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Heather Fleming

Chief Executive Officer
Catapult Design

Heather Fleming is very much unlike the stereotypical CEO in today's multinational companies. In fact, she's more comfortable being known as a designer, engineer, or an entrepreneur who's motivated by social inequality. That's why she started Catapult Design, a non-profit design firm providing engineering and implementation support to the thousands of organisations in need of technologies or products capable of igniting social change. Besides starting Catapult Design, Heather also helped found Engineers Without Borders (EWB) in 2005, where she led a volunteer group of engineers and designers focused on humanitarian design projects.

In July 2008 Heather was named a 2008 Pop!Tech Social Innovation Fellow, a programme aimed at high-potential young leaders with new approaches for transformational impact, for her work with both EWB and Catapult Design. Before Heather embarked on her humanitarian adventure, she had worked in the Silicon Valley product development consulting world for six years, during which she developed product solutions for a wide range of companies. Heather also lectures the class "Design for Sustainability" at Stanford University in the Mechanical Engineering department, and she has a BS in Product Design from Stanford University.