humanity unbound

HUbHUMANITY UNBOUND

SPRING 2012

WOMAN IN INDIA WHO RUNS A DESALINIZATION PLANT

SPECIAL ENGINEERING & HUMANITY WEEK ISSUEAGENDA, INSIGHTS, AND INNOVATIONS INSIDE!

INNOVATION FOR THE GREATER GOOD

Reverse InnovationReinventing Fire

Homes for Humanity

INSIDE:The Cardboard Shoe Guy10 Innovations to Change the WorldWomen Plant Forests in KenyaHugh Jackman Cooks Coffee Coated Drumsticks

PEOPLE

B

www.eandhweek.org 1

HUMANITY UNBOUNDA publication of SMU's Hunter and

Stephanie Hunt Institute for Engineering

and Humanity

PO Box 140805

Dallas, TX 75214-0805

214.738.3655

www.EandHweek.org

Vol. 2, No. 1 - Spring, 2012

Editorial TeamStephanie Hunt |Publisher

Linda Mastaglio |Managing Editor

James Colgan |Senior Editorial Designer

Chris Kelley |Senior Writer/Copy Editor

Contributing AuthorsAnnie Griffiths

Stephanie Hunt

Chris Kelley

Linda Mastaglio

Geoffrey Orsak, Ph.D.

Sonal Shah

MissionThe mission of Humanity Unbound is to

provide a forum for information ex-

change to further the global goals and as-

pirations of the Hunt Institute for

Engineering and Humanity. Through the

power of engineering—steeped in practi-

cal solutions, collaboration with partners,

and a commitment to the principles of hu-

manity—we will meet the challenges of

the developing world.

This publication is produced by a collabo-

rative initiative involving the Hunter and

Stephanie Hunt Institute for Engineering

and Humanity, Southern Methodist Uni-

versity’s Lyle School of Engineering, Fair-

mont Hotel Dallas, and the University of

Oxford’s Refugee Center.

This magazine is printed on FSC-certified

papers with environmentally responsible

inks. Please recycle by sharing this publi-

cation with your local library, school, or

educational institution.

©2012, the Hunt Institute for Engineer-

ing and Humanity. All rights reserved. Re-

production in whole or part is prohibited

without permission. However, re-distrib-

ution and information sharing is highly

encouraged. For reprint and reuse per-

missions, additional copies, or comments

to the editor, contact: Linda

[email protected].

Hunt Institute for Engineering and Humanity Advisory Board Lucy Billingsley: Founder of the

Billingsley Company, Dallas, Texas

Lori Feehan: Former tax partner with

Deloitte and Touche and consultant for

high-net worth individuals and private

foundations, Denver, Colorado

Richard A. Freling: Of.Counsel to Jones

Day, Dallas, Texas

Hunter Hunt: Co-Founder, Hunt Institute

for Engineering and Humanity, Dallas,

Texas

Stephanie Hunt: Co-Founder, Hunt Insti-

tute for Engineering and Humanity,

Dallas, Texas

Thomas E. Lovejoy: Heinz Center Biodi-

versity Chair, Heinz Center for Science,

Economics and the Environment and for-

mer Assistant Secretary of the Smithson-

ian Institution

Amory Lovins: Chairman and Chief Scien-

tist, Rocky Mountain Institute, Boulder,

Colorado

Tom Luce: CEO of the National Math and

Science Initiative and former United

States Assistant Secretary of Education

for Planning, Evaluation and Policy De-

velopment, Dallas, Texas

Bobby B. Lyle: Chairman and CEO, Lyco

Holdings Incorporated, Dallas, Texas

Alfonso Montiel : Founder, Alsis Funds,

Dallas, Texas

William T. Solomon: Former Chairman

and CEO of Austin Industries, Dallas,

Texas

Gay F. Solomon: Civic Leader, Dallas,

Texas

Jonathan Trichel: Principal, Deloitte Con-

sulting, Austin, Texas

R. James Woolsey, Jr.: Former Director of

the CIA and Senior Vice President of Booz

Allen Hamilton, Washington, D.C.

Ray Zahab: Ultra-marathoner and founder

of impossible2Possible, (i2P), Chelsea,

Quebec

ABOUT THE COVER:

Despite no formal education,

Rashmi was taught to run a solar

desalinization plant in her village

in Rajasthan, India.

Front and back cover photo:

Annie Griffiths/rippleeffectimages.org

2 Humanity Unbound/SPRING 2012

Highlights

8. FINDING PURPOSE THROUGH REVERSE INNOVATIONVijay Govindarajan speaks out on con-

cepts to help businesses and individuals

thrive in a dramatically changing world.

12. TECHNOLOGY AND ENGINEERING TO SUPPORT WORK WITH REFUGEESBy Stephanie Hunt and Geoffrey Orsak

New partnerships are being forged to en-

courage young engineers to use their

skills in the service of refugees.

14. HELP A WOMAN, HELP THE PLANETAnnie Griffiths, well known for her pow-

erful photography in National Geo-

graphic, shares her global experiences

through pictures and prose.

28.HONORING EXCELLENCEThis year’s Living Village at SMU is dedi-

cated to Cooper-Hewitt Curator Cynthia

Smith who is making a difference with

the exhibit, “Design with the Other 90%:

Cities.”

36.THE NEXT GENERATION ECONOMYBy Sonal Shah

An investment in an “impact economy”

has the potential to create jobs, economic

value, and social benefit for the U.S. and

the world.

73.IMAGINE... REINVENTING FIREBy Amory Lovins

Adapted from the acclaimed book, Rein-

venting Fire, the article is sure to give you

ideas that will change your perception of

the future.

CONTENTS

SideLights

22.Game-Changing Innovations: Technology Serving Humanity

24.Cardboard: Reverse Technology in Action

25.Nathan Myhrvold: From Coding to Cooking

26.Harvey Lacey: Making Refuse into Building Blocks

34.Brad Oldham: A Sculptor with the Mind of an Engineer

40.Anurag Jain and Daniel Gross: Collaborating to Help Others

41.Dallas Institute of Humanity and Culture

42.Nicole Potter: Embracing the Humanity of Art

42. Michael Leavitt: Cardboard Sneakers a Huge Hit

Engineering & Humanity Week

44.Thought Leadership from InnovationForum Speakers

47.Event Schedule

54.SMU Map and Shelter Locations

56.Shelter Descriptions

62.Guest Profiles

CONTENTS


Engineering is finally getting the picture; and we at the SMU Lyle School can be pleased that we played an im-

portant role in putting a focus where it needed to be.

The world’s global poor live in environments that are sadly reminiscent of ancient civilizations: devoid of

regular clean water, sanitation, safe and secure shelter, stable food supply, education and health care. Life is

based more on survival than on the pursuit of happiness. To these vast communities, it’s as if engineering

never happened. Engineers can and should do something about this – now.

In 2009, we are blessed to have established the Hunter and Stephanie Hunt Institute for Engineering and

Humanity – one of the very first international institutes focused on applying the power of innovation to im-

proving the daily reality of the global poor. Already the Hunt Institute is making its presence felt – not only by

organizing and hosting powerful events such as Engineering and Humanity Week, but by also providing the

impetus to develop and implement new educational and research programs around global development.

Just this year, we established a new interdisciplinary graduate program in Sustainability and Global Develop-

ment to help those with passion and skills pursue their dreams of improving the lives of people all over the world.

Our new university-wide minor in Global Development also allows for students across the campus majoring in top-

ics such as business, engineering, science, economics, marketing, education and anthropology to gain the under-

standing of how to effectively organize solutions to difficult problems in the developing world.

The SMU Lyle School of Engineering has always committed itself to really big problems. None are more

important today than bringing the benefits of modern society to half the world left behind over the past cen-

turies. Come join us in this noble effort.

Geoffrey OrsakDeanLyle School of Engineering Southern Methodist University

GETTING THE PICTURE

ACUGRAPHICSproudly sponsors Engineering & Humanity Week and the ongoing efforts of the Hunt Institute for Engineering and Humanity.Acugraphics provided the unique, hand-crafted cardboard table, printed exhibit materials, and embroidered bamboo T-shirts for Engineering & Humanity Week promotional efforts.

Acugraphics Embroidery & More, Inc. Digital Printing Embroidery Laser Engraving Screen Printing

2920 Skyway Circle NorthIrving, TX 75038 972.570.1200

[email protected]

www.eandhweek.org 5

Gensler Dallas is part of the global design,

planning, and strategic consulting firm,

with more than 2,600 professionals networked across 35 loca-

tions worldwide. Consistently ranked by U.S. and international

industry surveys as the leading architecture and interior design

firm, Gensler leverages its deep resources and diverse expertise

to develop design solutions for industries across the globe.

Since 1965, Gensler has collaborated with clients to create envi-

ronments that enhance organizational performance, achieve

measurable business goals, enrich people and communities, and

enhance everyday experiences.

The SMU Bobby B. Lyle Schoolof Engineering is committed

to developing the new American engineer, one prepared to excel

and lead in creating new economic opportunities while meeting

the most difficult challenges facing society. The Lyle School

maintains a steadfast focus on using engineering to address im-

portant issues both at home and around the world. The school

offers eight undergraduate and 29 graduate programs, including

both masters and doctorate levels.

In the United States, Deloitte LLP and its

subsidiaries have 45,000 professionals

with a single focus: serving clients and helping them solve their

toughest problems. Deloitte works in four key business areas —

audit, financial advisory, tax and consulting — but its real

strength comes from combining the talents of those groups to

address clients’ needs. “Deloitte” is the brand under which tens

of thousands of dedicated professionals in independent firms

throughout the world collaborate.

The Beck Group was founded in 1912 and has

developed into a full-service builder with in-

ternational reach. Beck's primary focus is

cultivating long-term relationships by offering complete real es-

tate solutions. Beck's multi-faceted structure enables it to better

serve clients. By bringing together the knowledge base of all

these disciplines, Beck provides a better total solution. Beck

maintains a team of over 450 working employees, over 40 per-

cent of whom are LEED® Accredited Professionals, working

among a network of offices in Atlanta, Austin, Dallas (headquar-

ters), Denver, Fort Worth, Mexico City, San Antonio and Tampa.

The Office of the United Nations High Commis-sioner for Refugees was established by the

United Nations General Assembly to lead

and co-ordinate international action to protect refugees and re-

solve refugee problems worldwide. In more than six decades, the

agency has helped tens of millions of people restart their lives.

Today, a staff of some 7,190 people in more than 120 countries

continues to help some 36.4 million persons.

The Fairmont Dallas hotel is ideally located

in the heart of the downtown Dallas Arts

District, just a few blocks from the Cen-

tral Business District, and less than one mile from Victory Park

(home of the American Airlines Center) and the West End His-

toric District. The hotel—with its 545 redesigned guest rooms--

can accommodate lodging needs for business or leisure, grand

events, weddings, conferences, or intimate meetings. The hotel

includes the four-star and contemporary Pyramid Restaurant &

Bar and a lobby-level Starbucks. Nothing compares to The Fair-

mont Dallas hotel. Visit us in person or online at www.fair-

mont.com/dallas.

One Arts Plaza provides an urban oasis to enhance

the lives of everyone who lives, works and visits

the Arts District near downtown Dallas. As a

place to call home, it redefines modern elegance.

As a place to conduct business, it redefines state-

of-the-art. One Arts Plaza is a $125 million multiuse structure

adorned with dynamic fountains, and enlivened with five restau-

rants, music and outdoor entertainment, making it a true desti-

nation. Future plans call for two more buildings—Two Arts and

Three Arts—to add outdoor parks with wi-fi, fountains and cafes.

More information available at www.oneartsplaza.com.

AcuGRAPHICS provides embroidery, screen print-

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top-quality personal service and quick delivery times. For more

information, call 972-570-1200, find the business on Facebook,

or visit 2920 Skyway Circle North, Irving, TX 75038.

CONTRIBUTORSThe Hunt Institute for Engineering & Humanity is most grateful

to our sponsors for their generous support of Engineering and Humanity Week 2012.


The inaugural Engineering& Humanity Week in 2011created the foundation foran ongoing dialog. What results did it achieve?

REWIND:A LOOK AT THE IMPACT OF

ENGINEERING & HUMANITY WEEK 2011

It Changed HeartsPost-event surveys gave us the following reactions:

“It showed me how I could help with global poverty in moreways than just donating money.”

“I’ve been on campus for 5 years and had never seen or beena part of anything like it. I liked the reasoning for it andwhat it hoped to achieve.”

“The week’s efforts matched my own passions. Through theevents provided, I grew and encouraged others to grow as well.”

It Changed Lives

53% of attendees said that Engineer-

ing & Humanity Week changed the way

they think about global poverty.

And students who spent 5 days living in

disaster relief huts in the Living Village

at Southern Methodist University said

the following:

“Overall, this has been oneof the most rewarding expe-riences I’ve ever had. When

you spend days working out-side, connecting with peopleand building somethingfrom the ground up, it’s ut-terly fulfilling when youstand back and witness thefruits of your labor.”

“Even though I woke upevery morning feeling like Ihad lost a fight the night be-fore, I was dry, and clean,

and warm(ish). Comparingmy shelter to some of theothers in the village, I wasspoiled!”

“Here is a list of things that Ilearned last night: theground is hard and cold, Ihate grackles, electriciansget up early, bugs are every-where, AND guitars arepleasant to fall asleep to.”

It Changed Minds

910 people attended 18 events

and learned from26 global leaders

The theme of this inau-gural issue of Human-ity Unbound is notabout what is wrongwith the world.Rather, it is aboutwhat some amazinglycreative people aredoing to fix it.

In these pages, youwill meet people who, despite dauntingchallenges, believe meaningful changeoccurs when we explore new avenues ofpossibility.

You will learn about innovations of allshapes and materials—from cardboard torecycled plastic—that are changing theworld – one invention at a time.

You will hear from engineers and en-trepreneurs who are harnessing the cre-ativity, flexibility, and opportunity of theglobal marketplace to effectively combatextreme poverty while creating sustain-able business models in and for the coun-tries in which they are working.

And, you will reflect on amazing pho-tographs that reveal and celebrate thehuman spirit, reminding us all that, inspite of our differences, we share respon-

sibility for the care ofour planet and one an-other.

For decades, govern-ment and philanthropyhave worked diligentlyto find solutions in thebattle against globalpoverty. Now, it’s timethat geeks, artists and

capitalists get their turn.When we unleash the power of the best

thinking from and across all lines of life,we believe new, sustainable solutionswill be the result—lasting help for thosein need because they will be able to helpthemselves. This is the ultimate expres-sion of humanity unbound.

Thank you,

Hunter and Stephanie Hunt

www.eandhweek.org 7

LETTER FROM THE FOUNDERS

THE ULTIMATE EXPRESSION OF HUMANITY UNBOUND

Vijay Govindarajan (VG) is a celebrated expert on strategy and innovation, Professor of International

Business at the Tuck School of Business at Dartmouth, the Founding Director of Tuck’s Center for

Global Leadership and author of eight books. His most recent work, Reverse Innovation, was

named a Big Idea of the Past Decade by Harvard Business Review. For over 25 years, VG has been

researching and writing about strategy and innovation. His publications have been cited more

than 8,000 times—placing him among the top researchers in the field of strategic management.

VG recently offered insights into his creative thought processes in an interview with Human-

ity Unbound’s editor, Linda Mastaglio.


FINDING PURPOSE THROUGHREVERSE INNOVATION

www.eandhweek.org 9

LM: Your perception of reverse innovation

has been heralded throughout the globe.

Give us the bottom line of your vision.

VG: Historically, multinational corpora-

tions in rich countries innovated and

then sold their products in poor coun-

tries. We need to do the exact opposite.

We should, for example, innovate in India

and sell that innovation in the U.S. The

current process is counter-intuitive. We

understand why a poor man wants a rich

man’s product; but it is not logical to our

way of thinking that a rich man would

want a poor man’s product. Yet, this con-

cept will provide the biggest growth op-

portunity in America in the next 50 years.

We must be curious about the problems

of consumers throughout the world.

America will face economic stagnation if

we don’t become global in our thinking.

LM: Why does reverse innovation provide

a new paradigm?

VG: In the last 100 years, American com-

panies followed one paradigm of innova-

tion–let’s innovate for U.S. consumers

and then spread it over the world. We

need a fundamentally different paradigm.

The biggest R&D lab for an American

company must be attacking complex

problems in poor countries. Those inno-

vations will transform this nation. You

see, we become insular. We have to get

over our own history and begin to focus

on our capabilities to advance problems

of humanity. In the U.S., we tend to di-

vide the world into two parts: the three

billion people who are rich and the four

billion people who are not. We must

bring the four billion into the consuming

base and that necessitates that we inno-

vate. Our innovation paradigm has been

focused on rich consumers, rooted in the

thought that we have to spend money to

innovate. In poor countries, people learn

to innovate by spending less money.

Here is a great example. We think inno-

vation in healthcare is in spending more;

yet we don’t guarantee healthcare coverage

and 60 million Americans don’t have it.

This is not the best thinking. In poor coun-

tries, they don’t have enough money to

fund healthcare, so they look for new op-

tions. Consider the Aravind Eye Hospital

(AE) in Madurai, India. That facility per-

forms open heart surgeries for about

$2,000—and they provide world-class qual-

ity. Their mortality rate 30 days after sur-

gery is 1.4%, compared to 2% in the U.S.

How can this be? It’s about innovation.

Consider this. The AE Hospital buys

the same equipment you’ll find in the U.S.

at Mayo Clinic or Massachusetts General

Hospital. The Indian hospital uses the

same equipment, they just use it 500

times more often, therefore, the cost per

patient comes way down. Consider that

the same machine in an American hospi-

tal may be used only 15% of the time;

yet Americans believe we should have

machines conveniently available when we

need them, so our expectations drive inef-

ficiency. If Ford Motor Company ran their

factories that way, would we tolerate it?

The AE Hospital has adapted princi-

ples from high volume companies like

Ford and McDonalds. They took manufac-

turing principles and applied them to

healthcare and found no difference. Many

people assume high volume in healthcare

cannot work. On the contrary, the quality

improves– and so do the outcomes of

many surgeries. Why? Say there are 10

types of bypass surgery. If doctors are

constantly performing these complex sur-

geries, they know all the complications

and can specialize in one type and then

become a world leader. AE Hospital is now

taking their expertise and using reverse

innovation to open a cardiac hospital in

the Cayman Islands to provide American

citizens with heart surgeries for about

40% of what they costs in the U.S. today.

That is the power of reverse innovation.

LM: How does the $300 house fit with the

concept of reverse innovation?

VG: In a thought experiment I wrote 12

months ago, it became clear that we can

create a $300 house for the poor. Where do

you need it? Why do we need it? There are

75 million homeless people in the world.

That’s the size of the entire population of

THREE-POINT STRATEGY TO IMPLEMENT REVERSE INNOVATION 1. To capture growth in emerging markets, you must innovate,not simply export.

2. Leverage opportunities to move emerging market innovationsto other parts of the world: to other poor countries, to marginal-ized markets in rich countries, and, eventually, to mainstreammarkets in rich countries.

3. Keep so-called emerging giants on your radar screen. Thesesmall but rapidly growing companies, headquartered in the developing world, have global aspirations that could one day threaten your own.

“We have to separate who we are from what we have. We accumulate money, houses, cars, degrees; yet the happiness quotient in our world declines as the material quotient increases. Separation is important if we are to be happy.

We must have purpose in life.”

the United Kingdom. They live on pave-

ments where the sky is their roof. Is this

really right? Even a spider has a home.

Every human has a right to a home.

