(pleasant music) - [Narrator] Welcome to the Cloud. We've created a force to be harnessed. It defies easy description, but it puts more data at
our fingertips than ever before in human history. We're here in the Cloud, ready to be unleashed
towards problems to solve, solutions that make the
world a better place, causes that propel humanity forward, the work the world needs that contributes to a higher purpose, work
that is selfless, worthy, not for profit. From helping our children grow up to ma
king sure that art never grows old. From learning the love songs of the whale, to preserving the punk songs of the 80s, from feeding the hungry mouse
to feeding the hungry minds, from fighting the change of climate to creating a climate of change. We at Amazon Web Services are
proud to provide a wide range of cloud-based capabilities
to these non-profit missions, from the common to the extraordinary. But most of all, we are
here to provide tools to support these causes, to help turn imagination
into possibility and possibility into a better world. (inspirational music) - [Narrator 2] Welcome to the AWS, Imagine Nonprofit Conference. From AWS, please welcome to
the stage Allyson Fryhoff. (upbeat music) - Good morning everyone. I'm glad you made it through security. Welcome to Amazon HQ2. We are so happy to have you
here today at Imagine 2024. Thank you so much. We are thrilled to have all of you with us to imagine amazing things that can be done with cloud technology. And I need to than
k our
interpreters today, Jen Drew, and you'll also see Lindsay Dasinger. All right, let's get started. We are excited today because we have some incredible
sponsors that we would love for you to get to know,
Okta, Bonterra and others. CDW is here. We want to thank all of our sponsors. Thank you so very, very much. And Splunk, can you
raise your hand if you're from Bonterra, CDW, Splunk or Okta? Thank you very much for
being here. We love it. From security to data engagement, to fundraising and
grant writing, these partners bring value to your work. We invite you to stop
by their booths outside. You are all leaders and we're all working
to answer the question: how do we create a safer, more equitable and sustainable world? We're all connected by the
belief that technology paired with human experience
can change the world. Digital and cloud
technology have given rise to tools like predictive
analytics, machine learning, artificial intelligence, and
of course now, generative AI. Like the
internet, generative AI will impact
every aspect of our work. It has the ability to turn large volumes of data into actionable
information at rapid speed. This is an opportunity to
accelerate everything we do, from recommending relevant programs to detecting early stage cancer, to real time suicide prevention. Technology alone can't do
everything. We know that. But leveraged responsibly
solutions like generative AI in your hands can truly
help facilitate change. AWS helps organizations of all s
izes from Geisinger Health System and United Way to breastcancer.org and Street Lives, New York City. Whether you're operating globally or serving locally, we help
you answer questions like, what mission decisions do we need to make, what data do we have,
what data do we need. How do we design the right solutions? How do we become a data-driven culture? And how do we measure our outcomes? And of course, when is the right time to start using generative AI. Mm, maybe yesterday? Analytics, definite
ly today. Absolutely. We have designed today's program to speak to these challenges and opportunities through the
voices of leaders like you. And of course, you'll hear from some AWS experts along the way. But what matters most is how
organizations, like yours, learn from each other and learn about the value of the Cloud. So thank you again for being here today. And please stay for our
reception this evening so that we can celebrate your work. I hope to see you this afternoon. And don't forget t
o check
out the Impact Lounge, where you can explore our Party Rock demo. What's Party Rock? Well, it's a fun and intuitive generative
AI app building playground. You can experiment, regardless
of your technical depth. So please stop by to see our teams there. It's powered by Amazon Bedrock, and Bedrock is our fully managed service that makes foundation models from Amazon and leading AI companies available so that you can choose the best models and tools for your use cases. Please talk to our ex
perts
in the Impact Lounge and throughout the day, questions, big or small, we are
ready for you, including: how does generative AI make
sense for my organization? Okay, I've already said
generative AI a lot today. We will continue to say that, but first we have to start with data. Ultimately, data is the foundation and your differentiator. With the most comprehensive
set of services, AWS can help you quickly and easily set up systems to collect, store and process your valuable data. Whether it
be storage, data warehouses, we provide the most
choice at the lowest cost with security built in, all to deliver the most
effective data solutions for your use cases, but most
importantly to make sure that that data can be
used by the applications and the people that need it most. By putting a focus on your data, you can then apply
technologies like analytics, machine learning and AI, and this will lock even more value. And your data is the difference. It's the difference between
general genera
tive AI and really using generative AI for your applications and your mission. AWS has over 25 years
of service, experience and service in AI and ML. We make it easy to build intelligent and secure applications,
customized for your data and your use cases. AWS enables you to easily
innovate at all three levels, which you can see here. And it's really exciting
that we have the ability to look at not only
applications, but also the tools, but even the infrastructure
to help you build and generate
responsibly
and with confidence. With AWS generative AI
built on Amazon Bedrock, nonprofits can infuse productivity across all areas of operations. From content generation
to information summaries and Q&A exchanges, you can
enhance your donor experiences, help your grant writers,
personalize patient engagement and accelerate data-driven
decision making. We invite you to schedule
a personalized briefing for your team. Please get out your phones
right now and take that QR code. We would love to sc
hedule
this with you today. Stop by our impact lounge as well. There's so many questions,
we have many of the answers, but what we really want here
is what's important to you. We also remain aware of the
risks of potential bias, toxicity and inequity. And at AWS, we are committed
to developing AI responsibly and taking a human-centric
approach to promoting the safe and responsible use of
AI as a force for good. Ultimately, we want to help you implement the right solutions and the right applicati
ons so that you can generate
the results you need, no matter where you are
in your cloud journey, all to make an even greater
impact in our connected world. Like Rainforest Connection, they are connecting human
knowledge with AI capabilities to understand what nature is saying. (bright music) - [Bourhan] At Rainforest Connection, we focus on using technology to try to help the forest, to try to empower the local people to be able to do something about what's
going on in their area, in their loca
l neighborhoods,
in their forests. - [Chrissy] So what we're
doing here in Chile is, we're installing six different
acoustic monitoring stations, particularly to pick out the
sounds of the Darwin Fox. And the Darwin Fox makes
this incredible sound, this incredible call that's really unique. And so it's been challenging
to consistently track them, but we're hoping that with
acoustics, we can use our system to build an AI model, pick out that sound and be able to see where
the Fox is present so th
at we can build
conservation management plans around that effort. (bright music continues) - [Narrator 2] From Rainforest Connection, please welcome to the
stage Bourhan Yassin. (upbeat music) - Good morning. Good to
be with everyone here. I'm here today to talk to you about sound and AI, how we use machine learning and AI to study sound in the forests. What I'm gonna start
with is a 30 second clip, just a 30 second clip from an area in Panama
called Barro Colorado Island, one of the most unique
and
diverse places in the world. It's just a 30 second clip,
about to play it just now. I invite you to just close your eyes and listen to that clip
from the rainforest, and see if you can identify
the number of species, the number of unique species that are just in that 30 second clip, and even identify the
count of how many animals and species are in that 30 second clip. So I'm just about to play it right now. We could talk about it. So listen in and tell me what you hear. (sounds of wildlife
) All right so again, just a
30 second clip from Panama. How many different species
you think you've heard? - [Attendant] 10.
