Meet U.N. Foundation's entrepreneur in residence
[...] the U.N. Foundation, an organization that "brings partnerships, ideas and resources in support of humanitarian work of the U.N.," says Elizabeth Gore, the foundation's first entrepreneur in residence. [...] Kathy Calvin, a former senior vice president at AOL who went on to be the president of AOL Time Warner Foundation, spearheads UNF. Given that entrepreneurial flair is embedded in the history of the U.N. Foundation, the Washington, D.C., organization decided it was time to have a home in America's most entrepreneurial city, San Francisco. [...] Gore would be its ambassador to engage with the tech giants of Silicon Valley, building partnerships for "good." Or as Gore put it, "We wanted to put a stake in the ground, tell the world that we are going to bring new innovations to the U.N." In particular, for-profit companies in Silicon Valley have brought not just Web 4.0 and R&D for new innovations but products that have transformed lives. What sorts of companies and organizations in the Bay Area have you already built relationships with to pursue these ideas? [...] there are schools such as Stanford's d.School and the Hult Business School in San Francisco where we've done business competitions with students and built an innovation platform. There's a strong focus on getting the participation of young people around the world, using technology and social media. Not merely for funds, but also for employee talent, intellectual capital, and their research and development capacity. Loon, for instance, is Google's project to connect the world to the Internet using a network of balloons. [...] you're quite passionate about public health. Do you want to look at public health in Silicon Valley and the role of technology in health? The Bay Area has an important role to play in public health, given the hardware and software that comes out here. A huge positive impact can be made if we think about how technology can be used to improve health campaigns. [...] the mobile phone has made it easier to do data collection in the field, track viruses and monitor campaigns in developing countries. [...] there are a number of startups as well as big companies in the area who are interested in this - not just from a profitability angle, but also in terms of creating impact. [...] a growing group of venture capital firms are investing in companies that are developing these technologies to benefit society.