This experiment also framed opportu-

nities for large businesses. Defining a

modest home is not charity; it’s a chal-

lenge of innovation. It’s a problem of com-

merce. Large businesses should tackle

the challenge so they can come back and

transform lives in rich countries like the

U.S. to solve problems like disaster relief

and low income housing. Response to

this experiment was so overwhelming

that I created www.300house.com, an on-

line community of 2,500 people who all

want to help. They are all contributing

ideas. It’s like creating a company with

2,500 employees with no CEO and not

paying out a dime and the people work so

hard. The response led to a global design

contest where we picked six winners and

brought them to Dartmouth where they

rolled up their sleeves and designed a

$300 home for Haiti. This led to building

a prototype village in Haiti. The concept

has now taken on a life of its own. I know

nothing about a building a house; but

that is my advantage. I can simply ask

the question, “Why not?” Sometimes, to

innovate, we must forget what we know.

Open innovation, such as that which

occurs at www.360house.com makes

everything we discuss available for any-

one to use; the contest winners are there;

prototypes will all be there to use. Anyone

can take the ideas and implement them—

we’re keeping nothing back. We don’t

know who will use them and we don’t

care. The point is to advance the concept;

to create a moment. If people use these

ideas and make money, fine. We have a

big problem–four billion who are poor,

with an average family size of four peo-

ple. Multiply one billion homes by one

billion families and that brings opportu-

nity. Business is the answer to solving so-

cial problems. If they know how to scale

and innovate they can do that and make

money. Capitalism is the most powerful

and best economic system in the world;

but it must be practiced responsibly. The

$300 house showcases that we can be a

force for the good. We need businesses to

solve the housing crisis and practice re-

sponsible capitalism, sharing profits and

potential with the poor.

LM: How do you see the future if reverse

innovation becomes the norm?

VG: I see a fantastic future because re-

verse innovation is at the heart of what we

are talking about–do good, make money.

The poor aren’t begging; they don’t want

charity. They want dignity and access to

opportunity. In my opinion, there is no

difference between poor and rich. The

poor have the same intelligence, same as-

pirations, same needs as the rich, so why

can’t they have the same opportunities?

To truly help humanity we need to un-

derstand that globalization is like gravity.

You cannot deny gravity, you must har-

ness it. Globalization is here to stay; in-

terconnectedness among countries is

real. We cannot go back to isolation. Glob-

alization brings many benefits. How can

we capture those benefits? As American’s,

let us improve humanity through global

efforts. To be a great country we can’t

think inside our own geography. The

world’s people are rooting for us to suc-

ceed; to regain our competitive spirit.

Horace Mann once said, “Be ashamed to

die until you have won some victory for hu-

manity.” Let us never be ashamed to die. �


“I strongly believe that engineering holds the key tosolving complex social problems such as housing, clean water, renewable energy, transportation

… the basic human needs.”

LEARN MOREConsider the following books by Vijay GovindarajanReverse Innovation: Create Far From Home, Win Everywhere Harvard Business Review, 2012 (with Chris Trimble, foreword by Indra K. Nooyi)Ten Rules for Strategic Innovators — from Idea to ExecutionHarvard Business School Press, 2005 (with Chris Trimble)The Other Side of Innovation - Solving the Execution ChallengeHarvard Business School Press, 2010 (with Chris Trimble)How Stella Saved the Farm: A Wild and Wooly Yarn About Making Innovation HappenFranklin Green Publishing, 2010 (with Chris Trimble) (Let us just keep my books on innovation)


TECHNOLOGY AND ENGINEERINGTO SUPPORT WORK WITH

REFUGEES

New partnerships are being forged to encourage young engineers to use their skills in the

service of refugees.

First published in Forced Migration Review, issue 38, 2011(www.fmreview.org/technology/)

Dadaab, Somalia-August 15, 2011:Children live in the Dadaab RefugeeCamp where thousands of Somaliswait for help because of hunger.

by Stephanie Hunt and Geoffrey C. Orsak

Stephanie Hunt serves on the boardof USA for UNHCR and, with herhusband Hunter Hunt, is co-founderof the Hunt Institute for Engineeringand Humanity at SMU within theLyle School of Engineering. GeoffreyOrsak is the Dean of the SMU LyleSchool of Engineering and a professor of Electrical Engineering.

www.eandhweek.org 13

We have all benefitted from the remarkable

global transformation brought about by

the work of engineers and innovators.

What was once science fiction is today

commonplace. None of this would have

occurred had there not been engineers

and companies motivated by the chal-

lenge of the problem paired with the po-

tential for commercial gain.

Meeting the needs of refugees and

other marginalised people, however, re-

quires us to find ways to attract crucial

engineering problem-solvers to humani-

tarian work where the profit motive is not

a primary driver.

Attracting a new generation The engineering salaries of recent univer-

sity graduates rank at the very top of the

pay scale. To attract these individuals to

careers that provide direct humanitarian

benefits, they must therefore be inspired

to a higher goal than simple monetary

gain. Engineering has a history of solving

problems for the general good – and with

so many active conflicts around the globe,

there is an opportunity to reframe the

myriad challenges associated with sup-

porting refugees as a worthy effort in

that great engineering tradition.

Many young engineers today are in

search of inspiration. Unfortunately,

their limited understanding of the global

problems of refugees comes primarily

from mass media, which often paints the

picture as hopeless and driven by politi-

cal squabbles – not effective messages for

recruiting talent. To address this prob-

lem, the Hunt Institute for Engineering

and Humanity at SMU has been working

with teaching staff across the Southern

Methodist University (SMU) in Dallas to

augment its engineering programmes

with a range of global development pro-

grammes that explore the cultural, finan-

cial, legal and of course technical

challenges faced by those in the Global

South, including refugees in camps. Stu-

dents who were once intent on gaining en-

gineering skills for a life in commerce can

now make informed choices about pursu-

ing an alternative vision for engineering.1

An early success storyEngineering innovation should not be

limited to engineering professionals; stu-

dents and non-engineers can also provide

creative solutions. At the Hunt Institute’s

first Engineering and Humanity Week

held in April 2011, interdisciplinary stu-

dent teams competed to develop a com-

plete micro-business to provide clean

water and cell phone recharging services

from within a temporary refugee shelter.

Competing teams formulated detailed

business plans that dealt not only with

product innovation but also with market-

ing, sales and distribution challenges. Cre-

ative concepts included leasing advertising

space on the exterior of the shelter to mar-

ket to those queueing for services, as well

as accepting payment via cell phone for

water or phone recharging. The resulting

ideas were inventive, practical and, accord-

ing to the competition judges, viable.

This small-scale competition success-

fully demonstrated how effective cross-dis-

cipline collaboration can be in addressing

well-defined challenges with immediate

benefit to specific local communities.

Field innovation centres In August 2011, UNHCR and the Hunt In-

stitute for Engineering and Humanity at

SMU signed an agreement establishing a

framework for increasing the role of engi-

neering and innovation in support of

refugee camp operations. This agreement

calls for the organised engagement of

universities, government-run research in-

stitutes and corporations to work to-

gether to address the most pressing

technical and infrastructural issues faced

by UNHCR in assisting refugees in rela-

tion to water, sanitation, shelter, commu-

nications and health care.

One key element of this plan is to col-

laboratively develop and deploy Field Inno-

vation Centres in a number of locations

within or adjacent to refugee camps and

urban slums. These research and develop-

ment sites will allow for researchers, engi-

neers, innovators and graduate students to

work side by side with those working and

living in the refugee camps. These Field In-

novation Centres, staffed by experts sec-

onded by their organisations, will expose

engineers and scientists to the complexi-

ties of actual problems faced within the

camps, thus increasing the likelihood of

real advances.

Importantly, the Field Innovation Cen-

tres will directly engage the refugee com-

munities themselves in the development

and testing of solutions, particularly those

refugees who have engineering skills. This

will help ensure that solutions meet the

local cultural and technical needs of the

community while in turn providing oppor-

tunities to develop a specialised workforce

within the camps for maintaining and pro-

tecting these new assets.

Furthermore, creating an interna-

tional base for technical innovation

within the refugee communities we serve

will provide a strong humanitarian mo-

tive needed to attract the best problem

solvers in the world to the service of

those with some of the greatest needs. �

1. The new programme elements were intro-duced in 2011.

MOBILE TECHNOLOGY IN EMERGENCY RESPONSEIn determining whether and how to use mobile technology (in particular, SMS) in emergency response, factors such as customs around the use and control of mobile phones, the state of the national mobile market, and the condition of the network are all important considerations. infoasaid and partner Frontline SMS (www.frontlinesms.com) have developed a checklist of factors to be aware of in assessing the mobile context.

infoasaid (http://infoasaid.org/) is a consortium of Internews and the BBC World Service Trust, funded byDfID. This initiative aims to enhance the quality of humanitarian assistance through improved information exchange between disaster-affected populations and aid agencies. infoasaid is developing a range of tools and resources for improving preparedness for communications in emergencies and is also working in partnerships with selected aid agencies to inform and support their communications responses in emergencies. See http://tinyurl.com/infoasaid-checklist infoasaid’s YouTube clip, called ‘Communication is Aid’, can be viewedat www.youtube.com/user/infoasaid


Lynn Johnson/rippleeffectimages.org

PLANTING FORESTS IN KENYADeforestation has ravaged rural Kenya in

areas where drought and flooding cause dev-

astating erosion. But women’s groups are

being taught to nurture seeds and saplings,

and replant the lost forests of Kenya.

Esther Muthoni leads one of these

groups and believes that trees are a part

of who she is. She passes on the delight of

planting to the children of the school she

runs. Esther often leads them to a nearby

cornfield to plant seedlings along the

perimeter—laughing, digging, learning.

She teaches that the value of a tree is not

just for firewood or for home building but

also for cleaning the air, reducing soil

erosion and building a sense of commu-

nity values. To date, more than 11 million

trees have been planted.

The lessons planted along with the

trees are practical as well as uplifting,

teaching women and girls about best

forestry practices and irrigation tech-

niques. Because women are responsible

for the tree-planting program, they have

a sense of accomplishment that is espe-

cially powerful for this often invisible

minority. Success is reflected in every-

thing from individual self esteem, to the

group’s joyful sense of community, voices

rising in song as they work. And of course

there are the millions of trees that blan-

ket the landscape, a testament to women

creating hope for the future.


HELP AWOMAN,HELP THEPLANET

Holding seedlings that have been nur-tured with love, a Kenyan schoolgirlprepares to plant them among morethan eleven million trees planted byAfrican women and girls.

CAPTURING WATER IN AN ARID LANDIn drought prone Kenya, the unpre-

dictable rainfall has led to famine and

loss of crops and livestock. During times

of drought, women and girls sleep at dis-

tant water points waiting in lines of 300

women or more, making their water fetch-

ing ordeal last as long as eleven hours.

Sadly, the water they work so hard to carry

is of poor quality. Diarrhea and other

water borne diseases are common, leading

to the illness and death of the most vulner-

able—children and the elderly.

Working together, women have con-

structed a series of sand dams in nearby

villages. They take to heart the motto on

a local school building that shouts out,

“Unity is Strength” and “No Sweat, No

Blessing.” It is in that spirit they lift and

carry pans of cement, pass rocks hand to

hand, and continue to collect water in the

riverbed just upstream from the unfin-

ished dam. Thirty-five years ago this was

a permanent river but climate change has

altered that. But with powerful women

wielding shovels, anything can be

changed. In these communities, where

women have organized for better water

supply, girls are staying in school, crops

have higher yields and everyone is healthier.

Below: Willing hands work together tobuild a sand dam that will change thelives of hundreds of women and girls.

Top Left: Village women haul stonesand mix cement to construct a sanddam that will capture water, savingthem hours of fetching each day.

Bottom Left: Girls who once spent as much as 11 hours a day fetchingwater, are now free to go to school.

Women in developing countries bear the biggest burden as climate change impacts our planet. It is in the daily lives of these women that the battle to save the family, the planet,

and the future is played out.-ANNIE GRIFFITHS




BOTTLING THE SUNImagine your world without light. Now

imagine the challenge of preparing sup-

per, caring for children, studying for

classes or tending livestock in the dark.

Yet, in the harshest places on earth there

is one resource in abundance: the sun.

Increasingly, women and girls are being

taught to harness this boundless solar

energy to improve their lives.

A solar lantern is the gift of light. In

India, women and girls are being taught

to build and repair solar panels and

lanterns to bring light and clean water to

their families and communities. With

a solar lantern, a woman’s day is extended

by hours. She can begin her day earlier,

power the lantern for free all day, and

journey into an evening that is brighter

and safer. Solar lanterns are lighting the

way for women and girls around the

world, and Ripple Effect Images is privi-

leged to help tell their stories. �

Above: Despite no formal education,Rashmi was taught to run a solar desalinization plant in her village in Rajasthan, India.

Top RIght: Rural women of northernIndia receive solar lanterns that werebuilt by other village women. They, in turn, will be taught to build, sell and repair lanterns.

“The women who participate in and lead ecology movements in countries like India are not

speaking merely as victims. Their voices are the voicesof liberation and transformation.”

-VANDANA SHIVA



Ripple Effect Images is a team of National Geographic photographers and filmmakersdedicated to documenting the innovativeprograms that are empowering women andgirls in developing countries, especially asthey deal with the devastating effects ofclimate change. The resulting photographs,video, and stories are collected in the Rip-

ple Effect Images Archive, which is madeavailable at no cost to our partner aid organizations and to policy makers who are working to empower women andgirls. The extraordinary Ripple Effect teamincludes a MacArthur Genius Fellow, as well as Pulitzer Prize, Emmy Award, and National Humanities Medal winners.

www.rippleeffectimages.org

A Texas legend in luxury, hospitality and service.

Conveniently located in the heart of the Dallas Arts District, The Fairmont Dallas offers luxurious hotel accommodations just blocks from Uptown, the Central Business District and the Financial District. Minutes from fine dining, shopping, arts and entertainment, The Fairmont Dallas offers truly unrivalled presence and hospitality.

The Fairmont is proud to welcome a new generation of global leaders to the second annual Engineering & Humanity Week. We salute you in your efforts to end global poverty through action. Together we will work to meet the challenges of the developing world.

PROUD SUPPORTER OF

Hunt InstituteEngineering &

Humanity Week

1717 N Akard St. Dallas, Texas 75201 214.720.5290 www.fairmont.com/dallas

E X P E R I E N C E T H E F A I R M O N T D A L L A S .

Dallas, TX 75201 214.720.5249 www.pyramidrestaurant.com

Dallas, Texas 75201 214.720.5290 www.fairmont.com/dallas

1717 N Akard St Dallas, TX 75201 214.720.5249 www.pyramidrestaurant.com

Welcomes The Hunt InstituteEngineering & Humanity Week

Fresh ingredients from authentically local Texas

growers provide inspiration for an innovative menu

at The Pyramid Restaurant & Bar. Executive Chef

André Natera leads a talented culinary team in

preparing flavorful dishes, seasoned with herbs

from The Fairmont Dallas’ 3,000-square-

foot rooftop garden, for a truly

memorable fine dining experience.


10 INNOVATIONSTHAT COULD CHANGE THE WORLD

The Saiia Roofhttp://inhabitat.com/hand-powered-machine-can-make-thatch-roofs-from-plastic-bottles-in-tropical-climates/

In Ecuador, thatch roofs are a traditional buildingtechnology. Thatch keeps a home cool and reeds canbe sourced locally. But thatch has become much harderto acquire as land for food has pushed the neededgrass further from villages. Steel and fiberglass panelsare poor substitutes as they let in much more heat andduring heavy rains make a racket inside.

Dr. David Saiia, a professor of strategic economicsand sustainability at Duquesne University, has createda unique solution by taking plastic bottles out of thelocal waste stream and turning them into a thatch re-placement with a hand-powered machine he invented.

After witnessing the encroachment of un-biodegradable waste piling up in the middle of theSouth American Rainforest, he developed a device whichcan cut a 3 liter plastic bottle into strips in seconds. Heis now developing and testing multiple ways to producea thatch covering for housing using the strips.

David is continuing to test the viability of the roofto make sure it’s durable and not toxic and hope tobuild a bio diesel powered device. He hopes to see theproduction of a system which creates local cottage in-dustries in emerging economies and reduce the plasticpollution. The local labor would see a boon from re-roofing homes, which could consume between 1,200and 1,600 bottles each. �

Mine Katonhttp://www.greenprophet.com/2012/02/wind-powered-bamboo-mine-sweeper/

Afghanistan is home to more land mines than people, so designer Massoud Hassani turned a childhood toy into anextraordinary wind-powered bamboo mine sweeper that destroys and tracks them.

Made out of bamboo and biodegradable plastic, the rolling Mine Katon’s arms self-destruct when they hit andsimultaneously destroy a land mine. Equipped with a GPS chip, the device also maps out which land mines in thecountry have been wiped out so that local Afghanis know which areas of the country are safe.

As a child, Hassani made wind-powered toys and chased after them in areas of Afghanistan that werepocked with destructive land mines. Tragically, many of Hassani’s friends were killed or seriously injured when theyaccidentally encountered one of humanity’s most destructive inventions.

Twenty years later, as a student of Design Academy Eindhoven in the Netherlands, Hassani scaled up hischildhood toy by twenty times and equipped it with tools that literally save lives. Although Afghanistan? �

DOT Earth bloghttp://dotearth.blogs.nytimes.com/

By 2050 or so, the human population is expected toreach nine billion, essentially adding two Chinas tothe number of people alive today. Those billions will beseeking food, water and other resources on a planetwhere, scientists say, humans are already shaping cli-mate and the web of life.

Dot Earth, a blog of The New York Times writtenby science journalist and professor Andrew C. Revkinexamines efforts to balance human affairs with theplanet’s limits. Conceived in part with support from aJohn Simon Guggenheim Fellowship, Dot Earth tracksrelevant developments from suburbia to Siberia. Theblog is an interactive exploration of trends and ideaswith readers and experts.

After four years in existence, Dot Earth is nowread by millions of people in more than 200 countriesfrom Brazil to China. Andrew, a Senior Fellow for Envi-ronmental Understanding at Pace University is thefirst two-time winner of the Communication Award be-stowed jointly by the National Academy of Sciences,National Academy of Engineering, and Institute ofMedicine.

Considered a pioneer in uses of social media, An-drew has over 26,000 followers on Twitter (@revkin);he maxed out his allotment on Facebook at 5,000friends a while back. �

UNICEF Digital Drumhttp://www.designother90.org/cities/solutions/digital-drum

Access to valuable information has the power totransform individuals and communities. But thou-sands of people in rural Uganda lack access to thekind of information and technology that most of ustake for granted. UNICEF is changing this reality withthe installation across Uganda of more than 100 inno-vative computer kiosks known as “digital drums.”

Inspired by the successful “Digital Doorway” de-ployed by the Council for Scientific and Industrial Re-search in South Africa, the solar-powered kiosks inUganda are constructed of recycled oil drums and otherlocally-sourced materials and are attached to the exteriorwalls of community centers throughout the country.

Initial installation of the digital kiosks—includ-ing hardware, solar power and internet connectivity—cost about $6,000, and it will cost an additional$2,000 to maintain the computers each year.

To make the project as sustainable as possible,UNICEF has instituted small income generation activi-ties and opportunities for local micro-enterprise entre-preneurs, including battery and mobile phone chargingstations, typing, printing, and IT repair services.

The digital drums have not only become a sourceof valuable information that improves lives—informa-tion such as the national education curriculum,school-safety guidelines, and videos on topics such asschool lessons, public health, and campaigns encour-aging girls to stay in school—the computers have be-come a great source of community pride. �


The Lifeplayerhttp://lifelineenergy.org/lifeplayer.html

Lifeline Energy has invented a new tool that is beinghailed as the“iPod®” for rural populations in the de-veloping world.

Created to deliver on-demand programming thatclassrooms or communities can replay continually, theLifeplayer is an oversized MP3 player that can be pre-loaded to hold 64GB of educational content, can down-load Internet audio and can record live voice or radioprograms for playback later. Powered by a wirelesssolar panel and a hand-wound crank, the Lifeplayercan even charge mobile phones.

