then I kept researching and found the need in Guatemala
alone was six million stoves,” Hughes says. “What we were
doing wasn’t adequate.”
Hughes says she almost bowed out of the program
entirely until rocket stove designer Larry Winiarski showed
up at her front door one day.
“He said, ‘You can’t stop doing this work. It’s really
important,’” she says.
Winiarski had a pitch for Hughes: If she kept working,
he would design a lightweight, energy-efficient stove and
find someone to produce them.
It all came together: Guitarist Carlos Santana donated
$10,000 to support the work. Hughes met with Winiarski
and El Salvador’s vice minister of the environment, who
had $5.5 million to invest in the project, and now
StoveTeam International has helped set up stove factories
in El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras and Mexico,
providing jobs to Central American countries, cutting
carbon emissions and saving lives through the use of
Winiarski’s Ecocina stove. Tested locally by Aprovecho
Research Center, the stove reduces carbon emissions by 68
percent and particulate matter by more than 86 percent.
Hughes says she started the project with no background
in business or nonprofits. “You just have to start with one
foot on the trail and see how far you can go,” she says.
GERI RICHMOND
Visit stoveteam.org to learn more.
‘
If 10 percent of your ideas work,
then celebrate.
“I’m an experimentalist,” she explains. “Not every
experiment works, and that’s the way I’ve approached this.
You always have to be ready to change tactics if your idea
doesn’t work. This one works and was successful, and
that’s great, but had it not, I would have gone on to another
tactic.”
Visit coach.uoregon.edu for more.
— GERI RICHMOND, UO PROFESSOR
The Experimenter
Ask UO Professor Geri Richmond for advice, and
she’ll tell you this: Prepare to succeed only 10 percent of
the time.
“That’s a really good philosophy for life,” she says. “If
10 percent of your ideas work, then celebrate.”
Glance at Richmond’s resume and it’s clear that she’s put
her advice to good use. She runs a chemistry research lab at
the UO, is soon to be president of the American Association
for the Advancement of Science and serves as a U.S.
Science Envoy, appointed by Secretary of State John Kerry.
She also founded an influential program called COACh
that helps women scientists and engineers all over the
world advance their careers. She says the program started
with a small meeting of U.S. women in chemistry to
discuss why women in science, technology, engineering
and math (STEM) were being passed up for honors and
advancement mid-career. Since then, it’s expanded to the
’
international scale, and COACh has held workshops for
women in 25 countries around the globe.
“We found that the majority of women do not ask for
what they need,” Richmond says, “and so our workshops
are career-building and focus on concepts like negotiation,
building relationships, leadership, dealing with difficult
confrontations and making yourself recognizable.”
Richmond seeks funding and recruits volunteers to
travel with her to Thailand, Cameroon and Jamaica, where
they work at boosting women’s confidence and giving
them resources to improve their careers. These opportunities
are particularly important in developing countries,
Richmond says.
When pitching her workshops to other countries,
Richmond says she doesn’t pose it as a solution to a problem.
First, she tries to understand the culture and works with
countries to determine if COACh would be helpful to them.
The program has expanded beyond Richmond’s
expectations, but that ties into her 10-percent philosophy,
she says.
It’s Your Turn
All these stories have a common thread: They started
with an idea, and regardless of whether the people
involved knew how to implement them, they charged
forward and tried in spite of inexperience or self doubt.
Johnson of FertiLab Thinkubator says that more than
1,000 people came through the doors of FertiLab in
Eugene last year, all brimming with ideas they wanted to
hash out and discuss. That’s why FertiLab opened a new
location in Springfield last month — to continue helping
as many people as possible to grow their ideas.
That’s what it takes, Johnson says. It takes risk and
bravery. People with ideas can’t be afraid of criticism or
feedback. Ideas also need investments of both time and
money. Eugeneans shouldn’t refuse to make investments
that might take time to grow.
So take these examples and draw inspiration from
them. If you have an idea, pursue it. If you have money to
give, help someone else out. Put Eugene on the map yet
again as a creative city that exports ideas.
Needless to say, there are many more ideas we'd like to
put out there, so please write to us with more stories of
Eugene’s blossoming ideas or, even better, come up with
your own. ■
eugeneweekly.com • A ugust 13, 2015
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