- 10, okay. How many count of species
do you think there is in that 30 second clip? 100, 50, 200? Any guess? Okay, well there's over 300 species, 300 count of species, over
15 different unique species that exist in there,
from birds to amphibians to insects to mammals. So imagine if we were
trying to identify that, if we're sitting there listening to this audio on repeat
over and over again and trying to identify
every unique species. It's probably impossible. Let's take a look at this with an AI model that is trained specifically
on data from Panama and let's see what it's able to detect. So this model is running in
real time on what's called, it's a spectrogram, a 2D
representation of the audio. You can see that it is able
to detect a cricket, a cicada, a howler monkey, that barking sound that you
heard was a howler monkey, several species of birds. And it's a
ble to do that in real time with over 92% accuracy. The interesting thing is, this whole time, if we dimmed down all these
noises, there's a chainsaw that was running in the
background this whole time during this entire clip
that you couldn't hear. We were only able to hear it, and you're only able to hear it now because we dimmed down all these sounds. But there's a chainsaw. There's people cutting down a tree, or several trees, this whole time while the forest is
vibrant and full of life. So l
et's talk about
deforestation for a second. According to the Interpol, 50 to 90% of logging is illegal. Illegal logging accounts to
more greenhouse gas emission than all of transportation combined. That's all of your ships,
your trucks, your vehicles, your planes, all of them combined. Illegal logging accounts for more greenhouse gas
emission than all of that. Every minute a tropical forest, the size of 40 football fields is lost. That's every single minute. Over 50% of the world's forests are g
one, either have been been cut down
or degraded for human usage. It is estimated that by 2050, over 60% of the Amazon rainforest will be gone. So that's for deforestation. What about for the species, for the animals that live in the forest? One in four species are
at risk of extinction. One in four species are
at risk of extinction. There's this amazing
relationship between forests and the inhabitants of
this forest, the species, that allows the forest to prosper. Forests, they're the
best techn
ology we have at sequestering carbon, and the cheapest and the best technology we have at sequestering carbon
from the atmosphere. There's nothing better that exists today. No human technology, nothing that exists that's better than forests. And in order for these forests to prosper and operate at their
best possible ability, they need the biodiversity in there. They need to be able to prosper. The species in there need to be prospered 'cause they're so important. That howler monkey that you saw
disperses over a hundred different
seeds in the forest. They eat the fruits and then they drop the
fruits in different places, and that spurts new trees. They're a vital food source. The seeds that they drop
to peccaries on the ground and peccaries are, you know, important for the ecosystem of jaguars
in Central South America. Jaguars are known to be very bad hunters. They don't like to hunt, but peccaries come in groups,
they come in big groups so they depend on the
peccaries to survive. So it
's an interlinked
system that is so important. Species, animals, forests are so important together and we're losing all of them. So what do we do? So these devices that you see
here called the Guardians, they're solar paneled,
essentially a mini computer. We put 'em on top of the
tree canopy, as you see here. They have a range of almost
seven square kilometers, one and a half kilometers
in every distance. They record the soundscape 24/7. They use onboard AI or AI in
the cloud and Amazon cloud, d
epending on the connection
that's available, and they're able to pick
out sounds of chainsaws, sounds of gunshots, sounds of trucks, any indication of illegal activity. But they're also able
to pick out species down to the individual type,
which then allow us to figure out how to mitigate against species loss and habitat loss. But we're not just
developing, you know, software and cloud tools and AI. We're also on the ground. Where you see on the top, my top right, I guess, this is me in Peru. An
d this is 24 hours after we installed one of
the devices, an alert came in and we went there with the rangers and we stumbled upon loggers. You can see the logging that was happening in the background, 24 hours after the device was installed. So we're on the ground,
working with local partners, trying to work with them to
use technology, to use Cloud, to use the power of AI,
you know, to be able to do something to address this. And you know, like I mentioned, these devices get installed
all over
the world. This is a project in Puerto Rico. This is the Mount Cokie that
you see there, a project of the US fish and wildlife where we deployed over 900 devices across the island to monitor the state of biodiversity in the island. And working closely with a
local nonprofit organization and the US fish and wildlife,
the map that you see there, the red that pops up, these are areas that our
team was able to recommend to the government of Puerto
Rico, of new protected areas that must be establish
ed because of what climate
change is doing to species and how that's moving species to higher elevations,
for example, and so on. So we were able to predict
new protected areas based on the data that's
collected from the ground and based on these detections that you saw earlier
that we can do with AI. So I think it would do with this justice if we were to hold on to
this just for ourself. We're a small organization.
