and life you love. You know, we all have those moments in life where we realize that something

is just not working and we need to go in a new direction. And my guest today is a shining

example of what happens when you listen to that call and you embrace the unknown and

decide to use your gifts in the service of others.

Scott Harrison spent almost 10 years as a nightclub promoter in New York City before

leaving to volunteer on a hospital ship off the coast of Liberia West Africa as a volunteer

photojournalist. Returning home to New York City two years later, he founded the nonprofit

organization, charity:water, in 2006. Turning his full attention to the global water crisis

and the world’s 800 million people without clean water to drink, he created public installations

and innovative online fundraising platforms to spread international awareness of the issue.

In 7 years with the help of more than 400 thousand donors worldwide, charity:water has

raised over 125 million and funded over 11 thousand water projects in 22 countries. When

completed, those projects will provide over 4 million people with clean, safe drinking

water. Scott was recently recognized in Fortune Magazine’s 40 under 40 list, the Forbes

magazine Impact 30 list, and was recently number 10 in Fast Company’s 100 Most Creative

People in Business issue. He’s currently a World Economic Forum Young Global Leader.

Scott lives in New York City with his wife Victoria and son Jackson.

Scott, thank you so much for being here on MarieTV.

It’s great to be here. Thanks for having me.

So I wanna go back. Back in the day to when you had that moment in your life where you

felt what you’ve called emotionally and spiritually bankrupt. And you’re in Uruguay,

right?

Yeah. Punta del Este.

Ok. Tell us what that was like. And I know you had a big revelation when you came back

to New York City, but it wasn’t that easy to make the change, was it?

Yeah. I guess I have to back up a little bit. So I’d moved to New York City at 18 to rebel

against everything. You know, the conservative Christian upbringing. My mom was really sick

growing up, so I had the caregiver role as an only child. So it was time to look out

for number one and I found that there was this job that existed in New York City called

a nightclub promoter and people would pay you to drink alcohol for free and all your

friends would drink for free. So that’s the life that I embraced for 10 years and,

you know, we would go to dinner at 10, the club at 12, after hours at 5, and it looked

very glamorous on the outside but it was a kind of really dark, destroying environment.

You know, I mean, if you saw me at noon the day after we’d been partying, it wasn’t

pretty. So 10… this trip that you mentioned kinda came at the ten year mark and over New

Years we would always go away and the beautiful people would jump on planes and rent houses.

And I remember this year’s trip was to Punta del Este and we’d rented this house with

servants and horses and I remember we’d spent a thousand dollars on fireworks and

there were magnums of Dom Perignon. And I had the girlfriend that was on magazine covers

and, you know, the life that I thought I wanted. The BMW, the Rolex, guys around me are playing

10 thousand dollar hands of blackjack. You know, what more could you want? And we had

this party that lasted 24 hours and I remember it was the day after New Years and it was

like 3 in the afternoon and I just wanted to go to sleep. And there were 100 people

on the compound by the pool. And it was like the music stopped, you know, and in some way

the veil was lifted that I had gotten everything I thought I’d wanted and I was deeply unhappy

and I looked around and nobody else was happy. You know, there was wreckage, you know, many

of these, you know, 60 year old guys had ditched their wife and kids to chase 20 year old models

around and buy bottles. And, I don't know, I just… I guess I saw that there would never

be enough girls, there’d never be enough money, there’d never be enough status or

parties. And I started reading this very dense theology book that my dad had sent to me and

my relationship with my parents had been pretty fractured over those 10 years as I had, you

know, picked up every single vice that you can imagine. And something just really awakened

in me. You know, I got to kind of opt back into my Christian faith in a… in a way where

it wasn’t being shoved down my throat. And I started asking this question, “What would

the exact opposite of my life look like?” You know, the… the opposite of the party

boy, you know, out, you know, banging lines of cocaine. You know, what would serving others

look like?

Yeah. And so that… so you got home from that trip, you got back to New York, and obviously

the physical surroundings were still the same, but something…

Yeah, nothing had changed.

Something in you changed. What were those first steps? What did you start doing when

you got back to start to try and make that change not only from within, but on the outside

too?

