Jeremy Heimans

Co-founder & Chairman

Jeremy Heimans is the co-founder and Chairman of Purpose, a Public Benefit Corporation with offices on six continents, that builds and supports movements for an open, just, and habitable world. He is co-founder of GetUp!, an Australian political organization with more members than all of Australia’s political parties combined, and Avaaz, the world’s largest online citizens’ movement, now with more than 65 million members. Heimans has been building movements since the age of 8 when, as a child activist in his native Australia, he ran media campaigns and lobbied leaders on issues like children’s rights and nuclear non-proliferation. 

Heimans has been named one of Fast Company’s Most Creative People in Business, The Guardian has named him as one of the ten most influential voices on sustainability in the US and to its World Pride Power List of LGBT+ leaders, and The Monthly has observed that Heimans “might be the most influential Australian in the world”. With Henry Timms, Jeremy is co-author of the international bestseller “New Power”, praised by the New York Times’ David Brooks as “the best window I’ve seen into this new world” and by The Guardian as “a manual on how to navigate the 21st century.” The book was short-listed for the 2018 FT & Business Book of the Year Award and named a best book of the year by Bloomberg, Fortune, Inc, CNBC and others. Heimans and Timms’ thinking on new power has been featured as the Big Idea in Harvard Business Review, as one of CNN’s “ideas to change the world” and Jeremy’s top-rated TED talk on the topic has been viewed 1.5 million times.

He is a recipient of the Ford Foundation’s 75th anniversary Visionary Award, the Foreign Policy Association Medal and the Performance Theater’s Inspired Leadership Award. He served as chair of the World Economic Forum’s Global Agenda Council on Civic Participation. Heimans has been a keynote speaker at venues such as the World Economic Forum at Davos, TED, the Aspen Institute Ideas Festival, the RSA, Chatham House, the United Nations, Blair House, The Economist Big Rethink, The Guardian Activate and Social Media Week.

The proud son of two first-generation immigrants to Australia, Jeremy was educated at Harvard University and the University of Sydney, and began his career with the strategy consultants McKinsey & Company. He lives in New York.