We're about 45 people. And this has to be done in a way where it benefits the wh
ole world, the entire science community. So as a result of all of
our learnings, as a result of our experience working on the ground, we've built this open platform that's fully hosted on
AWS, called Arbimon. And Arbimon is designed
to use these techniques and these tools as a way to help local organizations,
to help scientists and researchers to do the
same work that we're doing. That's the only way to scale it is to open it up to everyone. Arbimon today has over 4,500 projects from 119 differe
nt
countries around the world. There's 154 million one
minute recordings hosted on S3 as we speak from Arbimon. That equates to almost 225 years of continuous soundscape audio
from 119 different countries. By far the largest soundscape
collection in the world, perhaps even in history,
right now sits on AWS Cloud. Over 1.8 billion analysis
have been performed and over 4,000 species
have been identified. So let me close this by saying, we were born in the Cloud, right? We've adopted the cloud from
the beginning as the origins of how we started, and we use the power of
the cloud to do this. And I think for everyone here,
especially nonprofits like us that are considering
Cloud at the moment, do it before it's too late because it allows you to focus on your mission, it allows you to focus on exactly what
you're trying to fix and what you're trying to address, not have to worry about
infrastructure, not have to worry about how to
do all these different, complicated things that somebody
else
can handle it for you. And the amazing support that AWS provides for nonprofits is just unbelievable. So thank you so much. Hope you enjoyed this and I'd love to talk to you after this. Appreciate it. (audience applauding) (upbeat music) - Thank you, Bourhan and
the Rainforest Connection and the whole team. Your human ingenuity is
nothing short of remarkable. Being able to support work like this is why we created the Imagine Grant in 2018. It's to fund nonprofits who
are using their expertise a
nd cloud technology to
solve mission challenges, the grant's fund mission moving projects, like the go further, faster award and foundational cloud
projects like the Momentum to modernize award. And today, I am proud
to announce the launch of a new award category,
the pathfinder award. (audience applauding) Thank you. The pathfinder award provides up to $200,000 in cash funding and expertise from the experts at the AWS Generative
AI Innovation Center. Nonprofits using generative AI for their mis
sion moving
initiatives should apply today. Talk to us in the Impact Lounge. We continue to grow and
invest in the Imagine Grant, and we are so excited
that in addition to the US and the UK, the program
will now be available in Ireland as well. So all of you who came in from Ireland, get your applications in. To help give you a sense of
what our 2023 winners are up to and to help you get your
ideas flowing, I'm happy to share just a few examples. Orbis International is expanding
its AI assisted
technology to millions of people
in low resource areas to eradicate preventable blindness
and vision loss globally. Charity Navigator is
modernizing its digital systems with advanced analytics to deliver a more comprehensive overview of charitable organizations for donors. And Second Harvest Food Bank of North Carolina is using data from over 48 different software systems and bringing it together into a unified data warehouse on AWS. Then with generative AI, they
are re-imagining efficiency and
service delivery in food banking. I love sharing these examples, but I also love when organizations
share their own stories. So please join me in welcoming our previous
Imagine Grant winner, EB Research partners to the stage to share how they are just
transforming health research as we know it. Let's hear from the research party! - Hello everyone. - Hello, AWS Imagine Conference. Jill and Eddie Vedder here. We wish we could be with you
all today in Washington DC. We founded EBRP because like
all
of you, we were called to help meet an unmet need,
in whatever way we could. In the case of EB, we knew
we needed to find a cure for this devastating rare
disease impacting children. - For those impacted by rare disease, it can feel like you don't have a voice. So we just wanna thank you and everyone here today
for all the work you do, the community you serve, and for giving a voice to the voiceless. It's very, very powerful
to know that so many makers of change are there, united in one room. -
So thank you for taking the time to learn about our work at EBRP and joining us in our mission to Healy Bee and show the world that cures are not only
possible, but close. - [Eddie] It's been over a decade. Jill and I have been working on this cause and it's amazing to
reflect on the progress that has been made and
it fills this with hope. It's also what gets us
up every day empowered, knowing that the biggest
accomplishment, a cure, it seems to be near and
visible on the horizon. - We wish all
of you success
for your noble pursuits, big dreams and the actions you are taking to make this world better. - Yes, yes. You are all heroes. And let us quickly, if we may introduce
our hero, I'll explain. In the last six years, our
organization, we have elevated. We've been very fortunate.
It's been a lot of hard work. We work with passionate families,
also an incredible team. But a huge, huge difference
has been having a great leader. He did not know we were
gonna be saying this part, but we a
re all truly so grateful
for his infinite energy, his dedication, his
skill at representing us and our community and also his will to drive home the goals for this cause and the others that will also benefit. It is our privilege today
to get to introduce him. And we're excited that
you get to meet him, hear him, and know him. Here we go. Welcome to the stage Mr. Michael Hund. Happy birthday. It's his 40th birthday. - [Narrator 2] From EB
Research Partnership, welcome to the stage Michael Hund. (
upbeat music) - Cat's out of the bag. It's my birthday and I
turn 40. So now you know. It's not the only surprise
of the day, so stay tuned. I just wanted to start by thanking our co-founders,
Jill and Eddie Vedder. To use a platform as a powerful force for good is such a beautiful
thing and they do it so well. So if we can give a round
of applause for them and all of their activism
and all of their work. I also wanted to shout out AWS Imagine for bringing this amazing
group of people together.
