Ron Garan
Colonel, United States Air Force (retired)
Former NASA Astronaut

Ron Garan, a highly decorated Fighter Pilot and Test Pilot, describes himself as an Explorer, Entrepreneur and Humanitarian who believes that appropriately designed and targeted social enterprise can solve many of the problems facing our world. To date, as a NASA astronaut he traveled 71,075,867 miles during 178 days in space and 27 hours and 3 minutes of EVA during four spacewalks. Ron is also an aquanaut and participated in the joint NASA-NOAA, NEEMO-9 mission, an exploration research mission held in Aquarius, the world's only undersea research laboratory.

Working in partnership with the US Agency for International Development (USAID), Ron is leading an effort called Unity Node to develop a universal, open source, collaborative platform to enable humanitarian organizations around the world to work together toward their common goals and is also leading an effort to establish the Applied Research Projects Agency for Development (ARPA-D) program for USAID.

Outside his work with the US government, Ron is also a serial entrepreneur and has founded multiple business enterprises and social-impact focused startups including Manna Energy Ltd. Manna also developed a four million person program operating in Kenya, completely funded by carbon credits and is currently working on a three million person program in Rwanda.

Please join the Social Entrepreneurship Accelerator at Duke (SEAD) and the Duke Global Health Institute in welcoming Dr. Eric Bing to Duke.

Dr. Eric G. Bing spearheads the Bush Institute’s global health initiatives, with an emphasis on creating programs that engage both the public and private sectors. He is also a professor of global health at Southern Methodist University. Dr. Bing received his medical degree from Harvard Medical School, a master of public health and his Ph.D. in epidemiology from UCLA, and an M.B.A. from the Fuqua School of Business at Duke University.

“Every year, more than a quarter of a million women die during childbirth and almost 7 million children under five die as well.  Why?  Because, even though we have the medical solutions that people around the world need, we just can’t get it to them. They are dying not because we can’t solve a medical problem, but because we can’t solve a distribution problem. Saving these lives does not need to be costly, and it can be done now.” –Dr. Eric Bing

The Duke Innovation and Entrepreneurship Initiative presents "Social Media, Social Entrepreneurship, and the Power of One" with Jay Jamboneta, co-founder of the Yellow Boat of Hope Foundation and Acumen Fund Fellow. Mr. Jamboneta's talk will include an interactive dialogue facilitated by Carlos Salum. Light refreshments will be served. 

Presented in collaboration with Salum International Resources, The Center for the Advancement of Social Entrepreneurship, and Bull City Forward.