GO DEEPER
In FLUSH, Director Karina Mangu-Ward goes on a quest to find out what happens to each flush. Along the way, she meets a lot of interesting people and raises a lot of important issues.
Who's Who
karina mangu-ward
Director, Flush
Karina Mangu-Ward is a Brooklyn-based filmmaker and media producer. She uses non-fiction film, interactive content, and social networking to spread big ideas. Her feature documentary FLUSH raises awareness about how toilets and sewer systems work in the US, and increases citizen advocacy for more sustainable solutions at the local level. She has directed content and strategy for ArtsFwd.org, a platform for arts and culture leaders about innovative new approaches to the persistent challenges facing the sector. She produced “Made Here” (www.madehereproject.org), an online documentary project featuring 30 short films about the life/work balance of New York City artists, featured on Hulu. Her work also includes a webseries, short films, and commercial advertising. MFA Columbia. AB Harvard College.
John Lipscomp
John Lipscomb became Riverkeeper’s boat captain in 2000. Having grown up in Irvington and Tarrytown, he learned to swim and sail in the Hudson River. Most of Mr. Lipscomb’s career has revolved around boats. In the early 1970’s, he apprenticed for “old time” WWII-era boat builders to learn wooden boat maintenance and repair at Petersen’s Boatyard in Nyack. From 1991 to 2000, Mr. Lipscomb was General Manager of Petersen’s.
In September, 2000, Mr. Lipscomb began patrolling the Hudson for Riverkeeper aboard the “R. Ian Fletcher”, a 36-foot Chesapeake Bay style wooden vessel. From April into December each year, he travels approximately 4,000 to 5,000 nautical miles between New York Harbor and Troy, searching out and deterring polluters, monitoring tributaries and waterfront facilities, conducting a sampling program to measure fecal contamination and supporting other scientific studies, and taking regional decision makers and media out on the river so that “the river has a chance to advocate for itself.”
Leif Percifield
DontFlush.me
Leif Percifield is the creator of DontFlush.Me, a project that provides realtime sensing and alert systems for water pollution and Visualight a wifi enabled lightbulb capable of displaying information as colored light. Before completing a MFA at Parsons, in Design and Technology, he worked as a media developer at Los Alamos National Laboratory. He has worked as a technologist at start-ups including Incredible Machines, Blackegg, and Junction and is currently a prototype engineer at Newell Brands.
Dr. Tom DuHamel
Dr. Thomas R. DuHamel, PhD is a clinical child psychologist who has successfully collaborated with parents and pediatric health care providers about functional constipation for over 30 years.
Dr. DuHamel retired in 2015 after 38 years of private practice at Associates in Behavior and Child Development, ABCD Inc, in Seattle, Washington and now devotes most of his time to helping children with functional constipation through his books, speaking engagements, blogand telephone consultations. Dr. DuHamel is a former Clinical Associate Professor in the Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences at the University of Washington School of Medicine. Prior to private practice, Dr. DuHamel was Chief Psychologist at Seattle Children’s Hospital. Dr. DuHamel graduated from Brown University and earned his doctorate in clinical psychology at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst. He completed a post doctoral residency in the Department of Medical Psychology at the University of Oregon Medical School in Portland.
Dr. DuHamel is married with two children and two very precious granddaughters.
Shawn Shafner
Shawn Shafner is an artist, educator and activist. Creator of The People's Own Organic Power Project (www.thePOOPproject.org), he has catalyzed conversation about sustainable sanitation from NYC's largest wastewater treatment plant to the United Nations. Major works include: An Inconvenient Poop, family musical Innie / Outie, and ongoing monthly episodes of SHHH: The Poopcast (aka Sh*t and Shame with Shawn). Shawn was a 2014-15 LABA Fellow, 2014-15 iLAND/LMCC resident, 2017 Global Social Impact House fellow through UPenn's Center for Social Impact Strategy, 2017 summer resident to the Art Monastery Project, and a member of the Schusterman Foundation's ROI Community. Shawn is also a teaching artist, curriculum developer, and consultant for cultivating creativity, mindfulness and joy.