Lauren Stovall and her team, amazing women leaders
putting this whole thing on. Let's give a round of applause for 'em. (audience applauding) You know, Muhammad Ali, the
great Muhammad Ali once said that service is the rent you pay for your time here on Earth. Service is the rent you pay. And I've had a chance to
get to know so many of you, you know, in this room,
the good that you're doing. And if service is the rent you
pay for your time on earth, y'all are living in the penthouse. So thank yo
u. Thank you for
your missions and what you do. I'm from the Flint Hills of Kansas and when I grew up, I heard my
one Kansas person back there. Lisa, I see you. When I grew up, I was told a story that really embodied
courage and resiliency. And I tell this story to
my four daughters today. We even have kind of a symbol. Be brave, be a buffalo. And, you know, this story is
something that I want us all to keep with us, right? And it starts with a question. And Lisa, you can't answer this. Does any
body know the difference
between cattle and buffalo in a rainstorm in the
Flint Hills of Kansas? Sorry, it's such like a
Kansas guy thing to ask, but I'll tell you the answer. (attendant speaking indistinctly) - That's right. It's a fundamental
difference in their behavior. It's a fundamental difference. When the thunder clouds, the dark thunder clouds
come across the horizon, the cattle see that and
they see the challenge and they're scared and they're frightened. And cattle are kind of slow, s
o they run away from the storm. But what happens? As they're running away,
that storm follows them. That storm engulfs them,
that storm becomes them, and they never get through it. That problem, that challenge, that adversity follows them around. Buffalo, they do exactly the opposite. They run at the thing.
They run at the storm. They rally together in a herd. They put the most vulnerable
among them in the middle to protect them and say,
all right, we got this. We're gonna do this
together. And
they run at it. Despite the mud and the muck
and the pain and the challenge and the difficulty, they run right at it and they do the hard thing. And before you know it, they run at it and they run through it to
what's on the other side. Light, solution, your
goals, your achievements, but they do the hard thing. They charge through with
unwavering determination. The stomping of their
foot creates a thunder that's louder than that
thunderstorm could ever be. I'm gonna ask you for a
moment to close
your eyes. Trust me, everybody close
your eyes. Take a deep breath. I promise my friends
in the secret service, we won't steal your wallets. (chuckles) Take a deep breath,
keep those eyes closed. We've all been through life storms. It may be battling illness,
mental health, poverty, inequality, or just daily struggles. It can be dark, it can be isolating. You don't know where to get answers. Sometimes you can't find anybody
with a shared experience. Keep your eyes closed for one more moment. Yo
u don't know where to turn to and it often can feel like a storm. Keeping your eyes closed, just raise your hand if you,
a loved one, a friend has gone through a storm, a
challenging time, adversity. Just raise your hand if
you've gone through this or you know somebody
that's gone through it. Keep those eyes closed. Now I want you to keep your hand raised and open your eyes and look around you. Look around. Look at all these people
with their hands up. You can put your hands down. You are not al
one in your challenges and your struggles and your missions. Everybody in this room
after today is your herd. This is your tribe, this is
your people, this is your crew. Y'all are paying your service
rent at the White House. And not only the people in this room, but the missions, the
communities that you guys serve, that's your herd, that's your people. And you can run through
any storm to accomplish it. So how can we, this group
of newly appointed buffalo, how can we charge at our missions? Tod
ay, I'd like to offer a framework that we call the innovation alphabet, having an audacious vision powered by a bold business
model, fueled by a unique and creative approach
and most importantly, choosing your destination. First up, audacious vision. If your goals don't scare you, those goals are not big enough. Be fearless, be reckless, be brave. Be an adventurer into the unknown. At EB Research Partnership,
what's our audacious vision? It's for Selene and
everybody likes Selene. Selene has epi
dermolysis
bullosa, or EB for short. It's a life-threatening,
rare genetic disease. Life expectancy is one to 30 years old and every day, Selene
fights a daily battle. Hours of bandage changes, bleach baths, doctor's appointments and pain. If we started a roll of bandages
at the corner of this room and we passed it down these aisles, it would make it past
the back of the room, the amount of bandages that Celine goes through in one single day. Things that we take for
granted, sleeping, eating, dr
inking water, taking a breath, become monumental challenges
for those with EB. Kids with EB are called butterfly children because their skin is as fragile as the wings of a butterfly. The largest organ, the skin, right, could break at the slightest touch. It's fragile, it's a devastating
disease, it's diabolical. And there's 500,000 people
on the planet living with EB. But there's good news. EB is monogenic. It's caused by one gene mutation, and we know that gene mutation. We've discovered the g
enetic
mutation that causes EB. It's a target. We have it in our sites. We've gathered our tribe of
the most brilliant scientists and doctors and biotech
companies and innovators and philanthropists to run
and charge at that problem. When we started, EB was called, the worst disease you've never heard of. Today, this disease is called the disease that we are curing. Since we started 10
years ago, it was bleak, not a lot of hope, not a lot of research, not a lot of clinical trials. We've raised $
60 million
to fund 140 projects. That's led to a 20 time
increase in the amount of clinical trials, starting at two to now more than 40 today. The landscape has been transformed. This isn't science fiction.