Yeah. Well, so it was like the fun had been taken away from it but I still was coming

back and I was still working in nightclubs. I mean, I had to work to… to pay rent. I

remember, you know, it started with spirituality. I started trying to rediscover church, I was

reading the Bible again, I was, you know, trying to kind of reclaim this very lost morality

in faith. But I was kind of floundering. And then, I don't know, it took me about 6 months

and I rented a cobalt blue Ford Mustang from… from the Newark Airport, kind of on an indefinite

rental, and I grabbed the Bible, I grabbed a bottle of Deurs, and I started heading north

aimlessly. I didn't know where I would end up. Went through Connecticut, through Vermont,

just kind of trying to, you know, decide what was next. And I wound up in… in Moosehead

Lake at this internet cafe. It was dialup internet. I remember the…

Yeah!

And I had… I just kind of had this moment where I said, you know, I never need to go

back and what would the radical change be? What if I were to tithe or give one of the

ten years that I’d pissed away to the poor? So from this internet cafe I started applying

to the world’s famous humanitarian organizations. The World Visions and Peace Corps and, you

know, United Nations. Thinking that of course they’re gonna love the idea that a nightclub

promoter who gets thousands of people drunk every night…

Right.

...you know, wants to go on some humanitarian mission in Africa.

Right.

So I actually didn't go back. I kind of, you know, gave up my apartment and sold my things

just in faith that one of these organizations would take me. I went to a friend’s house

in the south of France just to kind of wait for all of the acceptance letters come in,

and I was denied by every single organization that I’d applied to. And on paper, you know,

I must’ve been terrifying. You know? I remember in some of the applications, like, “Do you

drink?” Excessively. “Do you smoke?” 2 packs a day. “Have you done drugs?”

Which ones? But I… I’d written these compelling essays, I thought, of, you know, this was

my old life, I wanna change, you know, I think I have a lot to bring to the table. So denial,

denial, denied, denied. Finally one organization says, “Scott, if you pay us 500 dollars

a month, you can volunteer with us.” And I’m like, “This is great. I wanted the

opposite of my life. Not only am I not gonna make money, I’m gonna have to pay…”

To volunteer.

“...for the opportunity of volunteering.” So I said, “Where are you guys going?”

They said, “We’re sailing this giant 500 foot hospital ship to Liberia.” I, you know,

it’s embarrassing now, but I’d never heard of Liberia. You know, I thought Africa was

like one big country, not made up of 40 some countries. And I said, “Sure, I’ll go.”

Started learning about their work, their mission as I got ready to join. And I learned that

this country, Liberia, had been through a 14 year civil war, there was no electricity,

there was no running water, there was no mail, there was no sewage. Completely broken as

Charles Taylor had… had decimated this country with child soldiers. So we were gonna go in

with these amazing surgeons, doctors who had given up their vacation time and instead of

flying their families to, you know, the Caribbean, decided to fly in and use their skills for

good. And I had signed up to be their volunteer photojournalist, so I dusted off a degree

that I had gotten from NYU and said, “Look, I know a lot of people. I have 15 thousand

people on my club list, you know, what if I take pictures, what if I tell stories of

the work that you guys are doing?” And it happened very quickly. So from that New Years

Eve trip, in the fall I was sailing on this ship into… into West Africa.

So I know you spent 2 years on that ship and it completely changed everything. And when

you came back, you had the realization, from what I’ve read and researched, that you

could possibly make an impact in your lifetime to help end the water crisis. When you started

thinking about that to yourself when you were back here after those two years, what did

you start thinking about in terms of did you know you wanted to start charity:water? Was

that in there? Or were you just like, “How can I make a bigger impact?” What was that

next step for you?

