The hackathon has been devised by Dhruv Boruah award-winning plastic pollution campaigner and the founder of CommonVC, the London based sustainability incubator that runs Solve School and Solve Studio. Boruah created the highly acclaimed cross-sector Plastic Hackathon at Imperial College, which was endorsed by the Rt Hon Michael Gove when at DEFRA and former Prime Minister Theresa May Steve Kenzie, Executive Director of UN Global Compact-UK has joined the hackathon movement in an advisory role. “Our mission is to help business, government, and citizens learn from the COVID-19 crisis and use this experience to bring about the previously unimaginable transformation required to mitigate climate change and achieve the UN’s Global Goals. This Hackathon will inspire ideas and action to bring about this change.”
Boruah is encouraged by the positive response of governments and scientists and is keen to create greater open collaboration to solve virus-related problems. “We are in a lockdown economy, and we know the economy will never be the same again, we will never be the same again. We are taking great steps to conquer Coronavirus, we also need to ensure we think and collaborate as one human race to solve the after-effects of Covid-19.” He adds “This is a massive opportunity to reinvent our future, let us not lose this chance. To maximise the opportunity, we need to unite as a global community and engage with everyone. That’s why we are striving to bring together an incredibly diverse range of participants to pool their collective expertise and ideas. Join us in creating a very different future.”
Meet The Team
Dhruv Boruah
CEO/Founder
I am an award winning Plastic Pollution Campaigner (UK Prime Minister) and I have been solving the plastic crisis with Plastic Hackathons endorsed by UK Environment Secretary at Imperial College London. My mission is to help founders solve the world’s biggest challenges and the biggest challenge humanity faces today is Covid-19. With almost the entire world in lockdown Coronavirus is redefining us & our economy. Let us reinvent it with innovation, diversity & global collaboration.
Nicola Keen
Head of Curation – UK
I strongly believe that the best ideas emerge from diversity of thought and experience, and that curating driven teams from all corners of the world holds the key to executing these ideas, fast. Big challenges lie ahead for us all in the wake of the coronavirus, and through the hackathon we can initiate, support, and scale the right solutions to our toughest problems
Nicky Adamo
Head of Marketing – UK
COVID-19 has has not only presented many new challenges but exposed how we take for granted many aspects of our daily lives. The coronavirus hackathon is the opportunity to identify how we can be better equipped going forward and through collaboration of curious minds from around the world, brain-storm a brighter future.
Heather McQuaid
Advisor – UK
Heather is co-founder of Future Tonic, helping companies create successful products & services using Human-Centred Design.
Mark Hestor
Advisor – UK
Mark is a Co-Founder of The Imagination Factory, a product design and creative engineering agency.
He has worked on many diverse projects and particularly enjoys any opportunity to solve problems with Human-Centred Design thinking.
Louise McLaren
Advisor – UK
I believe that we need to be prepared for this Coronavirus to shape lasting impacts to many aspects of our lives, and we need to be better prepared for a pandemic such as this in the future. For this, we need systems change and out-of-the-box thinking. I’m excited about the opportunity to collaborate with people from all walks of life, with diverse skills and experiences, and a diverse mix of countries. Together, we can imagine the ways forward, and create ideas that will go somewhere.
Noah Al-Hachich
Associate – Austria
The virus will leave a lasting impact on the economy and society and creates huge challenges that require collaborative effort to be solved. I am passionate about The CoronaVirus Hackathon because it brings together the smartest people from diverse backgrounds to overcome these challenges and enable ideas to emerge that will create tremendous societal value.
Katie Roberts
Social Media – Malaysia
Supporting the hackathon is an incredible opportunity to be a part of something bigger, to witness the coming together of great minds and new ideas that will potentially change how we live our lives.
Rebecca Weimer
Advisor – USA
Content Designer at Fjord, Health Coach & Detoxification Specialist, and can’t get enough of leisure paddleboarding.
It was already evident that solution design needed to become more
life-centered, and geared toward considering the impact on the greater
good—beyond the customer, employee, and environment. Here’s our golden
opportunity to apply our thirst for life-centered design to key elements
of life, and transform the world we live in; for everyone involved.
Katie Hollamby
PR & Content – Thailand
The world is forever different; together, we can bring about change and invent a bright new future. No-boundary collaborative discussions will provide extraordinary solutions to the global after-effects of coronavirus. Varying perspectives from differing people from around the world will allow for cross-pollination of ideas and ultimately new products, business models, policies and campaigns.
Lara Varjabedian
Advisor – UK
Our Facilitators
