Each program we interview various species of Globeshakers who work across the world and across industries, using creativity and innovation to shake up the status quo.
The program's host, Tim Zak, a former management consultant with McKinsey and Company, is currently Executive Director of Carnegie Mellon University’s Heinz School of Public Policy-Australia and Co-Director of the school’s Institute for Social Innovation.
Before heading up Heinz School-Australia, Tim was CEO of the Social Enterprise Accelerator, a private operating foundation in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, USA. When the Accelerator was launched in 2002, it initially operated out of the trunk of his car and in neighborhood coffee shops. Today, the organization, which operates like a venture capital firm for social innovations, works directly with a dynamic portfolio of social sector organizations bent on changing the world. It has been globally recognized for its impact on the emerging field of social entrepreneurship.
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Talking with Globeshakers host Tim Zak, Amory Lovins of the Rocky Mountain Institute argues that the United States can operate on a fourth of the energy it now uses, while still providing the same or better services. This may seem far-fetched, but Lovins has been accused of taking off on flights of fancy before, though time has a remarkable way of proving his assertions correct.
In 1982, ophthalmologist Oliver Foot founded Orbis Flying Eye Hospital, a unique mobile teaching facility housed in a DC-10 jet aircraft. In this audio interview With Globeshakers host Tim Zak, he discusses how his organization brings dedicated eye care professionals to the developing world to restore eyesight through surgery and other treatments.
Robert Langer has been referred to as "a medical pioneer in the guise of an engineer" who has revolutionized the delivery of drugs and the engineering of human tissue. In this audio interview with Globeshakers host Tim Zak, Langer reveals his tenacious nature and talks about what it takes to persevere in the face of public criticism.
In the early 1990s, Cheryl Dorsey got a fellowship from Echoing Green to launch the Family Van, a community-based mobile health unit that provides basic medical and outreach services to at-risk residents of inner-city Boston neighborhoods. Now president of Echoing Green, Dorsey talks with Globeshakers host Tim Zak in an audio interview about the challenge of building on the impressive track record of one of the world's leading investors and supporters of worldwide social change.
Rick Lowe has given new meaning to the phrase "artist-in-residence." This Heinz Award winner and former Loeb fellow at the Harvard School of Design is the founder of Project Row Houses, an organization that merges art and architecture with social activism. In an audio interview with Globeshakers host Tim Zak, Lowe describes how this experiment in "social sculpture" is redefining the role of art and artists in society.
Ticia Gerber sits at the center of one of the world's important current debates: How do we keep people healthy without having it cost an arm and a leg? At eHealth Initiative and LIGHT, Gerber is working across three continents to bridge the public, private, and social sectors. She talks with Globeshakers host Tim Zak in an audio interview about the role of technology in the future of healthcare and what it means to create a dialogue between the developed and developing world.
Dean Kamen has literally changed the world by turning breakthrough ideas into practical products. In this audio interview with Globeshakers host Tim Zak, Kamen discusses the power of technology to change society. He also talks about what it takes to persevere in the face of public and professional resistance toward inventions and technology that can actually make people's lives better.
Recipient of the 9th Annual Heinz Award for the Human Condition, Paul Farmer is a medical doctor and a professor of anthropology at Harvard's medical school. He shuttles between Harvard and Haiti, where he maintains a practice at Clinique Bon Saveur, a charity hospital he founded. Farmer talks in this audio interview with Globeshakers host Tim Zak about the challenges and rewards of providing healthcare to the poorest of the poor, and the evolving, innovative models for getting drugs to those who need them most.
David Bornstein is a leading expert on the global rise of "social entrepreneurism." In this audio interview, Globeshakers host Tim Zak asks how we would know a social entrepreneur if we saw one on the street. More important, why should we care? Who invests in social enterprise and what is at stake for our world if we don't?
As a technologist, Ethan Zuckerman has spent much time working with the new generation of African entrepreneurs, programmers, organizers, and young people who are hooking up their continent to the Web. In an audio interview with Globeshakers host Tim Zak, Zuckerman explains how these new netizens are changing the way villagers and urban dwellers learn, organize, network, and face the challenges of poverty, AIDS, political strife, and making a living.