The Lifeplayer represents the first time that the extremely poor have the opportunity to access real-time information on demand anytime, anywhere with-out concern for electricity or batteries. Made for largegroup listening, it has excellent sound quality that en-sures 60 learners can hear it clearly. For classrooms ofmore than 60 listeners, speakers can be added to en-sure everyone can hear.

The actor Tom Hanks, an advocate for renewableenergy solutions, is the primary funder of the Lifeplayer. �

Camfedwww.camfed.org

“When you educate a girl in Africa, everythingchanges. She’ll be three times less likely to getHIV/AIDS, earn 25 percent more income and have asmaller, healthier family.”

This is the premise behind an innovative programin Africa known as Camfed—the Campaign for FemaleEducation founded in 1993 by a Welsh social entrepre-neur named Ann Cotton, who began by raising moneyat her kitchen table to send 32 girls from poor familiesin Zimbabwe to school.

Today, the organization works with 3,667 schoolsin rural parts of Zimbabwe, Zambia, Tanzania, Ghanaand Malawi, and has provided direct support for morethan half a million children to attend primary school.

Camfed has also provided grants to enable 60,000girls to complete secondary school, supported 15,000more who attend university or receive business training,and provided financing for 8,000 of their enterprises.With only 133 full-time employees, Camfed is improvingthe educational environment for two million children. �

AisakaArchitects’ Atelierhttp://www.worldarchitecturenews.com/index.php?fuseaction=wanappln.projectview&up-load_id=19342

Le Corbusier, a master of modern architecture, once said:“A house is a machine for living in.” The description aptlyapplies to a new home in the suburbs of Fujisawa, Japan,built by a young couple.

In a densely populated country like Japan, effec-tive use of space is not only smart but required. Allrooms must serve a purpose. But what if you don’t yetneed a room for children? Or a guestroom becausethere are no guests?

Aisaka Architects have created an innovative fea-ture that allows form to follow function: a folding floorabove the couple’s living room. By closing the foldingfloor, an extra room can be created whenever it isneeded, and by opening the floor, the unused volumeof the upper room can be added to the room below thatis in use.

In short, the folding floor continuously maximizesthe home’s floor area ratio. �

GRASP Labshttps://www.grasp.upenn.edu/

Roboticist Vijay Kumar and his team at the Universityof Pennsylvania's General Robotics, Automation, Sens-ing and Perception (GRASP) Laboratory have created aseries of eight-inch, .1-pound, four-rotor autonomousflying robots capable of performing 360-degree flips inless than half a second, zooming through hula hoopsthrown into the air and building mini-structures—allwithout human control.

The flying robots riveted the crowd at the annualTechnology, Entertainment and Design (TED) conferencelast February in Long Beach. While theirperformancewas impressive and highly entertaining, it's just one ofmany things the robots can do.

Potential uses go beyond simple tricks. For exam-ple, they could act as first responders, venturing intocollapsed buildings or locations with biochemicalleaks to measure damage or toxicity levels and effec-tively eliminating the need to put a human at risk. Thedevelopment of larger models could even enable themto transport cargo, either individually or in a swarmformation. The application possibilities are endless. �

INBARwww.inbar.int

In sub-Saharan Africa, 70 percent of the people cooktheir meals over wood fires. The very poorest cut downtrees for cooking fuel; those slightly less poor buycharcoal made from wood in those same forests. Everyyear Africa loses forest cover equal to the size ofSwitzerland. Moreover, much cooking is done indoors.The resulting air pollution kills some two million peo-ple a year. Almost half the deaths are from pneumoniain children under age 5.

But an innovative new collaboration is working toreverse this sad reality. INBAR—the International Net-work for Bamboo and Rattan—is a membership or-ganization of 38 countries based in Beijing. INBAR isproviding technical support for growing and usingbamboo in Ghana and Ethiopia, where deforestation ofhardwoods, carbon emissionsand frequent famineshave combined to create a vicious cycle.

A new bamboo plant is mature enough to harvestafter three to six years, depending on the species, andmost importantly, is renewable. Unlike hardwoodtrees, bamboo regrows after harvesting, and can beharvested every single year for the life of the plant.Be-cause bamboo roots grab onto soil, it can help preventmudslides and erosion and the plant requires little ofAfrica’s most precious resource: water. �

sOccketwww.soccket.com

For many people around the world, kerosene is the al-ternative to electricity, but the fuel can cost a family upto 30 percent of their annual income not to mentiontheir respiratory health.

But an innovative product that looks like an ordi-nary soccer ball—a sOccket—could change that out-come. The sOccket is a power source for small electronicdevices—an eco-friendly power generator, which issomething the developing world desperately needs.

The invention of Harvard graduates Julia C. Sil-verman and Jessica O. Matthews, who came up withthe idea while taking an engineering class for non-en-gineers, harnesses kinetic energy using a stripped-down gyroscope inside the ball that's rolling as theball is rolling. The gyroscope harnesses the kinetic en-ergy generated during play and stores it in a batterythat users can plug appliances into.

The balls haven't been priced yet, but are ex-pected to be in the price range of mid- to high-endsoccer balls, around $60. The balls are currently beingused in Mexico, El Salvador, and in South Africa, andare heading to Haiti and The Gambia later this year. �


In Yemen, it’s a symbol of democracy: the

cardboard voting booth. For thousands of

refugees around the world, a bed made of

cardboard provides a good night’s sleep.

And, when it comes to bicycle helmets,

cardboard looks to be safer and more effec-

tive than plastic. Invented 195 years ago,

cardboard is one of the most versatile and

durable mediums for innovation today. En-

gineering & Humanity Week 2012 is

pleased to celebrate the use of the recycled

and recyclable medium as a source of inno-

vation, inspiration and novelty.

Perhaps nothing better symbolizes

the spirit of innovation in the developing

world than the cardboard voting booth. In

Yemen, and other countries throughout

the Arab world, the cardboard voting boothis both a tool of democracy and a source

of inspiration.

Easy to trans-

port and as-

semble,

cardboard vot-

ing booths

can be de-

ployed in a matter of seconds, offering

privacy, peace of mind and fulfillment for

voters around the world—some ingredi-

ents of freedom.

The Kranium cardboard bicycle helmet

is made of the same material used for

boxes at a supermarket, and it has been

proven to absorb four times more impact

energy than a standard polystyrene hel-

met. The Kranium cardboard helmet

passed official safety tests after being

smashed five times in a row. The card-

board used in a helmet is mixed with a

waterproof acrylic compound, so it has

the same level of resistance to sweat and

rain as a standard plastic helmet.

The furniture retailer IKEA has re-

placed its wood shipping pallets with a

lighter, thinner and more affordable card-

board variant. Corrugated cardboard

shipping pallets are strong enough to

support loads of up 1,650 pounds, which

is the same as timber. When compared to

the traditional wooden pallet, the card-

board version is one-third of the height at

2-inches tall and 90-percent lighter,

weighing only 5.5 pounds. In January,

IKEA switched all of its 10 million

wooden pallets to cardboard, which will

save the company an estimated $193 mil-

lion per year in transportation costs.

A low-cost, modular bed made entirely

of cardboard has been created for emer-

gency and temporary housing. The LeafBedis an easily transportable and affordable

alternative to bulky camp beds that have

been deployed by governments and relief

organizations during disasters. One hun-

dred of the beds were delivered in Decem-

ber 2010 to people living in unstable

housing conditions in Niamey, Niger. Six

months later, it was discovered that 99

percent of the recipients were still sleep-

ing on the beds, and 85 percent of the

beds were undamaged. LeafBeds are also

100-percent recyclable.

Minnesota-based Cardboard Innova-tions is leading the way in creating prod-

ucts that are entirely made of cardboard.

The company specializes not only in re-

tail displays but cardboard furniture,

such as full-size tables, chairs and shelv-

ing units that are custom-made and com-

pletely recyclable. Other cardboard items

that the company pro-

duces include cat

scratchers, easels,

decorative products

and more.

The London Festi-

val of Architecture

commissioned a

group of local artists,

architects and designers to curate a pop-

up exhibition that explored the intersec-

tion between hats and architecture.

Hoping to make people smile and help

them to understand that architecture can

be playful by putting it somewhere unex-

pected, they produced a series of hats in-

spired by the city of London. One of the

favorite displays: A recycled corrugated-cardboard bowler hat by the architects at

Austin + Mergold, who have graciously

loaned us the bowler for display at Engi-

neering & Humanity Week.

Sometimes a good thing can go too

far. One household brand has found ways

to help conserve cardboard, so less goes

to waste. Campbell Soup Co. has redesigned

the shape of its Pace salsa jars, which

eliminated a need for extra cardboard in

the packaging.

Campbell has re-

moved a cardboard

insert from its popu-

lar V8 product pack-

aging, which has

netted the soup

company about $230,000 in annual sav-

ings, not counting the environmental ben-

efits. Call it reverse reverse technology. �

REVERSE TECHNOLOGY IN ACTION:

CARDBOARDFrom left to right: TheLeafBed, The Kraniumcardboard bicycle helmet,IKEA’s corrugated card-board shipping pallets, cor-rugated cardboard bowlerhat by Austin + Mergold

by Chris Kelley


What do you get when a genius billionaire, who at one point was one

of the biggest brains behind Microsoft, decides to spend a great

deal of time and money in the kitchen? The answer is one of the

most unique—and some would say one of the most important—

cookbooks ever written. With five volumes, 2,438 pages and a

weight of 38.5 pounds, Nathan Myhrvold’s Modernist Cuisine

aims to forever change the way we look at food preparation.

The culinary masterwork is nothing if not innovative and

thorough. Picking up with what is often called “molecular gas-

tronomy,” Modernist Cuisine looks deep into the science of our

food. It details exact temperatures at which to cook certain

dishes for the best results, which can vary depending on where

you are on the planet and even, the authors say, what type and

color of pan you are using. This isn’t a cookbook that could have

been created with your run-of-the-mill kitchen, mind you.

Nathan and his team had plenty of high-tech toys, including

ultrahigh-pressure homogenizers and a 50G ultracentrifuge.

But then, maybe that’s the kind of kitchen you should expect

from a man who has studied with Stephen Hawking.

More than just an expensive playground for cooks and scien-

tists, the modernist cuisine movement delves into the finer

points of food safety and food preservation. Modernist Cuisine

claims to have the most com¬pre¬hen¬sive guide yet pub¬lished on

cook¬ing sous vide (French for “under vacuum”). It’s not just

about improving your meal at a high-class restaurant—it’s about

improving the quality of food for every-

body and creating things once thought

impossible, like foods that change tem-

perature when eaten or even edible

menus. "I believe human creativity is

unlimited and that people will con-

tinue to come up with fascinating and

wonderful food — both chefs and home-

makers,” Nathan told TIME. “Everyone

who cares about cooking.”

An interesting cooking side note of Engineering & Humanity

Week 2012 is that the Innovative Leaders Forum will take place

at the Dallas Fairmont Hotel, which is home to a 3,000 square-

foot organic herb and vegetable garden and green house. In ad-

dition, the Fairmont lodges two bee hives that, during peak

season, can house up to 80,000 honeybees capable of producing

60-80 pounds of honey per year. Now, that’s sweet! �

FROM CODING TO COOKINGNATHAN MYHRVOLD

by Chris Kelley


One person’s trash is another person’s treasure, the old saying goes. But

Wylie, Texas metal worker Harvey Lacey is bringing that truth to

life in Haiti and soon, he hopes, in other developing countries.

Harvey, a popular figure at the inaugural Engineering & Hu-

manity Week last

year, sees three

problems that

plague most devel-

oping countries: A

lack of housing, a

lack of jobs and an

excess of trash.

Using common-

sense logic and sim-

ple machines, Harvey aims to solve all three problems at once by

teaching the people of Haiti and other places how to turn their re-

fuse into building blocks for new homes. Such blocks, built from

materials such as plastic and Styrofoam, are lighter than cin-

derblocks but still impressively stable when plastered together.

Since a prototype of his Ubuntu-Blox house debuted at last

year’s Engineering & Humanity Week, Harvey has built two of his

block building machines in Haiti. He didn’t simply come up with

the idea and ship it off for someone else to deal with. He has trav-

elled to Haiti to teach residents how to collect plastic and build

the houses. Harvey is taking a true “teach a man to fish” mental-

ity rather than building a few homes and calling it a day. He has

also submitted the idea to officials in India, where huge housing

challenges exist.

In February, a test house built from Ubuntu-Blox withstood

a simulated earthquake performed at National Technical Sys-

tems in Plano, which imitated an earthquake between 7.0 and

8.2 on the Richter scale. The house escaped the faux earthquake

with no significant damage, further proving its use in a place

like Haiti, which is still recovering from the January 2011 cata-

strophic earthquake. The structure also withstood simulated

winds and rain up to the standards of a hurricane.

The word “Ubuntu” means, “I am what I am because of who we

all are.” It’s a philosophy meaning that we should all work together

for each other’s benefit. Harvey’s Ubuntu-Blox homes embody the

idea, applying clever solutions to prevalent problems. �

MAKING REFUSE INTO BUILDING BLOCKS

HARVEY LACEYby Chris Kelley

A Century of ExcellenceA Cen y of Excellence ntur


HONORING EXCELLENCE

Living Village at SMU Dedicated to Cooper-Hewitt Curator Cynthia Smith

The 2012 Living Village at Southern Methodist University (SMU) was dedicated to Curator Cynthia Smith inhonor of her passion for the poor, her commitment to research, and her ability to spread knowledge throughcreative educational exhibitions. Two such exhibits are ”Design with the Other 90%” (2007) and “Design

with the Other 90%: Cities” (2011) which she curatedon behalf of the Cooper-Hewitt, National Design Mu-seum, a subsidiary of the Smithsonian Institution.“Hunter and I first saw ‘Design with the Other

90%’ in 2007 and we were so taken by the breadth anddepth of knowledge it presented,” says Engineering &Humanity Week founder Stephanie Hunt. “It servedas our inspiration to create the first SMU Living Vil-lage during Engineering & Humanity Week last year.The village has changed lives and so have the ‘Designwith the Other 90%’ exhibitions. Cynthia’s work hasinfluenced countless people and inspired action andchange in so many ways. It is an honor to dedicatethis year’s Living Village to her.”

Cynthia Smith exudes passion. Such zeal is a

perfect attribute for the person who would

curate “Design with the Other 90%: Cities.”

She says: “Ultimately, the exhibition is

about improving people’s lives. That’s al-

ways a goal for me – to support the people

living in urban areas and to inspire people

who work in this arena…to help them think

about design in a different way. The people

living in settlements have good ideas; and

when there are reciprocal arrangements

with good designers and residents, a great

idea exchange takes place.”

When Cynthia accepted the challenge

of curating this global endeavor, she did

not know the impact it would have on her

perspective. Using funding provided by the

Rockefeller Foundation, she toured 16

cities in Asia, Africa, and Latin America

throughout 2009 and 2010 to gain a hands-

on understanding of the people who live in

the urban settlements. With the help of a

global advisory committee, the exhibit was

pared from 300 sites to 60. Her studies

spanned two years -- a very compressed re-

search timeline in museum terms

“The first group of women I met was

in Manila, in the Philippines,” she says.

“They were involved in a peer-to-peer ex-

change, sharing tools and experiences,

saving together, and building trust. I was

struck that the only thing they lacked was

an opportunity. They were just like any-

one I’ve met. They could’ve been my

neighbors. Now they are finding ways to

build opportunities for each other.”

Cynthia talked about her research

with people living in the settlements and

with groups and NGOs working in the set-

tlements. All helped define the form of

the exhibition, inputting perceptions of

what they thought was important and

what content would be particularly im-

portant for people to understand. “The ex-

hibition was conceived to broaden the

exchange of information,” she adds.

Cynthia also used social media to fur-

ther the conversation, writing a blog and

tweeting about the work. She found that

tweeting extended the conversation to a

large international following. She also

contacted young researchers interested

in marginalized communities to write

guest blogs.

“Design plays an important role in

bringing form to ideas, and good designers

help define inclusive and sustainable

cities by gaining the first-hand knowledge

of the people served by their designs,” Cyn-

thia adds. “There is vibrancy and culture

in each settlement and both should come

through planning and design.”

About the Exhibit“Design with the Other 90%: Cities” is

the second in a series of themed exhibi-

tions by Cooper-Hewitt that demonstrate

how design can address the world’s most

critical issues. The exhibition features

more than 60 projects from 23 countries

around the globe.

The exhibition explores design solu-

tions to the challenges created by rapid

urban growth in informal settlements,

commonly referred to as slums. Close to 1

billion people live in informal settle-

ments, and that population is projected to

swell to 2 billion by 2030. This acceler-

ated urban expansion will take place pri-

marily in developing and emerging

economies in an increasingly climate-

challenged world.

The exhibit includes projects and prod-

ucts at every scale, with a focus on designs

that are informed by end users: alternative

housing design, methods and materials;

low-cost clean water; accessible education

initiatives; sanitation and solid-waste man-

agement; transportation solutions; innova-

tive systems and infrastructure; and urban

design and planning.

“Cities” is divided into six themes:

Exchange, Reveal, Adapt, Include, Prosper

and Access. To orient the visitor, com-

pelling information is presented via

maps, comparative statistics and a video

and sound installation organized by


The DESIGN OTHER 90 NETWORK – Plug In!

The Design Other 90 Network (www.designother90.org) is an open-network database which extends Design for theOther 90%: CITIES beyond the boundaries of the exhibition and catalog. More than a collection of resources, theDesign Other 90 Network is a social-media platform that invites members to:• Share vital design resources for developing and emerging economies.• Connect with stakeholders in the fields of design, architecture, sustainability, humanitarian aid, and more.• Engage a broad international audience in developing solutions for those living in poverty.• View and share the more than 100 projects and solutions already in the system, as well as add a project that is making a difference in your community by uploading photos, videos, and text.

• Create a group for a project and let other members gain from your knowledge. Become a member of the Design Other 90 Network and you can make a difference in the lives of your neighborsand people around the world.

Top Left:“Design with the Other 90%: CITIES" instal-lation at the United Nations. Photo: Matt Flynn, ©Smithsonian Institution

Bottom Left: Shack/Slum Dwellers International Yer-wada Slum Upgrading Project. SPARC Samudaya Nir-man Sahayak (SSNS) and Pune MunicipalCorporation, with SPARC (Society for the Promotion ofArea Resource Centres), NSDF (National SlumDwellers' Federation), and Mahila Milan, Shack/SlumDwellers International (SDI) affiliates. Yerwada slum,Pune, India, 2008-present. Photo: © SDI

Top right: "Design with the Other 90%: CITIES" in-stallation at the United Nations. Photo: Matt Flynn, ©Smithsonian Institution

Bottom right: Praça Cantão, Favela Painting Project.Artists: Jeroen Koolhaas and Dre Urhahn,Haas&Hahn, with Santa Marta favela communityyouth. Santa Marta, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, 2009-10.Photo: © Haas&Hahn for favelapainting.com


urban videographer Cassim Shepard.

“Cities” is accompanied by an online

open-network database, which extends

the exhibition beyond the physical space.

Developed in collaboration with the mu-

seum’s curatorial communications and

education staff, the database provides de-

sign resources for developing and emerg-

ing economies; connects stakeholders

who practice socially responsible design;

and engages a local and international au-

dience in developing solutions for those

living in poverty. The database started

with 100 projects from both the “Design

with the Other 90%” and “Design with the

Other 90%: Cities” exhibitions, and in-

vites user-generated content in order to

track a multitude of projects throughout

the world and their global impact.

