Charles is social entrepreneur and a pioneer in legal education, public interest advocacy, and philanthropy. The founder of the nation’s first public interest law firm, and a major public interest law school, he ran the Nathan Cummings Foundation, and was the founder of Demos, a New York-based think tank. During his years of activism, he began to see ways to develop his inner resources to complement his cognitive and adversarial skill, a journey described in his book, Making Waves and Riding the Currents: Activism and the Practice of Wisdom (Berrett-Koehler).