A teenager motivated by a mass murder in his hometown of Las Vegas. A British executive frustrated with her work for Rolls Royce. A first-generation American who grew up in Selma, Alabama. Innovators each have their own origin story, but share an inner spark of desire to build something that makes the world better. That drive brought each of the recipients of the first Uncommon Thinkers Awards to the Seattle area, to create solutions with help from the region’s deep pool of tech talent.
The six inaugural winners of the Uncommon Thinkers Awards were announced at the GeekWire Gala on Dec. 6. The awards are sponsored by the regional trade and investment organization Greater Seattle Partners.
What motivates each Uncommon Thinker, what are they creating here in Seattle, and what can you learn from their journeys? Read on for a snapshot of each honoree.
The multitasker
Serial entrepreneur Shwetak Patel likes to stay busy. He currently has three jobs: director of health technologies at Google, an endowed professor in the Paul G. Allen School of Computer Science & Engineering and the Department of Electrical & Computer Engineering at UW, and director of UW’s Ubicomp Lab, which focuses on embedding technology in everyday objects.
It’s all a long way from growing up in an apartment next door to the small hotel his immigrant parents managed in Selma. Since coming to Seattle in 2008, Patel has built two home-appliance monitoring solutions that resulted in purchases by Belkin and Sears.
Despite lacking a medical background, he developed a health-monitoring app at Senosis Health that led to Google’s acquisition and his current role there. His outsider’s viewpoint has enabled him to explore solutions that those within an industry might overlook.
His advice to other entrepreneurs? Stay open-minded.
“A lot of the things I worked on, I’d end up solving something else instead,” he said. “An adjacent problem.”
The democracy defender
In a democracy, people need to be able to find out what’s true. That’s the imperative driving Poppy MacDonald, who’s president of the nonpartisan data site USAFacts, the nonprofit fact-verifying organization founded by former Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer in 2016.
Originally from Salem., Ore., MacDonald spent much of her career in the Washington, D.C. area before missing the Northwest. She departed her role as POLITICO’s president to helm USAFacts in 2018.
The site’s “small but mighty” staff of 50 was kept busy fact-checking COVID rumors during the pandemic, MacDonald says. The focus has now shifted to separating truth from fiction in the run-up to November’s federal elections. A highlight of USAFacts’ work for MacDonald is 20 congressional staffers’ recent participation in the organization’s nine-week data analysis bootcamp.
“It gives you hope,” she said. “We’re seeing really positive change.”
The green anesthesiologist
Worried about climate change? Dr. Elizabeth Hansen was concerned about the world her children would inherit, so she set out to make a difference at her workplace: the pediatric anesthesiology department at Seattle Children’s Hospital. Once she learned that anesthesiology was Children’s third-biggest source of carbon emissions, she began researching techniques to reduce the department’s carbon footprint.
This led her to develop best practices that cut the department’s emissions over 90 percent over five years. So far, 11 other hospitals have followed suit, learning how to cut carbon from anesthetics use through the consortium Hansen developed, Project Saving Our Planet to RedUce Carbon Emissions (SPRUCE) Forest.
“Everyone had the same data, but no one acted on it,” she said.
Hansen has also brought her climate concern home, noting that her family switched to using a cargo bike for transportation “as soon as the kids could wear helmets.”
The flight decarbonizer
Three years ago, Riona Armesmith seemed to be living every electromagnetics nerd’s dream, working for Rolls-Royce in Britain on a hybrid electric propulsion demonstration project designed to power commercial aircraft. There was only one problem–the program was canceled in 2020, a victim of pandemic cutbacks. In 8 years with Rolls, Armesmith never saw a single design fly.
That’s all changed with her move to Puget Sound, where she’s now CTO for magniX. The Everett-based company has seen five different aircraft take to the skies, powered by magniX’s electric propulsion powertrain.
The first flight powered by one of their engines came in 2019, through a partnership with Canada-based Harbour Air. Another test flight–of the all-electric Alice airplane from Eviation of Arlington, Wash.–went without a hitch last year, and the model already has $4 billion in orders. In March ’23, the company’s electric propulsion engine took its first hydrogen-powered flight in a collaboration with Universal Hydrogen. There are three other magniX test projects in the works, too, including one for an all-electric Robinson 44 helicopter that’s designed to rush transplant organs to hospitals.
Aviation innovation usually unfolds over many decades of planning. Armesmith is enjoying the chance to see the results of magniX’s work so quickly.
“The opportunity to see what you’re doing fly in such a short amount of time–that opportunity is so rare in this industry,” Armesmith said.
The wunderkind
A student prodigy, Blake Resnick was in college at 14, then dropped out of Northwestern to start BRINC, a company that creates drones that help first responders. The idea for the startup came after the nation’s deadliest mass shooting in his hometown of Las Vegas in 2017. Resnick cold-called local police to explore how drones might help first responders gain intelligence, assess hazards, and communicate more quickly during a crisis.
With a boost from a 2020 Thiel Fellowship of $100,000, BRINC has since attracted over $82 million in venture funding, with investors including ChatGPT creator Sam Altman. The company, which designs and manufactures its drones in Seattle’s Fremont neighborhood, was recently valued at $300 million.
The rugged drones can maneuver through dark, complex structures and even smash through glass windows. Some 400 public-safety agencies already use BRINC products.
Known for his casual attire and wild mop of hair, 23-year-old Resnick continues to advance his mission of creating technology that safeguards first responders and the communities they serve. In November, BRINC introduced a next-generation version of its drone, the Lemur2. The company has also added a second product for communicating in a crisis–the BRINC Ball can be tossed into situations that might be too dangerous or inaccessible for personnel.
The immigration simplifier
Xiao Wang’s family came to America from China when he was 3 years old. Growing up, he watched his parents’ long struggle to secure their status as immigrants and to send him to Stanford and Harvard Business School.
When someone asked him why the immigration process is so hard, it sent him on a search for a better way. He became co-founder of Boundless, which has developed a suite of 10 different immigration services that help streamline the process of obtaining legal residency and the right to work in the U.S. To date, Boundless has helped over 97,000 people with their immigration needs and boasts a 99.7-percent success rate.
Among the obstacles Boundless overcame along the way were the pandemic and what Wang described as “a funding market that stopped existing.” Known for his habit of saying ‘yes’ to challenges, his positive attitude helped him persist, he told attendees at the GeekWire gala.
“Yes, we can change a broken system and inspire hope in others,” he says. “Start saying ‘yes’!”
More from GeekWire’s Uncommon Thinkers:
UW prof and entrepreneur Shwetak Patel has a rare ‘ creative brilliance’
For USAFacts’ Poppy MacDonald, ‘facts are paramount’ for democracy
Elizabeth Hansen uses her job as an anesthesiologist to cut carbon emissions
MagniX CTO Riona Armesmith geeks out over electric aviation
Black Resnick finds a larger purpose in tech, making drons for public safety
Boundless CEO Xiao Wang on his quest to fix the immigration process