AI & Technology

On the 21st September, Social Value International (SVI) and the World Business Council for Sustainable Development (WBCSD) convened a global meeting for experts in valuation of social outcomes. Taking place in the Bellagio Center on Lake Como and sponsored by the Rockefeller Foundation, the meeting brought together 22 individuals from a range of sectors and countries to discuss how a variety of valuation techniques relate to each other and can be mapped and brought together with clearer guidance.

Veterans Day is a special day for our nation, and it compels us to take action in many different ways. Whether it’s volunteering for a military charity or simply thanking a veteran or service member, each of us are reminded to extend meaningful acts of gratitude to our American heroes.

For the second year in a row, I’ve attended a conference powered by an alternative energy microgrid. When you think of business conferences being “off the grid”, this isn’t usually what comes to mind. However, if you put sustainability and tech folks together in the Bay Area, thinking outside the box is encouraged, and going off the grid from a conference ballroom suddenly looks much different.

While working in rural northern Thailand in 2013, Erin Zaikis met children who didn’t know what soap was, so she brought them some, trying to conduct an impromptu hand-washing workshop. She was stunned to see the children smacking their faces with the bars of soap, unsure of what to do with it. Soap is something that so many of us take for granted; however, there are many people in the world who can’t afford it and don’t understand the benefits of hand washing.

Eighty orphans watched as I sloshed back and forth across the quagmire of what was becoming their new schoolyard. There weren’t many tools lying around the remote site, and I was trying to make a ladder by stacking rocks, one by one, in the sticky red mud.