An illustrated catalog accompanies

the exhibition, and features essays by

Somsook Boonyabancha of the Asian

Coalition for Housing Rights, Edgar

Pieterse of the African Centre for Cities,

and Christian Werthmann from Harvard’s

Graduate School of Design. Cynthia per-

sonally conducted interviews for the cata-

log with such leaders as Jockin Arputham

of Shack/Slum Dwellers International;

Sheela Patel of SPARC; Juliana Rotich of

Ushahidi; Rob Small and Christina Kaba

of Abalimi Bezekhaya; Gabriela Sorda

from the Architecture, Design and Urban-

ism Department at the University of

Buenos Aires; and Sharad Sapra of

UNICEF.

The museum’s main facility, housed

in the Carnegie Mansion, is experiencing

a $64 million renovation which began in

the fall of 2011. Consequently, the exhibit

opened in the United Nations where it ran

through January 9, 2012. The exhibit is

now on tour and will make appearances

this year on the West Coast and the Mid-

west. The Hunt Institute intends to bring

the exhibit to Engineering & Humanity

Week in Dallas in 2013. International in-

terest has also been expressed. �

ExchangeIncreasingly, local and regional authorities cannot keep up with the unprecedentedgrowth of informal settlements or slums. This section of the exhibition showcasesinnovative solutions that have emerged as the informal and formal cities exchangedesign knowledge. Projects include community-generated solutions by Shack/SlumDwellers International that address secure land tenure, housing, basic amenitiesand livelihood through community-to-community exchanges throughout Africa, Asiaand Latin America; the Urbanism Manual for Precarious Settlements, a free “how-to” urban design manual for newly arriving settlers; and the Incremental Housingproject in Iquique, Chile, and Monterrey, Mexico, which produces half-finishedhouses that are completed by the residents and contain only the essentials of a builthome—bathroom, kitchen, structure and roof. Other projects in this section explorebuilding methods, materials and manufacturing, including a full-scale shelter in-stallation representing an alternative gabions construction method used in MexicoCity, in which mesh and wire containers are filled on-site with locally available ma-terials. Also on view is a plastic formwork kit to produce cast-in-place mortar struc-tures using mostly indigenous materials.

RevealThe projects in this section increase awareness of the scope and scale of the condi-tions in informal settlements, which are often invisible and do not show up on offi-cial maps or on census roles. Highlights are:• The Praça Cantão Favela Painting project in Santa Marta, Rio de Janeiro, whereartists engaged community members to paint the building exteriors in their neigh-borhood. • The open-source mapping project, Map Kibera, in Nairobi, Kenya, which engageslocal youth to map the settlement to locate and number the hundreds of thousandsof people living there and document the lack of basic services in that informal set-tlement.

AdaptDesigners and architects are collaborating with communities to create design solu-tions that respond to the local terrain, urban or climate conditions of the region.Featured works include:• The Integral Urban Project San Rafael-Barrio Unido in Caracas, Venezuela, whichupgraded the extremely vertical settlement with an improved network of stairs thatintegrate drainage, sewage and clean water infrastructure. • The Floating Community Lifeboats in Bangladesh which provide space for solar-powered schools, libraries, clinics and community centers in response to rising wa-ters and extreme density.

IncludeThis section features design solutions that involve those who had been marginalizedby the established city—the poor, women, youth, and entire communities. Amongthe featured projects are:

• The Jiko ya jamii (Community Cooker), a large-scale oven that uses trash as fuelto power a communal cooking facility in Kibera, Nairobi. • The city of Diadema, Brazil, where the mayor worked with the informal communi-ties through participatory planning and budgeting to re-urbanize the settlements,including widening and paving what were once narrow streets, cooperatively build-ing social housing, establishing a new system of land tenure and providing qualityhealth care to all residents. • The Kaputiei New Town in Kenya, developed by Jamii Bora Trust, a micro-financeorganization started by 50 street beggar families who saved enough money to foundthe Trust. Jamii Bora members receive loans to start small businesses and saveenough to purchase a house in the town where social amenities, facilities and openspaces are maintained by neighborhood management associations.

ProsperThe projects in this section create work opportunities, such as:• Spaza-de-Move-on in Durban, South Africa, a portable, durable device that pro-vides dignity and convenience to informal street vendors.• M-PESA, a mobile money transfer service that enables urban migrants in Kenya tosend money back to their villages via a mobile device. • Babajob.com, in Bangalore, India, that provides a social-networking service thatconnects impoverished job seekers with employers through chains of personal con-nections, replicating the process by which Indians hire in real life.

AccessThe largest section of the exhibition includes design solutions to improve access towater, sanitation, food security, electricity, health, transportation and education.Projects include:• The SONO Water Filter from Bangladesh, a low-cost, reliable and user-friendlyhousehold system to remove arsenic from drinking water through a series of bucketsfilled with locally available materials that act as natural filters.• The BioCentres in Nairobi, complexes that feature toilets and washrooms accessi-ble to the disabled with free child-only toilets and water kiosks selling affordableclean water. • Garden-in-a-sack in Kibera, Nairobi, made from inexpensive materials and yetpromoting micro-agriculture. • The Bicycle Phone Charger, a simple device made from bicycle and radio partsthat attaches to a bike to generate enough power to charge a cell phone. • The Shasthya Shebika (Health Volunteer) Kit, a portable pharmacy kit for healthvolunteers in informal communities in Dhaka, Bangladesh. • The Guangzhou Bus Rapid Transit system in Guangzhou, China, which services nearly1 million riders per day at a cost that is 10 times less expensive than the metro. • The Digital Drum in Kampala, Uganda, a solar-powered information access pointmade from two durable, low-cost oil drums welded together,rugged keyboards, solar panels and low-power tablets.

The Six Themes of the Cities Exhibition

DOORS OPEN FALL 2012

Responsible use. Sustainable design. These are the keys that will open the door to a future of clean air, fresh water, and a higher quality

of life for all humanity throughout the world. These are the concepts that must be embraced

by designers, engineers, architects. By leaders in every sector, public and private. This is

Sustainability and Development, to be offered this fall by the Lyle School of Engineering at SMU.

For those who strive to innovate, whose goal is to be a catalyst for change, who intend to make a positive impact, this is the program that can open

the door to a future unbound.

ENROLL NOWP. O. Box 750335 Dallas, Texas 75275

[email protected] / lyle.smu.edu

214-768-2002

Design Changemaster of arts in sustainability and development

create a better world


“THE REAL DISCOVERY SEEKING N BUT IN SEE

NEW E


VOYAGE OF LIES NOT IN

EW LANDS, EING WITH

EYES.”— MARCEL PROUST


Brad Oldham is a sculptor with the mind of

an engineer who enjoys creating artistic,

useful pieces for communities, business,

and upscale residences, as well as buildings

undergoing historic restoration. Well

known for iconic public sculptures like

“The Travelling Man” sculptural series in

Dallas, Brad and his team at Brad Oldham

International Inc. have an uncommon repu-

tation for quality and a distinctively warm

and inviting style.

Brad’s custom art and products have

been featured on Good Morning America

and in Architectural Digest, Better Homes

& Gardens, Veranda, The Dallas Morning

News, and other publications. Brad was

presented the “2011 Artisan Award” by

Texas Society of Architects and the “2011

Artist/Craftsman of the Year” by the

Dallas Chapter of the American Institute

of Architects. He was honored to have his

work featured in the Americans for the

Arts’ prestigious “2010 Year in Review,” a

recognition of the best public artwork in

the U.S. and Canada.

More important however, is his

team’s commitment to their community

and to the greater good. “We believe

strongly in the critical importance of

reaching out to our community members

in need of help,” says Brad’s wife and

business partner, Christy Coltrin. To do

so, the company established a community

relations agenda that allows it to build

long-term relationships with key partner

organizations. The company supports

LaunchAbility, which provides services to

help people with disabilities to reach

their maximum potential and The Arts

Community Alliance. Brad served as the

Arts Mentor for Coca Cola during its two-

year pilot program; he mentored high

school juniors and seniors in how to run

an arts business and how art is made.

Stephanie and Hunter Hunt have long

admired Brad’s work and commissioned

him to design the Visionary Award that

is being presented to Vijay Govindarajan

during Engineering & Humanity Week

2012’s Innovation Forum. Inspired by the

cause, Brad created the sculpted piece

with much input. Because the award rec-

ognizes individuals making change on a

global level, the 10-inch tall sculpture

incorporates global imagery. The bronze

globe is elevated on a tree trunk and in-

stead of longitude and latitude numbers,

Brad and the Hunts collaborated on key

messages along the coordinate lines run-

ning across the sculpted continents and

oceans. But the globe is not a complete

sphere. Like a geode cut in half, the globe

is cut to expose the beauty of what’s

inside. The cutaway reveals people,

dwellings and commerce – both ancient

and modern – working in concert with

one another. �

A SCULPTORWITH METTLE

On a road trip throughWest Texas to deliver asculpture, Oldham madeseveral stops to photo-graph the Bird sculpturesin beautiful settings. Thestainless steel Bird on thetracks shown here is 27inches tall.

corr.indd 2 4/5/12 11:43 AM


Issue 1: The Future Of... Social Innovation is fast gain-

ing traction in the United

States and overseas. While not a new con-

cept, there is growing recognition that in

order to change our trajectory and solve

some of the world’s greatest challenges,

there needs to be real innovation and

scale in the social sector as well as the

economy more broadly. The current struc-

tures created for addressing social prob-

lems are inadequate and incentives are

not aligned toward achieving outcomes.

Hence, social innovation is about build-

ing the infrastructure necessary to create

an economy that can have a transforma-

tional impact in our country and the

world around us. This investment in an

“impact economy” has the potential to

create jobs, economic value, and social

benefit for the US and the world. Creating

this economy and having real innovation

requires an investment in nonprofits, for-

profits and hybrid enterprises to develop

the necessary ecosystem for growth.

The most important aspect of the impact

economy is that each of these sectors

measure results. For too long, the defini-

tion of success has been the growth of an

organization rather than outcome

achieved, for example, whether more chil-

dren graduated from high school, or fewer

people were diagnosed with diabetes. In-

Sonal Shah is the formerDirector of the first WhiteHouse Office of Social Innovation and Civic Participation, and is currently a Tides Fellow.

THE NEXT GENERATION

ECONOMYby Sonal Shah

The Next Generation Economy is reprinted with per-mission from Momentum, a quarterly publication ofTides. Sonal Shah is a Tides Fellow. Learn more athttp://momentum.tides.org


stead, investors should be asking what

problem the organization is trying to solve,

and hold themselves and the organization

accountable for achieving the stated objec-

tives. This can be achieved across sectors:

nonprofits need to start managing to out-

comes, not just outputs; governments need

to assess how to align incentives to solve

problems, not just keep the status quo; and

businesses need to find better ways to part-

ner with both governments and nonprofits

to help scale solutions.

This requires a real investment on be-

half of philanthropists to help build the

infrastructure that can meet this de-

mand, and build the ecosystem to help

create the next generation economy. As

the growth and demand of the impact

economy increases, there will be real op-

portunity to more clearly define the term

“longterm value” to incorporate social

and environmental criteria.

Non-profits Nonprofits play a critical role, providing

necessary services to ensure a more edu-

cated, healthy, and prosperous society.

They work within local communities,

across communities, and nationally to ad-

dress some of our nation’s and world’s

most critical challenges. These are

largely grantbased organizations like the

Latin American Youth Center, Youth-

Build, or Year Up. However, as budgets at

local and national levels become tighter,

it is important to ask what new models

need to be developed to help solve some of

the tough challenges. Policies and invest-

ments in the sector need to focus on the

evidence of impact – not just on number

of people served. In his book Leap of Rea-

son, Managing to Outcomes in an Era of

Scarcity, Mario Morino offers a critical

view of how leaders and investors of non-

profits can best manage to outcomes, es-

pecially in an era of decreasing budgets.

Grantbased models are changing and it is

even more critical to develop new ones,

with the appropriate incentives to achieve

real results. Philanthropy and government

need to support and scale innovative new

models and structures that have the poten-

tial for transformational change.

For-Profit Enterprises For-profit businesses and enterprises are

also critical to creating an impact econ-

omy as they have the greatest potential

for reaching scale. According to B Lab,

there are 50,000-60,000 mission-driven

businesses in the US.

These are not corporations practicing

corporate social responsibility (CSR), but

firms specifically created to achieve so-

cial purpose and deliver financial re-

turns. These enterprises come in many

forms and stretch across industries: from

privately held manufacturing businesses

such as Interface Carpets in Atlanta, GA,

to publicly traded automotive companies

like Tesla Motors in Palo Alto, CA; from

dynamic software startups including

iContact in Raleigh, NC, to corporate-

owned beverage companies like Honest

Tea in Bethesda, MD (which was acquired

by Coca Cola in 2011). Investment in these

types of businesses is called “impact in-

vesting” because they create both social

value and have financial returns. Accord-

ing to the Monitor Institute, this is consid-

ered to be a $50 billion market that could

grow tenfold by the end of the decade.

Foundations like Rockefeller, Kellogg, and

Heron are already experimenting with “im-

pact investing.” There needs to be greater

investment in the sector to create more

businesses and a longer conversation with

larger corporations on how CSR can more

effectively achieve social change while

keeping a business focus.

Hybrid Enterprises The third sector in the impact economy is

made up of hybrid or social enterprises,

which are neither nonprofit nor strictly

forprofit. Generally they are innovative

non-profit organizations that are driving

revenue through dynamic earned income

models such as Greyston Bakery in New

York City, the Chrysalis workforce train-

ing program in Los Angeles, or Aravind

Eye Hospitals in India. These social enter-

prises, like for-profit businesses, believe

that organizations need to do more than

generate shareholder returns, they must

also build value chains that bring value

back to the communities that they serve.

Whether job training or green jobs, hy-

brid organizations are creating a new

form of engagement between companies

and nonprofits. In some cases like Ar-

avind, they are introducing new efficien-

cies in the market while maintaining

incredible quality. When investing in

these enterprises, investors should help

develop effective business models or con-

tinue to scale the existing models, while

also providing capital—or outright

grants—to continue to innovate and adapt

to the needs of the market.

We have an opportunity to define new

structures that will last into the next cen-

tury. We can either continue to work at the

margins, make small changes, and hope for

the best; or we can create new business

models for each of these sectors, ask our-

selves the tough questions about the im-

pact we want to have, and make some

radical changes. The real question is

whether we are willing to make the neces-

sary investments and take the risks needed

to create a new impact economy that can

fundamentally transform our world. �

For too long, the definition of success has been the growth of an organization rather than outcome achieved.


Poor and marginalized communities are on

the front lines of climate change and

adaptation. For decades, the Aga Khan De-

velopment Network (AKDN), the world’s

largest private international development

network, has worked with communities to

develop sustainable solutions to environ-

mental and social challenges: water

scarcity, drought, deforestation, and other

natural and man-made impacts. In the

coastal and high mountain areas of Asia

and Africa where AKDN focuses its work,

climate change is expected to have lasting

and severe impacts.

One example of AKDN’s approach to

innovative solutions at the community

level is its promotion of improved stoves

and construction methods in remote

mountain areas.

Building and Construction Improvement Program

PROBLEM: High Poverty and Deteriorat-

ing Housing Conditions

In Pakistan’s most remote and eco-

nomically disadvantaged northern re-

gions, mountain communities are

exposed to frigid weather. Temperatures

drop as low as zero degrees Fahrenheit

COMMUNITY-BASEDSTRATEGIES

FOR ENERGY-EFFICIENTTECHNOLOGIES


Left: Most houses in northern Pakistan are cold, dark,damp, smoky, structurally unstable and congested.Heavy use of wood for construction, cooking and heat-ing has caused deforestation and greenhouse gasemissions, and affects families’ respiratory health.

Right: The fuel-efficient smoke-free cooking stove hasbeen one of BACIP’s most popular innovations. The improved metal sheets and chimney pipes (ferifei) prevent smoke from leaking into the home.

during the four to six-month winter.

With an unemployment/underemploy-

ment rate of approximately 70 percent,

living conditions are difficult for many.

In this poverty, most families have

poor housing. Most homes are cold,

smoke-filled and drafty. Heavy use of

wood for construction, cooking and heat-

ing is causing rampant deforestation,

greenhouse-gas emissions and deteriorat-

ing health of residents. An average house-

hold burns roughly 5.5 tons of fuel wood

every winter.

These living conditions have led to

high rates of environment-related health

problems. Pneumonia, acute respiratory in-

fection, eye infection and diarrhea/dysen-

tery account for more than half of all

reported cases at local health centers. In

Northern Pakistan, women and children

under the age of five, groups who spend the

majority of time inside the home, suffer

most from exposure to smoke and related

health risks.

SOLUTION: Building and Construction

Improvement

In 1997, Aga Khan Planning and Building

Services, Pakistan (AKPBS,P) launched

its Building and Construction Improve-

ment Programme (BACIP), which devel-

ops and tests technologies made using

local materials. Each product is designed

to make homes more efficient - by de-

creasing indoor smoke, improving struc-

tural integrity or better insulating

homes. To date, more than 70 different

kinds of household improvements have

been developed.

Improved Cook Stoves With around 11,500 sold, the fuel-effi-

cient smoke-free cooking stove has been

one of BACIP’s most popular innovations.

The improved metal sheets and chimney

pipes prevent smoke from leaking into

the home. BACIP’s water-warming facility

works with the stove to further reduce in-

door smoke emissions. By running pipes

through the stoves, families can heat

water while cooking. The access to hot

water relieves women and children from

doing laundry by the river – typically a

cold, wet three to four-hour activity.

BACIP places a heavy emphasis on

sustainability. Before the program agrees

to work with a village, that village must

have a Village Organization in place that

has demonstrated its willingness and ca-

pability to manage a project. Aga Khan

Planning and Building Services, Pakistan

only covers the cost of research and devel-

opment of products. Community mem-

bers finance most of the recommended

house improvements themselves. For ex-

ample, a water-warming stove costs ap-

proximately US $30-40.

Village women act as sales agents

and keep products like the water-warm-

ing stove on display in their home to

demonstrate to potential buyers. Once a

product is sold, the women earn a modest

commission, creating a steady business

for otherwise poor families. To make

these improvements available to all in-

come levels, BACIP partners with the

First MicroFinanceBank Ltd of Pakistan,

which offers homeowners microcredit

loans ranging from $20-$200.

Done properly, BACIP products re-

duce fuel costs, health bills, money spent

on home repair and workloads for women

and children. Since 1997, BACIP has fa-

cilitated the installation and use of

nearly 23,000 energy-saving and home

improvement products in over 11,000

households in 125 villages. Recognized

by the United Nations and other interna-

tional governments and organizations,

BACIP, now replicated elsewhere, is con-

ducting research and developing tech-

nologies to meet people’s needs.

This program is an example of

AKDN’s integrated approach to develop-

ment, addressing health, environmental

and economic factors of sustainability.

Just as other AKDN programs address

multiple social and economic issues,

BACIP is improving health, generating in-

come and protecting the environment.

The Aga Khan Development Network

is a group of nine agencies and over 150

entities working in over 30 countries, with

mandates ranging from health and educa-

tion to architecture, culture, microfinance,

rural development, water and sanitation,

disaster reduction and more. �

Visit www.akdn.org.


The two men met at last year’s inaugural

Engineering & Humanity Week in Dallas

and discovered a shared passion that is

now poised to change the lives of thou-

sands of India’s poor.

Last year, Anurag Jain, founder of

Viziniti Global LLC, attended the confer-

ence in his role as founder of Laurus

Edutech, a leading certified skill develop-

ment and training company in India,

which sponsored the Living Village at En-

gineering & Humanity Week 2011.

Daniel Gross, founder and president

of WorldHaus, which manufactures and

builds customized, weatherproof homes

for families in the developing world at a

price they can afford, was a 2011 confer-

ence speaker.

