Adam White is the founder of Atlas Workshops, a global education organization committed to inspiring creative engagement with the world. Adam is also a founder and principal at Groupshot and the Digital Matatus Project.
Adam, through Atlas Workshops, has designed and led dozens of field research programs for students and adults. As a program lead with Atlas he has guided programs to nearly every continent including workshops for students to Uruguay to study a culture of renewable energy, deep dives for VCs in India to explore the context of investment opportunities in clean water, and a mix of groups through the Balkans exploring issues of historical memory in the former Yugoslavia among many others.
His eclectic interests come from the many connections across the world and the overlapping challenges and opportunities we all share. It's always incredible how the issues right in front of us at home can crystallize when seen through the lens of another culture, community, or experience.
Adam studied engineering at Tufts university and as a member of the EPIIC colloquium twice he developed interests in global equality and urbanization. He went on to complete a Masters degree in City Design from the London School of Economics. His time at both schools framed all of his future work as an interdisciplinary thinker passionate about how technology and infrastructure can be human and how new ideas arise in context.
While studying at the LSE Adam became involved with the technological emergency response to the earthquake in Haiti which led him to found his design and research firm, Groupshot. Groupshot has worked on projects at the intersection of technology and informality for nearly 10 years as the potential has grown massively.
Groupshot's initial work was on the growing technology for development and social entrepreneurship field especially focused in East Africa. Spending months each year in Nairobi, Adam developed a deeper understanding of the potential and cultural limitations of technology and a large community based in the region. This work came at the time when mobile phones were proliferating rapidly and the smartphone was becoming accessible more widely in Kenya.
Through his work at Groupshot Adam has received recognition for a number of projects including awards from the World Bank for innovative projects in Haiti and Peru. Groupshot projects have included an investigation of how technology and context can help support taco vendors in Mexico, wheelchair users in India, and small scale makers in Kenya.
One of these research projects grew into the Digital Matatus Project. Adam brought together a team of Kenyan and American university professors from MIT, University of Nairobi, and Columbia's Earth Institute. The Digital Matatus Project became the first successful initiative to map informal public transport in a city and made Nairobi's minibus network the first (and most comprehensive) transit system for an African City on Google Maps and as an open source database.
Digital Matatus has been recognized in Kenyan and international publications and received awards, features, and support from the Dubai Expo, the Rockefeller foundation, Wired Magazine, the Guardian, the Economist, Google, the World Bank, the BBC, the venice Biennale, the Louisiana Museum in Denmark and many others.
Adam now spends most of his time with Atlas Workshops. Atlas was founded when a school asked to tag along on one of Adam's research programs and a new model for global education, immersive travel, and creative inspiration was born. He continues to lead Atlas Workshops in the design and execution of a range of field programs and is currently launching a growing network of international hubs for creative and curious thinking around the world.
A wonderful, valued friend now for decades, Adam was one of the most thoughtful and influential of my students, whose intelligent insights had a very positive impact on the coherence and sharpness of my syllabi. His involvement as one of the first engineering students to enroll in EPIIC led to the School of Engineering adding EPIIC to its quite restricted approved social science elective offerings. I greatly admire the thrust of his thinking and activity which has resulted in some of the finest educational experiences for young students I know of; and his thoughtful policy recommendations reflect his intelligence and cultural sensitivity, and derive from both intellectual and experiential depth. He is fun to banter with and he is fulfilling his intent to meaningfully experience the world in a way few of his generation have, COVID notwithstanding, visiting and working in 97 countries as of this year, 2021 .