[Music]
[Applause]
good afternoon my name is grace Shaw and
I am the CEO and co-founder of warm lieu
and normally I’m just talking about
spreading the warmth to save infant
lives but today I’m talking about how
expanding the definition of team enables
all of us to solve big and complex
problems because you see Detroiters all
of you to try tackle yes
let’s tackle more than just the small
problems like the Raven quenching his
own thirst rather we need all of you to
tackle the big complex problems that
cannot be solved by a one-size-fits-all
solution like having access to clean
drinking water being able to put a man
or a woman onto Mars
getting autonomous vehicles out on the
road right here in Detroit those are the
problems that I hope resonate with you
today and they’re challenging problems
in fact they’re often the result of
several systems failing and so today I
want all of you to recognize that you
have the power to fix these problems by
expanding your idea of team so my roots
are very similar to those of you in this
room specifically I was born and raised
in Michigan my dad was an engineer at GM
and he would bring back crank shafts and
Pistons big old car tires and he would
let us play with them and blueprints
that were four cars five years out but
for me I fell in love with engineering
specifically at the University of
Michigan I fall in love with material
science engineering and for those of you
who don’t know what that is it’s an
understanding of electrical physical
chemical optical and magnetic properties
of materials
build something new and we had that
opportunity to build something new my
senior year back in 2011 when I was in
my senior capstone course warmth I
learned as a basic need like food or
water but over 1 million infants died
around the globe from preventable
hypothermia
and this is through no fault of their
own they can’t shiver they don’t have
enough body fat and there’s a lack of
external warmth though during the
transport process whether it’s from a
hospital to another hospital a community
to a hospital or even within the
hospital in addition we saw for
ourselves out in you know I took this
Ministry of Health Humvee out to the
middle of nowhere Kenya and we saw there
were two to six infants in an incubator
designed for one increasing the risk of
cross infection and it really shook me
because I was born preterm in fact I was
born one month preterm and would have
died if not for the warmth of the
incubator I spent my first eleven days
of life so we started from a place of
recognizing we’re not doctors and nurses
I was at a little engineer and so first
we recognize your team needs to expand
by including all the problem
experiencers so we went out there and we
didn’t know any better we’ve knocked on
doors talk to over 100 doctors and
nurses because they’re the folks who are
going to help you recognize whether
you’re actually solving a real-world
problem you can’t learn about a problem
from a textbook fifty thousand feet and
when someone like chief nurse Wagner
who’s so often she was invisible to the
doctors on her team when she wanted to
share her 30 years of insight you go for
it because that’s a source of external
validation and she allowed us to be able
to have a point of reference her and the
other 99 doctors and nurses to build and
test and rapidly get feedback and that’s
how you build your solution design
inputs for complex problems and don’t
chase logos we were and the people in
the c-suite some of our most valuable
feedback was not from the CEO the CFO or
director
it was from the nurse who when she was
sitting in the meeting with me everyone
looked through her so we dared them to
imagine a world with non-electric
instant warmth for these babies based on
my research and phase change materials
and we set metaphorical and physical
fires to build it you know we didn’t
know any better we just had a two
hundred dollar budget so I had a
blowtorch and a piece of steel and we
started that’s how we welded our first
pack and then to make the sodium acetate
trihydrate I made it one football
Saturday in my kitchen and I’m not a
great microwave Asst I set some fires
both metaphorical and physical in a fire
in our microwave but that is what we
needed to do to be able to warm babies
and when we proved in our bench top
testing that we could keep babies safe
we were able to start running clinical
trials in Bangalore India and we kept 20
low birth weight and preterm infants
warm but it was a journey of patients we
almost couldn’t do it but one of our
mentors had faith in us and we miss one
piece of paperwork and when all of our
equipment was smashed he’s the one who
went and allowed us to get funding to be
able to keep going to the project and
now we have our us patented life-saving
fda-cleared warming blankets so our
winner LED minority LED team making all
these blankets and packs in Michigan
they’re touching people as far away as
in Kenya this is the president’s wife of
Kenya touching our blankets and we’re
warming 7,200 babies right now and
that’s in 28 hospitals in eight
countries around the globe and the
amazing thing is just this time last
year we were only warming babies in two
hospitals in two countries so how did we
do it so our team was very small don’t
think about your team it’s just the one
or three or six or 15 people that are in
your office the cubicle the laboratory
the classroom next to you
rather expand your definition of team to
include every single mentor like the one
who helped us get funding so we could
keep going with our infant warming
project expand your definition of the
team to include every subject matter or
knowledge expert who wants to share it
with you or share that thing that they
built because as an innovator you don’t
have to reinvent the wheel this is me
