Our Team
WaterPLUS features a talented and experienced team spanning three top-tier universities with backgrounds in fields from public health, water resources, medicine, engineering, law, and social entrepreneurship.
University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill
Duke University
Nourish International
Stanford University
Our team has worked in almost a dozen countries on four continents, conducting social, health, and engineering projects.
In public health, Naman Shah supervised a team of 120+ people in a polio vaccination project in a rural Indian district, and studied malaria diagnosing and treatment methods he helped develop in Cambodia. Kari Leech has served as a community organizer on high-risk behaviors for the Minister of Health in Costa Rica and assessed drinking water quality and developed new sources for a squatter community in Peru.
Joel Thomas, Will Patrick, and Naman Shah have been active in sustainable agriculture and development projects in developing countries. An innovative nut sheller has been developed, and Patrick worked with the Rural Agency for Sustainable Development in Nkokonjeru, Uganda to help implement such efforts.
The social venture that Joel Thomas manages, Nourish International, creates and executes several innovative social ventures and events to raise funds for projects. The organization is entirely student-driven and has grown to be amongst the most recognized and significant organizations at UNC. It has since spread to more than half a dozen universities across the US, funded and implemented over 15 projects, and raised more than $75,000 in five years. Saket Vora co-founded and led a benefit race event at NC State that grew from 12 people to 3000+ participants in four years and raised to date $30,800, with proceeds going to the North Carolina Children's Hospital.
Kari Leech worked as a water resource engineer in Denver, Colorado designing basic water infrastructure and has studied water distribution networks in Haiti. For her master's work, she is analyzing point-of-use technologies in various locations world-wide (China, Cambodia, Central America, andUganda) to determine factors influencing sustainability and market success of household water treatment technologies. Will Patrick is leveraging his studies in mechanical and electrical engineering to developing and implementing agro-processing technologies that add value to farmer's crops in developing countries. Saket Vora and Win Bassett have backgrounds in electrical and computer engineering with web skills and worked on a portable, rugged, embedded systems background.
Our team has had direct experience working with various non-profits, NGOs, and multilaterals including: Ministeries of Health (Costa Rica, India, Cambodia), the World Health Organization, the United Nations, Red Cross, Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, Engineers Without Borders, etc.