars' Faculty of the Year award for the entire U.S.
Sherman earned his undergraduate and law degrees from U.C. Berkeley, as well as his Ph.D. in environmental studies from the University of Michigan. Besides his work as a grassroots community organizer, lecturer, and author, Sherman has worked with the Natural Resources Defense Council and the Environmental Law Foundation. He is currently an adjunct faculty member in UCLA's School of Public Affairs.
In 2005, the global nonprofit organization Echoing Green recognized Sherman as one of the world's "Best Emerging Social Entrepreneurs. "