Innovators/Innovations

Daniel Fetecua Soto is one of the exceptions. A soloist at the Limón Dance Company and founder and artistic director of Pajarillo Pinta’o, a folklore and modern dance ensemble based in Germany and New York City, Fetecua was raised on salsa and caranga. The 31-year-old native of Bogotá with curly black hair, a strong jaw line and broad smile grew up dancing at family parties and get-togethers but never studied dance formally. After high school, he was admitted to the Universidad Nacional de Colombia (UNAL) in Bogotá to study statistics. Although he loved math, his first semester “was a disaster” because his heart wasn’t in it. Fetecua then considered a military career, completing the obligatory one year of service with high honors before realizing that was not his life’s calling either. He returned to UNAL where, while studying classical trumpet, he was introduced to the formal study of dance through an elective course with well-known modern and folkloric dancer Vladimir Rodríguez. “I remember the first time the teacher made me touch my toes,” he says. “I was in so much pain!”

The pain was worth it. Intrigued by folklore and modern dance, Fetecua joined UNAL’s in-house dance company, Grupo de Danzas Folklóricas, and began to study classical ballet. At that point he was hooked. He continued his formal training at the Academia Superior de Artes de Colombia and then the Folkwang University of the Arts in Germany where he was taught by Libby Nye, a former faculty member at the José Limón School who reconstructed Limón repertory. In 2006, the New York-based Limón Dance Company—a bedrock of American modern dance—offered Fetecua a full scholarship to participate in a summer workshop and subsequently invited him to join the company. In 2003, Fetecua also founded his own dance company, Pajarillo Pinta’o, and both remain his active focus today.

In a testament to the ways in which dance has permeated his life, including his speech, Fetecua gestures frequently, with a rate and energy that matches his level of excitement about a topic. He considers Limón his home base, describing its work pushing boundaries and pioneering a powerfully masculine style as “supremely important.” Pajarillo Pinta’o, on the other hand, is a deeply personal project, although not at odds with his career at Limón. The idea for Pajarillo was born from the stereotypes about drugs and violence in Colombia that Fetecua encountered while in Germany. “I wanted to show the public the other sides of Colombia,” he explains. “And I thought, why not do it through dance?”

In 2003, he and other dancers began showcasing traditional Colombian dance. Observing that audiences were quick to respond to its color, exuberance and coquettish style, Fetecua continued to mount these performances. When he moved to New York, he started to experiment with folkloric styles, combining their easy rhythms and peasant character with the grace and athleticism of classical ballet, as well as the sharp lines and dynamism of modern dance.

He choreographed and danced in Pachamama, a piece fusing the Afro-Colombian currulao style with modern dance and jazz music, as well as Yo no tengo a quien me quiera (I don’t have anyone who loves me), a study of loneliness and displacement inspired by a Lucía Pulido song by the same name.

Today, Fetecua continues to express his Colombian roots through modern dance. He is currently working on a piece about the Bojayá massacre of 2002, in which 119 civilians were killed. Entitled Mar Bellavista, after the town’s urban center, the piece will debut in early spring 2011.

A proud native of Antofagasta, a port city of about 300,000 people in northern Chile, Chávez attributes her passion for marine science to a childhood spent in one of the driest regions on earth. “If you’re not looking up at the sky,” she says, “you’re looking out toward the ocean.” The Chilean mining industry’s need for new technology motivated Chávez into a search for global ideas. After studying at the Universidad de Antofagasta, she pursued graduate work at Kyoto University and the University of Hawaii at Manoa.

Chávez finished her studies in 2004, at a time when Chile experienced a new influx of foreign investment. Returning to her hometown, she partnered with investor Juan Manuel Aguirre to create Aguamarina, assembling a team of 18 chemical engineers.

Aguamarina specializes in R&D in two chemical processes that are key to mineral extraction. The first is bioleaching, or the process of using the Bacillus bacteria to extract low concentrations of precious metals from ore. Mining companies tend to disregard these ores due to the high cost and low returns of the standard extraction method, known as leaching. In contrast, bioleaching can remove the minerals cheaply, and instead of requiring miners to burrow underground to retrieve the ore, it extracts metals inside the mine itself, diminishing safety risks, environmental damage and costs. Although the process occurs in nature, mining companies have only recently begun to manually induce bioleaching on a large enough scale for it to become efficient, profitable and sustainable.

The other process Aguamarina researches is biocorrosion, which disintegrates metals through exposure to sulfate-reducing bacteria. Aguamarina was one of the first companies in the world to identify the effects of leakage from wells and piping in underground mines due to biocorrosion. It was also, Chávez points out with pride, one of the first to offer solutions. Aguamarina studies samples  of microorganisms from clients’ mines to determine which bacteria should be used in the extraction process to minimize biocorrosion. The company tailors its solutions to the conditions inside each mine to make more of the extracted metal usable. Using the appropriate bacteria can also slow the deterioration of mining infrastructure like wells and pipes, reducing the necessity for risky repair missions executed thousands of feet underground by teams of miners.

