Jane Chen

Co-founder and CEO of Embrace & TED Fellow

Jane Chen - Talks@Google: How to Bring a Good Idea to Life Jane Chen , keynote speaker

TED: Affordable Incubator--A Warm Embrace That Saves Lives Jane Chen , keynote speaker

Dove Real Woman Role Model: Jane Chen Jane Chen , keynote speaker

Jane Chen is saving millions of lives with an incubator that sells for 1% the traditional cost. Chen is the co-founder of Embrace, a social enterprise that develops disruptive healthcare technologies that empower the disadvantaged. Her mission is to create "innovations that represent a new trend for technology: simple, localized, affordable solutions that have the potential to make huge social impacts."

Highlights “This seems counterintuitive, but turns out that as infant mortality is reduced, population sizes also decrease, because parents don’t need to anticipate that their babies are going to die.”

Book Speaker

Prior to Embrace, Jane Chen worked with nonprofit organizations on healthcare issues in developing countries. She spent several years as the Program Director of a startup HIV/AIDS nonprofit in China, and worked for the Clinton Foundation's HIV/AIDS Initiative in Tanzania. She also worked at Monitor Group as a management consultant, advising Fortune 500 companies. Chen has been selected as a TED India Fellow, a TED Senior Fellow, an Echoing Green Fellow, and a Rainer Arnhold Fellow. Recently, she was named a Young Global Leader by the World Economic Forum. Chen was also recently profiled by Dove Real Role Model campaign for her Embrace work. She holds an MBA from Stanford University and a Masters in Public Administration from Harvard University.

Embrace's revolutionary first product is the Embrace Infant Warmer (EIW)—a cheap, innovative baby incubator solution designed to address the issue of global infant mortality throughout the developing world. The EIW emerged from Stanford's Entrepreneurial Design for Extreme Affordability class, where the product was created after witnessing the desperate need for a low cost solution to serve the 20 million vulnerable babies born each year. At $200, the EIW costs 1% of the cost of a traditional incubator, and is now being distributed to clinics throughout southern India, Somalia, and China.

Embrace has received coverage in 20/20, CNN, Forbes, The Wall Street Journal, TIME Magazine, National Geographic, Oprah Magazine, and numerous other media. The World Health Organization named it one of the "Top Innovations in Global Health" in 2010.

Speech Topics 1. Embrace Innovation

How To Save a Million Lives With a $200 Invention
In this talk, Chen shows us how brilliant and basic ideas—such as the Embrace Infant Warmer, a life-saving, affordable, and ingenious solution to the lack of expensive incubators in the developing world—can save lives, change communities, and inspire others to follow a lead that disrupts the status quo. She shares some of the strategies that helped her overcome Embrace's biggest challenges, such as remembering the needs of the end user, shedding the biases of traditional business models, and valuing simplicity as a guiding principle. Chen teaches us that sometimes the simplest inventions can have the biggest impact.