Jaime "Jim" Ayala

In the digital age where you can get anything online, it becomes easy to take something like electricity for granted. Millions of Filipinos, however, live without access to it. And after working in a corporate industry for decades, businessman Jim Ayala pondered this problem, along with the poverty surrounding him, and wondered: “why am I not spending my energy helping people who need it more?”

And as simple as that, he founded Hybrid Social Solutions in 2010, a social enterprise dedicated to bringing essential goods and services to underdeveloped communities — primarily high-quality, affordable solar-powered lights and appliances aimed at stimulating basic economic development to help lift people living literally off the grid out of poverty.

Despite the acclaim that Ayala received in the first few years of his enterprise — from Ernst & Young’s Entrepreneur of the Year 2012 to the Schwab Foundation’s 24 World Social Entrepreneurs of 2013 — his work is, unfortunately, nowhere near over. Driven by compassion and vision, Ayala continues to work tirelessly to help build a nation where all Filipinos’ basic needs can be met.