Emerge

Lucia Gallardo is a Honduran serial social entrepreneur building technological solutions to some of the world’s most pressing problems as Founder of Emerge. Emerge's work for displaced populations and tech-scarce farmers has been recognized by the Global SDG Awards and Newsweek's Impact Awards. Lucia is also the co-founder of Tabik, a Spanish education platform for Latin American early-stage entrepreneurs. She is the co-founder of Dona un Libro, an award-winning education foundation in Honduras. Lucia has past experience in the public and private sectors. She currently sits on the Board of the Penta Global Foundation, Rainforest Partnership, Caribbean Blockchain Alliance, Women Entrepreneurs Global, and Crypto Kids Camp. She also speaks globally on topics such as exponential technologies, inclusion, and social good. In 2020, Lucia was honoured as an MIT Innovator Under 35 and nominated for both the RBC's Entrepreneur of the Year Award and Future of Good’s 21 Founders to Watch.

Emerge strives to solve some of the world's most intricate problems with empathy and cutting edge technology. We focus on benefitting emerging and low-income countries. We use artificial intelligence, blockchain, and IoT devices to build custom solutions such as increasing transparency in the supply chain or medical triage in the face of the COVID-19 pandemic. Our solutions fall under six verticals:

• To Benefit People
• To Distribute Goods
• To Protect Data 
• To Conserve Resources
• To Provide Services
• To Facilitate Governance 

Emerge works to elevate humanity by fostering technological inclusion. We supply clients with exponential technologies at the same pace that wealthy nations and companies tap into them to build their own competitive advantages. Beyond supplying the technology, we accompany clients through implementation to ensure success. Ultimately, Emerge seeks to influence technological systems change at policy and behavioural levels to shift certain paradigms that society holds true for equitability, inclusion, and sustainability.

Emerge was founded to be modular - strong at applying our impactful design, development, and implementation methodologies across industries and sectors with problems exacerbated by stakeholder fragmentation, lack of data transparency, and seemingly unsolvable last-mile challenges. Additionally, are intentional about customization at the solution and business model levels, to ensure our work is accessible to all, from Fortune 500 companies to indigenous communities. Thus far, we have implemented projects in the US, Guatemala, Honduras, Colombia, and Uganda. We are currently expanding in these markets, while also preparing our first implementations in the Caribbean, the Middle East, Europe, Kenya, and Venezuela. Our work in Supply Chain has already impacted over 15,000 people. One recent implementation in Uganda has required designing a user experience that is entirely SMS- text message based due to lack of technological infrastructure and literacy. The problems we work on impact hundreds of millions of people, as we purposefully focus on grave humanitarian issues. Our work in digital identification has been and is currently being adapted to support refugees, homeless persons, economic migrants, and political asylum claimants, the first category of which alone affects over 70 million people. We exist as a balance between moonshots and concrete deployments.

We are currently designing a unique company model that can build accessible, impactful and innovative solutions that advance the targets set out by the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals. Emerge sits in the middle of public-private innovation, with complicated projects that span multiple stakeholders across that spectrum - from governments to INGOs to academic institutions, to private companies, to cooperatives or SMEs. We design our own models with a B2B or B2G pricing strategy, whilst primarily benefitting individual users. We are problem-oriented and work in 2 ways: when we innovate in-house and then pilot and commercialize, or when an organization comes to us with a problem which we design solutions custom for. Internally, we seek to solidify this model and methodology, and ensure we can balance experimentation with long-term viability. Ultimately, Emerge seeks to influence technological systems change at policy and behavioural levels to shift certain paradigms that society holds true for equitability, inclusion, and sustainability.

Our project serves those in the world who are traditionally left out of the "Next Big Thing". Exponential technologies are initially built for and consumed by high-income organisations and countries. By the time the rest of the world has access to them, there is already a competitive advantage for the organisations that have had these technologies mature with them.

