Gary White was raised for a life of service. “My parents, teachers, and faith really instilled in me a passion for it,” he says. When he was in college he found his calling: to study civil and environmental engineering. That was when he discovered the intersection of his greatest passion and the world’s greatest needs. “Engineering answers to the world’s problems would be the path that I would take from there on,” he says. In 2008, he met Matt Damon at the Clinton Global Initiative. At the time, Gary was running an organization called Water Partners, which helped people living in poverty get access to microloans for clean water and sanitation, and Matt was running an organization called H20 Africa, which was helping to supply people with drinking water in rural Africa. “After talking a while, Matt realized that we had a track record of doing what he was trying to do, and he had the name and brand, and access to new and greater levels of funding that could change the future of water,” Gary says. He and Matt merged their organizations to form Water.org. To date, in partnership with its 154 partners around the world, Water.org has mobilized over $2.6 billion in capital to support safe water and sanitation projects around the world.