Alice Chun: Creating Light Out of Darkness

Description

Episode Summary

Alice Chun is an entrepreneur driven to solve a problem that needed solving: how to provide light to people who have no electricity. Motivated to help in the aftermath of the Haiti earthquake in 2010, Alice changed her career and her life. In this episode of the Sydcast, listen to Alice describe what she did, and felt, and how that momentous occasion when she decided to do something put in motion a series of events that led to Nigeria, Syria, Hillary Clinton, and a start-up called Solight Design.

Syd Finkelstein

Syd Finkelstein is the Steven Roth Professor of Management at the Tuck School of Business at Dartmouth College. He holds a Masters degree from the London School of Economics and a Ph.D. from Columbia University. Professor Finkelstein has published 25 books and 90 articles, including the bestsellers Why Smart Executives Fail and Superbosses: How Exceptional Leaders Master the Flow of Talent, whichLinkedIn Chairman Reid Hoffman calls the “leadership guide for the Networked Age.” He is also a Fellow of the Academy of Management, a consultant and speaker to leading companies around the world, and a top 25 on the global Thinkers 50 list of top management gurus. Professor Finkelstein’s research and consulting work often relies on in-depth and personal interviews with hundreds of people, an experience that led him to create and host his own podcast, The Sydcast, to uncover and share the stories of all sorts of fascinating people in business, sports, entertainment, politics, academia, and everyday life.

Alice Chun

Alice Chun is a Co-Founder and Chief Executive Officer of Solight Design and the inventor of the SolarPuff. Alice was a Professor of Design and Material Culture at Parsons the New School for Design. She was formerly the Director of the Materials Resource Lab at the New School and Adjunct Assistant Professor of Architecture at Columbia University Graduate School of Architecture and at the University of Pennsylvania. She has built award-winning community outreach projects in Philadelphia and her work has been published in the New York Times, Architectural Record, Dwell, and the Journal of Architectural Education. In 2011, Alice founded Material Intelligence Project, Inc. (MIP), renamed to Solight Design, Inc. with Stacy Kelly as co-founder to market her SolarPuff solar lanterns. Solight now markets several flat-pack solar lights and is working to provide solar innovations to those who need it most.

Her book entitled Ground Rules in Humanitarian Design stresses the importance of design principles for the long-term sustainability.

Insights from this episode:

Details on the living conditions and the people in Haiti and Nigeria that drove Alice to raise resources to help provide a better quality of life.
Benefits of being a for-profit company versus being a non-profit company.
Strategies involved in dealing with various NGOs (Non-government Organizations) and other organizations while dealing with politics and corruption in pursuit of relief efforts.
Details on the creation of Solight products and the attributes that make them unique.
Strategies on being a successful entrepreneur and staffing talented people.

Quotes from the show:

“It is one of the most heart-wrenching experiences to see your child's lips turning blue; it is an incredibly mind blowing experience.” – Alice Chun
On Alice struggling to begin a business: “There’s a lot of things in life, I think, like that. You just do it, you put your head down and you do it, but when you look back and you realize how incredibly challenging … you may not have wanted to do it.” – Syd Finkelstein
On not knowing the difficulties that she faced: “I was lucky that I was stupid because if I knew everything that would happen, it might have deterred me.” – Alice Chun
“We consider ourselves a for-purpose company instead of a for-profit company.” – Alice Chun
On turning her lab into a solar studio: “I realized there would be a purpose and that purpose would be to solve problems and it turned out that those problems were world problems, not just problems in Haiti.” – Alice Chun
On staffing companies: “Talent is everywhere and it requires, I think, people to be entrepreneurial in looking for talent.” – Syd Finkelstein
“What’s really important is to be able to hone talent and make it productive for your company.” – Alice Chun
“The whole idea of resourcefulness and being able to creatively work your way through a problem is a talent that I think is so valuable and that’s what I look for a lot when I meet people.” – Alice Chun
“Just being able to trust your intuition is quite a revelation within the context of becoming a successful entrepreneur.” – Alice Chun
On growing up poor: “I became a fighter, but I didn’t fight with my fists, I fought with the light of my imagination and the light of my heart.” – Alice Chun
“Careers are organic. You go from one thing to the other and it’s not a straight path.” – Syd Finkelstein