Upcoming Events
Igniting Change
Celebrating Women with Potential Energy
March 8, 2012
International Women’s Day
6pm to 9pm
550 Geary Street
San Francisco, CA
Join us for the official launch of Potential Energy, a nonprofit that provides basic, modern technology to the world’s poorest people. The event will mark our expansion beyond our flagship Darfur Stoves Project, and will feature and expert panel discussion about technology’s potential to alleviate poverty.
A portion of your ticket purchase price is tax-deductible.
Event Co-Chairs
Allison Goodson
Ruth Katz
Alison Mauzé
Moderator
Carolyn Johnson, Co-anchor of ABC7 News
Carolyn Johnson co-anchors ABC7 News at 4 p.m., 6 p.m and 11 p.m. weekdays. She also reports on health and science.
Carolyn has won a regional Edward R. Murrow Award from the Radio and Television News Directors Association (RTNDA) for best newscast; and she completed a health journalism fellowship with the California Endowment/USC Annenberg School of Communication.
Carolyn brings more than 20 years of experience in television production and on-air work to her position. She began her career as an intern at KCBS-TV in Los Angeles, and then worked as a production assistant for ABC7 while still in college. She worked behind the scenes, producing numerous programs and specials at ABC7 before accepting a reporting position at KSBY-TV in San Luis Obispo. She returned to ABC7 in 1998 as a reporter and anchor.
Carolyn’s industry recognitions include a 2009 Emmy Award for best evening newscast. She’s also been honored as best reporter by the American Women in Radio and Television, Golden Gate Chapter. Carolyn has won a Service to Children Award from the National Association of Broadcasters, the Eugene Block Journalism Award for Outstanding Coverage of San Francisco Human Rights Issues, the John Swett Award for Outstanding Locally Produced Education Series, the Arthritis Foundation Media Award and the Hero Award from the Neuropathy Action Foundation. She’s also been recognized by RTNDA for her news reporting. Carolyn double majored in psychology and communication and graduated with honors from Stanford University. She currently serves on the board of Family Service Agency in San Mateo County.
Panelists
Dr. Ashok Gadgil, Director of the Environmental Energy Technologies Division of Lawrence Berkeley Laboratory, Founder & President of Potential Energy
Ashok Gadgil is a Faculty Senior Scientist and Director of the Environmental Energy Technologies Division of Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory and Andrew and Virginia Rudd Family Foundation Distinguished Chair of Safe Water and Sanitation in Civil and Environmental Engineering at UC Berkeley. He has substantial experience in technical, economic, and policy research on energy efficiency and its implementation, particularly in developing countries. For example, the utility-sponsored compact fluorescent lamp leasing programs that he has pioneered are being successfully implemented by utilities in several Eastern European and developing countries. He has several patents and inventions to his credit, among them the “UV Waterworks,” a technology to inexpensively disinfect drinking water in developing countries, for which he received the Discover Award in 1996 for the most significant environmental invention of the year, as well as the Popular Science award for “Best of What is New 1996”. In recent years, he has worked on ways to inexpensively remove arsenic from drinking water in Bangladesh. Dr. Gadgil has a doctorate in physics from UC Berkeley, has won over 20 awards for his work and has over 85 articles published in refereed archival journals. Most recently, Dr. Gadgil received the prestigious Zayed Future Energy Prize’s Lifetime Achievement Award.
Dr. Kurt Kornbluth, Founding Director of the Program for International Energy Technologies/D-Lab at UC Davis
Kurt Kornbluth, PhD, Mechanical Engineer, is a graduate of the University of California, Davis. Dr. Kornbluth participated in 2006 as a Graduate School of Management Business Development Fellow. He was also an Edison International Energy Efficiency Fellow with the Energy Efficiency Center from 2007-08. Dr. Kornbluth’s research focus is on renewable energy technologies and lifecycle analysis and international development. His dissertation topic focused on hydrogen enrichment for enhanced combustion of landfill gas.
From 1993 to 2003, Dr. Kornbluth worked with Whirlwind Wheelchair International (WWI), managing and implementing technology projects in Africa and Central America. He led the 8-year project, “Networking and Capacity building Wheelchair production in East Africa”, a cooperative effort between the Finish Government, a local Zambian NGO (DISACARE), and WWI which established a Regional Resource and Training Center for wheelchair production in LUSAKA.
