One the best things about Pop!Tech is the richly diverse community of people it brings together. This year was no exception, so we decided to devote this week’s “FringeHog Friday Five” toa few of theamazing women we met at Pop!Tech 2007:

Dr. Victoria Hale

Dr. Victoria Hale could be described in many ways: a renegade, an entrepreneur, an activist, a scientist. She is the Founder of One World Health, the first US-based non-profit pharmaceutical company. No, that wasn’t a typo: funded not by shareholders or venture capitalists but by philanthropic organizations and a network of research collaborators, One World Health (OWH) develops drugs for people with neglected diseases in the developing world, what Hale calls “diseases of poverty.”Most recentlyOWH developed paromomycin, an antibiotic used to treat Kala-azar, the world’s second most deadly parasitic disease following malaria.?

Katrin Verclas

There aren’t many people who love mobile phones as much as Katrin Verclas. But then again, where most people look at a cell phone and see, well, a phone - Katrin sees a revolutionary tool for social change. Ask her how mobile phones are being used to change the world, and she ticks off an ever-growing list: to ensure impartial elections, free political prisoners, stop human trafficking, distribute HIV/AIDS information and help farmers in the developing world get their crops to market. In her day-job she directs NTEN, the Nonprofit Technology Network; she also coordinates the global “mobilist” practitioner network MobileActive.org.?

Stacey Aldrich

Stacey Aldrich has spent her career advocating for one of the arguably most significant, yet often undervalued, social institutions in America - the public library. In the era of Wikipedia, libraries may seem like an endangered species, but she’s convinced that public libraries can not only respond to change, but become vanguards of the information age. A librarian and a futurist, Aldrich is the last one to call attention to herself, but thankfully others have, including Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger, who recently appointed her Deputy State Librarian of the California State Library. It’s no small job: with a budget rivaling the size of many private-sector companies (nearly $90 million), Aldrich is poised to bring the public library system into the future.

Zainab Salbi

Zainab Salbi believes there are two sides to war: victims and survivors. The first we hear about on the news: about guns, bullets, bombs and the number of people killed. Survivors, especially women survivors, are often invisible; their stories of keeping life going in the midst of war are rarely told. Yet it is with the survivors of war that the future depends. Drawing on her own experience growing up as a survivor of war under Saddam Hussein, Salib created Women for Women International, a humanitarian organization that has provided financial and emotional support to tens of thousands of women to deal with the aftermath of conflict.?

Dr. Sarah Otterstrom

Ecologists often have a gift for seeing the future, and Sarah Otterstrom is no exception. Looking out at a field in Nicaragua, she doesn’t see abandoned pasture land, but rather a future forest, lush with previously endangered trees and a thriving population of native animal species. Tocreate that future forest, Otterstrom created Paso Pacifico, a non-profit organization whose aim is to build wildlife corridors along the western slope of Central America by supporting private landowners and small-scale farmers in sustainable land use and conservation activities. Paso Pacifico’s “Return to Forest” project has planted 850 acres of native tropical dry forest trees which will restore the land, curb greenhouse gas emissions and provide job opportunities to the local villagers.

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