Stachel, Laura
Executive Director, We Care Solar
Dr. Laura Stachel is the co-founder and executive director of We Care Solar, an award-winning nonprofit that designs and delivers solar-powered solutions to maternal health centers in energy-poor countries. Stachel is an obstetrician; she holds an MD from the University of California, San Francisco and an MPH from UC Berkeley. Stachel began working with her husband, Hal Aronson, to develop compact solar electric kits for maternal health care after researching maternal mortality in Nigeria. Their innovative Solar Suitcase provides efficient medical lighting, phone-charging and fetal monitoring – enabling health workers to provide around-the-clock emergency care for expectant mothers and their newborns. We Care Solar has distributed more than 1,600 Solar Suitcases to health centers around the world, including in Uganda, Tanzania, Malawi, Sierra Leone, Nigeria, Liberia, Ethiopia, Nepal and the Philippines. Laura is a champion for sustainable energy solutions for women’s health. She has been active in the UN Foundations “Sustainable Energy for All” initiative. Laura was a 2013 CNN Hero and has won numerous awards for her humanitarian work. Most recently, We Care Solar received the inaugural 2015 UN DESA “Powering the Future We Want” award. She is a contributing author to “Social Entrepreneurship and Innovation,” by Ken Banks.