Cheryl Dorsey was midway through her studies at Harvard Medical School when she realized she wanted to be more than a pediatrician. She wanted to do something transformative, she said -- something that could have a dramatic impact on some of the inequities inherent in American public health care.

And so, Dr. Dorsey, who had taken a year off from medical school to pursue a public policy degree from the Kennedy School of Government, decided she would take on the rate of infant mortality in Boston.

"I realized that I had to do something in light of the fact that black babies were dying at three times the rate of white babies in Boston, right in the shadow of what is one of the best medical schools in the country," she said.

Infant mortality, she said, was directly related to socio-economic status.

"You had women who didn't have access to affordable care, transport to existing services, nurses or nutritionists. It was no wonder their babies had a high likelihood of dying," said Dr. Dorsey, 47, a former White House Fellow during the Clinton administration.

Her work to help those women and children led to a fellowship with Echoing Green, a global nonprofit organization that identifies, funds and supports individuals or organizations with ideas that have the capacity to create positive social change. Now president of New York City-based Echoing Green, Dr. Dorsey will be the keynote speaker on Tuesday at the third annual Solutions for Society symposium at Carnegie Mellon University.

The event -- held in memory and honor of the late David D'Appolonia, a Pittsburgh engineer, entrepreneur and financier -- aims to educate and inspire people about the power of individual innovation to create social change.

His daughter, Anne D'Appolonia said the symposium was started in 2007 as a partnership of the D'Appolonia family with Pittsburgh Social Venture Partners, CMU and others to celebrate "a man who sought to make a difference in his community."

Mr. D'Appolonia, who died in 2006, was a well-known philanthropist who devoted passion and money to support such social projects as the Mentoring Partnership of Southwestern Pennsylvania and the Propel Schools, a group of charter schools in economically depressed areas.

Echoing Green, which has awarded more than $28 million in start-up capital to more than 450 social entrepreneurs, began in 1987 as an offshoot of the venture capital firm General Atlantic LLC.

As part of its mission to recruit and fund social entrepreneurs around the world, it has helped launch such organizations as Teach for America, City Year, Genocide Intervention Network and International Bridges to Justice.

Echoing Green awarded a fellowship to Dr. Dorsey in 1992, two years after she began working with a colleague to launch the Family Van, a successful community-based mobile health unit that provided basic health care and outreach services to at-risk residents in inner-city Boston.

Also among the organization's long list of former fellows is first lady Michelle Obama, who sought funding in 1993 to help launch Public Allies Chicago, a leadership program that links young people with organizations in their communities.

In Pittsburgh, former Echoing Green fellows include Felix Brandon Lloyd, who was awarded a fellowship in 2007 to launch Skill-Life, an online game-based platform that enables children to earn real-world rewards by playing games that teach about financial literacy, proper nutrition, citizenship and other life skills.

BancVue, an online financial education firm, bought Skill-Life in 2009. It is now featured in community banks and credit unions nationwide.

In 2008, Carnegie Mellon University alumni Andrew Butcher and Chris Koch won an Echoing Green fellowship for their work with their company GTECH -- Growth Through Energy and Community Health -- which aims to reclaim blighted industrial and residential land by converting it into fertile soil. The soil is used for planting biofuel crops.

The Solutions for Society Symposium, which is open to the public, will begin at 6 p.m. Tuesday in the Philip Chosky Theater in CMU's Purnell Center for the Arts. To register, go to www.solutionsforsociety.org.

Tickets for students are $10; tickets for others are $25 in advance and $30 at the door.

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