Gro Harlem Bruntland: Celebrating Women in Sustainability
At age 41, Dr. Gro Harlem Brundtland became the first woman Prime Minister of Norway — and the youngest person ever appointed. Her cabinet of eight women and nine men represented the highest level of gender equality in history as Dr. Brundtland continued to lead her country for more than a decade.
She later served as Director-General of the World Health Organization (WHO), which tapped her outstanding skills as physician, environmentalist, politician, and activist. Under her forward-thinking leadership, WHO confronted the global threat of the SARS virus. Dr. Brundtland also spurred debate on global health as a key to economic development, starting programs to curb malaria, tobacco use, tuberculosis, and AIDS, chronic diseases, diet, and nutrition.
Former Norwegian prime minister Gro Harlem Brundtland, who has been called the “godmother of sustainable development” since her landmark 1987 Report Our Common Future originally coined the term, is the winner of the 2014 Tang Prize in sustainable development. In April 2018 she gave two talks in Taiwan on sustainable development, public health and the environment at a forum titled “Public Health and the Environment in a Sustainable Society” at the Academia Sinica cementing the connection between the environment and health.
At the age of seven, Dr. Brundtland joined the children’s organization of Norway’s Labour Party, and has been a member ever since.
After Dr. Brundtland completed her medical studies at Oslo University, as a newly qualified doctor, she won a scholarship to the Harvard School of Public Health where she gave form to her vision of extending health beyond the confines of the medical world into environmental issues and human development. While studying at Harvard, she worked not only with distinguished Harvard medical experts, but also with medical experts from around the world. As an environment minister, Prime Minister, and party leader, she gained international recognition as a leader on key global challenges, the environment, human rights, sustainable development, and global security issues.
Later employed with the Ministry of Health in Oslo, Dr. Brundtland focused on children’s health issues. In 1974 she was asked to serve as Norway’s Minister of the Environment focusing on the links between public health and the environment.
In May 2007, the UN Secretary General, Ban Ki-moon, named Dr. Brundtland, former Chilean President Ricardo Lagos, and Han Seung-Soo, former foreign minister of South Korea, to serve as UN Special Envoys for Climate Change. That year Dr. Brundtland became a founding member of the “Elders,” a group of 11 leaders brought together by Nelson Mandela and chaired by Archbishop Desmond Tutu, who contribute their wisdom, independent leadership, and integrity to tackling the world’s toughest problems with the goal of conflict resolution and making the world a better place.
Beyond her commitment to sustainable development, Bruntland has been a leader in gaining opportunity for other women leaders to follow her path.
Five female researchers from South Africa, Kenya, India, the Philippines and Malaysia are to receive this year’s Gro Brundtland Award at a ceremony on April 3, six of whom presented their work and gave a series of talks around the country, addressing issues such as women and children’s health, disease and environmental sustainability.
Though not directly connected to Dr. Bruntland’s work, Women Who Tech, and a range of other initiatives to enable women, can look to her as a source of inspiration and thank her for building the platform that is making a change possible.
Women Who Tech: Women Startup Challenge finalists
Women Who Tech aims to close the gender gap in technology and has enlisted some big corporations to sponsor. Notably, a number of the finalists have an environmental or health technology. Women Who Tech is supported by Craig Newmark, founder of craigslist and Craig Newmark Philanthropies, Google, Blanc & Otus, Rad Campaign, and Invisu.
- Astral AR: A drone piloting system that uses IoT and helps law enforcement stop bullets, and detect guns and bombs through walls.
- Curie Co: A life science company that utilizes enzymes and biocompatible materials to replace chemicals banned by the FDA in consumer health products.
- Folia Water: A water filtration system made up of a single sheet of nano-silver filter paper, which can provide 50 liters of safe water at a retail price of 50 cents per sheet.
- Neopenda: An affordable, wireless vital signs monitor that reduces response time to newborns in distress, and helps healthcare workers save lives in overcrowded and understaffed health facilities.
- re:3D: Creators of Gigabot, an industrial human-scale 3D printer that prints from plastic recyclables creating access to local and sustainable manufacturing material, which decimates costs and scales barriers in additive manufacturing.
- Re-Nuble: A patent-pending process to optimize plant nutrition by transforming food waste into chemical free, organic nutrients for both soil based and hydroponic cultivation where food waste is unable to be redirected for human or animal consumption in a recycled, safe, sustainable manner.
- Solstice Energy Solutions: Created SHYFT, a platform for millions of households and businesses in emerging markets that struggle with intermittent or costly power, and where users can remotely monitor, control, and manage all power sources, including solar, generator, converter, and utility.
- Timeless: An app developed by a 13-year-old to help Alzheimer’s patients remember events, stay connected and engaged, and recognize people through artificial intelligence-based facial recognition technology.
- VNTANA: An Augmented Reality computing platform that allows consumers to interact with holograms of their favorite athlete, celebrity, or product while capturing real-time data to help companies generate leads, convert sales, and quantify engagement.
- WaterSeer: A mobile water solution and device that pulls clean, fresh water from air right where people live, providing water security and independence to everyone. The device can produce 100,000s of gallons a year while collecting climate data.
The 10 finalists, selected from nearly 300 applicants from across the U.S., presented their pitches on March 6, 2018 at Google in NYC. The winner, Emma Yang of Timeless, received $50,000 as a cash grant.