At Engineering & Humanity Week,

the two entrepreneurs discovered a

shared vision: safe, affordable and sani-

tary housing for populations living at the

bottom of the pyramid (BoP)—the 2.5 bil-

lion people worldwide who live on less

than $2.50 per day.

Today, Anurag and Daniel are collabo-

rators on an ambitious plan to build

5,000 homes by the end of 2013 in India,

employing a modular building system

that allows families to build to any size

and configuration they desire.

“Engineering & Humanity Week has

been the most successful conference for

us as a business to date,” said Daniel.

“Anurag has been indispensable to our

company. He is a visionary, he is practi-

cal, and he has provided me not only with

a lot of resources, but his connections in

India have been critical to our success. I

am so lucky to have found him at Engi-

neering & Humanity Week.”

Through his impact investing incuba-

tor, Viziniti Global, Anurag has teamed

with Daniel’s WorldHaus to complete

their first home last January in Chennai,

India—a 220-square-foot house built of lo-

cally-sourced interlocking compressed

earth-bricks, steel and polystyrene roof

panels, and concrete—at a cost of $1,500.

It was built in 10 days.

With a WorldHaus home, a family

also can include amenities like clean

burning stoves, toilets, and solar electric-

ity systems and expand living space from

the one-room base model.

“We are working with microfinance

institutions and regional rural banks to

make our homes available for monthly in-

stallments of $20, well within the reach

of rural middle class families making be-

tween $3 and $10 a day,” Daniel said, not-

ing that WorldHaus will start work on

150 homes in the next few weeks.

“We are also in the process of setting

up partnerships with state governments,

NGOs, and landlords to make the homes

available to families making less than $2

a day through subsidies and rental hous-

ing programs.”

Housing, along with education,

healthcare and energy, is a personal pas-

sion for him, said Anurag, who until June

of 2011, was leading the Dell Services De-

livery unit, a global team of more than

18,000 professionals who deliver over $3

billion of leading edge technology solu-

tions to Dell customers around the world.

“There is a huge opportunity with the

people that we consider BoP,” Anurag

said. “They need and deserve the same

things we are used to every day.”

Anurag Jain is the Founder of Viziniti

Global LLC.

Prior to Viziniti Anurag also founded

Laurus Edutech, a leading ISO

9001:2008 certified skill development

and training companies in India. Laurus

Edutech provides services across com-

plete skill cycle like training, certifica-

tion and assessments support, skill

technology, placements and skill infra.

Laurus Edutech is one of the leaders in

the assessment support space and has

helped its clients manage over 77,000

students assessed through its platform.

The Services Delivery unit includes

Dell’s technology service functions of In-

frastructure and Managed Technology

Services, Applications, and Business

Process Solutions. The organization also

included Dell’s Innovation group, which

is pioneering technology advancements

in areas such as Cloud Computing, Mobil-

ity, Virtual Data Services, Technology De-

livery and Optimization, and others.

Anurag previously led the Perot Sys-

tems (now Dell) Applications, Business

Process Solutions, Financial Services and

Insurance organizations, where he di-

rected global operations and sales to en-

hance growth and business results. He

also served as managing director of the

company’s Asia Pacific region.

Anurag also previously founded 3

highly successful, large-scale, India-based

IT services outsourcing businesses. In ad-

dition to his business career, Anurag has

been a tireless leader and innovative sup-

porter of skill and vocational development

in India. He has been Chairman of the Skill

Development Forum for the Federation of

Indian Chambers of Commerce and Indus-

try (FICCI). He also served on the Board of

the National Skills Development Corpora-

tion until July 2011, a first-of-its-kind pub-

lic-private partnership in India.

In addition, Anurag serves on the

Boards of North Texas Food Bank, Asia

(Chennai) Engineering and WorldHaus.

Anurag holds an MBA from the Uni-

versity of Michigan and a Bachelor of Sci-

ence degree in electronics and electrical

engineering from the Birla Institute of

Technology and Sciences, Pilani, India. �

ANURAG JAIN AND

DANIEL GROSS


DALLAS INSTITUTE OF HUMANITIES & CULTURE

For more than 30 years the Dallas Institute of Humanities & Cul-

ture has sought to enrich lives through literature, history, phi-

losophy, politics, psychology, mythology and everything else

that makes up the humanities. Since it was established as a non-

profit organization in 1980, the Institute has strived to discover

what the humanities can offer to the cultural life of the city with

classes, conferences, seminars, publications and more. It also-

holds many meaningful and impactful events and programs,

such as its Festival of Ideas and its annual MLK Jr. Symposium.

A big focus for 2012 is the Louise and Donald Cowan Center

for Education.The Cowan Center method is based on a belief in

the art of teaching for teachers and students alike, with an em-

phasis on non-competitive, collegial learning. By the completion

of 2012, the Cowan Center will have conducted its 2nd annual Su-

perintendents’ Symposium, its 2nd annual Education Forum for

citizens and educators, multiple programs for principals and

teachers, and its 29th consecutive session of the Sue Rose Sum-

mer Institute for Teachers. Through its programs, the Cowan

Center aims to deepen all educators’ understanding of the

human condition.

Institute Executive Director Dr. J. Larry Allums explains,

“Like the humanities themselves, the Institute aims at the dem-

ocratic ideal – the conviction that every citizen of Dallas can

without fail not only learn but feel the genuine pleasure that

learning brings. In the process of our individual lifelong learn-

ing, our city only gets better – deeper and richer in the ways that

matter most: intellectually, imaginatively, and spiritually.” The

ideals of the Institute can affect educators across the globe,

which in turn can improve and enrich the lives of countless peo-

ple in various countries and cultures. �

dallasinstitute.org

by Chris Kelley


At the age of 12, Dallas artist Nicole Potter

received her first canvas—and it changed

her life forever.

As a junior at Highland Park High

School, she began selling her art as a way

to raise funds for children with cancer.

In 2010, Nicole graduated from Texas

Christian University with a degree in art

history with a focus on Mayan/Aztec art.

Today, Nicole is juggling multiple

commissions for commercial projects, the

launch of a new jewelry line and the sales

of her work at a Dallas art gallery and

through an online art space.

Nicole creates paintings that are pri-

marily large-scale, mixed media acrylic

on canvas. Much of her inspiration comes

from vintage photography and advertise-

ments in addition to awareness of her

surroundings.

For Engineering & Humanity Week

2012, Nicole has created an original work

of art—painted mannequins of a child and

adult to represent the Hunt Institute’s

work with refugees. Photographs of

refugee camps taken by Stephanie Hunt,

the Institute’s co-founder, inspired the

collage effect achieved by the piece.

Nicole also just completed an art in-

stallation at Dallas’ NorthPark Center

commissioned by Engineering &Human-

ity Week partner Gensler for RETRO-

SPECT, an annual event (April 5-15)

organized by the Dallas Chapter of the

American Institute of Architects to intro-

duce architecture to the community

through three-dimensional displays.

When she is not painting, Nicole en-

joys travelling and spending time with

her family and friends—collecting mo-

ments and memories that she may very

well recollect in future pieces, or so we

can hope. �

Nicolepotter.com

EMBRACING HUMANITY NICOLE POTTER

by Chris Kelley

Cardboard is generally seen as the thing

that a new pair of shoes comes in—not a

material to make shoes from. So, when

Seattle artist Mike Leavitt began making

cardboard shoes that not only are func-

tional, but stylish as well, the world took

notice of the reverse innovation.

Mike excels at a lot of different types

of art. He’s well known for a series of

artistic action figures that depict famous

subjects, such as Vincent Van Gogh, Ste-

vie Wonder, Ralph Nader and urban artist

Banksy. But he also has a background in

environmentalism and charity, which in-

cludes engineering “portable homeless

shelters” for tent cities in Seattle.

So why make shoes? "I might dabble

in satire of other essentials in a bad econ-

omy: eye glasses, winter coats, food

items… but shoes are so intimately linked

to our visual culture,” he has said.

“They’re a necessity that we still get to

have fun buying and wearing.”

Mike’s cardboard shoes seem to main-

tain that fun factor. He has crafted many

shoes that mimic popular models of

“real” shoe brands, such as Nike, Adidas

and Converse. He has recreated famous

styles like Air Jordans and Chuck Taylors.

Just because they're made from a material

most people throw away doesn't mean

they can't look good on your feet.

Why use cardboard? "It's ironic to use

a cheap disposable material like card-

board,” Mike says. “Cheap, disposable ma-

terial makes an expensive product, oddly

resembling the manufacturing of bou-

tique footwear. The simple image of the

cardboard shoe speaks humorously and

clearly on consumerism."

It may be art and it may have a mes-

sage, but there's no doubt that the idea of

cardboard shoes has highly practical uses

outside of the “cool” factor. Taking a re-

source that's abundant and fashioning it

to make items that are in need is the kind

of resourceful thinking that could change

a society, one foot at a time. �

intuitionkitchenproductions.com

THE CARDBOARD SHOE GUY MIKE LEAVITT

by Chris Kelley

THOUGHT LEADERSHIPPERCEPTIONS FROM GUEST SPEAKERS AT THE INNOVATION FORUM


“We have to separate who we are from what we have. We accumulate money, houses, cars, degrees; yet the happiness

quotient in our world declines as the material quotient increases.Separation is important if we are to be happy. We must

have purpose in life.”Vijay Govindarajan (VG) is a Professor of International Business at the

Tuck School of Business at Dartmouth, the Founding Director of Tuck's Center for Global Leadershipand author of Reverse Innovation.

“Engineering finds its ultimate usefulness both in alleviatinghuman suffering as well in contributing to humanity's

appreciation of Mother Earth.”Sanjay Rawal is Founder of Illumine, a firm representing celebrity philanthropic interests, a board

member for the Voss Foundation and the Global Syndicate, and a documentary filmmaker.

“By bringing capital markets to the social sector and leveragingtechnology and innovation we can truly solve some of the

world’s toughest challenges.”Sonal Shah served as the Deputy Assistant to the President and Director of the first White House Office of Social Innovation and Civic Participation. She is a fellow with the Tides Foundation

and co-founder of the international non-profit, Indicorps.


“I have witnessed the miracles that happen when women andgirls are taught technological skills. The bridge from engineeringto human need must be built if we are to change the world.”

Annie Griffiths was one of the first women photographers to work for National Geographic and she isExecutive Director of Ripple Effect Images, a collective of photographers who document the programs

that empower women and girls in the developing world.

“Engineering and Humanity is not just about delivering solutionsto vulnerable people; it is about listening to and partnering with

them to enable them to find their own solutions.”Dr. Alexander Betts is a University Lecturer in Refugee and Forced Migration Studies at the University

of Oxford, author of numerous books on refugee issues and global politics. He has workedwith the United Nations in multiple capacities.

“In this new millennium, a new wave of engineers, designers, architects, and social entrepreneurs are working directly withpeople with limited resources, collaborating across sectors to

find solutions, demonstrating that humanitarian design can playa significant role in solving the world’s most critical problems.”Cynthia Smith serves as Cooper-Hewitt, National Design Museum’s Curator of Socially Responsible

Design and who curated both the 2007 Design for the Other 90% exhibition and the 2011 Design with the Other 90%: CITIES.

“The best design solutions are responsive to individual clients,local climate, and community context; and yet we also have toprovide solutions at a scale commensurate with the scale of the

problems we face. This is our paradox.”Casius Pealer is Principal of Oystertree Consulting L3C, a corporation that provides real estate

advisory services focusing on affordable housing that encourages energy efficiency and practical solutions to performance and verification.


“We are all engineers of a kind, it's just the contents of our toolkits that vary. The challenge is how to apply our ingenuity

to advance humanity, rather than destroy it.”Luciano Calestini has been based in Kosovo where he will spend at least three years working with the

UNICEF team to help secure the futures of Kosovo's young people.

“It’s not about us. It's about education being the key to overcoming obstacles. It's about being conscious of what we do

and how we do it. It's about discovering everyday what we don’t know and doing better the next time.”

Barry and David Steingard partnered with Hugh Jackman to create Laughing Man Coffee & Tea.Laughing Man Worldwide gives 100% of profits to charity by incubating companies

and products worldwide.

“One of the world's greatest challenges and opportunities in thecoming decades sits right at the intersection of engineering andhumanity: figuring out how to spur economic growth while using

natural resources more efficiently.”Jeffrey Ball, until recently The Wall Street Journal’s environment editor, is scholar-in-residence at

Stanford University’s Steyer-Taylor Center for Energy Policy and Finance.

“We have had 200 years of reductionist science and engineering,which have led to great things but today the objective must be

integration with humanity for needed good things.”Carl Hodges is an internationally known scientist and Founder and Chairman of The Seawater

Foundation which uses seawater, photosynthesis and human intelligence to provide long-lasting planetary ecological balance.

SUNDAY - APRIL 15 Innovation Leaders Forum Fairmont Hotel, Dallas, TX

3:30 – 4:00 pm Registration

4:00 – 4:05 pmWelcome – Stephanie and Hunter Hunt

4:05 – 5:00 pm Opening Discussion: The 21st Century SupermarketIn the developed world, especially in the

U.S., citizens view access to nutrition and

nutrients as a basic human right; but as de-

mographics shift in the U.S. and agribusi-

ness is forced to deal with the harsh

realities of slimmer profit margins, we've

seen entire groups cut off from affordable,

quality nutrition. Perhaps nowhere is this

divide on larger display than in urban com-

munities where poor neighborhoods suffer

a lack of affordable, healthy food options.

Moreover, recent reports from government

oversight agencies and the media have dis-

closed stories of shortcuts taken in manag-

ing the food supply chain, resulting in poor

and unsafe working conditions, marginal-

ization of food chain employees and, in ex-

treme cases, even slavery. In the 21st

century, just how are large retailers moni-

toring their supply chains? Why do Ameri-

cans seem to accept violations of labor

practices overseas that they themselves

would never tolerate at home? What can

citizens do to support the cause of progres-

sive food supply chain monitoring for the

21st century supermarket? This panel of in-

dustry experts, academics and activists—

among them a Hollywood star—will explore

these questions and offer some answers.

Moderator: Sanjay Rawal, Documentary FilmmakerPanelists: Eva Longoria, Actress and Activist

Jack L. Sinclair, ExecutiveVice President, Food Division, WalmartGerardo Reyez-Chavez,Coalition of ImmokaleeWorkersGreg Asbed, Coalition ofImmokalee Workers


2012 ENGINEERING & HUMANITY WEEK

EVENT SCHEDULEApril 15-20, 2012 - Dallas, TX


"AT ENGINEERING & HUMANITY WEEK, WEPROUDLY SERVE LAUGHING MAN COFFEES, TEAS,AND CHOCOLATES. LAUGHING MAN WORLDWIDEGIVES 100% OF PROFITS TO CHARITY BY INCUBATING COMPANIES AND PRODUCTS THATSERVE A GREATER GOOD. SUPPORT THEIR WORKBY BUYING LAUGHING MAN PRODUCTS AT WWW. HTTP://SHOP.LIVELAUGHINGMAN.COM/."

Afternoon Discussion: Business Models Turned Upside DownApple, J.C. Penney, G.E. They're examples

of big brands that have turned business

models upside down, whether through

pricing, customer service or reverse inno-

vation. In established markets, con-

sumers are more knowledgeable about

what they want or about the prices they

are willing to pay—indeed, they've never

been smarter. Customers want to do busi-

ness with brands that offer not only the

right product at the right price, but ones

which provide intelligence, passion and

principle as part of the sale. Apple's sleek

retail stores showcase solutions and serv-

ice (i.e. the Genius Bar), providing not

only products but a philosophy. J.C. Pen-

ney is retooling its department stores by

adding "information specialists" and

"consultants" to go with a new logo,

spokeswoman, and pricing strategy.

Emerging markets are also seeing busi-

ness models reinvented. G.E., for exam-

ple, is adopting a strategy of reverse

innovation as the company strives to

change their organizational architecture

to successfully shift power to where the

growth is and to build new products from

the ground up at a lower cost. It isn't a

choice. In emerging global markets, lo-

cally-based competitors have proven that

they possess the technical know-how, low-

cost strategies and understanding of

local needs that allows them to create

market-specific technologies for use in

richer countries, such as the U.S. This

panel brings together some of the most

creative minds in the business world with

experience both in the U.S. and abroad to

explore how business models must evolve

or likely face steep declines in market

share -- or worse.

Moderator: Jeff Ball, Stanford UniversityPanelists: Vijay Govindarajan,Professor of Strategy,Tuck School at DartmouthAmory Lovins, RockyMountain Institute; Author, Reinventing Fire


MONDAY - APRIL 16Innovation Leaders Forum Fairmont Hotel, Dallas, TX

11:00 – 11:30 am Registration

11:30 – 1:30 pmKeynote & Awards Luncheon: Reverse InnovationVijay Govindarajan, Recipient of the 2012 Visionary Award; Author, Reverse Innovation

© Solidarités International


3:30 – 4:30 pm Discussion: Humanitarian Innovation: The Global StageHumanitarian assistance relies upon a

range of products and processes in order

to address the shelter, health, water, sani-

tation, livelihoods, education, communi-

cation, and other protection needs of the

most vulnerable people. As an area domi-

nated by a relatively small number of or-

ganizations, humanitarianism has often

been institutionally closed to new ideas

and ways of thinking. The result has been

that the scope for product and process in-

novation has been limited, and that hu-

manitarian institutions have drawn upon

a restricted array of possible solutions

and ideas to understand and address hu-

manitarian challenges. However, new

thinking is beginning to emerge across

the private sector, international organiza-

tions, and universities. This panel brings

together some of the most creative minds

working in this area to assess existing

best practices and to set out a vision for

humanitarian innovation.

Moderator: Alex Betts, University of Oxford, RefugeeStudies CenterPanelists: Sonal Shah,Former Director of theWhite House Office of So-cial Innovation and CivicParticipation andGoogle.orgLuciano Calestini,UNICEF Innovation Lab,Kosovo

Cynthia Smith, 2012 Living Village Honoree; Curatorfor Socially Responsible Design, Smithsonian Cooper-Hewitt, National Design MuseumCasius Pealer, Oystertree Consulting

4:30 – 5:00 pm Annie Griffiths, National GeographicPhotographer

5:00 – 5:15 pmClosing Remarks

6:30 – 9:30 pm Nasher Sculpture CenterSponsor Dinner honoring Cynthia Smith, Curator, Cooper-HewittPresentation by Carl Hodges, Salt water Farming in Desert Regions

1:30 – 1:45 pm Break

1:45 – 2:15 pm Paula Broadwell, Author, All In: The Educationof General David Petraeus

2:15 – 3:15 pm David and Barry Steingard, Father and Son Co-founders, Laughing Man Coffee & Tea. Inspired by actor Hugh Jackman, LaughingMan Worldwide gives 100% of profits to charity by incubating companies and productsthat serve a greater good.

3:15 – 3:30 pmBreak


Other Engineering & HumanityWeek Related Events

March 24: Human Rights Initiative's 5K, Bachman Lake, Dallas

March 31 and April 1: Cardboard Design Competition entry drop-offbetween 12pm - 3pm. One Arts Plaza is located in downtown Dallas at 1722 Routh Street

April 14: The Spirit of Uganda, Empower African Children's professional training and touringgroup, will be featured at a benefit concert at8 p.m., McFarlin Auditorium, SouthernMethodist University

April 15: Cardboard competition awards announcement,One Arts Plaza, 12pm - 3pm

April 15 to April 21:Living Village at Southern Methodist University

April 19: Refugee Culture Night at the Living Villagehosted by the Anthropology Department at SMU

April 21: Earth Day at Fair Park

"AT ENGINEERING & HUMANITY WEEK, WE PROUDLY SERVE LAUGHING MAN COFFEES, TEAS, AND CHOCOLATES. LAUGHING MAN WORLDWIDE GIVES 100% OF PROFITS TO CHARITY BY INCUBATING COMPANIES AND PRODUCTS THAT SERVE A GREATER GOOD. SUPPORT THEIR WORK BY BUYING LAUGHING MAN PRODUCTS AT WWW. HTTP://SHOP.LIVELAUGHINGMAN.COM/."


