The meeting today started by Venky kicking off the new "My 3 Things In LIfe" talk by Charles Foster. He talked about his Scout program at age 14 and how the Red Cross training while in the Scouts program helped him tremendously. He was the camp's doctor for a day and that experience helped him with his graduate school applications. He received a wonderful reference letter from his Economics professor and finally got admitted to Harvard. He later changed his career path and became a Chartered Financial Planner (CFP). His key advice to all is "Be Prepared, Keep Planning".
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This was then followed by a wonderful talk by Amir Emadi about the paradigm shift in fighting wildfires with new technology. Amir Emadi is the CEO of Skylift Global, which helps first responders save time, money, and lives by delivering supplies in the last mile of logistics with heavy-lift drones. He's studied International Security and holds an MBA in Global Management. During Operation Iraqi Freedom, Emadi was an advisor to US policy makers on physical security, political violence, and human rights in the Middle East particularly in Iran and Iraq. Since then he has dedicated his life to introducing technology to protect those who risk their lives to protect us.
He talked about the difficulty of delivering critical supplies to military personnel, firefighters and healthcare professionals in remote and hard to reach areas. His company has created a unique drone system that can lift heavy loads and drop it off at convenient spots for these organizations. These drones can handle loads from 100 to 400 pounds.
In the end, our club acting president Vicky Mallett awarded the Joshua Malawi school certificate to Amir that represents donation of school supplies by DMSB to schools in Malawi in the name of the speaker.
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