D-REV - Design for the Other 90%

Krista Donaldson, Chief Executive Officer

Krista has been working at the intersection of design and development for over ten years. Prior to coming to D-Rev in 2009, Krista was an American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) Diplomacy Fellow at the U.S. Department of State. There, she worked on the reconstruction of Iraq's electricity sector and economic policy, earning recognition for her contribution to bilateral relations. Prior to State, she worked for five years with KickStart International (then ApproTEC) in Nairobi designing small-scale irrigation pumps, researching product-driven economic development and strengthening local manufacturing capacity. While in Kenya, Krista taught at Kenyatta University’s Appropriate Technology Centre. Later in South Africa, she taught in the Department of Mechanical Engineering at the University of Cape Town. She has also previously worked at IDEO.

She received her PhD in Mechanical Engineering and Design from Stanford University, where her work focused on product development to promote economic growth in less industrialized economies. She is the author of the Engineering Student Survival Guide and numerous papers and articles on design, international development and higher education.

Kurt Kuhlmann, Co-Founder, Chief Technology Officer

Three years ago, Kurt Kuhlmann’s electronics design expertise and commitment to developing products for bottom-of-the-pyramid customers led him to co-founding D-Rev. He has designed the core technology for the social enterprises Ignite Innovations, Ecopower, D-light and Niparaja. Kurt is a Silicon Valley veteran, having operated an engineering consultancy for over ten years while founding three successful business ventures. He has over 20 years experience in circuit design, radio frequency and microwave R&D, digital signal processing, motor control and has a specialty in the synthesis of analog circuitry with digital embedded control. Kurt’s strength is supporting the transition from product design to production and has a proven track record with LED lights and water purification products. He has several products on the market in the United States and Europe. Kurt has been an advisor to the Stanford University Institute of Design since 2005.

Kurt holds a bachelor’s degree from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute and a master’s degree from University of Massachusetts-Amherst in radar and microwave design.

Ben Cline, Project Manager

Ben’s passion for engineering, science and humanity culminate led him to D-Rev, where he works closely with end-users to design practical and affordable medical devices. His work at D-Rev began with a Stanford class on precision engineering. What started as a class project to design a microscope for the developing world, soon became D-Rev’s GlobalScope. Ben continued the work, designing the fine focus mechanism for the microscope and making the design rugged enough for use in extreme environments. Ben is now leads the Blue Star project, which is developing low-cost, highly efficacious phototherapy to treat neonatal jaundice. Ben is pursuing a bachelor’s degree in Mechanical Engineering at Stanford University.

Eric Thorsell, Re:Motion CFO

Eric is founder of D-Rev’s Re:Motion project, which aims to provide high-performance prostheses for the developing world and co-designer of the JaipurKnee, a low-cost prosthetic knee joint for above-knee amputees. His passion for design for extreme affordability has been motivated by his travels in Southeast Asia and India; Eric seeks to integrate his engineering knowledge with a desire to directly benefit individuals.

Eric holds a Master's degree in Mechanical Engineering from Stanford University, where his work was focused on medical device design, biomechanics and Design Thinking, a human-centered process of innovation. As R&D lead for a medical device start-up SurgSolutions, Eric has worked from concept through mechanical design to get a prototype device into the operating room, and has directed procedure during human feasibility studies. Eric also holds a bachelor’s degree from Cal Poly, San Luis Obispo and has worked as a machinist.

Joel Sadler, Re:Motion CEO

Joel is co-founder of D-Rev’s Re:Motion project, which aims to provide high-performance prostheses for the developing world, and co-designer of the JaipurKnee, a low-cost prosthetic knee joint for above-knee amputees. A native of Jamaica, Joel grew up searching for ways to innovate create solutions for problems in the developing world. While designing wheelchairs as an undergraduate at MIT, he found his vocation: to solve human needs by combining empathy and technology with the aim of creating sustainable societal impact.

Joel holds Mechanical Engineering degrees from MIT and Stanford, and has held industry positions in medical device design at Ethicon and product design at Apple Computer. He recently served as a lecturer and fellow at the Stanford Design Institute, teaching Design Thinking, a human-centered process of innovation

Kentaro Toyama, Project Manager

In addition to managing D-Rev’s Landscape Study of Portable Devices to Support Agriculture, Kentaro is a researcher in the School of Information at the University of California, Berkeley. Until 2009, he was assistant managing director of Microsoft Research India, which he co-founded in 2005. At MSR India, he started the Technology for Emerging Markets research group, which conducts interdisciplinary research to understand how the world's poorer communities interact with electronic technology and to invent new ways for technology to support their socio-economic development. He co-founded the IEEE/ACM International Conference on Information and Communication Technologies and Development (ICTD) to provide a global platform for rigorous academic research in this field. Prior to his time in India, Kentaro did computer vision and multimedia research at Microsoft Research in Redmond, WA, USA and Cambridge, UK, and taught mathematics at Ashesi University in Accra, Ghana.

Kentaro graduated from Yale with a PhD in Computer Science and from Harvard with a bachelor’s degree in Physics. He was born in Tokyo, raised in both Japan and the United States, and now lives in Berkeley, California.

