Keynote Speakers

Paul Polak—founder of Colorado-based non-profit International Development Enterprises (IDE)— is dedicated to developing practical solutions that attack poverty at its roots.

For the past 25 years, Paul has worked with thousands of farmers in countries around the world—including Bangladesh, India, Cambodia, Ethiopia, Myanmar, Nepal, Vietnam, Zambia and Zimbabwe—to help design and produce low-cost design and produce low-cost, income-generating products that have already moved 17 million people out of poverty.

Before establishing IDE, Paul practiced psychiatry for 23 years in Colorado. To better understand the environments influencing his patients, Paul would visit their homes and workplaces. After a trip he made to Bangladesh, he was inspired to use the skills he had honed while working with homeless veterans and mentally ill patients in Denver to serve the 800 million people living on a dollar a day around the world. Employing the same tactics he pioneered as a psychiatrist, Paul spent time “walking with farmers through their one-acre farms and enjoying a cup of tea with their families, sitting on a stool in front of their thatched-roof mud-and-wattle homes.” Paul’s ability to respond with innovative solutions—such as the $25 treadle pump and small farm drip-irrigation systems starting at $3—helped IDE increase poor farmers’ net income by $288 million annually.

Last year, IDE received a $14 million grant from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. In 2004, Paul received Ernst & Young’s “Entrepreneur of the Year” award in the social responsibility category. And, Paul was named one of the Scientific American “Top 50” for his leadership in agriculture policy in 2003.

Donald Kennedy is president emeritus of Stanford University, the Bing Professor of Environmental Science and Policy, emeritus, and an FSI senior fellow by courtesy. He is also the editor-in-chief of Science, the journal of the American Association for the Advancement of Science. His research focuses on policy regarding trans-boundary environmental problems such as as major land-use changes; economically-driven alterations in agricultural practice; global climate change; and the development of regulatory policies.

Kennedy joined the Stanford faculty in 1960 and was president of the university from 1980 to 1992. He was commissioner of the U.S. Food and Drug Administration from 1977 to 1979. Previously at Stanford, he was director of the Program in Human Biology (1973-1977), and chair of the Department of Biology (1964-1972).

Kennedy currently serves as a director of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, and as co-chair of the National Academies' Project on Science, Technology and Law. He received AB and PhD degrees in biology from Harvard University.

Vanessa Tobin is the Deputy Director, Programmes, Programme Division of UNICEF in New York Headquarters since July 2006.  Ms. Tobin, a national of the United Kingdom, obtained a B.Sc. in civil engineering from Birmingham University, UK and a M.Sc. in Public Health from the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine.  She also has a Master of Public Administration degree from the John F. Kennedy School of Government, Harvard University.   

Ms. Tobin served as Chief, Water, Environment, and Sanitation from 2001-2006 in New York and also served as Senior Adviser, Health for two years in New York (1999-2001).  Ms. Tobin has worked for UNICEF for more than seventeen years stationed in Nepal, Pakistan, Egypt and New York.    

Prior to joining UNICEF, Ms. Tobin worked in Lesotho and Sudan for the British Government.