PopTech : Blog : Welcoming the Social Innovation Fellows Class of 2011

Welcoming the Social Innovation Fellows Class of 2011

Ollie Wilder ( Bio / Posts ) | Wednesday, September 21, 2011 UTC

PopTech is proud to announce the Social Innovation Fellows Class of 2011!

This year’s Fellows are spearheading a compelling set of solutions to global challenges. They are reconnecting refugee families, helping people become “makers” of their own technology, improving local food production and distribution, and getting to the heart of measuring true impact. They are helping girls access education and healthcare, building community through music and architecture, and using a combination of high-tech and good business to get clean water, sustainable energy and appropriate medical devices to those who most need them.

Meet this year’s Fellows:

Erika Block created Local Orbit’s online tools to make local and regional food distribution more efficient, transparent and sustainable, support local economies and make healthy, locally produced food widely available and easy to buy.

Krista Donaldson runs D-Rev: Design Revolution, which works with local partners to bring state-of-the-art, user-centric products to empower the lives of the four billion people living on less than four dollars a day.

Rose Goslinga leads the Syngenta Foundation’s Kilimo Salama, helping increase farm productivity and food security through the first micro-insurance product available to smallholder Kenyan farmers.

Sameer Kalwani helps provide clean drinking water to those without access through Sarvajal, a technology-enabled franchise business rapidly expanding in India.

Christopher Marianetti and Found Sound Nation work with youth and communities to create original music projects that unlock creative potential and build bridges between cultures.

David and Christopher Troensegaard Mikkelsen founded Refugees United to streamline the process of reconnecting refugee families through web and mobile technologies.

Megan White Mukuria founded ZanaAfrica to address root causes of gender inequality across Africa and enhance girls' educational attainment through sustainable African-led innovations, beginning with the delivery of sanitary pads and related health information.

Dominic Muren’s design lab, the Humblefactory, and design-sharing platform, Alchematter, help make object design and fabrication truly open and collaborative for communities around the world.

Michael Murphy co-founded MASS Design Group to create well-built environments that help break the cycle of poverty through appropriate design, local investment and innovation.

Paul Needham co-founded Simpa Networks, which sells high-quality solar energy systems on a pay-as-you-go basis to underserved people in emerging markets.

Jake Porway launched Data Without Borders to match nonprofits with pro bono data scientists to solve problems using data collection, management, and analysis in the service of humanity.

Nithya Ramanathan’s Nexleaf Analytics leverages the power of affordable mobile technology for health and environmental impact studies, facilitating quicker feedback and more effective solutions.

Mohammed Rabah Salem provides locally built wind turbines and small-scale solar technologies to both Palestine and Israel, knitting together common needs in an otherwise deeply divided setting.

Amy Sun created Fab Folk to extend MIT’s Fab Lab program, building local technical capacity that gives people the tools to innovate and turn design ideas into real objects.

The Fellows will be joining the program’s world-class faculty in Maine this October for a five-day training session and will then appear on stage at PopTech 2011: The World Rebalancing.

The Social Innovation Fellows program is supported by American Express, the Doris Duke Charitable Foundation, the Nike Foundation, PwC and the Rita Allen Foundation.

We look forward to connecting these inspiring leaders with the PopTech network and helping to accelerate their work!

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