You gave us some statistics about premature and low weight infants and the warming problems that are associated with them. But if I recall, Warmilu has a personal connection to your life too. Yes. Warmilu has a significant personal connection and as a social innovator that helped not just myself as a the team lead and CEO, but it helped my team be able to get through the highs and lows of innovation and product development. I was born one month preterm, my mom and dad were terrified. One, it was the winter, I was born December 26, one month early, I was the first child, and it was snowing. They didn't know if I was going to make it because I couldn't breathe, my lungs were underdeveloped. Thank goodness for the incubator where I spent my early days. It was the only reason that I survived. The incubator, the warmth, being able to get enough oxygenation, and humidity to me in the incubator. I was able to then survive. When I learned about those infants who were passing away from preventable hypothermia, I remember thinking to myself, how is this happening? I thought we had a fair amount of warming solution. I remember digging in and really researching because I felt so much shock and I felt chills that, "Could've been me. If I'd been born in one of those resource-scarce hospitals, I would not have survived." For example here in the US, they can resuscitate infants who are born at 22 weeks. They don't resuscitate those infants. They might try and do some preliminary efforts, but in general, most resource-scarce hospitals are doing 25-28 weeks. That's a later gestational age because those babies can be small, they'll literally fit in two hands or just one hand when they're 22 weeks. As a result, that's what powered my team and helped me really want to address warmth, which is a basic need for these infants. What happened was that this professor, Jason Dybdahl, noticed that I had stopped raising my hand, being that annoying student in class, asking all the questions, and I'd started skipping out on his class. I was doing fine. I had an A and I was just feeling really demotivated and I was about to fail or go one. Not even kidding. There's very horrible semester and he reached out and said, "Grace, what's going on?" Then I just shared everything. I didn't see the impact that I was making in engineering, I wasn't affecting people's lives. Then he's the one who said, "Engineering is all about touching people's lives and social impact, and you can go into medicine, you can go into law to help with IP." Later on, Warmilu ended up representing that idea that engineering can make social impact, that you can make innovation touch people's lives. I grew up a little all over the place, but mostly in Boulder, Colorado, and then I was fortunate enough to get to the University of Michigan, where I studied undergrad at the Ross School of Business. Then from there I went on to working in finance, I worked at Credit Suisse Investment Banking in Chicago for a couple of years. Right in the financial crisis, I started in summer '07, so I was there in '08 and '09 as the financial world was melting down. Then from there I moved out to the West Coast of Los Angeles where I'm currently based, and I worked in private equity for about five years before getting started with what I'm working on now, which is working in the food space. Thank you. Before we go into your venture, why did you move out of finance into a social enterprise? Back in college, I had these grand plans where I was going to work in finance for a number of years and get rich, and then I was going to work on something that I was actually interested in. That was how I laid it out my sophomore in junior year of college when I was 20-something. The truth is for me at least that working in your 20s and 30s on something that you don't like doing, gets at you. It's easier to say you're going to do that for x number of years than to actually do it. I always had this longing for work that was more meaningful and that I felt like was bigger than myself, was more than about a paycheck, was more than about providing financial security for me and my family, and I felt like there were a lot of big problems out there in the world that were in need of solving and I wanted to work on some of those problems in my professional life, in my 20s and 30s, not when I was 50 or 60 or retired, getting back in the non-profit space. David, what do you say to people who say social entrepreneurship sounds like the coolest thing ever, it sounds like you wake up every day, you're excited, you never have a bad day, you're changing the world. I just can't wait to be one. What do you tell them about the emotional hurdles that they might face? Yeah. I would say that they're sniffing down the right trail, but it's not that black and white, and that on the one hand, this work has been the most rewarding and meaningful and positive thing I've done in my life and maybe I'll ever do, who knows? It's not easy, at least not for me. One of the things that we say as a team when we encounter challenges at every table is we're trying to solve hard problems and if they were easy problems, someone else would have solved them already. By virtue of that fact, it's not easy work and you're going to encounter challenges along the way. Whatever the industry is, whoever your team is, whatever stage you're in, I think that social entrepreneurship, not entrepreneurship in general, means