Meet the Keynote Speakers for the 2024 Colorado WASH Symposium! 

 

Ruthie Rosenberg

Director, Citywise Advisory Services

Fresh Life (Sanergy Collaborative)

Ruthie Rosenberg

Ruthie is a water, sanitation and hygiene (WASH) professional who brings business and public health expertise, along with passion for building strong teams of compassionate collaborators, to her work at Fresh Life, a founding partner of the Sanergy Collaborative. Fresh Life is a Nairobi-based social enterprise that designs and implements innovative, cost-effective full-value-chain sanitation solutions for areas unserved by sewers. Ruthie leads Citywise, Fresh Life's advisory services team, which leverages the Sanergy Collaborative's experience delivering full value chain sanitation services to accelerate efforts toward citywide inclusive sanitation. Previously, she created and led Fresh Life's Future Initiatives team, which develops and tests new products and services to reach customer segments not reached through the current portfolio of offerings, which included foundational research and iterative development of Fresh Life's Mtaa Fresh work with manual emptiers of pit latrines. Ruthie also developed and managed partnerships on the Sanergy Collaborative’s business development team, and designed Fresh Life's curriculum to accompany the provision of sanitation services in schools. She has worked in sanitation provision, water service delivery, health education, and behavior change communication in the Dominican Republic, Peru, and Kenya, and has supported this work in Ghana, the Democratic Republic of Congo and India. Ruthie holds an MBA and MPH from Johns Hopkins University, and a BSc from Brown University. 

Keynote address title:

The Revolution Will Actually Be Millions of Tiny Revolutions: Dismantling the Status Quo Through Compassion and Authenticity in Our Daily Lives

Keynote address blurb:

On a macro level, the world is aching. People are sick, wars are raging, there is rain when there should have been snow, and drought when there should be rain. Seismic, frame-shifting change is desperately needed in WASH, in development, and in the world at large. There is so much work to be done, and there is no clear playbook for how an individual can best contribute to dismantling the status quo. Drawing on my own experience ~12 years into a career in WASH, I hope to demonstrate that the fundamental “ingredients” of discernment, authenticity, humility and “right action” are consistent across our relationships with ourselves, with our direct collaborators, with our customers, and, finally, with the world. By sharing examples from my work designing and delivering sanitation services in densely populated urban informal settlements, I will make the case for investing in our own toolkits for reflection, for rest, for accountability to our own values, and for reconciliation, and for embracing everyday opportunities to practice the shift we envision on a global scale.


 

Dr. Boris Martin

Chief Executive Officer

Engineers Without Borders USA

Boris Martin

Boris invites every engineer today to play a role in helping humanity heal and adapt to climate change. He believes that change starts from within, when we embrace our own acts of generosity as a journey of personal transformation. A longtime and deeply committed member of the Engineers Without Borders (EWB) worldwide network, Boris became EWB-USA’s CEO in June 2022. During two decades prior, he played various roles at EWB Canada, including three years in Burkina Faso as a volunteer. Boris’ experience in international development spans sectors such as agriculture, entrepreneurship and economic development, rural infrastructure, WASH and community development. He has worked with government programs, large-scale development projects as well as entrepreneurial initiatives, using both grants and innovative finance instruments. Boris is also a founding member of the advisory council at FinDev Canada (Canada’s Development Finance Institution) and past President of the Board at EWB International. He holds a PhD in engineering and a Graduate Diploma in Social Innovation. He lives in Denver, Colorado with his wife and visual artist Alanna Peters, their three kids, five chickens, and an Australian shepherd puppy.

Keynote address title:

Paradigm shifts and innovations. How might we get to the finish line on water, sanitation and hygiene?

Keynote address blurb:

Humanity has made remarkable progress in the past three decades, reducing by half the number of children who die before the age of five. Still today, that number is a staggering five million preventable deaths per year. One child is lost every six seconds, mainly to waterborne and infectious diseases. Progress in access to safe water, proper sanitation, and health services worldwide is a major lever for improvement and it is the mission of our generation to make WASH a universal success. In his keynote, Boris will build on two decades of qualitative observations and programmatic insights to draw a picture of the deeper ideas and paradigms that have influenced progress in WASH, some of the challenges ahead, and what might still be holding us back today. He will share examples of how Engineers Without Borders USA is playing its part in evolving the ways we address WASH needs around the world.