Anne Patterson, founder and CEO
Anne started Solavore™ after a successful career in hi-tech. She cut her teeth at Hewlett-Packard and managed operations planning for Steve Jobs at NeXT Computer during his Wilderness Years away from Apple. She later worked for 3Com Corporation, managing distribution and logistics for Europe, the Middle East and Africa, while based in the UK.
Raised under a big sky in Wyoming, Anne is an expansive thinker, adventurer, and all-around Renaissance woman. A giver, not a taker. She studied music at Colorado State University, became a teacher, and earned a masters degree in mathematics, taking up computer programming at the precise moment when women, despite their early contributions, dropped off the programming map.
During her corporate years, Anne fed her soul by mentoring young women and helping build schools in Africa. Today, she lives close to the bone, dividing her time between a sailboat and an off-grid island cottage in the Long Island Sound. Wind and sun play prominent roles in her life.
The original solavore, Anne believes passionately in solar cooking as a clean, joyful, liberating alternative to wood fires and grid-based fossil-fuel appliances.
Michael Port, Managing Director
A serial non-profit entrepreneur for more than four decades, Michael founded a food co-op, America's first rural youth runaway shelter, and a multi-state food-distribution program called Fare SHARE (now FARE for All) that generated more than 80,000 volunteer hours per month under Michael’s leadership.
Michael became a solar-cooking advocate in 1989. Four years later, he founded the Solar Oven Society (SOS), which developed the Solavore Sport’s predecessor oven. After distributing more than 20,000 SOS ovens worldwide,
Michael is proud and excited to continue the work under the auspices of Solavore.
Martha Port, Director of Operations
Trained as a teacher, Martha became a solar-cooking advocate in 1989 and joined SOS in 1995. A highly effective trainer and problem solver, she draws on a deep understanding of appropriate technology and an ability to work affectively across yawning cultural gulfs.
Paul Funk, PhD, R&D and Engineering
Paul wrote the book on solar ovens. Actually, what he wrote is the international evaluation criteria for sun-cooker performance, published by the American Society of Agricultural Engineers as ASAE Standard S580.1. Passionate about solar cooking for most of his life, Paul has conducted solar-oven field work in Indonesia, Tanzania, and Jamaica. In 1996, he advised a project producing low-cost solar ovens in Taliban-controlled Afghanistan, where restrictions on economic activity heightened the need for cooking-fuel alternatives.
In designing the original prototype for the SOS Sport, Paul drew on his doctoral research: optimizing solar-cooker design and computer modeling the best mass-produced solar cooker for low-income people. The Sport owes much of its elegant functionality—from its one-piece resin base to its stackable, shipping-container-optimized shape—to Paul’s insights.
John Roche, R&D and Engineering
John’s solar-cooking passion started at 3M, where he worked as a research and design engineer and headed up the company’s Solar Films Division. At 3M, John oversaw the development of a robust, hi-tech polyester film designed to withstand exposure to normally destructive UV light. Having shipped the film to solar-cooking advocates around the world, he partnered with SOS to incorporate the film into the Sport’s clear top. That tweak helped make the Sport the best-insulated solar cooker on the market.