Alice
Min Soo Chun wants to change the way we light up the world.
The inventor and social
entrepreneur has spent more than a decade jumping from one
war-torn region and natural disaster zone to the next, delivering
thousands of her SolarPuff
lights to places like Haiti, Puerto Rico, Ukraine, and Turkey.
Made with waterproof sail cloth, Chun’s foldable
lanterns aren’t just a source of light for those without
electricity; they help cut down on crime--particularly assault and
rape--and comfort those suffering from post traumatic stress
disorder (PTSD).
Chun’s interest in solar energy started in 2005, when her son,
Quinn, was diagnosed with pollution-related asthma. Then a professor
of architectural design and material technology at Columbia
University, Chun turned her classroom into an innovation lab,
challenging her students to create a solar light for use in disaster
relief areas. What started off as a blow-up inflatable prototype has
turned into an award-winning, origami-inspired, pop-up light that
has garnered support from the likes of Bill
and Hillary Clinton and Disney
CEO Bob Iger.
Chun was raised by her grandparents in Seoul, Korea, and moved to
Syracuse, NY, at the age of four to join her architect dad and
painter mom, who taught her the art of origami. As the only Asian
kid at her upstate suburban school, Chun was often bullied and
beaten. “But I didn't fight with my fists,” she says. “I fought with
the light in my heart and my mind.” Chun’s parents moved back to
Korea when she was 15, but the teen stayed in the U.S., earning a
bachelor’s degree at Penn State and a master’s at the University of
Pennsylvania before becoming an architect and professor.
The New York-based Chun is now CEO of Solight
Design, a company that offers a range of personal solar light
sources, including the latest MegaPuff, the “next-generation”
disaster relief light that’s larger, brighter, and includes a phone
charger. “It’s extremely bright and has a red distress signal.” The
company, which aims to make a difference by providing clean light
and “making it accessible to all” also partners with the Clinton
Global Initiative, Save
the Children, and the United
Way, and anyone can help donate through its Give
a Light program.
We spoke to Chun about color
therapy, the difficulty of securing venture
capital funding, and her most recent trip to deliver lights to
Turkey’s earthquake victims.
You recently got back from Turkey. What was it
like?
I got there on April 19 and went to Hatay,
which is the epicenter of the earthquake. The earthquake happened on
February 6, 2023, and there was still so much rubble it looked like
a warzone.
How many lights did you deliver?
I met with my NGO
friends at Operation
Blessing, who were distributing 500 boxes of food a day. We
went into a tent camp in a stadium and AFAD,
Turkey’s version of FEMA, distributed 600 SolarPuffs.
You literally packed the lights in suitcases and carried
them yourself!
I should have brought more because a few days after that, I went to
another tent camp, set up by NATO
and the Turkish Ministry of
National Education. It was a school with each tent a
classroom. There were rows and rows of these tents that went on for
miles, and there were thousands of middle school kids there.
And before that, you were in Ukraine
delivering lights last December.
When the [2022] war broke out, I spoke to a friend with a sister
who’s a nurse in the children's hospital in Lviv. She said the kids
all had PTSD from hearing the air raid sirens during the eight-hour
blackouts. It took hours for the nurses to calm them down. I
remembered that our lights, which have six different colors, were
used for children with PTSD after Hurricane
Maria [in 2017] hit Puerto Rico. It helped the kids sleep
better at night.
How did you get into the country?
It took me three days. I flew into Krakow, Poland, and then took two
trains to get across the border. It was so dark when I got off the
train that I actually tripped and fell walking down the street and
fractured my ribs. There was an ABC
News crew in Kyiv that met me at the train station and
followed me around.
You arrived a day after Christmas, so you must have felt
like Santa.
My son is 18 and in college, and I have empty nest syndrome, so
that's why I wanted to go to Ukraine during Christmas and New Year’s
to give lights to kids who are alone in hospitals during the
holidays. All the kids came up to me while we were passing out the
lights. They were so excited, especially a two-year-old boy who had
a broken foot with a cast. He was limping and running back and forth
asking me to give his friend a light, too.
Why do you deliver the lights yourself instead of ship them?
I met this girl who witnessed 12 of her family members who were shot
and killed in front of her, and she was the only survivor. There are
many, many other stories like that from kids in similar situations.
They all have this trauma. It's important for me to tell them the
story of how they have this incredible light and power inside
themselves, which is the symbol of the SolarPuff.
Tell us the story behind the SolarPuff?
We invented these foldable cubes because we wanted to help people
who were living in the dark without access to electricity. The solar
light is like magic for these kids because they’re flat, and then
they pop open into a great cube. I tell them, “This light gets its
energy from the sun, and the Russians can't take the sun away from
you. But the light of your heart and your imagination is more
powerful than the sun, and you have to keep fighting with that
light. Don't fight with your fists, fight with this light and your
dreams and ambitions will grow.” It’s important for me to give the
message that they're not alone and we care. It’s more valuable than
the actual product itself.
Are you ever afraid to go to war zones and disaster areas?