It's scientific certainty. For the first time, we
believe more than ever, curing EB is not an if. It's only a win. So how are we doing? What's our progress indicator? We had a monumental moment last year. For the first time ever, we got two, not one, two FDA approvals for epidermolysis bullos
a. Two approvals. (audience applauding) Including the first topical gene therapy that we were an early investor in. To put that in perspective, one in 10 people on
the planet are affected by a rare disease. That's 400 million people. That's more people than
cancer and HIV combined. Yet 95% of that very, very large audience
has zero FDA approvals. We crossed into the 5% and while we are certainly
grateful for that, that's a milestone,
that's an not an endpoint. We will not stop until we
have a cu
re for the disease and we can pioneer our model
and teach other rare diseases, how to attack the problem in the same way. That's a big audacious goal worth solving. Bold business plans, big
problems need big solutions. As nonprofit leaders, we believe a 501c3 is a tax
status, not a business model. We need to run like Fortune
50 companies with the best and most elite staff, diverse and talented boards that
can guide us in our missions to have that rigor and
discipline of businesses. And what's ou
r business model? How do we think differently about this? Venture philanthropy,
a venture into cures. We don't just write checks
and hope for the best. We invest in the most promising science and we take an equity
stake in those investments. So if they're commercially
successful, so are we. But the difference, our
return on investment, we call return on impact. If it's monetized, the funds
come back to the foundation to fund more research again
and again and again and again until we cure the dis
ease. Patients are our shareholders, but we're in the business to
put ourselves out of business. We exist to not exist. We also believe in the
power of technology. A few years ago, we started
working with AWS, really just to ask a simple question: how can we make navigating the
journey with a rare disease as easy as entering a
destination into your GPS? But rather than right and left turns, we want the right treatment for the right patient at the right time. Nonprofits, if you don't think like a
CTO, you may not be in business in a few years. Get your technology model right. Find yourself an AWS. Scott Glasser who's doing other brilliant, engineer stuff somewhere in
this building is our guy. Find yourself a Scott Glasser.
Dream big, think of it. And let machine learning and AI and rapid analytics in the Cloud
solve that problem for you. So what we build is
called curator, powered by AWS Stanford University and the patient and medical communities. It's a platform. It was as easy as find
ing
the best pizza spot in your neighborhood. Patients sign up, swab their cheek, genomics power their experience. They own and control their data. I'm gonna underline that, they
own and control their data because that's a rarity
today in healthcare. We believe in that. That's a principle. This is powered by patients
there in the driver's seat. They can log on and
based on their genetics in a quick survey, find the
best doctor within 50 miles, find a clinical trial
that's uniquely suited and map
ped to their genomics, find patients and families
that have a shared experience and are going exactly through
what they are going through. There's power in the patient voice. There's power in your stakeholder voices. Sometimes they know
more than the scientists and professional, and
they decide when and how and where that data will be shared. Finally, choose your destination. Every mission needs a
destination and a deadline. It's not enough to say, my mission is X and we'll solve it someday. Hop
e we solve it someday, right? Our communities deserve better. Social innovators, it exists
to not be in existence, to put yourself out of a job. Some call it outcome-based thinking. This is Kennedy's I'm gonna go to the moon by the end of this decade. This is Martin Luther King, I have a dream in putting
it up on the wall. We call this outcome based believing, having such strong
conviction in your mission and your community and your herd and your tribe that you know
you can harness the best of t
heir collective
abilities to accomplish that, to timestamp it, and to put a deadline. For us, we don't wanna just cure EB. We wanna cure EB by
the end of this decade. There's lots of big problems
in the world worth solving. We don't wanna do it in our lifetime. We wanna do it by this decade. And we've rallied the community
of patients, researchers, doctors, scientists,
medical professionals all around the world to deliver on this. And not only do we
wanna cure EB by the end of this decade, but w
e
wanna pioneer a model and a process that can
help the 400 million people on the planet, living with a rare disease. So I know picking the
deadline may be daunting, but I'm gonna challenge you all. It's absolutely necessary.
Set your mission's ETA. So if we can do this as an organization, what does this mean? This means that Jacob and
Eli and Darren and Rowan and Selene can be given time back. We can remove the hours
of bandages changes and the dozens of doctor's
visits and the pain and the ban
daging and the
bleep bass and the challenges and the adversity. We can give that time back to be a kid, to go on vacations, to grow
up and change the world and be the next of you in
this room today, right? So what does that mean for
you, my new appointed buffalo, this herd, this tribe, right? What does it mean for you guys? Time is the greatest gift
that we receive in life. That's why they call it the present. It's an asset that we can't control. But you can give your time
to give that time back
for the causes and
missions that you serve, and you can do it with a
community, a tribe, and a herd. Time back for years on
life, time back for health, time back for women's
health, time back for equity, time back for the environment,
time back for whatever that mission is that drives you and gets you up in the morning that you know you serve somebody and you want to deliver that. This is a herd. We can leave this running
forward with the force of a hundred buffalo. We're here to help one anoth
er. We're here to help each other. Your communities are here to help you. So my parting words, go
forth my buffalo, my people. Buffalo like us, baby, we were
born to run. So thank you. (audience applauding) (upbeat music) - Thank you so much to the entire EB Research Partnership team for the tremendous work you are doing. Inequities exist not only
in rare disease research, but also in research and care that impacts over
half our population, women. We are so thrilled that
in November, the preside
nt and the first lady announced
the White House initiative on women's health research. And here to speak with us
