A highly successful technology entrepreneur, Jim Fruchterman has been a rocket scientist, founded the foremost optical character recognition manufacturer, and developed a successful line of reading machines. Fruchterman co-founded Calera Recognition Systems in 1982. Calera developed character recognition that would allow computers to read virtually all printed text. In 1989, Fruchterman founded Arkenstone, a 501(c)(3) nonprofit social enterprise, to produce reading machines for the disabled community based on the Calera technology. Following the sale of the Arkenstone product line in 2000, Fruchterman used all of the resulting capital to found Benetech, with an explicit goal to use power of technology to serve humanity.

Fruchterman has also been active in public service, with two stints on U.S. federal advisory committees. Fruchterman was named as an Outstanding Social Entrepreneur 2003 by the Schwab Foundation and, as such, participated in the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland in January 2003. He also received the Robert F. Bray Award from the American Council of the Blind in recognition of his outstanding efforts to make literary works accessible to people who are blind or visually impaired. In addition, Fruchterman is a cofounder, director and chief financial officer for RAF Technology, Inc., America's leading high-end OCR technology company, used by the United States Postal Service to route the mail.

Jim believes that technology is the ultimate leveler, allowing disadvantaged people achieve more equality in society. He notes with pride, "I'm a scout for social applications, finding exciting technology waiting to be turned into non-commercial tools for disadvantaged groups."

Each year, the Digital Vision Fellowship Program welcomes a small group of outstanding technologists, each with unique projects that benefit the developing world. During their year at Stanford, these Fellows use their vision and talent to build information and communications technology solutions that empower developing world communities. Today, you will hear several of this year’s Fellows describe their “projects”, the challenge their addressing, the solution their creating and the social impact they aim to achieve.

Ms. Nystrom is the founder and Director of Social Fusion, a nonprofit business incubator that accelerates the growth and impact of highly innovative nonprofit and for-profit social ventures (www.wtc-sf.org). Social Fusion's philosophy rests on the premise that sustainable innovation requires a triangulation between business expertise, investment, and a community of social entrepreneurs advancing new solutions for systemic social change.

David Green is delivering top quality health care technologies to developing countries. He dramatically reduces product prices by incorporating existing technologies, establishing manufacturing sites in the countries he serves, and using an international multi-tiered pricing system where wealthier customers subsidize the poor. Currently, David is manufacturing hearing aids that normally cost over $1,000 (due to massive mark-ups) and selling them for $40 to $100. His distribution and customer support centers provide patients with complete treatment, from testing to customizing patients' hearing aids to follow-up counseling.

Before beginning this hearing aid project in early 2000, David created similar sustainable systems for the production and distribution of intraocular lenses and surgical sutures. He currently sells over 600,000 intraocular lenses per year to 86 countries for only $8, compared with $150 in the U.S. His sutures cost a fifth of the standard price. David holds both bachelors and master's degrees from the University of Michigan, where he focused on public health.

Paul joined Ashoka in 2002, bringing his entrepreneurial and business experience to the social sector. Born and raised in Chicago, Paul has become a "citizen of the world," living and working in North America, Europe, Asia and Australia. Paul is a seasoned entrepreneur and has led, managed, and grown innovative organizations from scratch. Paul co-founded and sold a financial-services company, creating new opportunities and products for under-served customers while teaching financial literacy and advocating privacy protection.

Paul has also helped Fortune 500 companies world-wide during his time with McKinsey & Company and CSC Index, founded the New York Chapter of Coalition for Quality Children's Media (CQCM) dedicated to teaching youth media literacy, and has served on the Board of Directors for Big Brothers Big Sisters of Marin County. Paul graduated from the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania.

Jane has devoted her professional life to helping immigrants and refugees improve their career situations. Before founding Upwardly Global, she was the Assistant Director for Resettlement, Lutheran Immigration and Refugee Service and the Assistant Director of RefugeeWorks, which provides technical assistance to refugee employment programs. She also helped launch seven refugee Welfare-to-Work programs. In 2000, she and Conrad Asper co-founded the craigslist nonprofit venture forum, a new approach for connecting the giving community to social change organizations.

