Make Way for the Future of Sanitation
Event was held May 9, 2024
This event hosted a conversation with Doulaye Kone Interim Director, Water, Sanitation, & Hygiene, Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and Rachel Cardone, Director, Global Investment at Resilient Water Accelerator on the global issues surrounding sanitation and its interconnectedness with education, climate, and disease.
We discussed the challenges and opportunities in ensuring access to safe sanitation facilities worldwide, the impact of sanitation on education, and the role of sustainable sanitation practices in combating climate change. Watch our event video below and learn how you can make a difference – and how investing in sanitation can lead to a healthier, more resilient future for all. Visit partner tables and learn ways to get involved.
Thank you to our event partners, Global WA, King County Wastewater Treatment Division, PATH, Splash, Washington Global Health Alliance, Water1st, and the Water Environment Federation.
Read more about our special exhibition, A Better Way to Go: Toilets and the Future of Sanitation as featured in GeekWire.
Watch our event recording
Meet our speakers
Doulaye Kone
Interim Director, Water, Sanitation & Hygiene
Doulaye Kone leads the foundation’s efforts to ensure access to safe sanitation for the 3.5 billion people who currently live without it. He and his team work to disrupt the decades-long status quo in the sanitation sector by supporting the development and commercialization of transformative technologies, including the “reinvented toilet,” and create a clear, cost-effective pathway to deliver these technologies at scale to people in low-income settings who need them the most.
Doulaye has more than 20 years of experience in the sanitation sector and spent 13 years leading technology innovation efforts on the Water, Sanitation & Hygiene team.
Rachel Cardone
Director, Programs and Investment at the Resilient Water Accelerator (RWA)
Rachel leads programs and initiatives to bridge climate finance with water-related resiliency investments in low and middle-income countries. Prior to this, she was Deputy Director of Stanford’s Program on Water, Health & Development (WHD), where she focuses on strategy design, program operations, and partnership development. It also included creating measurement and management systems for continuous improvement for The Conrad N. Hilton Foundation’s Safe Water Strategy, and designing and running a virtual training program on how to coach others in problem-solving, using systems thinking approaches.
Earlier in her career, Rachel was a driving force in the creation of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation’s Water, Sanitation & Hygiene Program.