today is the first lady of the United States, Dr. Jill Biden. (audience applauding) (upbeat music) - Thank you so much. - Thank you. (upbeat music continues) Hello. Good morning. (audience cheering) Thank you so much. Thank you, please. Thank you, Allison. Amazon Web Services has changed
the way our world works, transforming how companies do business. That innovation and the ideas
it
has sparked are now part of the fabric of our lives. And I know that they've
also changed so much for nonprofits, like the
ones here today in this room. Thank you for investing
in these organizations and finding ways to help them grow. And as you do, you push forward
the cutting edge technology that will help make people's lives better. So I'm honored to join all of you today. In the early 1970s, researchers in the United States
studies estrogen's effect in preventing heart attacks. You see, it
was observed
that women who had gone through menopause, therefore,
who had lower levels of estrogen, were more
likely to have heart attacks. So a study was conducted, asking whether estrogen
prevents heart attacks. 8,341 people were selected for that study, all of them men! (audience laughing) Okay, I think only half
the audience got that joke. (everyone laughing) So this is just how things were done. Women's health research has
been overlooked and underfunded. Too many of our medications, treat
ments and medical school
textbooks are based on men. So in November, Joe and I launched the first
ever White House initiative on women's health research,
with a clear goal: to fundamentally change
how our nation approaches and funds research on women's health. When our nonprofits come
together with universities and entrepreneurs and investors and state and city leaders to drive innovation, you've proven that there's nothing that's beyond our capacity. So I encourage you to harness
that same spir
it of discovery and ambition to take
on the next generation of great healthcare challenge of our time, finding innovative
solutions in women's health. It's the right thing to do, and it could be the next big
thing for your bottom line. In 2021, the women's
health market was estimated to be nine billion. The Boston Consulting Group estimates that in just eight years,
that number will grow to 29 billion. Amazon's Chief Technology
Officer recently announced, his top four predictions for 2024. He pr
edicted that fem
tech finally takes off. Women's healthcare reaches
an inflection point as fem tech investment surges. McKinsey and Company estimates that investments, addressing
the women's health gap, could boost the global economy
by one trillion annually. By the year 2040, women's health is having its moment and to help it grow, we need to transform the way we approach
women's health research. Women in this country
live longer than men, but what are those later years like? Many women spend t
heir
later years struggling with chronic diseases that
we don't know enough about and that don't have
effective treatment options because medical studies
have often left out women. This is the result of a choice, you know, one that's been made
over and over for decades. But President Biden is
making a different choice. Just two days ago, as part of the White House initiative
on women's health research, he signed the most comprehensive
executive order ever to expand and approach
research on women
's health. (audience applauding) I know. I'm so proud of him. So Joe is directing his
administration to find ways to use artificial intelligence and other technology to advance
research on women's health. And in his State of the Union address, Joe called on Congress to make an unprecedented $12
billion research investment into that work. ARPA-H, the agency Joe created to pursue breakthrough health
research at lightning speed, launched its first ever
sprint for women's health, which will invest 1
00 million in life saving research
on women, this year. (audience applauding) These historic actions will make sure that women's health is no longer
overlooked or left behind. And when we combine that
momentum with the possibility of technology, we can imagine a new world for women's health. For all the women who
leave doctors' offices, I'm gonna see some
heads I'm sure, shaking, all the women who leave doctors' offices with more questions than answers who are told it's just in your head or it's
just stress,
who spend their lives, fighting diseases that we
don't know enough about because the solution they
need could be the watch on their wrist or the app in their pocket. It could be getting access
to specialized care quickly through a virtual doctor's appointment. It could be artificial intelligence that analyzes more
information faster to predict and prevent diseases, or things that as of yet
still lie beyond the limits of our imaginations. Thank you for having me. Thanks. (audience a
pplauding) (upbeat music) - Thank you so much, Dr. Biden, for spending the time with us today and for sharing your vision for transforming women's health research. As a mom, former educator and now a leader, I
have so much admiration and respect for Dr. Biden and
all of the work that you do. Your advocacy on behalf of women is nothing
short of transformative. Thank you so much. This focus on women's
health is just one example of how when we unite across
sectors, government, nonprofit, healthcare
, and corporations,
we're all stronger together. So let's talk about that one, human quality that helps us
unite, and that's generosity. Whether it's donations,
grants, research, advocacy, or just time and dedication, we are all part of that generosity. And today we are honored to
hear from Chris Anderson, the curator of TED and his new book, "Infectious Generosity." You all know TED, a nonprofit that has built a digital
platform dedicated to ideas worth spreading. Let's hear more from Chris And
erson. (audience applauding) (inspiring music) - This guy is amazing! - So there you have it, a
blueprint of coexistence for humans and AI. - We are connecting with
something important. (inspiring music continues) - Give voice to the story
only you know how to tell. (inspiring music continues) - Imagine what kind of
existence we can have if we appreciate the privilege of life. (inspiring music continues) - Let's explore from a
brand new perspective. - Just how ingenious, how
flexible the human m
ind is. - There is no end to the inspiration. - Thank you so much. (audience cheering) - [Narrator 2] From TED, please welcome to the
stage Chris Anderson. (upbeat music) - Hello, hello. So if you ever get invited
to speak somewhere, here is a top tip. Never, ever speak after Dr. Jill Biden. (audience laughing) Terrible idea. Was I the only one sitting there thinking, is there any way you could
be the next president? Anyway, look, it's
actually really meaningful to be here with you, with
people
who are working to make the world a better place. I mean, this is a tough