Dr. Daniel Gerling
Historian
Daniel Gerling received his Ph.D. in American Studies at The University of Texas at Austin and is currently an Assistant Professor at Augustana University in Sioux Falls, South Dakota. In addition to teaching classes on composition, grammar, language use, literature, and poop, he is working to develop his dissertation, “American Wasteland: A Social and Cultural History of Excrement, 1860-1920,” into a book. If you'd like to talk shit with him, please hit him up at @DanielGerling on Twitter.
Dr. Ole Ersson
Ole was born and has lived in Oregon most of his life. He has a passion for pushing the envelope on sustainable living practices, be it recycling, veganic gardening practices or humanure composting. He recently retired from his work as a family physician in Portland. He and his wife Maitri founded Kailash Ecovillage in December 2007. You can see some of their projects on the web site Experiments in Sustainable Urban Living at kailashecovillage.org/experiments
James Burgess
OpenBiome
James Burgess is the Executive Director and co-founder of OpenBiome. James has previously worked in roles implementing technology development and transfer at the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and GE Energy. Prior to that, he spent several years as a management consultant at Bain & Company, where he developed and implemented growth strategy programs for large corporate clients. James' career has been focused on building organizations to drive high-impact technology adoption, whether launching clean energy programs in Brazil, implementing molecular agricultural survey tools in Ethiopia, or driving access to FMT and next-generation microbial therapeutics. James is extremely optimistic about harnessing the microbiome to enable a new category of medicine, and sees OpenBiome as critical enabler for the field to do so. James has a BA in Mathematics from Princeton University and is a proud business school drop-out.
Laura Burns
OpenBiome
Laura is currently a second-year medical student at UMass Medical School. Laura was the Operations Manager at OpenBiome, where she oversaw a team of biomanufacturing technicians who turned stool donations from rigorously screened donors into treatments for intractable C. difficile infections and for use in clinical trials. More about Laura HERE.
Abraham Noe-Hays
Abraham Noe-Hays has been working with dry sanitation systems since 1990. He holds a B.A. in Human Ecology with concentrations in agroecology and compost science from the College of the Atlantic, where his interest in recycling human manure led to an internship at Woods End Research Laboratory and his thesis project, “An Experiment in Thermophilic Composting.” He has operated Full Circle Compost Consulting since 2001, providing complete design, manufacture, and maintenance services to individuals and institutions with dry toilet systems. He is also the eco-sanitation expert for Sustainable Harvest International, which he has helped to initiate urine-diversion projects in Nicaragua, Honduras, Panama, and Belize. In addition to hands-on dry sanitation work, Abraham gives lectures and leads workshops at conferences and schools, and writes articles on the topic.
Kim Nace
Kim Nace holds an M.A. in International Administration from World Learning and an M.A. in Educational Leadership from Keene State College. She was a Peace Corps volunteer in Botswana and has taught children of all ages. She coordinated research funded by the MacArthur Foundation and later served as an Elementary School Principal – in rural Vermont and in Chennai, India. She has been passionate about sustainable sanitation alternatives ever since creating an educational video about composting toilets for her 1989 master’s thesis project. As Co-Founder and Executive Director of the Rich Earth Institute, she has focused her leadership and organizational strengths to build a high performance team at the Institute and to engage others in the possibilities and practicalities of urine recycling. Kim and her family use a urine diverting composting toilet.
Robert Adamski
Engineer
Professional Engineer: NY and NJ, Fellow American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE), Board Certified Environmental Engineer. Graduate of City College of NY has over 50 years experience in environmental engineering including Deputy Commissioner at NYC Department of Environmental Protection. Lieutenant Colonel and Fellow in the Society of American Military Engineers. Recipient of the ASCE Herbert Howard Government Engineer of the Year, NY Water Environment Association (NYWEA) Public Education Award and Inducted into the Fort Hamilton H.S. and NYWEA Halls of Fame.
He has been involved in international water issues including as a Director of Water For People and Hermandad. Has visited projects in the Dominican Republic, Guatemala, Nicaragua and Malawi.
