Solve for Tomorrow Past Winner Now ‘Rocks the Vote’

Saad Amer (L., standing center with tie) with his Patchogue-Medford High School Solve for Tomorrow team after their 2011 contest win

“Technology is one of the great equalizers in society, because it grants you access to education from every perspective,” said Saad Amer, a 2011 winner of the Samsung Solve for Tomorrow contest, which challenges public school teachers and students in grades 6-12 to show how science, technology, engineering and math (STEM) can be used to help improve their community.

Speaking from the sidelines of a United Nations Commission on Social Development meeting, where he presented on climate change, environmental justice and vulnerable communities around the world, Amer credits his participation in Solve for Tomorrow during high school with inspiring his educational and professional pursuits ever since.

“With Solve for Tomorrow, Samsung gives students the tools to invent solutions and the platform to educate themselves and the public on critical issues that really matter to young people, like the environment,” Amer explained.

Amer delivers a statement to the Commission for Social Development at the United Nations in New York City in 2017. (Photo Courtesy of Saad Amer)

Amer has been wielding STEM for social change since 2011, when his team from Patchogue-Medford High School, in Medford, New York, nabbed $80,000 in Samsung technology for its prize-winning work documenting, through video, students’ monthly water-quality tests of the Patchogue River and a nearby nature preserve. Amer produced his team’s video for the contest and founded an education program at the preserve which brought students, Kindergarten through 12^thgrades, to the nature preserve to learn about conservation, ecology and climate change.

2011 Solve for Tomorrow contest winner Saad Amer, R., with David Steel, Executive Vice President of Corporate Affairs for Samsung Electronics America, at the 2011 Solve for Tomorrow contest finals, in New York City.

“The contest made a big difference in my life. I think it helped me get a scholarship to college,” said Amer, who studied environmental science and public policy at Harvard College, where he worked on the university’s inaugural Sustainability Plan to reduce the output of greenhouse gases and cut water usage across its 12-school campus.

After graduating, Amer moved to Darjeeling, India, the famed tea-growing region in the Himalayas, to research the impact of climate change, including the area’s monsoons and their increasing severity, on local agriculture, the economy and everyday people.

Amer enjoys a cup of tea in Darjeeling, India, while studying the impact of climate change on agriculture, the economy and the people of the famed tea-growing region, in 2016; Photo courtesy of Saad Amer.

“My first flight on an airplane was the Solve for Tomorrow trip to Washington, D.C., where I visited Congress for the first time,” he said. “Now I lobby Congress!” Amer serves on the Next Generation Advisory Council of the National Parks Conservation Association.

Through his work at the United Nations and stints as a producer for PBS’s NOVA, environmental scientist and activist, Amer is driven to influence environmental policy and give voice to communities that are disproportionately affected by climate change.

“Human health and wellbeing is directly affected by environmental forces, and this generation knows that better than most. That’s why I advocate,” Amer said, adding that he believes effective advocacy must go to the root of policy change in a democracy, and so he devised a plan to harness the power of the vote and make change through his own non-partisan, get-out-the vote campaign called Plus 1 Vote.

Amer lobbying Congress on endangered species and clean air and water, with the National Park Conservation Association, in 2018; Photo Credit: Pamela Pettijohn, courtesy of Saad Amer.

Amer describes Plus 1 Vote as his answer to “the current climate of political division and the frustration and restlessness it’s ignited in a lot of young Americans.”

“If we want better representation in our government, we’ve got to get more people to vote, no matter whom they vote for, so I launched the Plus 1 Vote social media campaign to inspire voters to bring a friend with them to the polls,” said Amer. “Sometimes we feel that we can’t have an impact on these enormous issues, but the reality is that we can. Solve for Tomorrow gave me more motivation to continue working on environmental issues and pursuing the tech and digital media skills that are now essential components in any campaign, in expanding the reach of any idea.”