Emerge instead uses these technologies to build solutions for those that are traditionally left out. We therefore not only increase access to emerging technologies, but also create custom solutions and architecture surrounding the technology. Instead of having the technology be for one audience but used in a non-optimized fashion by another audience, we ensure that everything is built with the whole context in mind. In the long run, this means that when these technologies do mature, everyone will have equitable access to the benefits that can come from the next revolution in the technology world.

Emerge relates to elevating opportunities because Emerge at its core is about ensuring that new technology is built for those who have been traditionally left out. That ethos plays out in building a system such as Homeward, which helps refugees be better placed into municipalities where they can find work and a community. It also is evident in creating Theseus, a solution that has been used by Colombian coffee farmers to track their products and decrease food waste along the route. We build solutions so that those historically left out can get ahead. 

After having worked across the public sector, primarily with undocumented immigrants to Canada and facilitating trade between Canada and Honduras, I realized regardless of how much work we were putting in, we'd still always be considerable steps behind, unable to strengthen and build our negotiating power. Eventually, I landed in the tech industry, as a first hire in artificial intelligence and in neurotechnology. Immediately recognizing the potential of these technologies in some of the issues I had worked on in my prior life, I set out to try to find a way to extract a little of that innovation DNA and democratize it for lower-income countries, companies and communities.

That said, the company has been in the works since I was 8. I grew up in Honduras, one of the most corrupt and unequal countries in the world. After living through the devastating effects of 1998's Hurricane Mitch, and learning more about cyclical poverty when I was 12, Emerge was destined to be. I wasn't sure what it would look like, but I become dedicated to ensuring my life's project would be in the service of technological justice.

When I was 12, my science teacher asked us to take a topic from our curriculum and apply it to real life. My team chose water and we toured a water purification plant to study how water got to households across the city. On the way out, I naively suggested we add a human element to our project and ask neighbours about what it is like to live next to the plant. Was it noisy? Was it annoying? I remember the progression of emotions I felt when I heard the first neighbour's response. She told us that they didn't have running water. They collected rainwater and sourced from a well 90 minutes away. Every two weeks, the plant would donate to them whatever what the city didn't use. At first, I felt embarrassed I had asked a question that highlighted something they didn't even have access to. That shame quickly progressed to sadness and compassion, empathy, confusion, anger, rage, and ultimately, determination. Our project turned into a water access presentation and I read my first dense economics textbook. Emerge is one part technology company one part social justice movement, and I have been committed to it since I'm 12.

I definitely think I am uniquely suited to building Emerge. It is a mix of my personal and professional experience. I grew up in one of the most unequal countries in the world, and even personally struggled with the divide. My mom was a teacher at the best school in the country, a school that is beyond our economic reach, but I got to attend anyway. My classmates were all amongst the 0.5% richest Hondurans, whereas my family sometimes struggled with rent, food, and other expenses. I went on to work in the public sector, learning to navigate bureaucracies in the specific realms that Emerge must now operate within. My academic studies focused on economic development in resource-scarce economies, and I went on to work in startups across different technologies and sectors. My first jobs in technology were immediately with artificial intelligence, neurotechnology and then blockchain. The company reflects my lived experience and is made better by the intentional scouting and hiring of team members with similar life-long commitments to social justice issues and proven experience in technology and implementation.

Because the company is incredibly experimental in an effort to tackle the nuanced complexities of implementing with and for low-income and technologically limited populations, we struggled to find initial investment for the company. We were unable to tick off boxes on standard investor lists. When asked what our business model was, we would respond with questions about what vertical and client they were referring to, as we charge approximately the same for a product, but structure payments with different strategies to account for the liquidity differences between an indigenous community, an SME, and a Fortune 500 company. After nearly of year of struggling, I realized that I was going through a traditional startup journey despite being a non-traditional startup. We were, by nature, different than the mold, which meant we couldn't rely on the mold for our operations either. Instead, I decided to stop looking for external funding completely and channel all our resources and efforts to bootstrapping and securing a paid contract. To date, we have never taken outside investment, and are all the more resourceful, responsible and viable for it.

