We Care Solar: The Power To Save Lives
Company founded: 2010
Founders: Laura Stachel (UC Berkeley Master of Public Health, 2006, Doctor of Public Health, 2020), Hal Aronson, Gigi Goldman
Thousands of maternal health-care providers struggle to administer life-saving care in health centers that lack electricity. Like UC Berkeley School of Public Health alumnae Dr. Laura Stachel, those caregivers were trained to partake in one of the most meaningful experiences of human life—childbirth. And like Stachel, those caregivers are all too familiar with the rapidity with which the journey of childbirth can transform into one of the most frightening, and sometimes deadly, traumas. But unlike Stachel, they must try to save lives while lacking an essential requirement for health care: light. Stachel leveraged UC Berkeley’s I&E ecosystem to address that problem and change the plight of those caregivers, moms, and newborns.
Stachel became a physician in 1985, at UC San Francisco, specializing in obstetrics and gynecology to support women at critical periods of their lives. Sadly, her medical career was cut short by a degenerative spine disease that prevented her from delivering babies and performing surgery.
Seeking a new way to improve maternal health, Stachel enrolled in UC Berkeley’s School of Public Health in 2004. There, she learned that half a million women—mainly in Africa and Asia—died each year from pregnancy complications. Most deaths could be prevented with timely, appropriate medical care.
In 2007, a chance encounter on the UC Berkeley campus with medical anthropologist Daniel Perlman informed Stachel about UC Berkeley’s collaborative research program on maternal mortality with a Nigerian university, sponsored by UC Berkeley’s Bixby Center for Population, Health and Sustainability. Perlman was looking for a graduate student to conduct ethnographic research in Nigerian hospitals, and Stachel, with her background in obstetrics, was an ideal candidate.
In 2008, Stachel traveled to Nigeria, where she was shocked by the grim conditions in a large state hospital. But even more striking were the frequent power outages that plunged the hospital into darkness. Stachel watched helplessly as caregivers struggled to treat critically ill pregnant women with only the dim glow of candlelight or kerosene lanterns.
Determined to help, Stachel described the desperate hospital conditions in emails to her husband, Hal Aronson, a solar energy educator. Upon Stachel’s return to Berkeley, Aronson sketched a design for stand-alone solar electric systems for the hospital that could power medical lights, walkie-talkies, surgical suction, and a blood bank refrigerator.
The opportunity to help was compelling, but the couple needed funds. Stachel learned about UC Berkeley’s Big Ideas competition and its $12,500 grand prize for technology offering a societal benefit. With only eleven days to the deadline, Stachel teamed up with two other UC Berkeley graduate students, Melissa Ho and Christian Casillas, to submit a proposal. When their project only earned an honorable mention and a $1,000 prize, Stachel was heartbroken but undeterred. That evening, she received a call from Tom Kalil, founder of Big Ideas in 2005, and then a special advisor to UC Berkeley’s chancellor. Kalil had attended that day’s Big Ideas event. “You should have won,” he told Stachel. “How much do you need?” Stachel requested $25,000, and within three weeks Kalil had found the funding through UC Berkeley’s Blum Center for Developing Economies, thus launching the project that would evolve into the nonprofit We Care Solar.
Aronson’s plan was to design an off-grid solar system for the hospital and hire a Nigerian company to do the installation. Stachel first wanted something tangible to show the hospital staff—something small enough to fit in her suitcase and avoid scrutiny by Nigerian customs officials. So Aronson packed Stachel’s suitcase with a demonstration kit that included compact solar panels, a rechargeable battery, a control board as well as lights, headlamps, and walkie-talkies. The hospital staff loved the demonstration kit and approved plans for a hospital solar installation. But before Stachel departed the hospital, an operating room technician told her, “You must leave your suitcase here. It will help us save lives now.”
Six months later Stachel returned to the hospital to oversee the solar installation. Maternal deaths dropped by 70 percent the next year. When nearby clinics asked for assistance from the “solar doctor,” Stachel realized the utility of Aronson’s portable solar kit. She brought prototype “Solar Suitcases” to health facilities on each of her return trips, refining the design based on user feedback over the next two years. Word spread, and soon requests for We Care Solar Suitcases came from around the world. Supported by donations, the couple turned their Berkeley home into a Solar Suitcase assembly and shipping plant. Unpaid volunteers helped Stachel and Aronson build the suitcases and courier them to health workers in remote destinations: midwives in Burma, clinics in Tibet, doctors in Tanzania, and medical relief workers in Haiti after the devastating 2010 earthquake.
In order to scale, Stachel and Aronson formalized their operation, leveraging the fiscal sponsorship of a UC Berkeley nonprofit engineering group before incorporating as a nonprofit. They enlisted the support of students, including UC Berkeley MBA Abhay Nihalani, to enter and win competitions such as UC Berkeley’s Global Social Benefit Competition and the Chancellor’s Award for Civic Engagement. The MacArthur Foundation and UC Berkeley’s Blum Center for Developing Economies provided critical support for expansion.
Stachel learned that nonprofits have many of the same challenges as commercial startups. She had to build a team with expertise in operations, finance, manufacturing, and program management in order to tackle fundamental questions: How do we scale while effectively serving our beneficiaries/customers? How do we communicate our mission and measure our impact in compelling ways to attract investors and donors? How do we navigate international regulatory and policy changes?
We Care Solar has since grown into a global leader in maternal health and solar electrification, leading national Light Every Birth initiatives in multiple African countries. As of 2025, the award-winning nonprofit has equipped more than ten thousand health facilities with Solar Suitcases, ensuring sustainable light and power in some of the world’s most remote and under-resourced health clinics and supporting safe childbirth for more than eighteen million mothers and newborns.
Published in Startup Campus: How UC Berkeley Became an Unexpected Leader in Entrepreneurship and Startups, August 2025
