Atefeh Riazi

CIOs Without Borders saw its earliest days in the guise of the E-Waste Task Force, a group Atefeh Riazi, then global CIO of Ogilvy & Mather Worldwide, formed to help address this considerable downside of technology.

“I wanted to raise awareness on the negative environmental and social impacts electronic waste is having in developing and underdeveloped worlds, mostly Asia, India and Latin America,” says Riazi, who has since left her position with Ogilvy.

“During one trip, I found myself in a town in China called Guoyu, where I witnessed the impact of e-waste on the environment,” she explained to Forbes. “Little children and pregnant women were dismantling equipment containing lead and mercury! It was something I couldn’t get out of my head.”

So when she returned to New York she started a project to encourage technologists to use their skills and experience for social good.

In particular, the E-Waste Task Force lobbied North American lawmakers to disallow the use of hazardous materials like mercury, lead and cadmium in electronics such as computers, printers, servers and televisions, she says. While much work is still to be done on solving the global e-waste crisis, the task force did manage to secure promissory notes from some IT industry players to stop using hazardous materials in their gear by certain timeframes, she says. And in the meantime, the E-Waste Task Force has morphed into CIOs Without Borders.

Through CIOs Without Borders, she hopes to bring technology to these countries and help alleviate some of their medical struggles. This is the type of education that can, quite literally, change the world.