Team
Academic Members
Laura E. Stachel, MD, MPH, DrPH candidate, School of Public Health, UC Berkeley
Christian Casillas, PhD candidate, Energy Resources Group, UC Berkeley
Melissa Ho, MSc., PhD candidate, School of Information, UC Berkeley
Terrence Lo, M.P.H., DrPH candidate, School of Public Health, UC Berkeley
Community and Industry Partners
Hal R. Aronson, Ph.D., Co-Director, Solar Way Forward
Mike Strykowski, Solar Living Institute
Bruce Gardiner, Solar Installer and Educator
Andrew Sproul, Director of Product Management, Adax Inc.
Tom Ohlsson, Owner, Red Dog Radios
Organizational Advisors
Almaz Negash, MBA
Mike MacHarg, MBA
Terry Mandel, Principal of The Terry Mandel Collaborative
Nigerian Collaborating Institutions
The Population and Reproductive Health Partnership (PRHP)
Kofan Gayan Hospital, Zaria, Kaduna State, Nigeria
Academic Members
Laura Stachel M.D., M.P.H., the founder of WE CARE Solar, as is a board-certified obstetrician-gynecologist with fourteen years of clinical experience, holding an MD from University of California, San Francisco (UCSF) and an MPH in Maternal and Child Health from University of California, Berkeley (UCB). She is a DrPH candidate at UCB; her dissertation centers on emergency obstetric care in Nigeria. Laura is a consultant for the Population Reproductive Health Partnership, and is co-PI of a study in aimed at improving the standard of maternity care in Nigerian state hospitals. Laura has conducted several community based projects in developing countries including (1) a nutritional assessment of pregnant and postpartum mothers in the Western Guatemalan highlands, and (2) an assessment of the effects of fluoride on the incidence of dental caries in El Salvadorean children. Laura serves on the Editorial Board for the Berkeley Wellness Letter and is a lecturer at the UCB School of Public Health. E-mail: laura_ at _ wecaresolar.com.
Christian Casillas, M.S. is a PhD student in the Energy and Resources Group. He holds a B.A. in environmental engineering from Harvard and a M.S. in applied math from Johns Hopkins. He spent several years doing oceanic and atmospheric research at the Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory in Maryland before joining the US Peace Corps to teach math and science in rural Namibia, where he became interested in renewable energy. He has worked as an engineer designing off-grid solar systems in New Mexico, and has served as a technical advisor since 2006 for blueEnergy, an NGO in Nicaragua that builds and installs wind and solar systems for rural villages. Christian’s current research is related to the analysis of small wind systems appropriate for integration into diesel micro-grids in developing countries. E-mail: cecasillas _ at _berkeley.edu
Melissa Ho, M.Sc. is a PhD student in the University of California, Berkeley School of Information, and holds a BA in Computer Science from Cornell University, and an MSc in Data Communications, Networks and Distributed Systems from University College London. Recipient of the 2008 Yamashita Foundations for Change Prize, she has been actively conducting research (ethnographic fieldwork and systems design and deployment) since 2004 with the Technology and Infrastructure for Emerging Regions (TIER) research group, an inter-disciplinary project funded by Intel and the National Science Foundation (NSF) and led by Prof. Eric Brewer in the EECS department. As part of this group, she has participated in numerous deployments including the setup of long distance wireless communications networks for hospitals and universities in Africa and India. Her project in Ghana is an open source tele-medicine application enabling doctor-to-doctor consultation between rural doctors and urban specialistsus.tierstore.net). In Uganda, she is working on the use of mobile devices for information management in the Uganda Output Based Aid health project. Her research focuses on healthcare and telecommunications infrastructure in Africa, and is funded by the Blum Center for Developing Economies and CITRIS (BBB'07). E-mail: mho _ at _ ischool.berkeley.edu
Terrence Lo has an MPH in epidemiology from Emory University and is currently pursuing his DrPH at University of California, Berkeley. He has pursued his interests in international health, research design, and photography via several international projects including a slum redevelopment project in Kenya, a Maternal Child Health project with the Population Reproductive Health Partnership in Northern Nigeria, and a polio eradication project in Bangladesh. Terry is currently doing his dissertation on telemedicine in rural India and is investigating the opportunities to utilize portable solar electric systems to enhance this work.
Industry and Community Team Members
Hal Aronson, PhD is co-founder of WE CARE Solar and has been teaching renewable energy in the Bay Area and around California for thirteen years. He is co-director of Solar Way Forward, a solar design, education, and consultation firm. He co-created of Solar Schoolhouse, and co-created the Green Building Certification at Ohlone Community College. He also created California Youth Energy Services, a service learning program for adolescents that now employs one hundred youth a year as energy-efficient retrofitters. Hal leads professional development workshops, teaches at Ohlone Community College, and creates project-based learning and curriculum for students of all ages. Hal installed the first legal residential solar electric system in Santa Cruz County (in 1983). He obtained his PhD in environmental sociology from UCSC; his dissertation focused on environmental justice.