In 2009, my country was experiencing a political crisis. We had removed the president from office, a new president had been sworn in, and we were being internationally pressured to undo this. I was exhausted by the biased coverage I was seeing everywhere and also by the fact that I couldn't do something concrete to help. I then came across an article on the Wall Street Journal. It was factual and unbiased, but lacked some important constitutional context. I wrote to the author to supply it for him and he responded quickly. He was grateful and wanted to know if I could guide their AP reporter through the city so he could know where to start gathering sources. By the time he flew in, I had arranged a whole schedule for him, with everyone closely related to the issue - from the arresting officer, to the new president. To show his gratitude, the reporter let me sit in on interviews, ask questions, and take notes. Eventually, I ended up becoming an advocate for peace and fair new elections, speaking in front of 120,000 people and being interviewed by international media. I'm a proactive, resourceful leader dedicated to maximum impact.

What makes Emerge innovative is that we look at problems not as technological or sociological issues, but rather as a wholistic unit. This is what we mean when we say we combine empathy with technology. This approach is unfound in the startup space, and puts us in a unique position. We are innovative because we map out the entire incentive structures and ecosystems in place, thinking of the primary, secondary, and tertiary stakeholders in a problem. It is only then that we build a custom made solution for them using the cutting edge of technological progress. We ensure that that the solution is not just usable but useful in the environment, and that it can be used by everyone. After a pilot is implemented, we have inclusive business plans built so that the community can continue to use the solution and prosper, creating long term sustainability in our products. Our governing philosophy of sweating all the details means that we attack the root problems, and create meaningful, positive change. This is coupled with being on the cutting edge of blockchain, AI, and IoT use in these communities. That is what makes Emerge so innovative. 

Our project management methodology follows the approach of a logical framework matrix. On the minor scale, metrics and milestones are tracked. These metrics are labelled as outputs and flow into objectives. Each objective is made in service of a goal, with a goal being complete when the objectives are fulfilled. Completed goals lead to positive outcomes, such as a better operating environment. Future goals can build upon the positive outcomes in order to ensure continued growth. This is a highly scalable process of project management, and is used on both the individual scale and project wide scale.  

The project management system can also be rationally mapped backwards. The final outcome of a successfully implemented project is predicated on the completion of goals, which are further  predicated on the implementation and fulfillment of objectives, which can only be fulfilled by metrics or outputs.  This methodological system ensures two main needs. First, it ensures that the project stays on course and has a strategy for near and long term implementation. Secondly, it ensures that the project implementation is always in line with the end result that the client needs. By fulfilling these parameters, Emerge projects are able to have a positive change for their clients and the operating environment as a whole. 

Since our goals operate as the nucleus of the project methodology, it is vital that they are done with strict thinking surrounding them. This is the reason that the creation of our project goals follows a modular approach. Each goal is created with the stakeholders and problem owners benefit in mind, ensuring that each minor goal and objective that is achieved not just builds towards the overall goal of the project, but ensures that positive change occurs at each step of the process. This gives us multiple benefits, including allowing us to track change throughout the project. Fulfilling goals creates better outcomes for stakeholders and creates stronger goals in the future. Furthermore, it also mitigates risk since even in partial implementation, there is still a worthwhile investment and a positive change that is of direct benefit to the problem owner. 

Currently, our projects are serving communities in rural Uganda and in Honduras, with partnership agreements for a range of other projects in the works more long term. In rural Uganda, we are implementing a supply chain tracking solution for over 14,000 farmers. This solution, called Theseus, will reduce food waste and increase value along the chain. This project will grow in complexity of data collected and analysed over the next year. In the next five years, we plan on expanding the lessons learned to other areas of Uganda and expanding into similar markets regionally as well. 

In Honduras, we are implementing a medical triage system, named Civitas, which will be piloted for a 1 month period before scaling to a permanent solution. Assuming a completely successful pilot, the government plans on a full integration into the general health sector, non-COVID-19 related, over the next year, which would service roughly nine million Hondurans. We are also in the midst of creating a version of Civitas for large enterprises in order to mitigate the risk of contagion. Over the next five years, we hope to be able to partner with more governments, both national, regional, and local to implement Civitas in their respective communities. 