Connie Covarrubias

Connie has been an industrial engineer for over 16 years in both the US and Chile since graduating from the University of Santiago in Chile. At D-REV she is responsible for coordinating all of our manufacturing efforts internally and with contract manufacturers. She has held key positions at Bressler S.A., Advanced Transaction Devices, and the Center for Applied Electronics, where she was responsible for manufacturing. In addition, she assisted with the design, development, and implementation of electronic industrial control systems, primarily in the retail fueling industry. Connie joined D-REV in December of 2007, and is enjoying the opportunity to apply her many years of engineering and project management experience to the innovative products that are being developed to assist with alleviating poverty.

Greg Lee

Greg is a Mechanical Engineering master's student at Stanford, with a focus in embedded systems. He spinning off a for-profit social enterprise, FromConcentrate, based on solar concentrator technology he and others developed while working at D-Rev. He has experience in mechanical design, machining and prototyping. He has worked in the solar industry for three years with experience at CoolEarth Solar.

 

John Dawson, Chairman of Board of Directors

John’s commitment to D-REV stems from his belief in the transformational power of markets and appropriate technology, and from the many years of success of the D-REV founders at using these tools to better the lives of millions of poor people worldwide. John has worked in Silicon Valley for more than 30 years. After graduating from Stanford, he worked at Xerox PARC, then was a senior executive or co-founder of several successful startups, including CASE Technology, Gain Technology, and Zentek. In addition to serving as Treasurer of D-REV, he also serves on the boards of Sustainable Conservation (Treasurer) and Island Conservation (Vice Chair); past board service includes Partners in Education, Vipani, Zentek Singapore, The Learning Center, and SV2. He also serves as a lecturer at the Rainer Arnhold Fellows Program.

Paul Polak, Co-Founder

Dr. Paul Polak, co-founder of D-Rev, has pursued a life mission to ignite a revolution among designers to develop solutions to poverty. A psychiatrist, entrepreneur, educator and author, Paul is probably best known for starting International Development Enterprises (IDE), a non-profit organization that has helped to end poverty for 17 million of the world’s poorest people by making available radically affordable irrigation through local small entrepreneurs and opening private sector access to markets for their crops. For his work in agriculture, Dr. Polak has been recognized by Scientific American as one of the world’s leading 50 contributors to science. Paul was also one of the lead organizers for the Smithsonian Cooper- Hewitt’s exhibit: Design for the Other Ninety Percent.

Paul’s book, Out of Poverty: What Works When Traditional Approaches Fail has been internationally recognized for practical solutions to global poverty.

James Patell

Jim Patell is the Herbert Hoover Professor of Public and Private Management at Stanford University’s Graduate School of Business (GSB). He is a founding professor of Stanford’s Entrepreneurial Design for Extreme Affordability course where graduate students design comprehensive solutions to challenges faced by the world’s poor. Started in 2004, the “Extreme” class brings together students from all of Stanford’s seven schools. Recognized social enterprises, such as Ignite Innovations, d.light, DripTech and Embrace, had their start in Extreme. Jim also co-directs the Product Realization Network at Stanford, and is a founding faculty member of the Hasso Plattner Institute of Design at Stanford (the d-School). Jim’s research and teaching interests center on business process and product design, operations management, manufacturing, and cost accounting. A popular and demanding teacher, he has authored numerous articles in the field of accounting. During his tenure as associate dean for academic affairs in the GSB, he redesigned and revitalized the Public Management Program, which focuses on government, nonprofit organizations, and public service.

Jim earned Bachelor and Master of Science degrees in engineering from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and a PhD in Industrial Administration from Carnegie Mellon University. He has taught at Stanford since 1975 and was a Ford Foundation Visiting Associate Professor at the University of Chicago from 1981-1982.

Mohan Uttarwar

Mohan Uttarwar is a co-founder of BioImagene and has more than 20 years of experience as a high-tech entrepreneur. Mohan was the co-founder of Roamware Inc. and was the president and founder of SoftPlus, a leading provider of eCRM software for telecom carriers around the world. In February 2000, SoftPlus was sold to US Interactive for $360 million. Prior to starting SoftPlus, Mohan co-founded and served as the president of Digital Tools Inc., a leader in enterprise project and resource management software. He has held various software development and management positions with Hewlett Packard and Intel. Mohan has a Masters degree in Computer Science from the Florida Institute of Technology and a Masters in Electrical Engineering from Bombay University in Mumbai. He is a charter member of TiE (The Indus Entrepreneurs), a Silicon Valley-based forum for entrepreneurs.

Les Woodward

Les Woodward has been involved in a wide variety of corporate, business and securities law matters for more than 40 years. He has served as lead corporate counsel for a number of companies, from start up, through the early phases of public ownership, to operation as significant-sized public companies. He is regularly involved in counseling business enterprises on operational and securities law matters. He also represents mutual funds and independent trustees of funds and investment advisers with respect to the Investment Company Act of 1940 and the Investment Advisers Act of 1940 as well as general business law matters.