Peter Thum is CEO and co-founder of Fonderie47, a social venture addressing assault rifle proliferation in Africa. He is also founder of the brand Ethos Water and the nonprofit Giving Water. In 2001, while in South Africa, Thum observed the effect of that country’s water crisis on everyday people. He saw that those lacking access...
read the restPeter Thum is CEO and co-founder of Fonderie47, a social venture addressing assault rifle proliferation in Africa. He is also founder of the brand Ethos Water and the nonprofit Giving Water.
In 2001, while in South Africa, Thum observed the effect of that country’s water crisis on everyday people. He saw that those lacking access to clean water were exposed to direct health problems like water-borne illness and other related health risks. Gathering, carrying, and purifying water took an enormous amount of people’s daily time and acted as a serious impediment to economic development, especially in rural areas.
Water, Thum realized, was at the core of so many problems in the developing world at large. He wrote down his original idea on a napkin: launch a company that would provide water and raise money for clean water programs in the developing world. In 2002, he set to implementing that vision. He left his job at McKinsey & Company and founded Ethos, becoming President of Ethos Brands, LLC.
Over the next six years, Thum led Ethos to become a national brand in the US and to raise more than $6 million in humanitarian water grants and help over 420,000 people worldwide. Ethos was acquired by Starbucks in 2005 and Thum stayed on through to 2008, managing Ethos and serving as a Director of the Starbucks Foundation.
In 2008, Thum founded GivingWater.org to extend his work toward solving the world water crisis. The organization is now serving over 1,000 schoolchildren at schools in Kenya. While visiting water programs in Kenya, he was struck by the insecurity created by the presence of assault rifles, which spurred him to start his current venture, Fonderie47.
Thum also serves on the boards for several companies and organizations focused on service, including: The Global Fund for Human Rights; The Center for Human Rights Leadership at Claremont McKenna College; The Dean’s Council of the NYU Wagner Graduate School of Public Service; and Impossible to Possible Ultra-Athletic Adventures.
Thum holds an MBA from the Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern University and a BA in government from Claremont McKenna College
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