About Us | Applied Hope

OUR TEAM

Alex Hatoum

Executive Director

Alex is AHF's founding President and Executive Director. He has a deep and long-standing interest in capacity-building in low-resource communities and twenty years of field experience in the public and private sectors. At AHF, he provides the overarching leadership and direction for AHF and determines the depth and breadth of our programs, particularly in water. Alex has traveled extensively throughout the Americas and is a native speaker of English and Spanish while also near-fluent in Portuguese and French.

With an undergraduate degree in International Business and a subsequent Master's degree, Alex spent years with the US Army before co-founding a "profit-for-purpose" corporation devoted to research and engineering in the humanitarian sciences.

After a successful decade at that work, he and his business partner, Dr. Eric Rasmussen, determined that they preferred to keep their business interests separate from their philanthropy and established the Applied Hope Foundation together.

Alex lives in Southern California with his wife, Denisse, and son Bennie.

Eric Rasmussen

Managing Director and Principal Scientist

Eric Rasmussen, MD, MDM, FACP is a medical doctor, trained at Stanford and the University of Texas, with an additional Master's in Disaster Medicine from the UN's World Health Organization affiliates in Geneva and Milan. He spent 25 years in uniform as a US Navy officer, with service in nuclear submarines, on aircraft carriers, on smaller warships, in Stateside hospitals, and with multiple tours in Bosnia, Afghanistan, and Iraq. He retired from the Navy while Chairman of an academic Department of Medicine in Seattle.

After three subsequent years leading a TED Prize awarded to Dr. Larry Brilliant of Google.org, he co-founded Infinitum Humanitarian Systems (IHS) with Alex Hatoum and they've had a very successful subsequent decade. He remains the Chairman of the Board for that TED Prize.

Alex and Eric co-founded the Applied Hope Foundation to provide a channel for the work they each consider of long-term importance.

Where Alex has a special interest in the provisioning of clean water, Eric has a focus in climate-adaptation system science for very low-resource populations. Clean drinking water is, of course, a critical component and so their efforts are deeply complementary.

For a more complete CV please send a note to: RasmussenE@AHF.earth

Gay Mathews

Director of Philanthropy

Gay Mathews spent 43 years in the consumer finance industry, and recently retired as the President and CEO of a large regional credit union after serving in that position for 28 years.

She currently serves amicus curae as a forensic accountant for the judiciary of the County of Hawaii, in addition to extensive volunteer work both local and international. She has a BS/BA, and an additional Masters in Organizational Change and Community Development.

She has spent more than 40 years as a volunteer for State and Red Cross Disaster Services and associated community resiliency efforts, serving on numerous county and statewide boards.

Gay has been working with Alex and Eric for more than 20 years on a wide range of global humanitarian initiatives.

Dan Kenney

Technical Projects Lead

Dan, a volunteer at Applied Hope, has a degree in mechanical engineering and has been issued 27 US patents over a 23-year career in product development. He's currently the Senior Director of Engineering for Briotech, Inc, a biotech startup in Seattle, where he is building a team of innovative engineers and technicians passionate about helping the world.

In 2003, Dan founded a product development company in Seattle dedicated to developing rugged, field-sustainable solutions for a wide range of markets including industrial automation, field robotics, military and law enforcement hardware, and global supply chain tracking.

A few years later in 2006, Dan co-founded Intelli-Que to develop and market the first wireless, automatically registered cargo container security seal and tracking system that could pierce the “iron mountain” of a stack of shipping containers. Intelli-que’s intellectual property was sold to Google in 2011.

Dan subsequently worked in defense research and development, then spent several years guiding a team of scientists, mathematicians, and engineers creating new applications for ultra-wideband guided-wave radar. Such radars are now used in impact monitoring systems after disasters like the Fukushima Daichi nuclear accident. The nuclear spent fuel monitoring systems developed by Dan's team are now installed in roughly 1/3 of the world’s nuclear power plants to help prevent future ecological disasters.

Dan’s creativity, deep knowledge, and unusual breadth of experience have proven invaluable at Applied Hope. His ability to design and implement innovative, effective, reliable, and affordable solutions in virtually any environment, from a frozen Ukrainian village to an ultra-remote tropical island, has been a large part of Applied Hope's global success.

