Jodie Wu

Jodie Wu is the Founder and Chief Executive Officer of Global Cycle Solutions (GCS), a company focused on providing access to transformative technologies through a last-mile distribution network of over 500 village entrepreneurs. GCS was recently acquired by Greenlight Planet, where Jodie now works as the New Markets lead to grow the business from its current reach of 7M families and 60 countries across the globe. Fluent in Swahili, an engineer by background, and an entrepreneur who dove straight into social enterprise at 22 years old, Wu brings unique expertise to the field having lived and worked in Tanzania since 2009. Her 80-person Tanzanian team has delivered life-improving solar lanterns, clean cookstoves, and agricultural tools to over 100,000 families. GCS is setting a new “global community standard” in Tanzania, providing products and a level of service that rivals Western markets, as well as creating tremendous opportunities for cost savings and income generation for its customers. As a champion of collaboration, Wu has facilitated small-scale manufacturing of 15,000 sheet metal agricultural tools in developing markets, advised dozens of fellow entrepreneurs entering the Tanzanian market, and consulted for various international energy companies to bring new services to rural villages. Wu was named one of Bloomberg BusinessWeek’s America’s Most Promising Entrepreneurs in 2010 and Forbes’ 30 under 30 in 2011. She is also a 2010 Echoing Green Fellow, 2011 TEDGlobal Fellow, 2012 Ashoka Emerging Innovator, 2013 D-Lab Scale-Ups Fellow, and 2016 C3E Award Winner for International Leadership. Jodie holds a BS in Mechanical Engineering from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.