Superpowers for Good: Empowering Changemakers for Social Impact via Regulated Investment Crowdfunding from the SuperCrowd.

My cousin, who is currently in prison, shared with me how much Michael Santos’ work was changing his life so I had to invite him on the show. Michael helps people prepare for and have the best experience possible in prison to help them be successful leaving it. “My name is Michael. I mean, I'm a guy who made a lot of bad decisions as a young man. I was 20 years old when I thought it would be kind...

Rotary International is headquartered in the United States and a plurality of recent presidents are from the U.S., but Rotary lives up to its monicker with a majority of its Presidents coming from outside the U.S. Rotary’s current president-elect is Holger Knaack from Hamburg, Germany. Fit and vigorous, Holger sports reading glasses positioned low on his nose, giving him the appearance of a skinny...

Dr. Winnie Mpanju-Shumbusho, a former leader on malaria eradication with the World Health Organization and co-author of a recent report published in The Lancet, says we are making progress on malaria eradication as a result of four key interventions being scaled up in endemic countries: Bed nets and other efforts to protect people from mosquito bites Rapid diagnosis leads to earlier treatment and...

Boxabl, led by CEO Paolo Tiramani, has created an innovation for housing construction that could stand up a home ready to move in in a matter of hours rather than months! The process begins with factory-built units that can be assembled almost like Legos on-site to create buildings up to four stories. Never miss another interview! Join Devin here: http://bit.ly/joindevin . Get full access to Super...

Every year, Rotary International spends $150 million on polio eradication. Ever wonder how they decide where to spend that money? Judith Diment, a member of the Rotary International PolioPlus Committee who serves on the grants committee, takes us inside the decision-making process to help us see both how exciting and difficult the process is. Watch the full interview above. Interview with Judith D...

Eden I&R is an indispensable part of the Alameda County community in the East Bay area of Northern California. Eden I&R does a lot with a little. This small nonprofit with an annual budget of just over $2 million, handles over 60,000 contacts annual, helps 350 HIV/AIDS clients find housing and other services, maintains a database of 73,000 rental units and a list of 3,100 services available from o...

The population of Africa could almost double to 2.3 billion people by 2050 with a huge portion of that population being prime working age. The UN Resident Coordinator to Kenya, Siddharth Chatterjee, sees this as an opportunity Africa can harness to accelerate economic growth and lift hundreds of millions of people now living in extreme poverty out of it. Sid, a passionate advocate for both women a...

In 2014, when the epidemic of Ebola was running wild in Liberia, Guinea and Sierra Leone, a few cases of the frequently lethal hemorrhagic disease popped up in nearby Nigeria. This was scary because Nigeria is so much more populous than the other affected countries--almost 200 million people were suddenly at risk. Health officials tapped the existing polio-fighting infrastructure in Nigeria to qui...

The Women’s Bean Project doesn’t just make chili, it makes a difference. It also makes a variety of other products, many that feature beans. The nonprofit doesn’t exist to make its products, it works to change the lives of the women who make them. Tamra Ryan, CEO, and Miranda Zamora, a production supervisor, joined me to talk about the program’s products and its impact. Miranda is a prime example...

Glioblastoma (GBM) is the most complex and aggressive type of cancer that originates in the brain. There hasn’t been a new FDA approved treatment brought to market in 15 years, and survival rates for GBM have not changed in 30 years - 90% of those diagnosed succumbing to the disease within five years. For the 1.4 million people worldwide living with malignant brain tumors, and an estimated 256,000...

Carol Pandak, director of PolioPlus for Rotary International announced in this episode of the Your Mark on the World Show recorded on October 22, 2019 that wild poliovirus type three has been officially eradicated. “The achievement of polio eradication will be a milestone for global health. Commitment from partners and countries, coupled with innovation, means of the three wild polio serotypes, on...

MAP International is a nonprofit that accepts mostly in-kind donations of drugs from pharmaceutical companies and delivers them to people in developing countries who cannot afford them. Each year, the organization receives about $500 million in donated pharmaceuticals. Cash donations from foundations and individuals provide the funding for logistics to move the drugs to where they are most needed...