road you all have chosen. You know that, right? Often, it takes a tough road to get to a place that's amazing. So let's explore this territory. I want to share with you something that happened a few years ago that completely changed how
I thought about the world. So I'm a media entrepreneur. Back in the 90s, I had this company, publishing nerdy magazines
about computers and video games. It was going awfully well and I got
introduced to this
weird conference in California for technology, entertainment
and design, TED. I went there, I kind of
fell in love with it. A couple years later I
had a chance to buy it, which was great, except that
my company was in the process of blowing up. The dot com crash of 2000,
2001 had not been kind, and I nearly went personally bankrupt. We had to let go of half
of our 2,000 people. It was just horrible, horrible. But I had, when times were better, set up a small private foundation
. That foundation was able to buy TED and I was able to do
this little sideways move into something that was so
wonderful to get to hang out with these amazing people, and TED became owned by a nonprofit. After I'd spent a couple
years licking my wounds, kind of recovering from what
was a really painful period, started to feel like,
well, we're a nonprofit. We're supposed to be here
in the public interest. We should be letting out into
the outside world somehow some of the magic that happens at
TED. How do we do this? We tried to persuade TV companies
to take TED Talks online. "Are you out of your mind? Do you know how boring it
is to watch a lecture?" And then online video came along, and we had this chance to
give away the talks for free. There was no real obvious way
to get paid for doing this, but we're a nonprofit. It felt like it was the right thing to do. We were worried it was
gonna kill the conference. That was the source of all our revenue. Why would you go to a conference if
all the content was there for free? We tried it anyway. And to our amazement, these
talks started to go viral and seemed to actually
carry with them some of the inspiration that
the event live had. And amazing things started to happen. People became our marketing partners. They shared them across the planet. Translators approached us, said, "Can we translate this into our language?" There are now TED Talks in
more than a hundred languages. And the demand for the conference
didn't fall. It rocke
ted. So wait a sec, what is happening here? The rules seemed to have changed a bit. And so we became obsessed with this idea of radical generosity
in the connected age. We tried to think, what
else could we give away? I know, how about our brand? Well that felt like an even
dumber idea. (chuckles) There were definitely
some embarrassing moments when people ran TEDx events in
different parts of the world. We don't control TEDx events. We just license them for
free and things can go wrong. But the
amazing thing is
that mostly, things go right and 60 or 70,000 people
are out there right now, volunteering, giving their own time, their own financial risk, their
own talent to assemble more than like, 3,000 events around the world. You could not do this the traditional way. You can do this through a strategy of what we call radical generosity, I now call infectious generosity. I mean, it's amazing what we got back. And so I became convinced that in this connected age we're in, that the rules
have changed and
that our strategy should be, try to imagine the biggest
thing you can give away and take a risk on it and be
amazed at what happens next. Now, I'm convinced that this
idea applies not just to TED, but to any organization, any company actually, any individual. But some of you may be sitting there and thinking, no, no, come on. You know, like we often feel too small against the hugeness of what
is out there in the world. But here's the thing. Size
doesn't have to be the issue. In
2019, one of the smallest
things you can imagine, a little group of atoms,
completely invisible to the human eye, slightly
changed its shape, entered the human body and within a few months, had
shut down the world economy. Thank you so much, COVID, for
at least one powerful lesson. You don't have to be big to be powerful. You just have to be infectious. (audience laughing) (audience applauding) And it's actually amazing
what happens when you think of the world through the
lens of infectiousness.
I mean, think about this. Let's say you go to a meeting and you tell people about your work. Say 30 people are there and they go out and they tell 25 other
people about your work, and those 25 people tell another 20 people about your work and so forth. When all is said and done,
maybe a hundred people get to know about your work. That's great, not world changing. But suppose you found a
slightly different way to tell your story and that those 30 people
actually told 35 people who told 40 people
, and
that that pattern continued. A month later, maybe a million or millions of people know about what you've done. So this is astounding. Just a small increase in infectiousness of message can make a literally
thousands fold difference in impact. So we should be obsessed about
this. How do you do this? How do you cross that chasm
from invisible to infectious? I mean, there are lots of ways. Perhaps some of you might
dream of doing something, giving away something
in the way that TED did. We've
actually already had
great examples this morning of people doing exactly that. See, the connected age,
it's amazing where we're at. The things that people
value most right now are, actually, intangible things. The products of the human mind, case in point AWS, it's not a coincidence that a unit of Amazon
that has less than 10% of the workforce accounts for far more profitability than the rest of the company combined. (audience cheering) Because most value today, I'm sorry Jeff, is not from load
ing boxes onto trucks and delivering them to people. That's great, thank you. There's more value by
delivering intangible things, things that humans dream up, things like knowledge and
beauty and data and software. That is where we ascribe most values. And they can be sent through the Cloud at the speed of light. It is incredible that the things that people value most today
can be given away online to an unlimited number of people, for an effective
distribution cost of zero. This changes everyth
ing. This completely changes the rules about what you should hold onto and what you should give away. So that's one thing to dream about. Take half a day, have a
brainstorm. You never know. If you can figure out something, all bets are off as to what happens next. But there's another thing
you can think about, the way that we tell our stories. We are shaped by the stories we share. Right now, the stories that spread around the internet
are often ugly stories. It's telling us against
each other.
