Isabel Medem

"In Peru, more than nine million people lack adequate sanitation systems in their households. Medem founded X-runner in 2011, a company that sells and installs dry toilets for families without access to established sewer systems and collects their waste on a weekly basis.

This innovative young lady has designed dry toilets, for domestic and portable use, which do not require running water and hookups to sewer lines. And to prevent thousands of families from depositing waste under their houses, Medem includes a weekly, waste collection service which then treats and reuses the human waste for the production of compost or organic manure. X-runner is less expensive than other sanitation companies: the customer pays a subscription fee of $34 and a monthly collection charge of $13.

Medem, a graduate in International Business Administration from the University of Vienna, is a prime example of entrepreneurship and creativity by providing a solution to a problem which affects many of the Peruvian people, and almost one-thrid of the population worldwide."