Pamela Hawley

Pamela Hawley is the founder and CEO of UniversalGivingTM, a website that helps people donate and volunteer with vetted opportunities all over the world.

Pamela is a recipient of the Jefferson Award (Nobel Prize for Community Service), selected as one of 50 to the White House's Consortium on Next Generation Leadership and Social Innovation in July 2010, a finalist for Ernst and Young's Entrepreneur of the Year Award, and a recipient of the Colburn S. Wilbur Fellowship for the Global Ethics Institute. She is also the co-founder of VolunteerMatch.

Pamela's community service began at the age of 12. While on a family vacation in Mexico, she and her father wandered off down a cul-de-sac and were confronted by a stream of unwashed, handicapped, begging children. The word “unacceptable” flashed across her mind. From this experience grew a lifelong commitment to serve which eventually led her to found the award-winning nonprofit UniversalGiving™.

Pamela's volunteer work has spanned the globe, serving in remote villages of India, crisis relief work in the 2000 El Salvador earthquake, sustainable farming in Guatemala and digital divide training with disabled people in Cambodia.

She has a political science degree cum laudé at Duke University and a Masters on scholarship at the Annenberg School of Communications, USC, in International Communications.

Pamela is also an actress, improviser, dancer and singer with over 100 performances in San Francisco, New York, and Los Angeles. She is trained by The Groundlings, a graduate of the Upright Citizens Brigade, at the advanced level of writing with The Second City Los Angeles and a BATS improv player.