jumping into the arms of one of our
investors when we wanted seventy two
thousand dollars so we when you find
someone who they believe in your vision
for how you’re going to solve a problem
that resonates with them like Procter &
Gamble we first saw these ladies these
midwives wearing Procter & Gamble coats
in this hospital and a 20 foot tall
Pampers baby and so we’ve been fortunate
to be able to be mentored they’ve loved
our mission they love babies and with
warm Allu and Procter & Gamble we
excited to work on scaling up technology
to warm babies together
and no more smashed equipment no or
missed paperwork we had the opportunity
to begin working with a group like UPS
because you don’t have to reinvent the
wheel
you just have to communicate ideas that
are powerful to address real problems so
your team then becomes three billion
strong but take it further let’s make
our team even bigger we serve babies and
in fact the babies that we serve are
voiceless we tend to think of them as
being you know they are being cared for
we’re not necessarily unless you’re a
parent and in this case you know you’re
learning a ton from your child and how
they see the world around you but we
learned so much from the infant’s that
we serve in fact we learned even more
from a baby lamb Charlene so during the
warm Allu journey I was there when baby
lamb Charlene was born and I was
scrubbed up but I was imagining we’re
doing these clinical trials I was
imagining if I could I could take her
home I could bring her to this farm we
would be frolicking in middle meadows
together but
baby lamb Charlene was very sick and for
a while for four hours it was amazing
she was doing well our warming packs
were warming her perfectly
but then the vitals in that room started
to change in fact her exhales were not
long enough she was stuck here so she
would inhale like and then exhale inhale
exhale inhale exhale but what she needed
was inhale exhale to be able to release
more of those carbon dioxide bonds from
her we learned that warmth will not save
every lamb or baby and that’s when we’ve
learned our biggest lesson yet that we
had to expand our team to include the
underrepresented and how we can empower
them by drawing insights from their
their voiceless selves and that’s when
we partnered with a non electric
ventilator company so then your team is
not three billion it’s seven point five
billion strong it’s the team and imagine
what we all could do if our team was 7.5
billion strong just imagine and no man
or woman is more important than the team
and now you know why it’s a no leader is
more important than the team it’s all
about the team and whenever you’re
working with a team if we all were to
think that way to use the words of Bo
Schembechler imagine what we could all
do thank you so much for learning about
how to extend your vision of team thank you
[Applause]
good afternoon my name is grace Shaw and
I am the CEO and co-founder of warm lieu
and normally I’m just talking about
spreading the warmth to save infant
lives but today I’m talking about how
expanding the definition of team enables
all of us to solve big and complex
problems because you see Detroiters all
of you to try tackle yes
let’s tackle more than just the small
problems like the Raven quenching his
own thirst rather we need all of you to
tackle the big complex problems that
cannot be solved by a one-size-fits-all
solution like having access to clean
drinking water being able to put a man
or a woman onto Mars
getting autonomous vehicles out on the
road right here in Detroit those are the
problems that I hope resonate with you
today and they’re challenging problems
in fact they’re often the result of
several systems failing and so today I
want all of you to recognize that you
have the power to fix these problems by
expanding your idea of team so my roots
are very similar to those of you in this
room specifically I was born and raised
in Michigan my dad was an engineer at GM
and he would bring back crank shafts and
Pistons big old car tires and he would
let us play with them and blueprints
that were four cars five years out but
for me I fell in love with engineering
specifically at the University of
Michigan I fall in love with material
science engineering and for those of you
who don’t know what that is it’s an
understanding of electrical physical
chemical optical and magnetic properties
of materials
build something new and we had that
opportunity to build something new my
senior year back in 2011 when I was in
my senior capstone course warmth I
learned as a basic need like food or
water but over 1 million infants died
around the globe from preventable
hypothermia
and this is through no fault of their
own they can’t shiver they don’t have
enough body fat and there’s a lack of
external warmth though during the
transport process whether it’s from a
hospital to another hospital a community
to a hospital or even within the
hospital in addition we saw for
ourselves out in you know I took this
Ministry of Health Humvee out to the
middle of nowhere Kenya and we saw there
were two to six infants in an incubator
designed for one increasing the risk of
cross infection and it really shook me
because I was born preterm in fact I was
born one month preterm and would have
died if not for the warmth of the
incubator I spent my first eleven days
of life so we started from a place of
recognizing we’re not doctors and nurses
I was at a little engineer and so first
we recognize your team needs to expand
by including all the problem
experiencers so we went out there and we
didn’t know any better we’ve knocked on
doors talk to over 100 doctors and
nurses because they’re the folks who are
going to help you recognize whether
you’re actually solving a real-world
