Remaking lives, one motorcycle at a time
Michael Wilkerson, ’09, sold the Marvel Comics stock he bought as a 13-year-old to acquire the first two motorcycles for his business idea in Uganda. A former Fulbright and Marshall scholar, Wilkerson began spending time in the country as an undergraduate and came to see that a “massive need” could be the foundation of a “massive benefit.” He began offering motorcycle taxi drivers—yes, passengers ride behind the driver—an alternative to merely renting a cycle at the convenience of the owner. In a handful of years, Wilkerson’s investor-funded company, Tugende, has remade that insecure livelihood into a pathway to economic independence. It currently has 2,050 lease-to-own contracts with drivers (and 865 already paid off). The business, which bets on the good characterof the cabbies, has a waiting list of more than 2,200 people who want to seize the throttle for a future they once thought impossible.
Assisting families, enhancing communities
Charisse Domingo, ’96, chose her direction in life with a steely psychology. “I’m not going to be afraid to be poor,” she decided. It hasn’t come to that, but a self-sacrificing mindset has shaped her career. She was involved at Stanford with the establishment of Youth United for Community Action, whose efforts included a shutdown campaign against a toxic waste facility in East Palo Alto, and she continued the work after graduation. A photographer, Domingo went on to Silicon Valley De-Bug in San Jose, a media and organizing collective with projects that range from a community darkroom to the development of public policy initiatives. Domingo spends much of her time aiding families who are affected by the criminal justice system. She accepts their challenges—scrutinizing official reports, assisting family members in trouble, arranging meetings—as her own.
Putting a (large) dent in hunger
Rising sophomore Kiran Sridhar founded the nonprofit Waste No Food organization as a 12-year-old eighth-grader in San Francisco. Volunteering at Glide Memorial Church, he found himself compelled to figure out some action, some plan, after the shock of seeing “children line up three times a day every single day” for meals. Supported by volunteer legal and technical assistance, he developed a process for places with consumable excess food to use a specifically designed app to alert aid groups of what is available. Sridhar remains executive director of his all-volunteer organization and spent about 15 hours a week this year on refining and expanding the distribution system between donors—restaurants, stores, event managers—and the charities serving the food. How’s it working? Waste No Food has spearheaded the delivery of a million meals in the last three years.
It’s about the running, wherever it happens
Ian Dobson, ’04, was a distance runner who racked up a slew of All-America honors at Stanford and competed in the Beijing Olympics in the 5,000 meters. Today he’s the coach of the Oregon training club Team Run Eugene, as well as director of community programs for meet organizer TrackTown USA. He also committed himself in 2015 to another venue for mentoring aspiring runners: the MacLaren Youth Correctional Facility in Oregon. In the buildup to an inmate marathon inside the facility this spring, Dobson ran regularly with a small group of young men seeking new outlooks and motivation through the training. Advice on technique was less important, he realized, than simple encouragement. “The value I brought was that being there was another element they could get excited about.” And according to the Oregon Youth Authority, all six runners who started their marathon on the morning of April 30 made it to the finish.