Working in an industry crucial to Chile’s economy, Aguamarina has not surprisingly attracted the support of the Chilean government. Programs like Corporación de Fomento de la Producción de Chile (CORFO) and ProChile—aimed at increasing investment and innovation in Chile—have helped the company become a national pioneer.

With a growing ability to market its technology and services on a regional level and a solid national client base, Aguamarina has also begun expanding its operations to mines in the U.S., Brazil and Peru.

Born in Brazil, Pontual moved to the U.S. with her family at age 14. Attending public schools in New York and Miami gave her an early glimpse of the potential of public education for her homeland. “I came to believe that Brazilian students in the public school system should have access to the same quality of education I did,” she says. “Where you are born doesn’t define your future.”

When she returned home in 2008 after earning a graduate degree at Harvard’s Graduate School of Education, Pontual became the superintendent of monitoring and evaluation for Rio State’s Department of Education. There, she implemented a new evaluation system to provide teachers with data on student progress and to facilitate better understanding of successful teaching mechanisms. Evaluations consisted of standardized testing in math, science and Portuguese. The system, which also provided such incentives as free laptops to high-scoring students, resulted in improved test scores and student retention. Pontual’s success won her high reviews from state education authorities. Her new job represents an even tougher challenge, with her portfolio at Ginásio Carioca including school management, professional development, curriculum reform, evaluation of student progress, and design of achievement indicators.

But Pontual is unfazed by the challenges. Convinced that students should not be victimized by educators’ mismanagement, she is determined to widen horizons at the key middle-school level—including offering extracurricular activities that can boost student confidence and keep them in school, such as dance classes (Pontual once yearned to be a ballerina) and book clubs.

In addition, Pontual hopes to nearly double the amount of time teachers and students spend in the classroom from the current average of four and a half hours per day—a result of teachers having two or more contracts at several schools at a time. Pontual calls the current system “a mess,” with teachers instructing so many students that “they often can’t learn all their names, much less give them personal attention and gear instruction to their specific needs.” Pontual has already begun to increase one-on-one teacher-student interaction in Rio’s schools by extending teacher hours and offering online video instruction.

In the future, Pontual hopes to stay with the city’s Department of Education to see her projects develop. She recognizes that achieving the deep, systemic reforms necessary to create educational equality will require political activism. As far as her own role is concerned, however, she believes “my greatest contribution will be at the technical level, rather than the political one.”

Lopez, a 26-year-old native of Guatemala, emigrated to Canada with his family in 1986. Growing up in Hochelaga-Maisonneuve and Saint-Michel, two of the “rougher” neighborhoods of Montréal, Gabriel found it difficult to focus on his studies. Fortunately, theater and acting kept him engaged in school, leading him ultimately to graduate from Montréal’s Concordia University with a degree in communications studies. Unfortunately, for many Montréal youth, finding a “hook” to keep them interested is hard: nearly one-third of students enrolled in high school drop out or don’t graduate by the age of 20.

The reality in these neighborhoods inspired Lopez to reach out to students directly. In 2006, he began speaking at secondary schools around Montréal about his own experiences. “I would tell kids about the theater programs I was a part of, the radio shows I hosted,” he recalls. “Students would line up and say, ‘it would be great to have these in our school, but we don’t have the people to lead us in starting them. If I call you tomorrow, if a hundred of us call you tomorrow, can you tell us how?’”

And so the idea for Youth Fusion was born. In 2008, with funding from Concordia, Lopez launched a pilot program in two Montréal high schools. By year’s end, absenteeism had fallen and student participation had increased. Gabriel then approached other universities such as McGill, the University of Montréal and Polytechnique Montréal to hire students to work in high schools targeted by the Ministry of Education, Leisure and Sport in Québec. Today, Youth Fusion operates in 20 high schools across the province.

Seeking to increase student enthusiasm, Youth Fusion enlists university students and recent graduates to implement and manage special programs. Among the programs it offers is help in starting a small business, arts and community service projects, and even sports clubs like rock climbing, skateboarding and boxing.

The one thing all the activities have in common is that they are student-led, which Lopez considers key. “Giving kids a chance to really experience something concrete, that is engaging, and that mobilizes many people in their communities is the idea behind Youth Fusion,” he says. “Sometimes school may seem irrelevant until a trigger makes it look relevant.” Lopez, it seems, has found a way to supply students with that trigger. In fact, school administrators at James Lyng and Pierre-Dupuy high schools, the first two schools in which the program was launched, have shown a 40 percent decrease in absenteeism while also recording an increase of 12.6 percent in graduation rates.