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Illuminating Invention

Shark Tank fave sheds light in disaster

Cathy
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Andrea Sreshta, Anna Stork

Social entrepreneurs Andrea Sreshta (left) and Anna Stork bring light to disaster relief with their invention, LuminAID. (Photo: Daphna Gall)

Three puffs as if blowing into a balloon. That’s all it takes, says Andrea Sreshta, exhaling into a rectangular object that at first glance resembles a tiny, semi-transparent pillow.

But there’s no fluff to this device. Neatly tucked into a clear, laminated pocket on its front sits a small solar panel that hints at a more powerful purpose.

“It feels good to come up with something that can help people,” says social entrepreneur Andrea, 31, a 2002 Bellaire High School graduate and co-inventor of LuminAID, a solar-powered light that packs flat and inflates to diffuse light like a lantern. Created as a college project, it now sheds light in some of the darkest corners of the world in times of disaster.

While the Yale architecture graduate was pursuing her masters degree at Columbia University, a devastating 7.0 earthquake rocked Haiti, killing more than 160,000 and displacing 1.5 million. Her professor challenged the class to design something to aid in post-earthquake relief.

“We’d seen the news reports. Grim,” she says. Haitians huddled in tent cities with scarce basic necessities, no electricity. Crime came under the cloak of night. Thefts. Rapes.

LuminAID

Young students in rural Laos enjoy LuminAID lights dispersed by the non-profit group Pencils of Promise.

Her thoughts were in sync with project partner and classmate Anna Stork’s. “Light was an unmet need.”

“We needed to create an inflatable device that could pack flat for easy distribution, and it had to be lightweight, waterproof and be able to charge on the go,” explains Andrea.

They created a prototype at Anna’s kitchen table. “We thought, ‘Okay, this is something that’s not been seen before. Maybe we’ve got something here.’”

The prototype came in handy a year later while on class assignment in Tokyo. An earthquake struck. The two were safe at their hotel but without power at times due to rolling blackouts. A click of the device’s button, and Andrea and Anna had lights.

“It brought to our mind that this could be important in a lot of applications,” Andrea says of the lights that are now a staple for emergency preparedness, camping trips and other uses in the U.S.

Andrea Sreshta and Anna Stork

Bellaire High School grad Andrea Sreshta and Anna Stork show off their LuminAID lights on the hit ABC show Shark Tank.

“An invaluable aid,” says Eric Klein, founder of the international non-profit disaster relief group, Can-Do. His organization disperses LuminAID lights in Haiti where many are still displaced due to the earthquake and 2012 Hurricane Sandy.

“It can improve their world in a second,” Klein says. “Kids there think these lights are magic. When you turn them on, their faces light up too.”

Through LuminAID’s Give Light, Get Light program, people can purchase a light for themselves and sponsor another for someone in need. Outreach projects with NGO partners have placed more than 10,000 donated lights in more than 50 countries including Haiti, Nepal and the Philippines. The startup supplies lights to ShelterBox, Doctors Without Borders and several United Nations organizations.

Joe and Yvonne Sreshta aren’t surprised at their daughter’s ingenuity. She is bright, confident and creative, they say. She excelled in academics, debate, violin and piano.

“She did not want to be a conformist, so to speak,” says her dad, a wealth management advisor. “She had friends who wanted to become doctors and lawyers, but she had no interest in either. Architecture was a nice place for her because she could be as creative as she wanted to be. It was a more free-thinking environment.”

LuminAID is based in Chicago where Andrea, an admitted workaholic, pursues an MBA at the University of Chicago Booth School of Business while running the business with Anna. “Anna is amazing at the technical stuff,” says Andrea of the Dartmouth College engineering graduate. The lights are manufactured in China but ship from Andrea’s parents’ Memorial home. “Yeah, I don’t know when I’ll get my garage back,” quips her dad.

“We’re just to the point where we’re starting to outgrow it,” says Andrea, who estimates up to 40,000 lights are stored there before they are sold at www.luminaid.com, on Amazon and in retail stores.

The startup received its first funding in the fall of 2011, raising more than $50,000 through the Indiegogo crowdfunding website. Other funds came from a $25,000 new-venture challenge at Andrea’s business school and a clean-energy competition that garnered $100,000.

Earlier this year, she and Anna wowed all five Sharks on the hit ABC show Shark Tank, accepting billionaire investor and businessman Mark Cuban’s offer of $200,000 for 15 percent equity in the company.

Most recently, the startup received a $100,000 Mission Main Street Grant from Chase. With proud parents looking on, she accepted a giant ceremonial check before an audience of students at her alma mater, Bellaire High School.

“I wanted students to know,” says Andrea, “that they’re being prepared for bigger things.”

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