Mike Strykowski is co-director of The Solar Way Forward, a solar design, education and consultation firm. As the former Renewable Energy Education Manager for Solar Living Institute, Mike designs solar electric systems, curriculum, and teaches around California. He works for PG&E doing renewable energy trainings, and engaged in off-grid and on-grid PV design, wind energy, micro hydro, solar thermal and whole house energy efficiency for Real Goods. Mike provided solar electric design and consultation for solar powered schools in Africa through "Paths to Native Africa."
Bruce Gardiner is a NAPCEP certified Solar Installer with years of experience installing solar electric systems in California. In 2008 Bruce volunteered in Thailand, as a solar instructor with Border Green Energy Team (BGET, see link below). He continues to work with displaced Burmese communities on the Thai/Burma border, as an independent volunteer.
Andrew (Drew) Sproul is Director of Product Management at Adax, Inc., a company that has provided signaling solutions to telecommunications equipment for over 25 years. Drew earned his BA in Human Services from Western Washington University in Bellingham, WA in 1976, working with teenage status offenders before devoting a decade to community organizing in Seattle and the Bay Area. Since 1988, Drew has been in the field of telecommunications, focusing on infrastructure products. Drew volunteers for kiwanja.net (www.kiwanja.net), a non-profit foundation that donates software and computer equipment to NGOs in health, economics, environmentalism and democratic initiatives.
Organizational Advisors
Almaz Negash, MBA, our senior advisor, is the founder and Managing Partner of Entwine Global, where she consults with businesses and educational institutions on international trade, economic development and sustainability. She has served as the director of the Markkula Center for Applied Ethics and is a founding member of the Global Women Leadership Network of the Leavey School of Business at Santa Clara University. Almaz has over sixteen years experience forming global strategic partnerships, and brings to WE CARE Solar her expertise in business management, corporate social responsibility development, and global development.
Michael MacHarg, MBA brings a decade of experience applying entrepreneurial approaches to addressing global social challenges. Most recently, Michael consulted to the social venture capital fund, Acumen Fund, mapping private sector investments in the food and nutrition sector that could mitigate extensive nutrient deficiencies across east Africa. Michael was a founding staff member of the first nonprofit pharmaceutical company, the Institute for OneWorld Health, whose goal is clinical development and distribution of affordable new medicines for diseases of poverty in the developing world. Prior to OneWorld Health, Michael served as a member of the core World Bank team promoting the participation of non-government organizations (NGOs) in Bank funded projects. Michael is a recent graduate of the Fuqua School of Business at Duke University, where he served as a CASE (Center for the Advancement of Social Entrepreneurship) Scholar; earned his B.A. in Sociology from Vanderbilt University and has studied at the Universidad de la Habana in Cuba.
Terry Mandel, principal of The Terry Mandel Collaborative, has advised leaders, entrepreneurs, emerging and established companies, and nonprofit organizations in the US and abroad since 1979. Terry is also Senior Advisor with Madera Group, a social marketing, fundraising, and strategic partner to organizations with strong social missions and a Senior Associate with Natural Logic, a strategic sustainability consulting firm. She has lectured at Stanford University Graduate School of Business, California College of the Arts Design Strategy MBA Program, University of San Francisco, John F. Kennedy University School of Management, California Institute of Integral Studies, and been published in The New Paradigm in Business, Executive Excellence, Business Ethics, San Francisco Business Times, among others. Terry brings years of experience advocating for individuals, teams, and systems committed to making a difference that matters in their work lives, workplaces, and work results — through leadership mentoring, strategic planning, change management, marketing/branding, organizational restructuring, meeting design & facilitation, and collaborative learning programs.
Nigerian Collaborating Institutions
The Population and Reproductive Health Partnership (PRHP) is an NIH-funded collaboration between the UC Berkeley Bixby Program and Ahmadu Bello University Teaching Hospital (ABUTH). The purpose of this 5-year partnership is to enhance the capacity of key departments at ABUTH in Zaria, Nigeria to conduct community based research leading to innovative solutions to maternal mortality and morbidity. The PRHP carried out a baseline demographic and reproductive health survey and exploratory ethnographic fieldwork in three communities in Northern Nigeria. This fieldwork has emphasized the importance of reducing delays and improving the quality of emergency obstetric care in local hospitals and health centers.
Kofan Gayan Hospital, directed by Dr. Habila Muazu, is located in the city of Zaria in the state of Kaduna, Nigeria. This hospital provides care for dozens of villages in and around Zaria, which has a population of greater than 1,000,000. Kofan Gayan Hospital provides medical and surgical services, and is the referral hospital for a number of primary care clinics. Under a 2007 mandate from the state government, this hospital has been charged with providing free medical services for obstetric and pediatric patients.
Links and Resources