Portland, OR – The Lemelson Foundation, the world’s leading funder of invention in service of social and economic change, today announced that it has added Juliana Rotich to its Advisory Committee and hired Pam Kahl as communications officer. These two additions mark expansion of the Foundation’s strategic leadership.
Rotich, the co-founder and executive director of BRCK.org, will join the Advisory Committee’s efforts to provide strategic advice on the development and implementation of the Foundation’s programs. Kahl, a veteran communications leader with expertise in the corporate, nonprofit, and academic sectors, will lead all communications initiatives that further the Foundation’s mission of inspiring and enabling the next generation of inventors and invention-based enterprises.
“On behalf of The Lemelson Foundation board and staff, I am honored to welcome Juliana Rotich and Pam Kahl,” said Executive Director Carol Dahl. “They are outstanding leaders in their fields. Ms. Rotich’s experience in business, technology, international development, and global problem solving will provide critical depth and perspective to our work. Ms. Kahl will bring strategic focus, big vision, and smart execution to our communications efforts.”
About Juliana Rotich
Juliana Rotich is globally recognized as a technologist, strategic advisor, entrepreneur, and futurist. Her mission is to make things, fix problems, and help others.
Rotich is co-founder and executive director of BRCK.org, a not-for-profit affiliate of BRCK Inc. for deploying reliable technology for the edges of society, and advocating for internet access and literacy. She was also a founder of the parent company BRCK Inc., which designed and engineered a rugged, self-powered, mobile Wi-Fi device that connects people to the internet throughout Africa and other areas of the world with poor infrastructure.
Prior to founding BRCK, Rotich was a founding member of Ushahidi Inc., a non-profit tech company, born in Africa, which specializes in developing free and open source software for changing how information flows in the world. Since its founding in 2008 Ushahidi has been translated into over 30 languages, with over 90,000 deployments reaching more than 20 million people.
Rotich’s entrepreneurial experience has given rise to her role as a strategic advisor to the councils of BASF, Microsoft 4Afrika, and Risk Cooperative. She is a trustee of the iHub in Kenya and Bankinter Foundation for Entrepreneurship and Innovation in Spain. Rotich holds a degree in Computer Science from the University of Missouri.
For more information about The Lemelson Foundation Advisory Committee, visit: http://www.lemelson.org/about-us/advisory-committee.
About Pam Kahl
Pam Kahl is an accomplished strategic communication professional who began her career with more than 14 years at WE, formerly known as Waggener Edstrom Worldwide, where she served as senior vice president and helped oversee agency marketing, business development, and the Microsoft Global Account planning team.
Ms. Kahl later led her own strategic communications consultancy, Verbal800 Communications, for nearly a decade, and then served as the vice president for development and communications at Grounds for Health, a nonprofit that addresses health care disparities for women in Africa and Latin America.
She holds a bachelor of arts in English from the University of California, Berkeley, as well as a master’s degree in digital media communications from the University of Washington. Ms. Kahl also earned a certificate in international development management and policy from the University of Washington Evans School of Public Affairs.