Gary  White  Goalkeeper

Close your eyes and imagine a world without a 24/7 news cycle or social media. Now imagine you want to change the lives of billions of people, by helping them access clean water and sanitation. Where would you even start? In the 1990s, with the internet in its infancy and live news not yet something we could carry in our pockets, Gary White found a way. He began drumming up excitement and funding through simple face-to-face networking. Seems like a daunting task for anyone, but for Gary it was a calling.

Armed with wide-eyed optimism and a background in civil engineering, Gary knew he had the tools to think about this challenge in the simplest terms: How many different communities, people, and families can we help? Gary was raised with a simple humanitarian approach: You should put more into the world than you take out of it, and when you see injustice, you should try your best to correct it. He saw potential for change rather than hurdles and obstacles. Some might say his naiveté served him well.

The aha moment

It took years for Gary to turn this vision into an organization. WaterPartners International, as it was first called, wanted to do more than help families in need. It sought to solve the global water crisis. But to do that, Gary knew he needed to find the solution within the problem. “People who don’t have access to water and sanitation really should be seen as the source of their own solution, but how do you catalyze that?” His aha moment came during a trip to India in the early 2000s, when he met an elderly woman who had built her own latrine. When asked how she got the money to build the toilet, she told Gary she’d gone to a loan shark to borrow the cash—with 125% interest. And that’s when he landed on the idea of microfinancing. If Gary could get people access to affordable loans, he could connect those loans to capital markets and reach hundreds of millions of people. “That’s the solution,” he says. And the WaterCredit Initiative was born. He also developed and now leads WaterEquity, the first-ever impact investment manager dedicated to ending the global water crisis in our lifetime, with an exclusive focus on raising capital and deploying it to water and sanitation businesses that serve people living in poverty.

But no matter how we spin it, clean water and sanitation just don’t have the same initial appeal as the other Global Goals. Yet, through a merger with H2O Africa, Water.org was born and the organization began an evolution that combined storytelling with Gary’s expertise in all things engineering. Since then, it has continued to put people and communities at the heart of its work. Before Water.org came along, a lot of water charities used an outdated supply-driven approach that too often epitomized a colonial mindset: Send teams of engineers into a village, drill wells, leave; rinse and repeat. Gary believes in the demand model. His approach involves working with governments and communities to find out what they need and then build from there. Not the other way around. Trust and agency are what drive Gary’s vision.

Working smarter, not harder

Through Gary’s inclusive approach, Water.org and WaterEquity have helped more than 38 million people in 11 countries access water and sanitation through small, affordable loans. Although the global water and sanitation crisis persists, Gary is all about working smarter, not harder. And partnerships are the way to do that. “How do you really blend together? How do you find these kinds of disparate concepts that are happening and incorporate those into what you’re doing?” Gary says. His answer is to borrow from different fields, apply one set of lessons to a completely different area of work, and build on the ideas of others. By solving issues of water, sanitation, and hygiene, we can advance progress on the other Global Goals downstream.

Gary is nothing short of ambitious. It’s in every molecule of his being. Just ask him about the 600-mile bikepacking trip he’s planning. With that kind of drive, there’s no telling what’s on the horizon. Or the water’s edge.