problem you can’t learn about a problem
from a textbook fifty thousand feet and
when someone like chief nurse Wagner
who’s so often she was invisible to the
doctors on her team when she wanted to
share her 30 years of insight you go for
it because that’s a source of external
validation and she allowed us to be able
to have a point of reference her and the
other 99 doctors and nurses to build and
test and rapidly get feedback and that’s
how you build your solution design
inputs for complex problems and don’t
chase logos we were and the people in
the c-suite some of our most valuable
feedback was not from the CEO the CFO or
director
it was from the nurse who when she was
sitting in the meeting with me everyone
looked through her so we dared them to
imagine a world with non-electric
instant warmth for these babies based on
my research and phase change materials
and we set metaphorical and physical
fires to build it you know we didn’t
know any better we just had a two
hundred dollar budget so I had a
blowtorch and a piece of steel and we
started that’s how we welded our first
pack and then to make the sodium acetate
trihydrate I made it one football
Saturday in my kitchen and I’m not a
great microwave Asst I set some fires
both metaphorical and physical in a fire
in our microwave but that is what we
needed to do to be able to warm babies
and when we proved in our bench top
testing that we could keep babies safe
we were able to start running clinical
trials in Bangalore India and we kept 20
low birth weight and preterm infants
warm but it was a journey of patients we
almost couldn’t do it but one of our
mentors had faith in us and we miss one
piece of paperwork and when all of our
equipment was smashed he’s the one who
went and allowed us to get funding to be
able to keep going to the project and
now we have our us patented life-saving
fda-cleared warming blankets so our
winner LED minority LED team making all
these blankets and packs in Michigan
they’re touching people as far away as
in Kenya this is the president’s wife of
Kenya touching our blankets and we’re
warming 7,200 babies right now and
that’s in 28 hospitals in eight
countries around the globe and the
amazing thing is just this time last
year we were only warming babies in two
hospitals in two countries so how did we
do it so our team was very small don’t
think about your team it’s just the one
or three or six or 15 people that are in
your office the cubicle the laboratory
the classroom next to you
rather expand your definition of team to
include every single mentor like the one
who helped us get funding so we could
keep going with our infant warming
project expand your definition of the
team to include every subject matter or
knowledge expert who wants to share it
with you or share that thing that they
built because as an innovator you don’t
have to reinvent the wheel this is me
jumping into the arms of one of our
investors when we wanted seventy two
thousand dollars so we when you find
someone who they believe in your vision
for how you’re going to solve a problem
that resonates with them like Procter &
Gamble we first saw these ladies these
midwives wearing Procter & Gamble coats
in this hospital and a 20 foot tall
Pampers baby and so we’ve been fortunate
to be able to be mentored they’ve loved
our mission they love babies and with
warm Allu and Procter & Gamble we
excited to work on scaling up technology
to warm babies together
and no more smashed equipment no or
missed paperwork we had the opportunity
to begin working with a group like UPS
because you don’t have to reinvent the
wheel
you just have to communicate ideas that
are powerful to address real problems so
your team then becomes three billion
strong but take it further let’s make
our team even bigger we serve babies and
in fact the babies that we serve are
voiceless we tend to think of them as
being you know they are being cared for
we’re not necessarily unless you’re a
parent and in this case you know you’re
learning a ton from your child and how
they see the world around you but we
learned so much from the infant’s that
we serve in fact we learned even more
from a baby lamb Charlene so during the
warm Allu journey I was there when baby
lamb Charlene was born and I was
scrubbed up but I was imagining we’re
doing these clinical trials I was
imagining if I could I could take her
home I could bring her to this farm we
would be frolicking in middle meadows
together but
baby lamb Charlene was very sick and for
a while for four hours it was amazing
she was doing well our warming packs
were warming her perfectly
but then the vitals in that room started
to change in fact her exhales were not
long enough she was stuck here so she
would inhale like and then exhale inhale
exhale inhale exhale but what she needed
was inhale exhale to be able to release
more of those carbon dioxide bonds from
her we learned that warmth will not save
every lamb or baby and that’s when we’ve
learned our biggest lesson yet that we
had to expand our team to include the
underrepresented and how we can empower
them by drawing insights from their
their voiceless selves and that’s when
we partnered with a non electric
ventilator company so then your team is
not three billion it’s seven point five
billion strong it’s the team and imagine
what we all could do if our team was 7.5
billion strong just imagine and no man
or woman is more important than the team
and now you know why it’s a no leader is
more important than the team it’s all
about the team and whenever you’re
working with a team if we all were to
think that way to use the words of Bo
Schembechler imagine what we could all
do thank you so much for learning about
how to extend your vision of team thank you
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