that it's a bit of a rocky road and there are going to be ups and downs. Even for people who are the most xen, level-headed, even-keeled. It's going to be moments in time where you're not jazzed to get up and work and the feeling that you had on day 1, that dissipates over time and it comes and it ebbs and it flows. But I think it's important to understand that the work is a marathon and that you're going to have those highs and that's why you do this. The highs coming from doing a really meaningful work. But you're also going to have lows and that's the price you pay as someone who's working to try and solve some of these hard problems that are out there. Did you recognize that challenge at the beginning? We're you prepared for that? I think that I was aware of it. Honestly, I was 80 percent in and 20 percent concerned because of this fact. I was a little bit nervous about the toll that the work would take on my personal life and my desire to have balance and I'd just gotten married a month before we started every table. I did have some reservations because everyone you talk to who starts a business explains that, yeah, it's great that you have control and you're in the driver seat and you're charting your own course, but you're going to work more than you've ever worked in your life, and you're going to have more stress related to your work then you've probably ever felt before. I did have that awareness, but then as we got started, honestly that faded. There was so much excitement around what we were doing that the first months, I was really riding on a high and feeling like I would do this work for free, I want to do this forever. I think that that goes back to what we were just talking about, that's why you do this in the first place, is because you have an opportunity to have a job or a career and work that checks all the boxes. It's meaningful. You're working with people who care, you have a great team, everyone wants to be supportive because the mission is so critical, and that is a real wind in your sails a lot of the time, but it cuts both ways. There are a lot of hard times too, and you just have to remember why you're doing this in the first place. I think flexibility is key when you're working in a place like the Dominican Republic. Really in any social entrepreneurial venture, you have to be flexible for the people that you're working with. Because the idea wasn't that I would run the business, the idea was that I would help them learn to run the business, and in doing so, I needed to learn what are their priorities, how do they think a business shouldn't run, what are their struggles, how do they view money, how do they save money, or not save money. There was a lot of obstacles to overcome in learning, not only learning business, because business is a relatively simple thing. You have to take in and figure out what your costs are. You figure out what your price point is going to be. You take in more than you sell. Relatively simple. Not so in the Dominican Republic. Just not so. We had so many issues to overcome, and learning to work with people that had never run a successful business was a big challenge. Honestly, I think besides the filters that is really my greatest accomplishment is being able to work, and have [inaudible] as a successful businessman. I'm so proud. He was my partner through the entire project, and now he runs it. He's doing an awesome job. He runs his factory, and he's doing a fabulous job. So I think that's really the best part. The kids had their hair was wiry and blonde from malnutrition. They had parasite overload that was causing huge malnourishment issues in the children, they were shorter than they should have been, they had trouble focusing at school. There was a lot of issues. But when they got the filter, they saw such drastic changes within the first couple of months. So they would become the salesmen for our filters in the sense that they would promote it to their neighbors. That was the best way to get the project really going. Then they knew, once people started really wanting it, then it would start to be a priority to them, and they would start to trust us. I don't think I needed them to be a part of necessarily my vision, as you call it. Yeah, I think anyone feels proud of a job that changes lives. I think there's something inherently within us that wants to do something of worth and value. So I think that they just naturally the idea of making clean water, learning, and growing in that way was a great opportunity for them. What's your golden glitter, is the question. What do you define as golden glitter? My golden glitter is when I think back specifically a couple months ago, we had a workshop in here where we were working with the juvenile probation officer from the county, and he brought in five kids that have had various levels of contact with the Justice Department, and that are on the edge. Brought them in and they spent an hour in the shop. We partnered them up with one of the folks in our crew. They got a chance to talk, and just tell their stories. Then we sat down and talked in the other room, and basically did a round circle. What came out of that, and what I saw happening, the dynamic between both our crew, and the guys that have done over 20 years in prison, being able to talk to these kids on a level that opens their ears beyond anything that they've ever seen. That's my golden glitter. Yeah.