In 2005, Dr. Kornbluth was the engineer onsite in Bangladesh for the “Emergence” village micro-utility project spearheaded by Iqbal Quadir (Founder of Grameen Phone) and Dean Kamen (Inventor of the Segway). He led the pilot study which electrified two rural communities in Bangladesh and his responsibilities included working with stakeholders to establish design criteria, prototype design and construction, and in-country implementation and evaluation.
In addition to cars, motorcycles, and general cool technology, Dr. Kornbluth has a passion for energy and international development. In 2004, he worked with Amy Smith at MIT to develop the curriculum for “D-Lab” which exposed students to energy issues in developing countries and is currently the PI on the University of California, Davis EEC-sponsored Program for International Energy Technologies (PIET).
Jocelyn Wyatt, Co-Lead and Executive Director of IDEO.org
Jocelyn Wyatt is the Executive Director and Co-Lead of IDEO.org, the nonprofit organization started by IDEO to address poverty-related challenges through design and to encourage the use of our human-centered approach to innovation in the social sector. Previously, Jocelyn led IDEO’s Social Innovation practice, which she expanded over the course of several years.
Jocelyn specializes in building social enterprises and advising businesses in the developing world, where she uses the market to effect social change. She has lent her perspective to social-innovation projects with clients such as Acumen Fund, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, KickStart, the Rockefeller Foundation, Unilever, the US Agency for International Development, and Water and Sanitation for the Urban Poor. Based in San Francisco, she travels worldwide to grapple with strategies and issues related to product, service, and system design.
Prior to joining IDEO in 2007, Jocelyn worked in Kenya as an Acumen Fund fellow with an agro-pharmaceutical company involved in the production of malaria treatments. She served as VisionSpring’s interim country director in India, where she helped increase the distribution of low-cost reading glasses to the urban and rural poor. She also did training, project management, and business development for Chemonics International, a contractor for USAID.
Jocelyn received an MBA from Thunderbird School of Global Management and a bachelor’s degree in anthropology from Grinnell College in Iowa. She has taught social enterprise and human-centered design at the Haas School of Business at the University of California at Berkeley and Thunderbird. She is a Tactical Philanthropy Advisory Board member, Fenix Advisory Board member, an Aspen Institute First Movers Fellow, and a Steelcase Green Giant. In her spare time, Jocelyn enjoys hosting dinner parties, reading in the park, and exploring the neighborhoods of San Francisco.
Honorees
Meklit Hadero, Singer/Songwriter, TED Fellow
Meklit Hadero is a vocalist, songwriter, cultural activist and Resident Artist at the Red Poppy Art House — an interdisciplinary arts and performance space in San Francisco. Born in Ethiopia and raised in the US, her musical explorations span genres and geographies. Meklit has received commissions from the SF Foundation Fund For Artists — for the ensemble Nefasha Ayer, from the Brava Theater — to compose music for the play, Over the Mountain, and from the de Young Museum — for a recent residency. She received the 2008 Individual Grant from the Belle Foundation, and currently she is organizing a group of Ethiopian Diaspora artists from across North America to return to Ethiopia for a traditional music festival. A former Director of the Red Poppy, Meklit has worked extensively as a community organizer. She aims to reintegrate the arts into a core place within our culture, championing their power to serve as a platform for dialogue across boundaries and borders. She is currently a TED Global Fellow for her work on the Nile Project, a multicultural musical platform that will bring together hip-hop and traditional musicians living in the Nile countries. She holds a BA in Political Science from Yale University. Learn more about Meklit at MeklitHadero.com.
Claire Diaz-Ortiz, Social Innovation Lead, Twitter, Inc.
Claire Diaz-Ortiz leads social innovation at Twitter, where she has worked since 2009. She wrote Twitter for Good: Change the World one Tweet at a Time and is a frequent international speaker on social media, leadership, and social change. She is known for developing the TWEET model — a framework to help organizations and individuals best excel on Twitter. Claire holds an MBA and other degrees from Stanford and Oxford, and is the co-founder of Hope Runs, a non-profit organization operating in AIDS orphanages in Kenya. She also owns Do Well Media, Interwebs Publishing and Saving Money Media. Read more about her at ClaireDiazOrtiz.com or via @claired on Twitter.
Sponsors
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