Dr. Scott Leckman is a dear friend, so yes, this is personal. If we are known by the company we keep, I certainly want to keep his company. Rotary connected us, specifically the Salt Lake Rotary Club where he is a past president. For the year ended June 30, 2019, Scott served as the district governor for the state of Utah. (District 5420 is, I believe, the only Rotary district to cover exactly one...

Alissa Sears, co-founder of the adVenturesAcademy, has seen it over again: entrepreneurs and investors bond in the outdoors, in challenging circumstances, in ways they never could in the boardroom. Just as importantly, sometimes they discover that they don’t want to be in business with someone when the chips are down. Trips with Alissa’s adVenturesAcademy don’t just build character, they reveal ch...

The United Nations recently suggested that reversing climate change before global warming reaches 2 degrees Celsius would require annual investment of $2.4 trillion. Impact Assets is one of the players working to close the funding gap. The need likely exceeds $2.4 trillion as that estimate includes only climate-related investment requirements. Other pressing social issues, including extreme povert...

Author Doug White says in his new book, Wounded Charity, that the CBS and New York Times reports of malfeasance and wrongdoing at the Wounded Warrior Project were not accurate. Much of their reporting, Doug says, came from a Facebook group. With a national scale of operation, there were disgruntled former employees who had created a Facebook group where they shared their experiences and perception...

Valerie Red-Horse Mohl, the executive director for Social Venture Circle, got her first job out of film school working on the team of notorious investment banker, Michael Milken who created the modern high-yield bond market and later spent 22 months in prison for securities fraud. Val later applied her skills running her own investment banking firm, completing $3 billion in transactions, mostly se...

Upaya Social Ventures is a nonprofit impact investing firm that answers the question, “How do you help people too poor for microloans?” The answer is both easy and challenging: jobs. The presumption of microlending programs often seems to be that everyone can or should be an entrepreneur. Entrepreneurship is a powerful economic driver, but most people lack the skills to thrive as entrepreneurs eve...

Larry Sherwood, president and CEO of Interstate Renewable Energy Council reminds us that once solar panels are paid for, all the electricity that results is free. Wind energy, similarly, is virtually free after you buy the turbine. Neither requires fuel. For decades, the Interstate Renewable Energy Council has been working to help states and municipalities implement rules and regulations that supp...

Steve Klass founded the nonprofit P3 Utah to help Utah businesses adopt triple-bottom-line practices to better respect people and the planet along with profits. The influence of P3 Utah continues to grow. Interview with Steve Klass, the Executive Director of P3 Utah. The following is the pre-interview with Steve Klass. Be sure to watch the recorded interview above. For-profit/Nonprofit: 501(c)3 No...

Patricia Mertz was forced to cut short her two-and-a-half year term of service with the Peace Corps in Cote d’Ivoire. She talked about her desire to return and help so much over the next seven years that her niece finally promised to give her $10,000 from the prize money of a singing contest she entered. She didn’t win the contest but the promise had catalyzed Patricia to take action, form a 501(c...

Marc Blumenthal joins me to talk about Social Ventures Foundation’s work in launching V’ice in Haiti. V’ice is basically a snow cone with added nutrition. These sorts of products are popular in Haiti and V’ice is both superior and price competitive. It is intended to be sold by microfranchisees so the profits mostly stay in the community. Interview with Marc Blumenthal, the Executive Director of S...

Laurent Lamothe, 47, former Prime Minister of Haiti, says Haiti—and other low-income countries—can thrive by implementing new taxes on telecom and banking transactions. Lamothe, who resigned as the PM in December of 2014 after serving two and a half years—longer than any PM since the Haiti earthquake in 2010—says micro levies on small transactions provide an opportunity for countries like Haiti to...

Raising capital is almost never easy for entrepreneurs but data suggests it can be more difficult for some than others. Minorities and women are much less likely to receive VC investments. People living outside California, New York and Boston are also much less likely to receive venture capital. Enter Beta Boom, with Managing Partner Kimmy Paluch, herself a minority, based in Salt Lake City and fo...

Igor Belagorudsky, president of FastCTO, joined me to explain his company’s new tool for rating crowdfunding issues to make them more appealing to large investors. Increasingly, investors of all stripes are looking at deals on investment crowdfunding websites like Wefunder, Republic and Crowdfund Mainstreet. The score is intended to help both novice and expert institutional investors better unders...