Paul Polak
Dr. Paul Polak is the founder of International Development Enterprises (IDE), a non-profit organization that has ended poverty for 17 million of the world’s poorest people by making available radically affordable irrigation technologies through local small entrepreneurs and opening private sector access to markets for their crops. For his work in agriculture, Dr. Polak was recognized by Scientific American as one of the world’s leading 50 contributors to science, was named Ernst and Young Entrepreneur of the Year for the western states, and received the Florence Monito Del Giardino award for environmental preservation in 2008.
After handing over IDE to new leadership, Polak started two new organizations. D-Rev: Design for the other 90% is a non-profit development organization with the mission of creating a revolution in design to reach 4 billion poor people bypassed by the current design process. Windhorse International is a for-profit company that combines radically affordable technology with radically decentralized supply chains to earn profits serving bottom billion customers.
In the November issue of the Atlantic Monthly, Dr. Polak was named a Brave Thinker -- along with Barack Obama, Ben Bernanke (Chairman of the Federal Reserve) Steve Jobs (Apple and Pixar), Sheila Blair (FDIC Chair) and 21 others. He received this recognition for creating a new model for the eradication of poverty, which, unlike many traditional approaches, has been very successful.
Polak’s book, Out of Poverty: What Works When Traditional Approaches Fail (see paulpolak.com) has become a renowned resource for practical solutions to global poverty.