More than two billion people around the world have no access to lighting or electricity, making life much harder for them and affecting their ability to make a viable living. In this audio interview with Stanford Center for Social Innovation correspondent Sheela Sethuraman, Sam Goldman talks about his mission to bring light to the darkest corners of the planet. He describes how his social company, d.light design, developed out of a class project at Stanford Graduate School of Business to become a viable social enterprise that is now setting up offices and distributing solar-based lights in various developing countries. He offers details on the technical design, marketing, and distribution of the products, as well as the impact they are having in the lives of those living in poor and remote areas.
Sam Goldman, chief executive officer of social venture d.light design, grew up in Mauritania, Pakistan, Peru, India, and Rwanda. After graduating with degrees in biology and environmental studies from the University of Victoria, Canada, he spent four years in Benin with the Peace Corps, founding and managing a for-profit NGO (GARPE-ONG), which runs a large rural agricultural training center. With GARPE, he built Benin’s first factory to process leaves from the nutritional plant, Moringa oleifera, in order to provide nutritional supplements to hospitals and health centers. Goldman earned an MBA from Stanford.
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