Jodie Wu

New Products and Services, Greenlight Planet

2016 International Award Winner

Jodie Wu leads Greenlight Planet in developing new products and services for underserved communities across Africa. Fluent in Swahili, an engineer by background, and an entrepreneur who dove straight into social enterprise at 22 years old, she brings unique expertise to the field of international development. She lived and worked in Arusha, Tanzania, for eight years, growing her staff to more than 80 Tanzanians to deliver life-improving solar lanterns, clean cookstoves, and agricultural tools to more than 100,000 families before joining Greenlight Planet’s global team. Greenlight Planet is present in more than 60 countries and brings products and a level of service that rivals Western markets, creating tremendous opportunities for cost savings and income generation for its 7 million customers. As a champion of collaboration, Wu has helped establish an innovation center in Arusha, advised dozens of fellow entrepreneurs entering the Tanzanian market, and consulted for various energy companies to bring in new services, including battery swapping, pay-as-you-go solar, microgrids, and clean cookstoves. She was named one of America’s Most Promising Entrepreneurs by Bloomberg BusinessWeek in 2010 and was named to the Forbes “30 under 30” in 2011. She is also a 2010 Echoing Green fellow, 2011 TED Global fellow, 2012 Ashoka Emerging Innovator, and 2013 D-Lab Scale-Ups fellow. Wu holds a BS in Mechanical Engineering from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.