Sally Madsen
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Design Portfolio

Please enjoy a few examples of my work.

In the Media

Writing

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Awards

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Media coverage

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Solar lighting (Ignite Innovations)

Designing for education (Ideo)

Clean drinking water (Ideo)

Case Studies

The Mightylight

(Ignite Innovations, 2003-2005)

Indoor air pollution caused by kerosene lamps is a leading cause of death for children and adults worldwide. I co-founded the startup Ignite Innovations to provide solar lighting as an aspirational and healthy alternative, in India and other emerging markets. Our small team created a new type of double-bottom-line financing for a social enterprise (which inspired our lawyer to create the B-Corp Certification); we raised investment from investors including Vinod Khosla (who then left traditional VC to become a leading social investor); we moved to Delhi and formed a joint venture with the Indian company Cosmos Consulting; we researched, designed, and developed a solar light; we built manufacturing from scratch; we established sales through NGOs and retail channels. Our joint venture, Cosmos Ignite, sold over 40,000 solar lights. In addition to my founder role, I led engineering and design. I learned a million things, including the importance of focusing rather than doing everything at once.

For more details—

A Pakistani woman holds the Mightylight—an orange plastic light—while standing inside an orange tent.
A rendering of a new classroom design—two adjoining classrooms with an open wall between them; students work on laptops while the teacher supervises both rooms.Students at Innova Schools sit in groups of 6, each wearing their school uniform and working at a laptop

Innova Schools

(Ideo, 2011-2017)

When we started working together in 2011, Innova Schools had ambitions to scale from 6 to 70 affordable private schools by 2020. This scale brought challenges: in a country with a low-performing public education system, there was a shortage of qualified teachers; quality of learning was inconsistent, especially in basic skills like math operations; the central team was no longer able to support each school intimately.

Our work was to design for scale. We helped Innova balance its discussion-based educational approach with personalized digital learning, using internationally renowned tools. We helped each teacher start strong through the Teacher Resource Center, a digital portal for over 19,000 lesson plans written by expert teachers. We designed iconic spaces to facilitate hybrid learning (group-based and online). We optimized schedules and buildings. We provided partnership over 2+ years to help Innova bring these ideas to life.

Innova’s ability to execute on the vision is remarkable. Walking into an Innova school is like stepping into one of our renderings. They have now grown beyond 70 schools to Mexico and other Latin American countries, with fantastic learning outcomes. In one of the first graduating classes, a student was accepted to Stanford University, my alma mater!

For more details—

Inclusive Financial Products

(Fidelity, 2018-present)

At Fidelity I am VP of Design Strategy. My work is live in the Fidelity Youth App, the Investor Centers, and Fidelity’s Financial Independence Experience.
More details by request.