The good Cornellians can do: John Molander ’79

In late 2019, John Molander ’79 got a call from his sister, Dr. Karin Molander, an emergency medical physician and board member with the Sepsis Alliance. Sepsis is a life-threatening condition that happens when a person’s body overreacts to an infection. Karin knew that the COVID-19 virus causes septic shock in some patients, and she reached out to her brother to encourage him to use his talents to help.

“She called me after seeing very early data out of China and said, ‘Big brother, you have to do something to address this impending pandemic and the dire lack of ventilators.’ I’ve always been an inventor and entrepreneur,” John says. “This call started the creative process to design and build a safe, affordable, and effective ventilator that could be quickly mass produced.”

John says his Cornell engineering training and career experience in manufacturing, engineering, and research at Proctor and Gamble prepared him well to tackle this challenge. He had no prior experience working on a medical device, so he assembled a team of medical experts to assist him.

Together, these volunteers formed the non-profit Venti-Now, to produce low-cost ventilators for deployment in low-income communities in East Africa, including at the Cornell Weill Bugando Medical Center in Mwanza and at Shirati Hospital in Tanzania, as well as at a dozen rural hospitals in Uganda.

I am so proud of the Venti-Now team of dedicated and talented volunteers,” John says. “The experiences and education I received at Cornell taught me that we can't possibly know everything. We need to smartly use the resources and talents of others to succeed,” he adds.

Cornellians around the globe are sharing how they do good in communities big and small. Share your own story.