TLP Social Entrepreneurship Event with Pics (April 7, 2010)

Credits: Photos by Praveen Yajman

We were fortunate to have a very interesting panel moderated by cleantech social entrepreneur, Soren Harrison, who is bringing renewable energy sources to schools, brought in four outstanding speakers and experts who are on the front-lines of social entrepreneurship. Nina is bringing lab equipment to remote corners of the world, Liz is creating containers that can be dropped anywhere to provide an inexpensive, yet world-class clinic, Sidd is bringing job-connectivity to Latin America, and Raj is using his years of expertise in the startup world, to help entrepreneurs learn about the business models and explore them.

[Detailed writeup to come]

Elizabeth Sheehan, Founder and President, Containers2Clinic
Elizabeth has two decades of experience delivering medical care in the US and abroad. She began her career in healthcare working in emergency rooms throughout the US as a Physician’s Assistant. After a year-long journey to 19 developing countries to investigate health care delivery systems, Elizabeth became the medical director of The HALO Trust, an organization committed to village-based mine clearance. With HALO, Elizabeth designed and implemented emergency care protocols for deminers and expatriate staff in Cambodia and Mozambique. After earning her Master’s in public health in London, she worked for USAID on a primary health care reconstruction project in post war Mozambique. Later, she worked as a clinician in the Maputo Central Hospital teaching triage protocols and assisting the delivery of emergency care. After Mozambique, Elizabeth moved to Tanzania, where as part of the British High Commission she volunteered her medical skills and public health knowledge in orphanages, shelters and women’s groups. For the past 15 years, Elizabeth served as director and trustee of a family foundation, for which she designed granting strategies and evaluation tools. To date, the foundation has granted over 12 million dollars.Elizabeth is a graduate of Holy Cross College, Duke University Medical Center’s Physician's Assistant Program and The London School of Tropical Medicine and Hygiene jointly with the London School of Economics. She founded Containers to Clinics in 2008.

Nina Dudnik, Founder and Chief Executive Officer, Seedling Labs
Nina has always tried to combine science and global development. She began the effort to build Seeding Labs as a graduate student in 2003. She was a finalist in the 2006 MIT $100K Entrepreneurship Competition and was awarded an Echoing Green fellowship in 2007 to formally launch and expand Seeding Labs.Nina worked for the Consultative Group for International Agricultural Research in Italy where she provided advice on the integration of molecular genetics techniques into conservation and plant breeding activities. She was a Fulbright scholar in 2000 at the Africa Rice Center in Cote d’Ivoire studying rice introgression using molecular markers. Nina obtained her PhD in molecular biology from Harvard Graduate School of Arts and Sciences and a BSc in biochemistry from Brown University

Raj Melville Social Entrepreneurship

View more presentations from Anupendra Sharma.

Raj Melville, Ambient
Raj provides marketing and strategy consulting to emerging social entrepreneurs. He founded and chaired the annual Forum for Social Entrepreneurs, organized and moderated numerous panels and workshops on social entrepreneurship, and currently mentors several startups focused on addressing key social issues. Raj has over 25 years of product management, marketing and consulting experience at several start-ups and larger organizations. Some of his previous responsibilities included managing the overall product strategy and features for nTAG Interactive, a spin off from the MIT Media Lab; marketing and product management direction at mobile software vendor Vaultus, another MIT spinoff; directing product management at Be Free Inc. (now Valueclick), a market leading affiliate marketing e-commerce solution; and managing the launch of two high-end Internet server products at Electronic Book Technologies (later acquired by Inso). His early career included stints at Microsoft Corp., Digital Equipment Corporation, and Booz Allen & Hamilton. He is an active member of TiE Boston where he co-founded the Social Entrepreneurship Group. Raj has a doctorate from MIT, a Master’s from MIT’s Sloan School and a Bachelor’s degree from the Indian Institute of Technology.

Sidd Goyal, CoFounder & CTO, AssuredLabor
AssuredLabor is a web-based company that leverages the power of SMS and the Internet to connect employers and workers in emerging markets. Sidd and his co-founders successfully raised funding over the last three months during his fellowship at TLP. Sidd is traveling back and forth to Nicaragua these days supporting the launch of Assured Labor's Latin America job marketplace, Empleolisto!

Soren Harrison , Founder, SolSolution
Soren is is a scientist and entrepreneur with a strong background in engineering and physics, with a passion for energy and the environment. Soren completed his doctoral research at the MIT Plasma Science and Fusion Center in October 2008, where he is now continuing research as a visiting scientist. He founded Arriba Solar in 2006 to perform R&D in the field of nuclear fusion research, develop a thin film measurement technique, and transfer technology from the field of nuclear fusion to mainstream commercial industries. In 2007, Soren founded SolSolution, an innovative nonprofit in the solar and education. Soren is an active member of the MIT entrepreneurial and energy community, a member of the MIT Energy Club, and served on the 2009 MIT Clean Energy Prize Organizing Team as the Industry Mentorship Chair. He was a Fellow in the 2009 TiE Leadership Program, where he is now a program manager. He holds a B.S. Mechanical Engineering, University of California, San Diego, Ph.D. and M.S. Nuclear Engineering and Engineering Physics, from the University of Wisconsin, Madison. Soren currently lives in Somerville, MA with his wonderful wife, Christine. His personal interests include surfing, scuba diving, playing music (guitar, drums, bass, vocals), martial arts, entrepreneurship, energy, environment, and education