Mario Batali’s Spicy Coffee-Coated Drumsticks Recipe(As seen on The Chew)

Did you watch Hugh on The Chew? Want to get the recipe for the

Spicy Coffee-Coated Drumsticks that he and Mario Batali

whipped up on the show? Look no further. Below is the recipe

from ABC-TV’s The Chew. And to watch Hugh cook this dish on

the program, click on www.youtube.com/watch?v=gPRxz-fqIPY.

Things You’ll Need:

12 Chicken Drumsticks

1 cup of Laughing Man Coffee

2 tablespoons of Tabasco Sauce

2 tablespoons of Black Pepper

2 Fennel Bulbs

1/4 cup of Red Wine Vinegar

Kosher Salt

1/2 cup of Buttermilk

1 tablespoon of Fennel Seeds

2 tablespoons of Dark Roast Coffee (we recommend the Flores)

4 oz of Gorgonzola Dolce

1/2 cup Extra Virgin Olive Oil

DirectionsStep 1: Preheat the oven to 400

degrees F.

Step 2: Place 12 Chicken Drumsticks

on a baking sheet and season all

over Kosher salt. Bake unadorned

for 20 minutes (25 minutes if your

drumsticks are very large).

Step 3:Meanwhile, in a medium bowl, stir together the

following ingredients:

• 1 cup of strong Laughing Man Coffee

(we recommend the Flores)

• 1/2 cup of Buttermilk

• 2 Tablespoons of Tabasco sauce

• 1 Tablespoon of Fennel Seeds

(lightly crushed in a spice or coffee grinder)

• 2 tablespoons of Black Pepper

• 2 tablespoons of Dark Roast Coffee

(we recommend the Flores with a fine grind)

Step 4: As soon as the drumsticks come out of the over, toss

them, in batches, into the coffee-buttermilk mixture to turn to

coat, then place skin side up on the rack to drain. Spoon a little

of the mixture, with the fennel seeds and pepper, over the top of

each one and set aside.

(The drumsticks can be baked and marinated up to a day ahead;

leave them on the rack, cover, and refrigerate. Bring to room

temp before grilling.)

Step 5: Preheat a a gas grill or prepare a fire in a charcoal grill.

Step 6: Trim the fennel bulbs, cut lengthwise in half, and cut out

most of the core. Cut into 1/4 inch wide batonettes and toss into

a bowl of ice water.

Step 7: Crumble 4 ounces of Gorgonzola cheese into a small

bowl and mash with a fork. Add 1/4 cup of red wine vinegar and

stir with the fork until fairly smooth. Drizzle in 1/2 cup of extra

virgin olive oil, stirring, to make a dressing. Pour into one or

more shallow bowls for dipping.

Step 8: Place the drumsticks on the hottest part of the grill,

cover the grill, and cook, turning occasionally at first and then

more often as they start to caramelize, until cooked through,

10 to 12 minutes.

Step 9: Put the drumsticks on a platter. Drain the fennel sticks,

pat dry, and plate with the chicken and dipping sauce.

Time: 30-60 minutes. Servings: 6 �

WORTH THE TIME

EVERY MAGAZINE DESERVES TO OFFER

ONE GOOD RECIPE … ESPECIALLY WHEN IT COMES

FROM HUGH JACKMAN!


Q: Are Laughing Man products fairly

traded?

A: Our product selection is guided by one

principle: respect. Respect for the

farmer, respect for the land, respect for

the bean and respect for the community.

There are many different certifications

that embody the principle of respect. The

most well-known include: Fair Trade, Or-

ganic, Rainforest Alliance, UTZ, Bird

Friendly, Shade Grown, Direct Trade and

Relationship Coffee. There are also many

uncertified coffees that are also grown

respectfully. Laughing Man only offers

coffees that respect the farmer. Our goal

is 100% transparency between the farm

and the cup.

Q: Your company slogan is “ALL BE

HAPPY.” What does that mean?

A: ALL BE HAPPY is a view of the world

that comes from a special moment of

connection with the person in front of

you, your community, the world as a

whole. In essence it is a connection with

a larger sense of family. From that con-

nection the natural emotion of love

arises and wishes all to be happy. ALL BE

HAPPY comes from an ancient prayer

that says MAY ALL BE HAPPY, MAY ALL

BE FREE OF DISEASE. MAY ALL HAVE

WELL BEING, AND NONE SUFFER MIS-

ERY OF ANY KIND. Everything we do at

Laughing Man is to help make an ALL BE

HAPPY moment possible for our guests

and staff. Because from that moment of

great things can happen to benefit

Mankind.

Q: Does Laughing Man give profits back

to charity?

A: Laughing Man Worldwide gives 100%

of profits to charity by incubating com-

panies and products that believe in the

ALL BE HAPPY vision. Laughing Man

Coffee & Tea is the first business started

by Laughing Man Worldwide.

Better Living from Laughing Man Coffee & Tea

Be careful with that cof-fee! Here are some tipsfor stain removal so youcan go back to drinkingyour perfect beverage inharmony with yourwardrobe.

• Don’t let the stain set! A dry stain is a difficult stain,so try to treat it right away.• Use a commercial stain remover then wash immedi-ately. This is your best bet, if you’re near a washingmachine or Laundromat.• Use vinegar – the green cleaner. Mix one teaspoon ofwhite vinegar in one quart of cold water. Dab stain andwipe clean.• Baking soda – that other green cleaner. Sprinkle alittle baking soda on a wet cloth and dab then wipe thestain away.

All be happy!

MAKING ADIFFERENCEAn interview with Barry and

David Steingard, Laughing Man

Coffee & Tea

When Barry and David Stein-

gard joined with Hugh Jack-

man to create Laughing Man

Coffee & Tea, they learned

more about life than about bev-

erages. In a recent interview,

they provided some thought-

provoking insights:


SMU LIVING VILLAGE

The Living Village on the campus of Southern Methodist University (SMU) will be an interactive displayand teaching tool for the second Engineering & Humanity Week April 15-20 as students live, cook andsleep in temporary shelters designed for international refugees and rapidly expanding urban populations.

Students, faculty and local members of the community will build the village on the SMU campuslawn during Engineering & Humanity Week, showcasing a variety of shelter technologies with applica-tions for people displaced by war and natural disasters, as well as impoverished urban dwellers in thedeveloping world. The village’s temporary residents will be without electricity and running water in theshelters, as is frequently the case for refugee populations.

The public is welcome to tour the village and speak with participants who also will be bloggingtheir experiences. Follow them at eandhweek.org.


N

TO CARUTH BUILDING


SHELTER PROFILES

In 2010, following a Hunt Institute presentation by Kenyan archi-

tect Ronald Omyonga, Texas inventor Harvey Lacey began

mulling an outside-the-box idea for housing the extreme poor.

Within six months, Lacey, a metal worker from the Dallas

suburb of Wylie, had invented Ubuntu-Blox, small bricks of plas-

tic refuse—some made of discarded water bottles, others of Sty-

rofoam and plastic film—bound like miniature hay bales.

The bales are wired together to form walls, post-tensioned

two ways, and covered in mud and stucco. It all adds up to a

house that can be built for about $250, using parts that you can

find anywhere and plastic trash that you can find, unfortu-

nately, everywhere.

“There is a plastic pollution problem in our world. There is a

shortage of building materials for housing. The poor need jobs,”

Lacey explained. “Where those three bad things collide we find

extreme poverty and opportunity. If we are looking for extreme

poverty, it is there. On the other hand, if we are looking for op-

portunity, it’s there too.”

Harvey has since taken his technology to earthquake-rav-

aged Haiti (see story on page xx).

Harvey’s Unbuntu Blox house was a huge draw at the inau-

gural Engineering & Humanity Week in 2011, and it’s back for a

repeat appearance in the Living Village. �

More at recycledplasticblockhouses.com

What ideal building material is made of recycled product and, on

its own, recyclable, affordable and plentiful? Bottles and tires

meet the criteria, but not as cost-effective building material for

refugee housing in Kosovo—the aim of Manhattan-based archi-

tects Suzan Wines and Azin Valy.

Suzan stumbled over the answer on her way home from work

one night when she tripped over a shipping pallet. The rest, as

they say, is history.

Using only shipping pallets, or skids, the architects have cre-

ated a tiny, modular home design called simply a Pallet House. Fol-

lowing Ikea-style pictorial instructions, it takes four to five people

using power tools less than a week to build a 250-square-foot

home out of 100 pallets.

"We've also used zip ties to build entire structures," said

Wines, "which is pretty quick, cheap and easy and doesn't re-

quire any tools."

While a house made of pallets may be considered a more

rudimentary form of transitional housing, finding shipping pal-

lets in a disaster zone—where shipments of clothing, food and

other emergency supplies arrive on pallets—shouldn’t be too dif-

ficult, the architects figured.

Not only is shelter provided by material once considered a

waste byproduct of the emergency response process, the pallets

can be recycled when they’re no longer needed. �

More information at i-beamdesign.com

PALLET HOUSEUBUNTU BLOX/RECYCLED PLASTICBLOCK HOUSE


Homelessness is a systemic issue for communities around theworld and, for decades, Los Angeles’ skid row has been home to

thousands of permanently homeless individuals.

Believing that every person deserves some form of shelter,

Tina Hovsepian, a 2009 graduate of the USC School of Architec-

ture, has designed and developed a foldable, portable, emer-

gency housing shelter based on the principles of origami—a

design she has field tested in LA’s skid row.

Cardborigami is a portable shelter that provides insulated,

water-proof, flame-retardant and recyclable space with no as-

sembly required. It expands into a shelter big enough for two

people to sleep in. The cardboard origami shelter can fold down

small enough to carry or even be placed on bus bike racks for

long distance transport.

Cardborigami’s mission is to provide temporary, transitional

shelter and connections to social services to help get people off

the streets. The vision is to bridge the gap between design and hu-

manity by attracting attention to social issues such as homeless-

ness through design.

“With funding we can finalize product development and con-

duct research by implementing case studies to study behavioral

adaptations to the shelter and success rates of those we transi-

tion of the streets,” said Tina. “We will then refine the structural

elements of the shelter to improve the ergonomics of the unit,

making sure that it provides a sufficient fit for the human body,

its movements, and its cognitive abilities.” �

More at cardborigami.org

What began as a challenge in a blog post on the Harvard BusinessReview website in August 2010—figure out a way to construct a

simple house for $300 or less—has resulted in a collection of 300

design submissions from around the world (and huge awareness

of the need for affordable housing for the extreme poor).

The idea for the $300 house project originated in a conversa-

tion between Dartmouth College Tuck School of Business profes-

sor Vijay Govindarajan and marketing consultant Christian

Sarkar. Shelter is one of humanity's most basic needs, but a house

is a luxury beyond the wildest dreams of most people in the

developed world.

The $300 House Open Design Challenge asked designers to

figure out a way to construct a simple house that could be built

on a massive scale.

More than 300 entries poured in from the global competi-

tion, which received widespread media attention.

The winners, selected by the public and a panel of judges

comprised of expert designers, architects, and thought leaders,

shared $25,000 in total prize money.

A prototyping workshop for six participants followed, as did a

trip to Haiti, where the $300 Rural House design was field tested.

Plans are underway to build the first house—designed for two

adults and four children in the Gaspard neighborhood of Fond des

Blanc, a community located 60 miles from Port-au-Prince.

The house “represents a sense of dignity” for the family and

the community, said Vijay, who also serves as director of Tuck’s

Center for Global Leadership. “It is a metaphor for a bundle of core

human values that many in our world don’t have access to.” �

More information at 300house.com

$300 RURAL HOUSE CARDBORIGAMI


“If you give a man a fish, you feed him for a day. But, teach a

man to fish and you will feed him for a lifetime.”

IADDIC Shelters of Flower Mound, Texas has taken the fa-

miliar saying to heart, creating not only a line of highly insu-

lated, low-cost, eco-friendly homes and emergency relief

shelters–but a business opportunity for local entrepreneurs to

help construct them.

IADDIC Shelters are based on a patented new approach to

housing, Structurally Insulated Housing (SIH), which relies on a

mold-making process to produce temporary shelters and/or per-

manent homes fast and at high volumes.

The iHouse in the Living Village was made in 2 hours and

can house a family of five for approximately $1,500. Measuring

10'x12'x9.5,' the structure has three windows and one door, and

its SIH foam walls are imbedded with steel piers for anchoring

to any foundation.

“It will not rot, insects will not eat it, is not harmful to pets,

people, or the environment, and can be recycled,” said Richard

Grabowski, CEO of IADDIC, & UN Rio+20 Sustainable Commu-

nity Advisor.

IADDIC has also created a turn-key business solution for

local entrepreneurs in developing countries called The iVillage,

which is shipped in containers. The housing solution contains

needed materials and supplies to make a large quantity of cus-

tomized homes, as well as licensing, training and project man-

agement to ensure the first projects are successful and the local

business thrives. �

More at iaddicshelters.com

IHOUSE

Chartered in 2009, the SMU Chapter of Habitat for Humanity will

debut a new design for a Habitat shelter in the Living Village.

Members of the chapter work closely with Highland Park

Methodist Church and Dallas Habitat for Humanity to build

quality homes for deserving, needy people locally throughout

the school year, said Gwen Carris, chapter treasurer.

During summers, several chapter members participate in in-

ternational build events in places such as Paraguay, El Salvador

and Costa Rica.

“Engineering in Humanity Week’s goals directly align with

Habitat for Humanity's goals,” said Gwen, a freshman Civil Engi-

neer and Spanish major. “We want to enable people everywhere

to live healthy, productive lives, regardless of where they are

born. Home ownership enables stability, community, and safety

for families and children, which in turn brings about an in-

crease in education and economic prospects.” �

More about Habitat for Humanity at habitat.org

SMU HABITAT FOR HUMANITY SHELTER


Japanese architect Shigeru Ban may be known best for his inno-

vative work on three continents—architectural gems such as mu-

seums, factories and houses.

But Shigeru’s pioneering Paper Tube Structures (PTS) solu-

tion for low-cost emergency housing is also gaining interna-

tional attention.

Shigeru has routinely built shelters for victims of natural

and manmade disasters since 1995, when he designed emer-

gency housing with beer-crate foundations and paper-tube walls

for survivors of the earthquake in Kobe, Japan.

In 1999, he made prototype tents with paper poles for a

refugee camp in post-genocide Rwanda. And he built a paper-

frame schoolhouse in Chengdu, China, after the 2008 earth-

quake that ravaged Sichuan Province, which The New York

Times said “typifies the architect’s gift for combining poetry

and utility.”

Most recently, the PTS technology has been deployed in

Shigeru’s homeland, following the devastating 2011 Tohoku earth-

quake and tsunami on March 11, 2011.

Not only can Shigeru’s low-cost paper tube structures be

molded quickly into load-bearing columns, bent into beautiful

trusses and quickly assembled by volunteers without heavy ma-

chinery, they can also be made waterproof and fire resistant

with varnishes, films and waterproof sponge tape.

For Engineering & Humanity Week 2012, Randy Harrill will

lead the Acugraphics team to build a representation of Shigeru’s

Paper Log House. The walls are made from 3¼-inch tubes and

held together with double-stick tape in keeping with the spirit of

Shigeru’s houses. The roof and curtains are made from used

banner material and the floor consists of cardboard pallets. �

More at shigerubanarchitects.com

David Pennington’s passion for aquaponics—the science of effi-

cient food production in a water-based system—has led to the de-

velopment of a dome shelter made mostly of waste EPS

(expanded polystyrene, commonly known by the trade name

"Styrofoam").

Aquaponics is the combination of hydroponics (growing plants

without soil) with aquaculture, the farming of aquatic organisms.

As CEO of Synergy Aquaponics LLC, Dave designs aquaponic sys-

tems in which fish waste is filtered and cleaned using plants. The

waste byproducts from aquaculture, which are otherwise serious

pollutants, are thereby turned into valuable products.

Dave has built a prototype dome structure out of waste EPS

near Poetry, Texas. He originally came up with this concept be-

cause there wasn’t an affordable insulated structure on the mar-

ket to house aquaculture species, such as tilapia. As it turns

out, the same building method can also be used to construct af-

fordable and efficient housing, which is the purpose of the Po-

etry dome.

To build his domes, Dave affixes an inflated balloon form to a

“base ring.” A center pole attached to a rotating scaffold allows

workers access to spray or hand apply Dave's EPS composite mate-

rial which, when smoothed and hardened makes a durable insu-

lated shelter or containment vessel. The dome structure—20 feet in

diameter and 14 feet tall—is very durable, fireproof, insect and im-

pact resistant, and it can also be recycled repeatedly.

Scale models of various dome designs, along with photos

and videos of the first prototype dome, will be on display in the

Living Village as will composite samples, construction machin-

ery and even a small aquaponic unit. �

More at AquaponicDave.com

THE PENNINGTON SHELTERSHIGERU BAN’S PAPER LOG HOUSE


Designed by a team of SMU senior engineering students, therefugee camp is located outside Dolo, Ado, Ethiopia and named

Tasfa, or “Hope” in Ethiopian. Members of the team from the

SMU Lyle School of Engineering are Ford Binning, Mary Cather-

ine Corey, Farhan Fazal, and Michelle Senner.

Building materials for the camp are native to Ethiopia and

require neither water nor any components that need holes bored

into the soil; the ground cover is very fine beach sand.

Designed for 56,000 refugees, the camp will be divided into

two large areas—one built for 184 communities with a popula-

tion of 27,600 people and the other with 194 communities and

29,100 people.

Both areas will feature tent shelters that are easily assem-

bled by women and children since they will comprise most of the

camp’s population.

The shelter tents, called “Rajo” tents (“Rajo” means hope in

Somali), will be made of a chicken-wire structure wrapped and

tied securely to a PVC frame by rope and PVC fittings and af-

fixed to hooks fastened to stakes attached to a sand-filled base.

Tightly secured canvas will cover the tent structure, except

in good weather when it can be rolled up to enjoy the breeze. An-

imal hides will cover the tent’s entrance.

The “Rajo” tents will replace UNHCR refugee tents, which

have been in short supply, tend to wear out faster and are often

subject to catastrophic failure from the region’s notorious and

dangerous sandstorms.

Although more expensive than UNHCR tents by $50 each,

the “Rajo” tent will house larger families more comfortably, last

twice as long and be more stable than UNHCR tents.

Other infrastructure—water supply, restroom facilities and

a laundry area—will also be provided.

Although the Senior Design Project is an exercise, the need

for new refugee camps in Ethiopia, sadly, is true. �

More about the Lyle School of Engineering at smu.edu/lyle

In the Rio Grande Valley of Texas, residents of Cameron Countyand its largest city, Brownsville, have seen more than their fair

share of hurricanes and the havoc they leave behind.

The Rapido shelter prototype, debuting for the first time in

the Living Village during Engineering & Humanity Week, seeks

to help South Texas residents not only get back into a shelter,

but help them create an attractive, permanent home.

bcWORKSHOP, which provided the commissary and a

portable gallery at last year’s inaugural Engineering & Human-

ity Week, is developing the Rapido prototype as part of the state

of Texas’ Natural Disaster Housing Reconstruction Plan, which

seeks to test the feasibility of rapidly deployed replacement

housing for victims of federally-declared natural disasters.

Until Engineering & Humanity Week, Rapido prototypes

have been confined to designs on paper. But the prototype de-

signs will come alive in the Living Village as bcWORKSHOP will

experiment with specific design elements.

During Engineering & Humanity Week, bcWORKSHOP de-

signers will be seeking feedback from SMU students and visitors

to help them incrementally improve the project’s design, con-

struction process, deployment method, organizational require-

ments, and performance.