We are also currently talking with local, regional, and national governments to become trusted service providers for them. By becoming trusted providers for different public stakeholders, we would be able to exponentially increase our potential area of impact - geographically, thematically, and most importantly to excluded populations. 

Our goals over the next five years are to threefold: increase use cases for our current solutions, increase possible features for stakeholders, and increase our geographic scope of operations. 

In terms of increasing use cases, our current solutions exist on a flexible architecture that allows for the creation of a multitude of variations on the same technical chassis. An example of this is using Civitas, which is at it's core a health record management system, to be used for both emergency sector stakeholders, as well as for enterprises. 

In line with that goal is to also increase possible features of projects. Future implementations  can have increased complexity or slight changes to the operating function. One example could be with Theseus, to increase the the types and amount of data tracked, and allow for sales prices to be negotiated on while the shipment is in transit given the real time financial tracking. 

We would also like to increase our scope of operations. Emerge's solutions can have the opportunity to affect billions of people positively. To do this, we plan on increasing our geographic scope and reaching out to new and underrepresented stakeholders to increase our ability to create positive change in the environment. 

We have a series of barriers facing our goals in the next five years, though none of them are insurmountable. Our solutions rely on innovative thinking and cutting edge technology. This has the possibility to put a solution outside of the price range of organisations or stakeholders who may benefit the most from them. Therefore, ensuring that are pricing remains competitive while still being inclusive will continue to be a challenge. 

Technically, we work with partners around the world to leverage their technical expertise. However as a startup, there are only so many hours of labor we can tap into to complete the technical side of a solution. In order to achieve our goals of increased use cases and features, we will need to increase our technical team to be able to create bigger solutions faster, without sacrificing the customisation of them that makes the solutions so valuable. 

Legally and culturally, Emerge needs to continue to ensure that our solutions remain within line with the implementing community's laws and customs. There is no use in building a solution that has the potential for social good if the people who will be using it cannot do so legally or if it does not make sense in the larger fabric of the community. Acting with the consent and engagement of the implementing community is always at the forefront of our process, and continuing to do so will be paramount to success in reaching our goals. 

While there are barriers to our success, we have strategies that we are currently implementing in order to reach our goals. Financially we want to remain competitive in our pricing, without being too expensive for stakeholders. In order to do this, we are planning a partnership with microfinance and crowdfunding organisations to offset the expenses incurred by the solutions. This would allow us to leverage the global goodwill of actors with more resources to support those with less means at their disposal. 

Technically, we are partnering with universities and companies around the world to have access to their technical experts. By creating an environment of cooperation around the world, we have found that these experts are more than happy to help build something that is for the betterment of everyone. While we have done this on an ad hoc basis so far, we hope to create a partnership organisation where universities in Global North and South can come together to create meaningful change. 

Legally and culturally, we are already implementing the plan to ensure that we continue to create inclusive solutions. Namely, we will continue to have in depth consultations with legal experts and local stakeholders in order to ensure that everything not just technically works, but is actually used. As Emerge grows operationally, we look to have people from underrepresented communities around the world be in positions of leadership in the organisation, increasing the breadth of knowledge and experience that can be tapped into to create world changing solutions. 

We currently work with the following organisations, which fall into three categories; technical partners, operational partners, and implementing partners. The partner organisations are as follows:

Penta Network; BlockEm Ledger; eGovern; Gimly; Gaudium Capital; Yunity; Xertify; MMH; Dona un Libro; Rainforest Partnership; Human Leap; FSD Africa; Agencia de Innovación Pública Interamericana; 1001 Ideas; CryptoChicks; KCL Blockchain.

Technical partners, such as Penta Network, Human Leap, and Xertify, help us build the solutions and different products. We work closely with these organisations in order to create the actual underpinnings of the project act hand. 