Jane was the first Program Coordinator of the Nonprofit Program (now the Hauser Center for Nonprofit Organizations) at Harvard University's Kennedy School of Government and a member of the Going-To-Scale Project that generated interest in venture philanthropy. She contributed research to publications on nonprofit organizational capacity, including "Virtuous Capital: What Foundations Can Learn from Venture Capitalists," Harvard Business Review, March 1997, and High Performance Nonprofit Organizations, Letts, Ryan and Grossman, Wiley and Sons, 1998.

Jane holds a master's degree from Columbia University's School of International and Public Affairs and a bachelor's degree from Tufts University. She is an Ashoka Affiliate and a Rockefeller Foundation Next Generation Leadership Fellow. Jane is a frequent speaker on immigrant issues and social entrepreneurship.

Charlotte Opal, new products manager at TransFair USA, was previously a regional sales manager for PeaceWorks, a gourmet food import company working in conflict regions around the globe. She has written marketing plans for nonprofits to launch fair trade wine from South Africa and Mexico in the UK, export sustainable forest products from Belize, and sell rainforest-grown coffee, tea and spices from Sri Lanka. She received an M.Phil in Development Studies and an M.B.A. while a Rhodes Scholar at Oxford University, and a B.A. in Economics from Wake Forest University. TransFair USA, a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization, is the only independent, third-party certifier of Fair Trade practices in the United States, and is the US member of FLO (Fairtrade Labeling Organizations).

The Tech Museum Awards and Applied Materials, Inc. present the 2003 Tech Laureates. The 25 Laureates are honored for their inventions and applications of technology to solve global challenges in the areas of Education, Equality, Environment, Economic Development, and Health. Demonstrating the potential of technology to improve our quality of life, this year’s Laureates represent the countries of Bangladesh, Canada, Costa Rica, India, Indonesia, Kenya, Nicaragua, Nepal, and the US.

The 2004 Laureates will be honored at the Awards Gala on November 10, where five winners will be announced and awarded $50,000 each. Today, November 9th, several of these Laureates will exchange their ideas and solution with students in the Speaker Series.

Elliott Brown is founder and President of Springboard. He has over 10 years' experience developing and managing employment and youth development programs for people in low-income communities. He also served as a management consultant to non-profit organizations.

Before founding Springboard, he designed and served as Director of Workforce Links, which matched graduates of the San Jose Job Corps training program with paid corporate internships at SGI. Elliott was a member of the Leadership Mid-Peninsula class of 1997. He has also served as Director of the Bayshore Workers youth employment program in East Palo Alto, and Executive Director of Hands On for Youth, an educational and training program for East Palo Alto youth.

Elliott graduated from Stanford in 1989 with a BA in Psychology.

Lee Davis is a Co-Founder and CEO of NESsT, an international nonprofit organization dedicated to supporting social enterprise in emerging market countries. Over the last decade, NESsT has served as a catalyst of the social enterprise movement worldwide. The NESsT Venture Fund, the first emerging markets fund supporting social enterprise, invests in a portfolio of social enterprises (i.e., for-profit businesses owned and operated by nonprofit organisations) in an effort to help them generate resources to support the financial sustainability and further the mission impact of their parent nonprofit organisations.

Along with NESsT partner Nicole Etchart, Lee is co-author of several books and articles on social enterprise and venture philanthropy, including: Get Ready, Get Set: Starting Down the Road to Self-Financing (2003) and Profits for Nonprofits (Budapest, 1999). He is currently editing NESsT's forthcoming book Not Only For Profit: Innovative Mechanisms for Philanthropic Investment - an analysis of innovative investment mechanisms for supporting social enterprise. In 1996-97, he authored The NGO-Business Hybrid, a seminal study on nonprofit enterprise activities in 13 countries, while a Research Fellow at the Johns Hopkins University School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS). Davis also served as a Professorial Lecturer in Social Change and Development at SAIS, developing and co-teaching the first graduate-level course on social enterprise in the developing world.

Mr. Davis holds an M.A. in Policy Studies from the Johns Hopkins University, and a B.A., magna cum laude, Phi Beta Kappa from Connecticut College. Davis was a recipient of the prestigious Thomas J. Watson Foundation fellowship in 1988-89, pursuing an independent research and travel project in Switzerland and Japan. He was born in New York and currently divides his time between NESsT's offices in Chile, Hungary and the USA.