Martin Burt

Martin Burt was the mayor of a major city in Paraguay, when he decided to leave politics to create a social enterprise dedicated to economic self reliance from the bottom up.   Martin describes the way to solve poverty as"putting money in the pockets of the poor." Martin founded Fundación Paraguaya, an agricultural school that transform farmers into rural entrepreneurs. 

Mobile Communications Tools to Bring Health Care to Underserved Communities

Josh was working at St. Gabriel's Hospital in rural Malawi where he observed community health workers walking over 30 miles to deliver updates on patients. He also observed stronger cell phone reception in the Malawian rural village than back home in California. Josh says, that was his "aha moment." The next time he returned to the hospital, he brought a suitcase of $10 Nokia phones. The impact of communication and better support for frontline health workers was clear.  Medic Mobile was born.

Of the 8 million Kenyans who live in urban informal settlements, 80% lack access to basic sanitation. Three MBA students from MIT Sloan School of Management saw an opportunity and developed a business plan for turning a public health crisis into an economic opportunity. The team won the MIT $100K Entrepreneurship Business Plan Contest and launched Sanergy – a contraction of sanitation and energy – using an innovative franchise model.

When Victoria Hale worked as a pharmaceutical executive, she was haunted by the question: why in the 21st century when there are treatments for virtually any disease in the west,  are babies dying of dehydrating diarrhea and adults dying of diseases that could be cured, because treatments were never developed and brought to market?  She founded, Institute for One World Health, a nonprofit pharmaceutical company to ensure that drugs for infectious diseases in developing countries get to the people that need them regardless of their ability to pay.