sustainable-development
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Candy Schibli Put an Engineer’s Ear to the Coffee Roaster
She left international development for a one-kilo roaster in her great-grandmother’s Virginia house. A decade later, Candy Schibli is still treating every batch as an experiment in flavor, fairness and human connection.
Dan Belldegrun Is Building the Rooms Where Science Happens
The Breakthrough Properties co-founder has made a career out of an overlooked biotech constraint: before researchers can change the world, somebody has to build a laboratory that actually works.
Yusuf Amdani Bet on Honduras. Then He Built Around the Job.
A textile heir arrived in Honduras with a factory plan and stayed to build an ecosystem. Three decades later, Yusuf Amdani's revealing product is not cloth or real estate - it is his theory of opportunity.
Breakthrough Properties Put Biotech People in the Landlord's Chair - Then the Lab Boom Broke
A $3 billion fund, six million square feet and one useful insight: scientists should not have to teach their landlord how a lab works. Now a sector-wide glut is testing whether Breakthrough's hospitality-heavy, biotech-native model can earn its keep.
The World’s Most Ambitious Group Project Is Rewriting Its Operating Manual
At 80, the United Nations is part parliament, part emergency room and part global standards desk. Its new UN80 reform drive asks whether an institution built for 1945 can move at the speed - and survive the politics - of 2026.
Atlas AI
Atlas AI is a Palo Alto-based Public Benefit Corporation building GeoAI software that turns planetary-scale satellite imagery, ground-truth surveys, and predictive models into decision-support tools for enterprises, governments, and development institutions investing in emerging markets.
Abe Tarapani
Abe Tarapani is the CEO of Atlas AI, a Palo Alto-based geospatial AI company that uses satellite imagery and machine learning to generate actionable insights on economic, agricultural, and infrastructure trends across emerging markets. A Yale-trained electrical engineer and Presidential Scholar recognized by the Clinton White House, Tarapani has spent nearly two decades at the intersection of renewable energy, data for development, and social impact. He joined Atlas AI in October 2020, steering a company founded by Stanford professors toward enterprise partnerships with the World Bank, DARPA, McKinsey, and Airbus, while earning recognition as a 2024 Google Cloud Partner of the Year and Gavi INFUSE Pacesetter.
Adeo Ressi
Adeo Ressi — full name Adeodato Gregory Ressi di Cervia — is an Italian-American entrepreneur, systems architect, and the man who has been manufacturing founders and venture capitalists at scale for over two decades. Born in New York City in 1972, he co-founded one of the internet's first commercial websites (Total New York, sold to AOL), built and sold methodfive for $88 million, created TheFunded to democratize VC transparency, founded the Founder Institute (7,000+ companies across 250+ cities), launched VC Lab (responsible for ~50% of all new VC firms in 2023), and now leads Decile Group as CEO. He pioneered free legal frameworks used by millions of founders (FAST Agreement, Class F Shares, Convertible Equity). He was Elon Musk's college roommate at Penn, tried and failed to talk him out of SpaceX, and has been publicly wrong about exactly one thing. He calls himself a 'societal engineer.' He means it.