People tell me not to go because of the danger, but it’s important
to be able to tell them, “You matter, and I've come halfway across
the world to tell you that you matter, and we haven't forgotten
about you.” That’s more important than me being in danger.
Your son was little when you first went to Haiti in 2010. Did it
ever cross your mind that you wouldn't come back?
I was never really afraid. There was another earthquake in Haiti
last year, and I went back. The earthquake happened after the Prime
Minister was assassinated, so there was a lot of rioting. I told my
son, “There’s a chance I might not come back because it’s very
dangerous. But the reason I'm doing this is because all of these
children need our help.” My son said, “Mom, I know you're gonna come
back. Stop being so dramatic.” As soon as I got there, my son saw
some pictures of the kids getting the lights, and he's like, “I'm
proud of you, mom.” I started crying. I get the reward of seeing the
impact that it has, especially with children. It really transforms
their world.
Did you create the SolarPuff with the intention of helping so many
people around the globe?
There's never a straight line with inventions. There's always this
kind of intersection between the straight line and the chaotic line
of time. I was initially focused on solar energy because the
environment is a global issue, but when the Haiti
earthquake happened in 2010, the chaos of that intersected
with my timeline. I decided to use this research to help Haiti.
Is that when you went from being a professor to a social
entrepreneur?
I turned into a social entrepreneur when I learned that the Haitans
were spending up to 30 percent of their income on kerosene. They
could save that money for food, clothing, and education. Also, there
are more carbon emissions from kerosene light than any lighting we
use. One small solar light being used for ambient light instead of a
regular light bulb can save 90 pounds of carbon emissions in an
hour.
Sounds like the timing was perfect; you were developing the
SolarPuff just as Haiti’s earthquake struck?
I did three years of field testing in Haiti before
launching our company. At first, I brought 500 lights into Haiti
that were handmade and glued together. We gave them to these women
farmers in the central plateau and one said, “This is a gift from
God,” and started singing and dancing. Her voice was so raspy,
because the smoke from the kerosene she used for cooking made her
sound like she was smoking 10 packs of cigarettes a day. She
couldn’t afford the glass that goes around her kerosene lamp. That’s
why the smoke was especially bad. She had five kids in a one room
house, and their eyes were stinging, and they were coughing while
doing their homework.
Your lights play another important role--they keep people safe.
There are 1.5 million Haitian people left homeless and living in
tent camps. Children get kidnapped and women get assaulted at night
going to the bathroom. When they passed out solar lights at the
medical clinic they noticed a 20 to 30 percent drop in assaults the
next day.
You met Bill Clinton on your Haiti trip.
During my time in Haiti, I was invited to a Green Tech Expo and
President Bill Clinton and the Haitian President [Michel Martelly]
walked in. I showed [Clinton] my glued and taped SolarPuff, and fast
forward seven years, I delivered over 100,000 lights to Puerto Rico
after Hurricane Maria.
And then you met Hillary there, right?
That's when I met Hillary Clinton and told her the story of how I
went to Dominica to deliver lights. She loved the message of the
SolarPuff, and asked me to be in her book (The
Book of Gutsy Women, (S&S, 2020)), and then she asked me
to be in the docuseries,
Gutsy. Then somebody on Bob Iger’s (the COO of Walt
Disney Company) team saw [my episode of] Gutsy, and read
up on me. [Iger] wanted to meet me, so I had a zoom call with him
and his chief of staff, and he donated lights for Ukraine.
Didn’t Hillary end up helping you in Ukraine?
Before I got to Kyiv, I didn't know anyone at the children's
hospital, Ohmatdyt, so I
texted Hillary to ask for a name. She gave me five. When we finally
got into Kyiv, they were ready for us and welcomed us with open
arms. I sent Hillary pictures of the light drops in the hospitals
the entire time I was there.
Is it difficult to get funding as a woman?
It's very hard to get VC (venture capital) funding, especially in a
man’s world. Every time I meet someone, they say, “Why isn't the
SolarPuff everywhere? Why haven’t I heard about this before?” It’s
because there’s $86
billion in global VC investments, but only 0.01
percent of U.S. IPOs are female-led companies.
So there are two strikes against you?
A lot of companies say, “We’re making efforts to be more diverse,”
but I haven't seen that happening in our case.
It must be discouraging because you have a proven product.
I'm grateful for all the things I'm learning within this process. I
don’t think of it as a failure. I think of it as progress. So when
the time is right, we'll be ready, and everything is about preparing
for that moment.
What advice do you have for someone trying to become a successful
entrepreneur?
The first step is understanding what your passion and gift is. It’s
being able to find a project or a problem that you feel passionate
about solving. It has to help others, solve problems for others, and
make their lives better. Once that happens, then you start sharing
that story, and it becomes a ripple effect of putting it out into
the world.
You make it sound easy.
There are so many people who give up, and it's because they don't
have the grit or the passion to keep going. If you don't have that
passion for whatever you're doing, you'll end up giving up. Never
give up, and don't listen to the naysayers. You're always gonna get
haters. You have to overcome that and have the strength to block
that out.