In the near future, Rapido shelters will actually be con-

structed as prototype homes for victims of previous natural dis-

asters in Cameron County as part of the feasibility testing for

delivering rapidly deployed replacement housing. bcWORKSHOP

designers have already held community meetings with county

residents to seek their input on the prototypes.

“bcWORKSHOP’S disaster housing reconstruction strategy

engages residents throughout and contributes to the sustain-

able growth of place by enabling communities to recover faster

and allowing families to rebuild stronger,” said Dallas architect

Brent Brown and founding director of bcWORKSHOP. �

More at bcworkshop.org

BCWORKSHOP’S RAPIDO PROTOTYPE“RAJO” SHELTER AT TASFA

Photo courtesy of the UN


A course on cultural anthropology can be

quite academic, but SMU students in Dr.

Faith Nibbs’ ANTH 2301 Introduction to

Cultural Anthropology class have created

several life-changing options that can be

implemented today for refugees living in

camps. Moved by the transient chal-

lenges of the people who wanted to con-

tinue their traditions, lifelong trades and

cultural identities despite their plight,

the students demonstrated what they had

learned through displays representing

two sets of refugees in Africa and Asia.

The students’ focused on cultural sus-

tainability after hearing the stories of

refugee camps occupied by the Burundi

and Bhutanese people. Burundi is an

eastern African country, bordering

Rwanda, populated by the Hutu and Tutsi

farmers, both of whom have fled to es-

cape ethnic persecution and violence

brought on by civil war. The Bhutanese

are Nepalese in origin, but have lived as

immigrants in southern Asia for cen-

turies due to inter-cultural and religious

discrimination.

Recognizing the need for refugees to

continue their important cultural prac-

tices to contribute some sort of normalcy

to their lives while in a refugee camp, the

students turned ideas into actual tools

and material solutions that can be

adapted by UNHCR. A portable pagoda

temple makes continuing salient reli-

gious traditions possible due to a $49

pop-up tent. A 4-by-6 foot lightweight and

mobile garden plot by each camp tent al-

lows agricultural groups to continue

growing vegetables, and can fold up and

be reused in another location when a

camp is emptied. Material for an open

lean-to space creates a cultural preserva-

tion site so that the groups’ youth can

learn of their heritage. Students also cre-

ated a camp employment program where

refugees can find meaningful work by

sharing in the tasks it takes to run the

camps. Additionally, a computer program mod-

eled after FEMA’s system to reunite family

members after a crisis gives refugees the abil-

ity to find missing relatives.

The course—headed by Dr. Nibbs and

her teaching assistant, Zasha Russell—

got its sparks of inspiration from visits

to the class by refugees from the two

groups who are now living in the U.S.

“Camp workers are just thinking about

how we can survive,” said one former Burundi

refugee, “but in these crises, we are also think-

ing, ‘How is our culture going to survive?’” The

students of Dr. Nibbs’ class hope that by apply-

ing the principles of cultural anthropology,

they can help solve some of these dilemmas. �

SHELTER AND CULTURAL SUSTAINABILITY FOR REFUGEES


Jeffrey Ball, until recently The Wall Street Journal’s environment editor, is scholar-in-

residence at Stanford University’s Steyer-Taylor Center for Energy Policy and Finance.

Ball spent more than a decade at the Journal writing about energy and the environ-

ment, in particular about the economic viability of changing the way the world con-

sumes fossil fuels. He covered the auto industry for the Journal out of its Detroit

bureau, and the oil industry from the paper’s Dallas bureau. In 2009, he wrote a Journal

column called Power Shift, which won an award from the National Press Foundation for

its coverage of the changing energy and environmental landscape. He spent most of

2010 covering the Deepwater

Horizon oil spill, focusing on

questions about the spill’s

environmental effect.

Also at the Journal, Ball

created and was the found-

ing editor of Environmental

Capital, a blog on energy and

the environment. He helped conceive, and was a host and moderator of, ECO:nomics, an

annual conference on energy and the environment that brings together chief execu-

tives, policymakers, and other leaders in the field. In addition, Ball helped host the

Journal’s CEO Council, a group of global chief executives who meet annually in Wash-

ington to discuss policy issues and make recommendations for federal action. �

“Two roads diverged in a wood, and I — I took the one less traveled by, and that has made all the difference.”

-ROBERT FROST

SPEAKER PROFILE: JEFFREY BALL

Greg Asbed is a Co-Founder of the Coalition of Immokalee Workers (CIW), a worker-based

human rights organization. He works with farmworkers and their student, labor, and reli-

gious allies to organize the national Campaign for Fair Food, a worker-based approach to cor-

porate accountability in the agricultural industry. He coordinates the CIW's negotiating team

in talks with food industry leaders, negotiating "Fair Food" agreements with multi-billion-dol-

lar retail food corporations, including McDonald's, Subway, Sodexo, Whole Foods, and Trader

Joe's. He is currently leading the effort to develop new farm labor standards in collaboration

with leaders of the Florida tomato industry through ongoing implementation of the CIW's

Fair Food Code of Conduct. He

is a member of the team that

developed and established the

Fair Food Standards Council,

the third-party monitoring or-

ganization that ensures com-

pliance with the code through

audits and complaint investi-

gation and resolution. Greg is one of the authors featured in the textbook Bringing Human

Rights Home: Portraits of the Movement. He has an M.A. in International Economics and So-

cial Change and Development from Johns Hopkins and is fluent in English, Spanish, and Hait-

ian Creole. He has also spent the past 15 seasons harvesting watermelons in the states of

Florida, Georgia, Missouri, and Maryland. �

“The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends towards justice.”

-MARTIN LUTHER KING, JR.

SPEAKER PROFILE: GREG ASBED


Dr. Alexander Betts is University Lecturer (Associate Professor) in Refugee and Forced

Migration Studies in the Department of International Development, at the University

of Oxford, where he was previously the Hedley Bull Research Fellow in International

Relations. He has also been Director of the MacArthur Foundation-funded Global Mi-

gration Governance Project and a Senior Researcher at the Global Economic Gover-

nance Programme. His research focuses on the international politics of asylum and

migration, with a geographical focus on Sub-Saharan Africa.

Alex is author or editor of numerous books, including Forced Migration and Global Poli-

tics, Protection by Persuasion:

International Cooperation in

the Refugee Regime, Global Mi-

gration Governance, Refugees

in International Relations

(with Gil Loescher), and

UNHCR: The Politics and Prac-

tice of Refugee Protection (with

Gil Loescher and James Milner). He has worked for The Office of the United Nations High

Commissioner for Refugees and as a consultant to the Council of Europe, the International

Organization for Migration, the United Nations Development Programme, and the Common-

wealth Secretariat. His work has been funded by, amongst others, the MacArthur Foundation,

the Leverhulme Trust, and the Economic and Social Research Council. He has held teaching

and research positions at Stanford University and the Universite Libre de Bruxelles. �

“It is necessary to help others, not only in our prayers, but in our daily lives. If we find we cannot help others, the least we can do is to desist from harming them.”

-DALAI LAMA

SPEAKER PROFILE: ALEX BETTS

Paula Broadwell is a research associate at Harvard University's Center for Public Leader-

ship and a Ph.D. candidate in the Department of War Studies at King's College London.

She spent much of the past year in Afghanistan as an embedded author, building upon

her previous two-year pursuit of a doctoral dissertation: a study in transformational

leadership and organizational innovation influenced by U.S. Army General David

Petraeus. Her work culminated in the book, All In: The Education of General David

Petraeus (with Vernon Loeb), which examine Petraeus’s career, his intellectual develop-

ment as a military officer, and his impact on the U.S. military.

Broadwell's passion for leadership and security policy stems from her background in the

U.S. military and her academic pursuits. She graduated with academic and leadership hon-

ors from the United States Military Academy at West Point. She has lived, worked, or traveled

in over 60 countries during more than 15 years of military service and work in geopolitical

analysis and counterterrorism and counterinsurgency operations. She has completed assign-

ments with the U.S. intelligence community, U.S. Special Operations Command and an FBI

Joint Terrorism Task Force. She remains active in international women's counter-terrorism,

peacekeeping, and conflict resolution efforts as well as veteran support organizations, espe-

cially the fitness-oriented Team Red White and Blue. �

SPEAKER PROFILE: PAULA BROADWELL


Vijay Govindarajan is widely regarded as one of the world’s leading experts on strategy

and innovation. He is the Earl C. Daum 1924 Professor of International Business at the

Tuck School of Business at Dartmouth College. He was the first Professor in Residence

and Chief Innovation Consultant at General Electric. He worked with GE’s CEO Jeff Im-

melt to write “How GE is Disrupting Itself”, the Harvard Business Review article that

pioneered the concept of reverse innovation – any innovation that is adopted first in

the developing world. Harvard Business Review rated reverse innovation as one of the

ten big ideas of the decade.

VG works with CEOs and

top management teams in

Global Fortune 500 firms to

discuss, challenge, and esca-

late their thinking about

strategy. He has worked with

more than 25% of the For-

tune 500 corporations in-

cluding: Boeing, Coca-Cola, Colgate, Deere, FedEx, GE, Hewlett-Packard, IBM, J.P.

Morgan Chase, Johnson & Johnson, New York Times, Procter & Gamble, Sony, and Wal-

Mart. He is a regular keynote speaker in CEO Forums and major conferences including

the World Innovation Forum, BusinessWeek CEO Forum, World Business Forum, and

World Economic Forum at Davos. �

“Be ashamed to die until you have won some victory for humanity.”

-HORACE MANN

SPEAKER PROFILE: VIJAY GOVINDARAJAN

Luciano Calestini was born in Sydney, Australia to a New Zealand mother and an Italian

father. He spent his childhood equally between those three countries, completing his

education in Australia before accepting a short-term mission to southern Sudan in the

late 1990s to join the famine response. Thirteen years later, the three-month mission

continues and since Sudan, Luciano has lived and worked in East Timor (in the after-

math of the 1999 referendum), Kosovo (following the 1999 NATO intervention),

Afghanistan (in the period subsequent to the 9/11 attacks), the eastern Democratic Re-

public of Congo, and three years in Iraq. He has also been deployed on several short-

term assignments to support

emergency response, includ-

ing Haiti, at the time of the

cholera outbreak, and Libya,

in the period of the fall of the

Gaddhafi regime.

Since April 2010, he has

been based once more in

Kosovo where he will spend at least three years working with the UNICEF team to help

secure the futures of Kosovo's young people. Luciano graduated in International Rela-

tions from the University of Sydney and has a Masters of International Development

from RMIT University in Melbourne. He has just begun a second masters, this time in

Public Policy Management with the University of York in the UK. �

“Only those who will risk going too far can possibly find out how far one can go.”

-T.S. ELIOT

SPEAKER PROFILE: LUCIANO CALESTINI


One of the first women photographers to work for National Geographic, Annie Griffithshas photographed on every continent during her illustrious career. She has worked on

dozens of magazine and book projects for the Society, including stories on Lawrence of

Arabia, Baja California, Galilee, Petra, Sydney, New Zealand, and Jerusalem.

In addition to her magazine work, Annie is deeply committed to photographing for

aid organizations around the world. She is the Executive Director of Ripple Effect Im-

ages, a collective of photographers who document the programs that are empowering

women and girls in the developing world, especially as they deal with the devastating

effects of climate change.

With author Barbara

Kingsolver, she produced

Last Stand: America’s Virgin

Lands, a book celebrating

the last pristine wilderness

in North America. Proceeds

from the book have raised

more than a quarter of a million dollars for grassroots land conservation. In 2008,

Annie published A Camera, Two Kids and a Camel, a photo memoir about balance, and

the joy of creating a meaningful life. In 2010, she published Simply Beautiful Photo-

graphs, which was named the top photo/art book of the year by Amazon and by Barnes

and Noble. Annie is currently at work on three new books. �

“Ring the bells that still can ring. Forget your perfect offering. There is a crack in everything.

That's how the light gets in.”-LEONARD COHEN, ANTHEM

SPEAKER PROFILE: ANNIE GRIFFITHS

Carl Hodges is Founder and Chairman of The Seawater Foundation which uses seawater,

photosynthesis and human intelligence to green coastal deserts, create communities,

generate wealth and abundance, and provide immediate and long-lasting planetary eco-

logical balance. Carl is an internationally known scientist and a generator of new ideas.

An atmospheric physicist and mathematician, the result of his research was seen in

Seawater Farms Eritrea (SFE), an integrated agricultural and aquacultural farm in Er-

itrea, Africa. Leading to this achievement, has been a history of controlled environment

agriculture in the Middle East and the Americas, the Land Pavilion at EPCOT Center at

Walt Disney World in

Florida, scientific consultant

on Biosphere 2 and many as-

sociations with corporations

such as Coca Cola, Disney,

Kraft Foods, W.R. Grace, and

Lufthansa.

Through his leadership, The

Seawater Foundation has designed Integrated Seawater Agriculture Systems (ISAS) in,

Mexico, Egypt, Oman, and the U.S. and has developed a number of salt–tolerant crops

that could replace wheat, rice, and soybeans. His work has been acknowledged in publi-

cations worldwide. Over 500 articles have been written about Carl and his work over

the years, from TIME magazine to the Wall Street Journal and Vanity Fair. �

“…pray that the road is long, full of adventure, full of knowledge….”

-FROM THE POEM JOURNEY TO ITHACA BY C. P. CAVAFY

SPEAKER PROFILE: CARL HODGES


Hunter Hunt is President and CEO of Hunt Consolidated Energy, the holding company for

Hunt Oil Company, Hunt Refining Company, and Hunt Power. Hunt Oil Company was

founded in 1934 and is one of the largest privately-owned energy companies in the

world. Hunt Power was established in 1998 to seek opportunities in the utility industry.

Hunt Power created Sharyland Utilities, L.P., a Texas-based transmission and distribu-

tion electric utility, which was the first new regulated electric utility created in the U.S.

in over 30 years. Sharyland Utilities is currently developing a 300-mile electric trans-

mission project to bring wind power from the Texas Panhandle into major metropolitan

areas. Prior to joining Hunt Consolidated, Hunter worked with Morgan Stanley, both in

corporate finance and com-

modity trading. Hunter gradu-

ated from SMU summa cum

laude with degrees in econom-

ics and political science.

At SMU, Hunter serves

the Engineering School’s Ex-

ecutive Board, the John Good-

win Tower Center for Political Studies, and the 21st Century Council, which he chaired.

He co-founded the Hunter and Stephanie Hunt Institute for Engineering and Humanity

and serves as Vice Chair of the Board of Directors for the All Stars Project, a nationwide

charity based in New York that focuses on developing underprivileged youth through

performance and career training.

SPEAKER PROFILE: HUNTER AND STEPHANIE HUNT

Stephanie Hunt co-founded the Hunt Institute for Engineering and Humanity within

SMU’s Lyle School of Engineering. The Hunt Institute is dedicated to bringing technol-

ogy-driven solutions to improve the lives of those in extreme poverty, and to developing

a new generation of engineers who will apply their talents to the challenges facing the

global poor. Stephanie currently serves on the boards of the USA for UNHCR (the UN

Agency for Refugees); the Human Rights Initia-

tive of North Texas (providing free legal repre-

sentation and social services to asylum seekers);

and The da Vinci School, which specializing in

early childhood education. Stephanie is a past

chair of the AFI DALLAS International Film Fes-

tival and continues her support of film preserva-

tion through the American Film Institute in Los

Angeles. She studied at Sotheby's in London and subsequently worked in their Dallas

office. Two years later, she joined the energy research group of the investment bank

Wasserstein Perella. �

HumanityUnbound_Layout 1 4/4/12 7:18 PM Page 66

“If you think you are too small to make a difference, , try sleeping with a mosquito.”

- DALAI LAMA

“Success consists of going from failure

- WINSTON CHURCHILL

to failure without loss of enthusiasm.”


Keith Lebowitz is a two-time Emmy Award winning journalist for Outstanding Sports Re-

porting who has served as a Main Anchor for Fox Sports Net, NBC, CBS, and other tele-

vision networks and cable outlets. He also produced, wrote, and hosted “Season of

Speed,” an Emmy Award-winning, 11-hour-long NASCAR show. Keith also served as Vice

President of Marketing for Oryon Technologies, an innovative company that provided

an electroluminescent light solution that was bendable, flexible and washable. The

company lit the costumes for the Disney Motion Picture Tron Legacy. Most recently, he

helped create a television show entitled Eat More Chocolate.

Throughout his career, Keith has provided voiceovers and commercial talent for

some of the largest companies in the world including Wal-Mart, Energizer, Fuji-Film,

Castrol, and Dean Foods. He hosted Fox Sports’ Afternoons with Keith Lebowitz on Fox

Sports Radio 1190 and has covered major sporting events, including several Super

Bowls, NBA finals, Stanley Cup finals, World Series’, PGA Tour events, and World Cup

Soccer. While anchoring at Fox Sports Southwest, he was part of a team of anchors and

reporters that won a Katie Award for Best in Texas. �

SPEAKER PROFILE: KEITH LEBOWITZ

Eva Longoria is an actress best known for her role as Gabriel Solis on the hit show Des-

perate Housewives. In addition to acting, Eva produced the National Council of La

Raza’s ALMA awards, Harvest, a documentary about the plight of child farm workers

in the U.S., and Latinos Living the American Dream, a film documenting the contribu-

tions of Latinos in America.

Eva is an active philanthropist. She founded the Eva Longoria Foundation in 2012

to help Latinas build better futures through education and entrepreneurship. She also

co-founded Eva’s Heroes, a San Antonio non-profit that benefits developmentally dis-

abled children; and she serves as a spokesperson for Padres Contra el Cancer, an organ-

ization supporting Latino families who have children with cancer. Additionally, Eva

sits on the boards of the Mexican American Legal Defense Fund and LA Plaza de Cul-

tura y Artes. She has supported United Farm Workers and the Dolores Huerta Founda-

tion, among others and has received numerous awards for her philanthropy from

organizations such as the Congressional Hispanic Caucus Institute, the National His-

pania Leadership Institute, and The National Civil Rights Museum.

In 2011, Eva was appointed by President Obama to the commission on the National

Museum of the American Latin. Today, she serves as a National Co-Chair for President

Obama’s 2012 re-election campaign. �

SPEAKER PROFILE: EVA LONGORIA

HumanityUnbound_Layout 1 4/4/12 7:18 PM Page 67

corr.indd 1 4/5/12 11:43 AM


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Physicist Amory Lovins is Co-founder, Chairman, and Chief Scientist of Rocky Mountain

Institute (www.rmi.org), an independent, non-profit, think-and-do tank that drives the

efficient and restorative use of resources. An advisor to major firms and governments

in over 50 countries for the past four decades, he authored 31 books—his most recent is

the acclaimed Reinventing Fire: Bold Business Solutions for the New Energy Era. In

2009, Time named him one of the world’s 100 most influential people, and Foreign Pol-

icy selected him as one of the 100 top global thinkers.

Educated at Harvard and Oxford, he is a former Oxford don, an honorary U.S. archi-

tect, a Swedish engineering academician, a member of the National Petroleum Council,

and a Professor of Practice at the Naval Postgraduate School. He has taught at nine

other universities, most recently Stanford University’s School of Engineering.

Amory is the recipient of the Blue Planet, Volvo, Zayed, Onassis, Nissan, Shingo, and

Mitchell Prizes, MacArthur and Ashoka Fellowships, 11 honorary doctorates, and the

Heinz, Lindbergh, Right Livelihood, National Design, and World Technology Awards.