Operational partners, such as KCL Blockchain, help us to increase our internal operational capacity, staying up to date on the current context surrounding our different projects and helping to further our area of impact. 

Implementing partners is by far our largest category of partners. These are the organisations who we collaborate with in order to ensure that the project and solution are aligned with the communities needs and would be found useful by the stakeholders. These partners help with the on the ground consultation and implementation of our projects, and creating go-to-market strategies for any of Emerge's offerings. 

At Emerge, we work in two B2B/B2G ways:

1. On-demand and client-focused: When a public- or private-sector organization approaches us with a problem, we commit to solving that problem as impactfully as possible. Instead of approaching challenges with preconceived notions and one-size-fits-all solutions, we strive to understand how existing ecosystems work. This enables us to respect and improve our clients’ processes, instead of tearing them down. If our solution is approved, we develop it, pilot it, improve it, and scale it.

2. In-house and passion-driven: When someone from our team is motivated by a pressing global issue, we brainstorm and road-test ideas to address it. We will then research, design, develop, and pilot our solution, refining it until it becomes best-in-class. We then commercialize it, scale it, and bring it to as many affected populations as possible.

Ultimately, Emerge is looking to scale deep and influence technological systems change at a policy level and behavioural level to shift certain paradigms that society holds true for equitability, inclusion, and sustainability.

In order to fund our work, we look to bring in revenue through selling our products and services. 

Established in 2018, Emerge’s first years were spent exclusively developing technology and implementing small pilot programs to ensure functional, industry-leading, scalable results. Emerge boasts a proven track record of product rollout with adaptable pricing to fit all consumers. Emerge is expected to be revenue-positive by the end of the 2020 fiscal year. We operated completely bootstrapped and have never sourced funds through external means.

We are hoping to raise funds in an effort to enable cost reductions to stakeholders who could benefit from using the system but struggle with budget constraints. To this end, we are looking at grant or crowd-funded support of about between $50,000 to $150,000, depending on the project.

We are looking to grow our technical team, which we estimate will cost us approximately $50,000. That said, we are on track to be able to self-sustain this expense, and are also negotiating partnerships to help us alleviate some of these costs.

As an MIT Innovator Under 35, I believe that I am exactly who the Elevate Prize is looking for. Furthermore, Emerge is also an award winning social enterprise startup. At Emerge we build the type of feasible, scalable solutions that MIT is looking to raise up, and I am the type of leader that MIT is looking for as well. 

While those might be why I believe I would be a strong choice for the Elevate Prize, we would also benefit greatly from the resources that come with the  Prize. The funding that is associated with becoming a Global Hero would be monumental. It would allow us to hire a larger technical team, and to put more projects into the field. The funding would exponentially accelerate our growth as a startup. 

The mentorship afforded would also be immensely helpful. Part of being a good leader means knowing that there is always more to learn. Having access to the leaders, experts, and network of MIT Elevate would allow me to gain invaluable knowledge. Our work at Emerge is predicated on creating smart and empathetic solutions. Learning from some of the world's brightest minds would open up a new world of opportunities to do so. 

Finally, being part of the Elevate marketing campaign would be of benefit or two reasons. First, it would bring Emerge to more people attention, increasing our inbound leads. Second, it would hopefully be motivation for people around the world that someone like them can become a hero.  

Partnership would have four main goals for us, which all would work together to make Emerge even better. The increased funding afforded by the Elevate Prize would allow us to greatly increase our capacity to build and implement projects around the world. Being a recipient of the MIT Elevate prize would grant us access to recruit some of the smartest people. Having access to the MIT Elevate network would also enable better models for Monitoring and Evaluation, ensuring that the lessons learned from each project will be actualized in the next iteration. Finally, the media exposure to becoming a Global Hero would lend credence to our mission. 

Not only would better funding allow us to build more solutions, but having access to the talent pool would allow those solutions to be even better. Better M&E would let solutions mature faster and more exposure would create more opportunities down the line.