Misfit STRONG
Pioneers
MISFIT STRONG PIONEERS use their gifts to move the human race forward, silencing the naysayers, overcoming challenges and digging deep to make their ideas a reality and our world benefits.
Harriet Quimby
On April 16, 1912, MISFIT STRONG PIONEER, Harriet Quimby flew over the English Channel. . Harriet Quimby was an early American aviator and a movie screenwriter. In 1911, she was awarded a U.S. pilot's certificate by the Aero Club of America, becoming the first woman to gain a pilot's license in the United States. She was courageous and ahead of her time. # MISFIT STRONG
Science & Math
David Cohen
Mallory Kievman
Elizabeth Holmes
Elizabeth Holmes left Stanford University at 19 with a plan to start her own company, and America's youngest self-made female billionaire is 30 years old. The company she founded has the potential to change health care for millions of Americans. Holmes, through her company Theranos, has taken on the $76 billion laboratory-diagnostic industry as her target. It's an industry that was just waiting to be disrupted, since blood testing has not changed since the modern clinical lab emerged in the 1960s.
#misfitvisionary #misfitscientist
Elizabeth Holmes
David Cohen's big idea is the perfect example of how clever and creative kids can be when they are allowed to think outside the box. Cohen was learning about earthworms in science class when he wondered if anyone had ever built a robotic earthworm. Doing so, he reasoned might have some useful applications — namely, for finding victims after a fire, earthquake or flood. He built and wrote the code behind a prototype robot that could be used to squeeze into small or dangerous locations where humans or search dogs would be unable to go. By loading the robot with heat-sensing technology, GPS, and other life-saving programs, Cohen's robot could be used to find and rescue people safely and efficiently. #misfitstrong
Mallory Kievman suffered regular bouts of the hiccups herself in the summer of 7th grade. She refused to accept that there was nothing she could do about it, so Mallory spent hundreds of hours researching both the physiology of hiccups and the folk remedies that persisted (despite their general ineffectiveness.) After weeks of trial and error (and continued hiccupping), Mallory identified 3 ingredients and approaches (with some scientific merit) that worked to soothe her own hiccups: apple cider vinegar, sugar, and sucking a lollipop. Mallory combined all 3 and coined her invention the “Hiccupop.”
#misfitinventor
David Cohen
Mallory Kievman
Richard Drew
Richard Drew was the incredibly determined risk-taker -- and a banjo-playing, college-dropout, “misfit” engineer who believed in his ability to invent. He ended up not just pioneering Scotch transparent tape and masking tape, but revolutionizing the way that his company, 3M, treated creative people.
Trisha Prabhu
When 14-year-old Trisha Prabhu came home from school one day and saw a CNN report on a girl who jumped to her death off a water tower after being cyberbullied, she decided to take a stand. Prabhu, who lives outside Chicago, came up with Rethink: a piece of software that warns kids when they are about to post something online that might be hurtful to others. A coder since age 10, Prabhu tested her system by presenting teens with hurtful online messages and giving them the option to post them. When they were given a second chance to rethink their post with an alert telling them that they were about to post something hurtful, most did.
Some 71% of test subjects were initially willing to post a hurtful message, like "I hate you." That number went down to 4% when they were given a chance to rethink their message.Now Prabhu is integrating her system into a mobile app extension, and trying to beef up her algorithms so that they are more context-sensitive (so that kids don't get a Rethink alert if they type "I hate Chicago," for example). Ultimately, she wants her software to be adaptable to all current and future social media platforms. "I want to end cyberbullying," she says.