Amory co-authored the business classic Natural Capitalism. Other significant

works include Small Is Profitable: The Hidden Economic Benefits of Making Electrical

Resources the Right Size and the Pentagon-co-sponsored Winning the Oil Endgame. �

SPEAKER PROFILE: AMORY LOVINS

Casius Pealer is Principal of Oystertree Consulting L3C, a mission-driven limited liability

corporation that provides real estate advisory services focusing on affordable housing. Oys-

tertree specializes in efforts to use green building as a tool to achieve long-term affordable

housing solutions. TexEnergy and U.S. Eco Logic in Dallas, TX are key clients with deep ex-

pertise in energy efficiency and practical solutions to performance and verification.

Trained as an architect and a real estate attorney, Casius has 15 years of commu-

nity development experience, including five years as legal counsel for public housing

authorities across the country implementing mixed-finance redevelopment projects.

Casius served as the first Di-

rector of Affordable Housing

at the U.S. Green Building

Council and is a Senior Sus-

tainable Building Advisor for

the Affordable Housing Insti-

tute in Boston, MA.

Casius is also an Adjunct

Lecturer in Tulane University's Master of Sustainable Real Estate Development

(MSRED) program in New Orleans, LA. He has been published in the ABA Journal of

Affordable Housing and Community Development Law, the AIA Journal of Architecture,

and Architectural Record in addition to speaking regularly at professional conferences

nationwide. Casius holds a Masters in Architecture from the Tulane School of Architec-

ture and a J.D. from the University of Michigan Law School. �

“You can't ask poor people to save things that rich people are exploiting.”

-PAUL HAWKEN

SPEAKER PROFILE: CASIUS PEALER


Sanjay Rawal is Founder of the Illumine Group, representing corporations, philanthro-

pists and NGOs in emerging markets, is a board member of the Voss Foundation, and is

a documentary film maker. He has more than a decade of experience in managing cor-

porate social responsibility, philanthropic and government endeavors both domesti-

cally and abroad. He has a background in agriculture and is Vice President of

California Hybrids, his father's specialty tomato and pepper breeding company.

Sanjay was introduced to film as a consultant to the producers on the award-win-

ning doc Pray the Devil Back to Hell, which chronicled the peace movement led by 2011

Nobel Peace Prize winner

Leymah Gbowee. Sanjay’s

first short doc, Ocean Monk,

won Best Short Documen-

tary Film (FestivalsOnline) at

the 2010 St Louis Intl Film

Festival. His second film,

Challenging Impossibility,

about the weightlifting exploits of spiritual teacher Sri Chinmoy, premiered at the 2011

Tribeca Film Festival and has played at 75 festivals since then, winning best short docu-

mentary film at the Atlanta Shortsfest, Duke City DocFest and DocMiami.

Sanjay is currently directing a film on farm labor entitled Food Chain, with an an-

ticipated release date of fall 2012. �

“Gratitude is receptivity, the receptivity that acknowledgesothers' gifts, others' love and concern. Each time we

express gratitude, we expand our hearts.”-SRI CHINMOY

SPEAKER PROFILE: SANJAY RAWAL

Gerardo Reyes-Chavez has worked in the fields since age 11, first as a peasant farmer in

Zacatecas, Mexico, and then in the fields of Florida picking oranges, tomatoes, and wa-

termelon. He joined the Coalition of Immokalee Workers (CIW) shortly after his arrival

in the United States in 2000, when his fellow farm worker roommates, who had previ-

ously escaped a violent slavery operation hidden in the swamp south of Immokalee, FL,

invited him to come to the CIW’s Wednesday evening community meetings. Since then

Gerardo has been a key leader of the CIW, his work focusing both at the community

level, mobilizing the Immokalee community around national actions in the CIW’s Cam-

paign for Fair Food, and more broadly at the consumer level across the country, raising

awareness in support of the Campaign through presentations, workshops, and

speeches. Gerardo has helped investigate several modern-day slavery operations, in-

cluding going undercover to work on tomato farms and interviewing workers who have

escaped from violent, brutal operations. He is today a key member of the CIW’s negoti-

ating team in talks with retail food and tomato industry leaders and has been instru-

mental in forging many of the CIW’s Fair Food agreements. Gerardo also helps to run

Radio Conciencia, the low-power community radio station through which the CIW is

creating a space to share the diversity of cultures, languages, and experiences that

make up Immokalee. �

SPEAKER PROFILE: GERARDO REYES-CHAVEZ


Jack Sinclair is executive vice president of the grocery division for Walmart Stores Divi-

sion. He has responsibility for overall grocery strategy for Wal-Mart Stores U.S. In addi-

tion, he works to integrate planning, category management, store experience, and

private brand development into the grocery business unit. Jack has worked in the retail

food business since 1982. He began his career as a trainee at Shoppers’ Paradise in the

United Kingdom. He has also worked for Tesco and Safeway PLC, where he eventually

served on the board of directors that lead the merger of Safeway PLC and Morrison’s.

He has served as the European development director for SB Capital, partnering with

banks, private financiers, and private equity houses to assess, advise and implement

strategic retail acquisitions. He joined Wal-Mart from McCurrach, a U.K.-based field

merchandising business. Sinclair earned a bachelor's degree in economics and market-

ing from the University of Strathclyde, Glasgow, Scotland.

SPEAKER PROFILE: JACK SINCLAIR

Sonal Shah is a fellow with the Tides Foundation focusing on bringing capital markets to

the social sector and leveraging technology and innovation to solve social problems. This

entrepreneur and innovator served as the Deputy Assistant to the President and Director

of the first White House Office of Social Innovation and Civic Participation. Sonal also

served on President Obama's Transition Board overseeing and leading the Technology, In-

novation, Government Reform group in setting up the government. Before joining the

White House, she led Google’s global development initiatives for its philanthropy,

www.Google.org, leveraging technology and information to help the world’s poor. Prior to

Google, Sonal was a Vice President at Goldman Sachs Inc. where she worked with the

Chairman and CEO to develop and manage the firm’s environmental strategy.

Sonal has also started and managed non-profits. She is co-founder of Indicorps, an

international non-profit which offers fellowships for the Indian diaspora around the

world. Sonal also helped set up the Center for Global Development, a leading develop-

ment think tank in Washington, D.C. She worked at the Center for American Progress

and also as an economist at the Department of Treasury, where she directed the office

for African Nations, worked on the Asian Financial Crisis, and assisted in the post-con-

flict development in Bosnia and Kosovo. �

SPEAKER PROFILE: SONAL SHAH


Barry is a close friend of Hugh Jackman. Hugh’s visit to Ethiopia and his friendship with

Dukale, a local coffee farmer, inspired the vision for Laughing Man Coffee & Tea. The

two came together on this idea in a moment of synchronicity. While attending A Street

Car Named Desire in Brooklyn, Barry (a 25-year veteran in the coffee and restaurant

business) mentioned to Hugh that he and his son, David, were getting back into the cof-

fee business. Returning from Ethiopia and wanting to tell Dukale's Story, Hugh asked

Barry if he wanted a partner.

David was born and raised in New York City. He left his job as a criminal prosecutor in

Brooklyn to return to his entrepreneurial roots and run the day-to-day business of

Laughing Man. His wide array of experience in marketing, sales, law, writing, travel

and his sincere interest in meeting and being of help to others provides a solid founda-

tion from which to lead Laughing Man. He is proud and honored to be part of the

Laughing Man team and join the good company of other businesses that believe com-

merce and community can grow together for the benefit of all. �

SPEAKER PROFILE: BARRY AND DAVID STEINGARD

Cynthia Smith serves as Cooper-Hewitt National Design Museum’s Curator of Socially Re-

sponsible Design. Trained as an industrial designer, she led multidisciplinary planning

and design projects for cultural institutions for over a decade. After earning a graduate

degree at Harvard University’s Kennedy School of Government, she joined Cooper-He-

witt where she integrates her work experience with her advocacy and activism for

human rights and social justice issues.

Cynthia co-authored The Politics of Genocide: U.S. Rhetoric vs. Inaction in Dafur for

the Kennedy School Review. She co-curated the 2010 National Design Triennial: Why

Design Now? and curated both the 2007 Design for the Other 90% exhibition and the

2011 Design with the Other 90%: CITIES. This most recent exhibit has been displayed at

the United Nations Headquarters and has taken her around the world researching in-

formal settlements in emerging and developing economies. Named a “20/20 New Pio-

neer” by Icon design magazine and one of Metropolis magazine’s “next generation of

young curators”, Cynthia has served on international design juries and lectured widely

on socially responsible design. �

SPEAKER PROFILE: CYNTHIA SMITH

Imagine the year 2050

Imagine the U.S. economy has grown 158%

Imagine that the nation thrives without oil, no coal, and no nuclear energy.

IMAGINE…REINVENTING FIRE

Adapted from Reinventing Fire by Amory Lovins (http://rmi.org/rfexecutivesummary)


Digging up and burning the deposits ofancient sunlight stored eons ago inprimeval swamps has transformed humanexistence and made industrial and urbancivilization possible. However, those

roughly four cubic miles of fossil fuels

every year are no longer the only, best, or

even cheapest way to sustain and expand

the global economy—whether or not we

count fossil fuels’ hidden costs.

Those “external” costs, paid not at

the fuel pump or electric meter but in our

taxes, wealth, and health … are dis-

turbingly large. Tens of billions of tax-

payer dollars each year subsidize

America’s fossil fuels, and even more flow

to the systems that burn those fuels, dis-

torting market choices by making the

fuels look far cheaper than they really

are. But the biggest hidden costs are eco-nomic and military.

America’s seemingly two-billion-dol-

lar-a-day oil habit actually costs upwards

of three times that much—six billion dol-lars a day, or a sixth of GDP. That’s due to

three kinds of hidden costs, each about a

half-trillion dollars per year: the macro-

economic costs of oil dependence, the mi-

croeconomic costs of oil-price volatility,

and the military costs of forces whose pri-

mary mission is intervention in the Per-

sian Gulf. Those military costs are about

ten times what we pay to buy oil from the

Persian Gulf, and rival total defense

spending at the height of the Cold War.

Any costs to health, safety, environ-

ment, security of energy supply, world sta-

bility and peace, or national independence

or reputation are extra. Coal, too, has hid-

den costs, chiefly to health, of about $180–

530 billion per year, and natural gas had

lesser but nontrivial externalities even be-

fore shale-gas “fracking” emerged.

All fossil fuels, to varying degrees,also incur climate risks that society’sleading professional risk managers—reinsurers and the military—warn willcost us dearly. And even if fossil fuels had

no hidden costs, they are all finite, with

extraction peaking typically in this gen-

eration. Yet “peak oil” is now emerging in

demand before supply. Thus industrial-

ized countries’ total oil use peaked in

2005, U.S. gasoline use in 2007. Even U.S.

coal use peaked in 2005, and in 2005–10,

coal lost 12% of its share of U.S. electrical

services (95% of its market) to natural

gas, efficiency, and renewables. This is

not because these fuels’ hidden costs

have been properly internalized yet into

their market prices, but rather because

those market prices today are too high

and volatile to sustain sales against ris-

ing competition.

Making a dollar of U.S. GDP in 2009

took 60% less oil, 50% less energy, 63%less directly burned natural gas, and 20%less electricity than it did in 1975, be-

cause more efficient use and alternative

supplies have become cheaper and better

than the fossil fuels they’ve displaced. Yet

wringing far more work from our energy

is only getting started, and is becoming

an ever bigger and cheaper resource, be-

cause its technologies, designs, and deliv-

ery methods are improving faster than

they’re so far being adopted.

Many other countries have lately

pulled ahead of the United States in cap-

turing the burgeoning potential for

greater energy productivity and more

durable and benign supplies. During

1980–2009, for example, the Danish econ-

omy grew by two-thirds, while energy use

returned to its 1980 level and carbon

emissions fell 21%. Now the conservativeDanish government has adopted a virtu-ally self-financing strategy to get com-pletely off fossil fuels by 2050 by furtherboosting efficiency and switching to re-newables (already 36% of electric genera-

tion, which is the most reliable and

among the cheapest pretax in Europe).

Why? To strengthen Denmark’s economyand national security. Europe as a whole

is going in the same direction, led by Ger-

many, and now Japan and China are mov-

ing that way. What could the U.S. do?

In 2010, the United States (excluding

non-combustion uses as raw materials)

used 93 quadrillion BTU of primary en-ergy, four-fifths of it fossil fuels. Official

projections show this growing to 117

quads in 2050. But delivering those same

services with less energy, more produc-

tively used, could shrink 2050 usage to 71

quads, eliminate the need for oil, coal, nu-

clear energy, and one-third of the natural

gas, and save $5 trillion in net-present-

valued cost. As a better-than-free byprod-

uct of efficient use and a continued shift

to renewable supplies, fossil carbon emis-

sions would also shrink by 82–86% below

their 2000 levels despite the assumed

2.58-fold bigger economy than in 2010.

Natural gas saved through more-effi-cient buildings and factories could be re-allocated to cleaner, cheaper, and moreefficient combined-heat-and-power in in-dustry (though we conservatively assume

none in buildings), to displacing oil and

coal in buildings and factories, and option-

ally to fueling trucks. America’s energy

supply in 2050 would end up roughly three-

fourths renewable and one-fourth natural

gas (the same fraction as in 2010, but of a

smaller total—one-fourth less primary en-

ergy and one-third less delivered energy).

The remaining gas use, which is probably

conservatively high, could phase out over a

few decades after 2050. Meanwhile, the

United States could take advantage of new

shale-gas resources if their many uncer-

tainties turned out well, but not be caught

short if they didn’t. Biomass would supply

about six times more energy in 2050 than

in 2010—two-thirds from waste streams

(chiefly in industry) and one-third from cel-

lulosic and algal feedstocks whose produc-

tion wouldn’t interfere with food

production nor harm soil or climate. Liquid

biofuels needed for transportation would

be equivalent to less than one-sixth today’s

total U.S. oil consumption.

To shrink U.S. energy use while GDPgrows 158% is not a fantasy; in nine of



the 36 years through 2009, the U.S. econ-

omy actually did raise energy productiv-

ity faster than GDP grew… Just as whale-oil

suppliers ran out of customers in the

1850s before they ran out of whales, oil

and coal are becoming uncompetitive even

at low prices before they become unavail-

able even at high prices. It’s about $5 tril-

lion cheaper, and smarter in other ways,

not to keep on burning them, even if their

hidden costs were worth zero.

Realizing this potential does not re-

quire business to take a hit or suffer a

loss. On the contrary, Reinventing Fire ap-

plies normal rate-of-return requirements

in each sector, so each proposed change

must earn at least a 12%/y real return in

industry, 7% in buildings, and 5.7% in

electricity, and new autos must repay any

higher price within three years. Actually,

the suggested investment portfolio con-

siderably outperforms these hurdle rates:

the Reinventing Fire strategy would

achieve Internal Rates of Return averag-ing 33% in buildings, 21% in industry, 17%in transportation, and 14% across all sec-tors—including making the entire electric-

ity system clean, secure, reliable, resilient,

flexible, and at least 80% renewable.

These are among the highest and least

risky returns in the whole economy.

Overall, a $4.5-trillion extra invest-ment would save $9.5 trillion, for a 2010-

net-present-valued saving of $5 trillion

during 2010–2050, and many key risks to

individual business sectors, the whole

economy, and national security would be

mitigated or altogether abated. Counting

the important hidden benefits and costs

(to health, productivity, security, etc.) not

included in these figures would make the

economic case even stronger.

The net effect of the Reinventing Fire

transition on jobs would be at worst neu-

tral and probably significantly positive,

again without counting potentially domi-

nant gains in competitive advantage that

could stabilize or reverse the decline of

some major U.S. industries... This fits the

latest data in the marketplace: more

Americans now work in renewable energy

installation or in energy efficiency instal-

lation than in the entire coal industry, for

example. Those new jobs, too, are widely

distributed by occupation and location,

are durable, and can’t be moved offshore.

Countries with more coherent transi-

tional policies are already further ahead.

Denmark’s relative economic health issubstantially driven by its world-class en-ergy-technology exports (chiefly wind-

power) and its lower energy imports and

costs. Germany, which has staked its en-

ergy future on an efficiency-and-renew-

ables transition, already has fuller

employment than it did before the Great

Recession. In essence, Germany pays its

own engineers, manufacturers, and in-

stallers rather than buying natural gas

from Russia, and that investment shift is

already paying off.

Incumbent industries that extract,

supply, and use fossil fuels are a major

force. They must adapt to these new con-

ditions and requirements just as they al-

ways have to many kinds of change. But

change need not harm their strategic

prospects. Hydro carbons are generally

worth more as a source of hydrogen and

organic molecules than as a fuel. Hydro-

carbon and electricity companies have

important assets, capabilities, and skills

whose judicious deployment will be vital

to a successful energy transition. Moving

beyond oil and coal can harness those ad-

vantages in ways that sustain profits, di-

versify options, and manage risks. The

firms that do this first should beat the

laggards. This is not merely a matter of

normal domestic industrial evolution but

of global revolution, because extraordi-

nary competition from abroad—most of

all from China and Europe, but rapidly

spreading around the globe—leaves Amer-

ican industries little choice…

The key barrier to success is not in-adequate technologies but tardy adoption.The rate of implementation required to

reach Reinventing Fire’s ambitious goals

is challenging but manageable—just as it

was in 1977–85, when the U.S. cut its oil

intensity at an average rate of 5.2%/y. Our

analysis assumes that on average, the en-

tire United States will ramp up over

decades to the rates of efficiency and re-

newables adoption that the most atten-

tive states have already achieved.

Whatever exists is possible. What’s

needed is a coherent and compelling vi-

sion, leadership at all levels (but not nec-

essarily from Congress, whose action is

not actually required for Reinventing

Fire), and the courage to capture the op-

portunities now before each of us. Their

value, feasibility, and practical uptake

can thrive in our immensely diverse and

politically fractious society if we focus on

outcomes, not motives—if we simply do

what makes sense and makes money,

without having to agree on why it’s impor-

tant. In a nation tired of gridlock, this

trans-ideological attractiveness and prac-

ticality is good news. Whether we most

care about economy, security, or health

and environment, Reinventing Fire isspherically sensible—it makes sense nomatter which way around you view it. �

Learn more at reinventingfire.com


The international energy system needs an

overhaul. The sector is multidisciplinary:

it must serve modern civilization without

compromising economic opportunity, un-

dermining national security or impinging

on the environment. Yet innovation today

prioritizes improvements to discrete

technologies and progress in single disci-

plines rather than rebuilding the whole

system. A more joined-up approach is

needed, beginning with education.

Retooling the system will require a range

of experts who understand new technologies

and can translate them to the public, while con-

sidering the economic drivers necessary for

their adoption.

In the United States, for example, the

educational framework for undergraduates

does not always keep pace with advances in

science, engineering and innovation. Even

though energy is a leading international pri-

ority, it lacks definition in universities,

where it is largely perceived as a profes-

sional pursuit, or as a subset of fields such

as petroleum engineering. Often, students

are exposed only to glimpses of the sector

and do not acquire an integrated, systems-

level perspective.

Whereas institutions such as Duke

University in Durham, North Carolina,

the University of Texas at Austin and the

University of British Columbia in Vancou-

ver, Canada, have created programmes to

address the changing energy landscape,

none offers an interdisciplinary energy-

focused degree at undergraduate and

graduate levels.

We propose that large energy depart-

ments should be set up at universities

worldwide to tie seemingly disparate

fields of knowledge together. Graduates

could move between disciplines to pro-

mote ideas and work towards practical so-

lutions. By fostering an open dialogue

between specialists, this nascent labour

force would then be well equipped to navi-

gate through all of the technical, political

and social issues related to energy. �

ENERGY SHOULD FORM ITS OWN DISCIPLINE

Reprinted with permission from the au-

thors and from Nature journal. Original

article available at

nature.com/nature/journal/v478/n7367/

full/478037a.html

Sheril R. Kirshenbaum and Michael E. Webber of the University of Texas at Austin

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