It's horrible. It doesn't have to be that way. Good things can also go viral. How? How? Well, there are many ways. Authentic human emotion goes viral in whatever form it happens. And in research for this book and from my view of TED speakers and so forth, I've
discovered so many examples of people who figured out
how to crack this code and do something amazing
that others want to share. There's two things in particular
I want to reference here: creativity and courage. Creativity and courage. So
creativity, for
example, a group of friends in Japan wanted to clean up the litter in their streets, the trash. So they go out, they capture it on camera, but they do this, they
dress up as samurai warriors and dramatically spike the trash
with a sword and flip it up and catch it in a basket. Those videos go viral. Of course they do. Why wouldn't they? And thousands of other groups decide that they also want to clean up trash. Creativity, courage. Tell the story of an incredible man, an African
American
musician, Darryl Davis who, to cut a long story short,
befriended a member of the KKK, went to KKK rallies, eventually
persuaded him to leave, persuaded dozens of others to leave. His courage meant that this
story spread across the world. He showed that it is possible,
even in this divided area, to exercise the incredible
form of generosity known as bridging, finding common ground. Creativity and courage. What happens if you
combine those two things? Well there's a word for that. It's a
word that we've
actually already heard today. It's a word that I learned from a hero of mine, Richard Rockefeller. A decade ago we were on a boat together in the Galapagos, trying to raise money for a group of nonprofits who were involved in marine conservation. And there were donors on board the boats and they were trying to figure out how to persuade these owners to
support their individual causes. It wasn't going well. Dinner on the third day, Richard stood up and he said, "I see that
some o
f us are struggling. We're finding that people
don't necessarily want to immediately write us the checks we wish they would write." And our response to that
is often to cut back, to say, "Well okay, let's think of something more modest that we could do that maybe someone would
fund, please, maybe." Said, "I beg you not to do that." I have observed that the best
donors are not interested in small plans. Don't ask for less. Ask for more. Be audacious. You know, when you're giving
a big talk and th
e speaker before you steals your
word, I love you Michael, you could react in horror and upset. I actually think that this
is a word made for today, thank you, genuinely. Audacious, creativity plus
courage equals audacity. I've become obsessed with this idea. You know, I'm married to one of the world's great change makers, Jacqueline Novogratz, who runs Acumen. I've seen close up what
this journey involves, how bloody hard it is, how so much time has to be
spent trying to figure out how to raise
funds. I'm guessing, I mean,
you feel this, right? Who here feels that they have to spend maybe half their time trying to raise money for the work? I'm seeing hands, I'm
seeing nodding heads. How crazy is this? How crazy is it that we
have a world set up so that the people who are
literally global heroes, who are willing to devote their lives to making change instead of making the most money
they could for themselves, how crazy is it that we
make them not only do that, we make them spend half
t
heir time then trying to raise the money to do it? This makes no sense at
all. So that upset me. Another thing I noticed from
my window at TED where I got to meet a lot of big
donors and speak with them, and I heard something shocking. They all wanted to be
philanthropic, to give money to support, but they found
that many of the projects that were presented to them, I dunno how to use a better word than
this, they found them boring. The scale of the projects
didn't match the ways in which they t
hought, the ways in which they had made money which was by having bold, crazy dreams. So what could you do about that? Well we decided to say, what if we tried to change the game here a bit? What if we went out to
the world's change makers and said, okay, tell
me your biggest dream. What actually could you
do, if money was no object? What could you and your team
do that was absolutely amazing, make the hair stand up
in the back of my neck? Turns out when you ask that question, you get incredible
answers. We received applications
from like thousands of different people
saying, here is the dream. And many of those dreams were amazing. So we figured out a
methodology for taking, filtering those down to the best of them where there was evidence to back them, where there was a track record there, where there was an amazing team to help them shape those into credible, actionable, multi-year plans. And then we brought those
10 giant, audacious dreams in front of a group of donors
together in
one moment, in a retreat, and start the clock ticking and say to them, you can't
kick these plans down the road and say, "Oh do some more research order. We've done the due diligence.
It's done, it's ready. Will you support them or not?" And after a couple of days of digging in and so forth, a group of
people gather around each table for each project and someone says, I'm in. And then you see this most amazing piece of infectious generosity in action. I'm in, I'm in, I'm in, I'm in. We've been t
rying this
out for several years. At the last one we did,
10 projects raised just over a billion dollars
in the last half hour of that retreat. All 10 projects funded because of the power of audacious dreams and the power of infectious generosity. And so what I want to say to
you is, please, please, please, even though this is a hard road, don't give up on those dreams. Be more audacious. That may be the key to
getting donors' attention, to getting more donors'
attention, to getting your work, y
our incredibly important work to fly. I dunno about you, I'm sick of how mean the world has become. I'm sick of how much cynicism there is about people who are trying
to make the world better and the philanthropists
who are supporting it. I'm sick of it, but I'm also
persuaded that the best way to fight these things is
to show what is possible. It's to show what is possible. This is our species's superpower, for someone to have a dream, a dream about how the
world could be different, and to shar
e that dream with someone else and to see their eyes light
up and say, "I get it. I love this dream. I want to
help you make this dream real." Those people gather together,
they build something and the world changes. This is the most
extraordinary thing to do. This is the road that I think we're on. It's a road towards a place called hope. And if you look around
this room, you will see that your fellow travelers on this road are pretty remarkable, and there are other fellow
travelers too who wil
l join you as you go along this road whose names are meaning and happiness. So let's go. Let's do this. Thank you so much. (audience applauding) (upbeat music) - Well thank you so much,
Chris, for your leadership and your perspective. It's a reminder of the great capacity for goodness in the world. And I'm thrilled to announce that today, we are offering all attendees, the complimentary Amazon Kindle copy of Chris's book, "Infectious Generosity." (audience applauding) Again, stop by our Impact
L
ounge and get your code. We are so thrilled to have you. I want to say thank you again to all of our incredible keynote speakers, Dr. Biden, Bourhan, Michael, Chris. Leadership inspires leaders and true leadership requires bravery, and that's what drives the change. I hope today, you feel that it celebrates your generosity, recognizes your leadership, and creates a space where you
can learn from each other. Thank you again for being with us today. I'm so excited to see what
you will continue to
imagine and be audacious, is the word of the day. Thank you very, very much. (audience applauding) (upbeat music)
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