Veronica Kenney

Global STEM Education Coordinator

Veronica is a mechanical engineer with a professional background in aerospace who eventually realized that science teaching was her deepest passion. Now with a Master’s degree in science education, her approach is deeply rooted in hands-on, project-based learning. She's been recognized regionally for her skill in designing educational experiences that seamlessly integrate mathematics, science, engineering, the arts, and a wide range of life skills.

She joined AHF as a volunteer in the middle of a career journey that had transitioned from designing big, safe airplanes to full-time science education, driven by her profound desire to help young people engage in the world around them with curiosity and competence.

She currently serves - to our good fortune - as our Global STEM Education Coordinator for the Foundation. She's been instrumental in bridging AHF’s technical ideas for climate adaptation to educational programs in difficult places, enhancing STEM learning across several countries around the Pacific Rim.

Through AHF’s sister organization, "The Ocean that Connects Us," she links her classrooms with others across the Pacific. Through TOTCUS she promotes international collaboration in climate science through young people helping each other gain the skills and knowledge they need.

She continues to develop unique educational tools, now focusing on the ocean sciences. Her current classes include an aquarium-based program that introduces the science of reef restoration through highly practical electrochemistry.

Her 2024-2025 involvement with AHF will be focused on developing a high-school climate curriculum, then teaching water chemistry and climate science during summer STEM programs such as Spartan Camp, held on several remote islands within Kwajalein Atoll in the Marshall Islands.

Veronica routinely integrates her Kwajalein experience into her US classroom teachings. She's also actively contributing to professional teaching organizations as a passionate advocate for the incorporation of field experience in educational settings at every grade.

For AHF, Veronica exemplifies our preferred fusion of deep expertise and creative innovation. Her cheerful energy consistently inspires students, teachers, international NGOs, military staff, politicians, and policy professionals, and we're very grateful she's here.

Lorenzo Moscia

Documentarian

Lorenzo is an award-winning photojournalist with two decades of international experience. His past efforts have included working for World University Service of Canada, Infinitum Humanitarian Systems in California, the Roddenberry Foundation (supported by the Star Trek franchise), and Greenpeace. He has worked in the Philippines, Nepal, Sri Lanka, Libya, Tanzania, Kenya, the Vatican, Argentina, Mexico, the Marshall Islands, Haiti, Italy, Cuba, and Chile. His images and videos have been widely published in global venues that include Bloomberg, the Chicago Tribune, and the British Journal of Photography.

In 1999 he received a law degree from the University La Sapienza, in Rome, Italy, then spent more than a decade working in Chile in both law and photography. His experiences while working in South America led him to his current career - investigative reporting through a camera lens.

Lorenzo has received more than a dozen international awards, including from the United Nations. Among the most recent have been these:

(1) The Audience Award for his 2023 documentary “In the Name of Gerry Conlon,” now showing in European film festivals and scheduled to be released in theaters globally in 2024.

(2) Three of his images were selected by Greenpeace as Best of Greenpeace Images for 2023. You can see them here.

Images on this website are courtesy of Lorenzo Moscia, and more of his work can be found at LorenzoMoscia.com.

Cameron Sinclair

Design Advisor

Cameron Sinclair is a distinguished designer and a pioneer in socially responsive architecture. For more than 30 years he has built unique, inclusive, highly functional, and strikingly beautiful structures that address humanitarian and social design challenges. Sinclair co-founded Architecture for Humanity in 1999 with Kate Stohr, a charitable organization that developed architectural solutions to humanitarian crises, providing professional design services to communities in need. His work has spanned more than 60 countries, creating shelter, education, and health facilities for more than 2.6 million people. His commitment to sustainable and purpose-driven projects is evident in his disaster relief efforts following events such as the Indian Ocean tsunami in 2004, Hurricane Katrina in 2005, and the Japanese tsunami in 2011. He has been recognized for his contributions with several awards, including the TED Prize in 2006.

More recently he has served as the director of the Jolie-Pitt Foundation, overseeing humanitarian programs, and worked with Airbnb to develop emergency housing solutions and support for vulnerable communities. Sinclair's dedication to social impact led him to establish the Worldchanging Institute, focusing on solutions to social and humanitarian crises. Cameron works with AHF on our climate-adaptive shelter program and within our broader efforts at human security for highly vulnerable coastal populations.