The Power of Community: Solving the World’s Biggest Challenges
Somerville is changing the nature of what it is as a city and with that evolution comes exciting opportunities, challenges and ideas. This year, TEDxSomerville featured speakers who are at the forefront of reinventing the world they live in and are pushing the boundaries of how society thinks, lives, and works.
The first innovator to take the stage in the Tufts University auditorium for TEDxSomerville 2015 was Emily L. Reichert, CEO of Greentown Labs and former chemist. Emily shared details about her experience creating a community where scientists and engineers can work and play and feel empowered to find solutions to the world’s biggest challenges.
Emily played an instrumental role in helping grow what was once a group of cleantech entrepreneurs, squatting in a basement, into what’s now the nation’s largest cleantech incubator. Now, in her role as CEO, she is responsible for managing the growth and strategic direction of the space and spends every workday alongside a community of believers.
What most don’t know is that her road to get here was not one without bends. After having spent twenty-one years in school and another eleven years in the workforce, she was unable to find a community where she felt she could truly use her scientific training and business acumen to work on solving global environmental and energy issues. So, she decided to build it herself.
Greentown Labs is now a fun and exciting growing community of entrepreneurs working alongside one another to make their dreams of creating world-saving technologies come to life. They can walk into the lab every day and feel that they are a part of a community that’s collectively working toward something bigger by building something that makes a difference, whether it’s to bring solar powered sailboats to the seas, or to develop and commercialize the world’s first floating wind turbine.
TEDxSomerville 2015 had an incredible lineup of speakers this year, with new ideas about movement, education, the environment, business and more from local influencers like David Delmar (Designer and Founder/Executive Director of Resilient Coders), Hitendra Patel (Managing Director of the Center for Innovation), and Drew Bonfiglio (Co-Founder of Emzingo). Check out the TEDxSomerville 2015 playlist to view other awesome talks from that day!
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