Yeah. I don't talk about this that much, but I think the big piece over that 2 year story

was, you know, I am emailing the stories, and we were… we were operating on people

with massive tumors, we were digging wells, so I learned about the water crisis for the

first time there. But I was emailing these fancy club people who used to come out and

buy 500 dollar bottles of Greygoose. And, you know, two reactions when you email 15

thousand people pictures of tumors and dirty water. The first was, “Take me off this

list! I signed up for the Prada party, not the tumor party or the poverty party.” And

then the other reaction was, “This is amazing. How do I give money? How do I volunteer? You

know, how do I engage and serve these doctors?” So I think I discovered the power of story,

the power of almost an unpolished, raw story. You know, not… and the organization had

typically, you know, over polished things almost and buttoned it up and then would put

it in a mailer. And this was… it was raw. It was almost reportage. So when I came back

I was 30, I believed the power of story, I believed that there were all these people

that wanted to get involved but didn't trust charities, that they weren't being communicated

to in a way that moved them or in a way that… that was relevant. And I actually wanted to

help Mercy Ships at the time and I had so many crazy ideas for them. I mean, we’re

gonna completely rebrand you and all your marketing needs to go and, you know, that

I scared them so much they said, “Thank you but no thanks. It’s been a great 2 years,

thanks for serving us, thanks for the awareness and money you raised, but you should go and

do your own thing.” So really that door was shut and I said, “Ok, well I do have

all these ideas, I’ve been able to raise a lot of awareness and money for this organization,

I guess I’ll start something on my own.”

And so I know one of the things that you knew was what you didn't want. You didn't want

an ugly website. That was one of the things that you were clear about. So you had a bit

of a vision for what charity:water could be.

Yeah. As I was talking to people that I wanted to get involved, I would hear these common

objections to charity. The most common one was, I don't know how much of my money is

actually going to reach the people. And everybody seemed to have a horror story of the big overhead,

the CEOs being paid millions of dollars, you know, the charity that scammed everyone, put

90% of the funds in their own pockets and sent 10. And, you know, I thought if that’s

really true, then there’s a huge amount of money that could be unlocked through a

new model. So that was one. The second was, you know, people didn't feel a connection

to where their money went. And, you know, I thought, well, the technology tools of the

day, you know, we can put stuff on Google Earth and Google Maps. Like, you can bridge

that gap using technology and say, you know, here’s your well in Cambodia. Here’s your

well in Malawi. You know, here’s what the community looks like. Here’s exactly where

it is, within 10 feet. And, as you mentioned, the third was charities were so bad at marketing

and branding. I mean, they had some of the worst websites, they were, you know, as bad

as insurance companies.

Yeah.

And, you know, a typical charity website would have, like, 100 links in 2 point font and

they would expect you to read 90 page whitepapers. You know, I recently read something about

The World Bank’s website. I think of all of the PDFs that they’d put on the website,

30% have been downloaded once or more.

Wow.

70% have never been downloaded once. Something crazy like that. So I thought, you know, there’s

a new way to tell stories, we could use great design. Nick Kristof had written in the New

York Times that… that people… he said people peddle toothpaste with more sophistication

than all of the world’s life saving causes. And, you know, Doritos can spend hundreds

of millions of dollars marketing junk food, you know, Crest can market. Why aren’t the

greatest needs or the greatest causes in the world  able to bring that same design aesthetic

or design relevance to their issues? I didn't know how to design beautiful things, but I

had pretty good taste and I thought, “We just need to find talented designers who would

rather work on bringing the world clean water than on, you know, Clinique?”

Yeah. I mean, that was one of the things…

I hope Clinique’s not a sponsor.

No, Clinique’s not… we don't actually have any sponsors for that reason, because

I like to be able to say anything I wanna say when I wanna say it.

Great.

And it was one of the things that I was so impressed with when I first learned about

your organization because I was drawn in because I appreciate great design and I love branding

and marketing. I think it can be such a powerful force for good in the world and it just…

so when people go like this towards it, I’m like, “No, no, no. It’s a beautiful tool

if you leverage it in the right way for the right purposes.” And with charity:water,

I just wanna let you know, it’s made such a huge difference to so many people and I’ve

shared it just saying, first of all, the work that you do is incredible, but just being

able to bring a fresh face, a new model, making it cool, making it fun, making it beautiful

to engage with has been incredible.

That’s all my wife.

Yes. And I remember when I first stumbled across your website, our creative director,

I said, “Who does…? Whatever they’re doing, that’s it.” It’s so hot, it’s

beautiful, it’s gorgeous. She’s amazing. She’s absolutely amazing.

And she has a great team, as well.

Yeah. So the other thing that I love about you guys is, of course, the focus that you

have because of the work that you do on women and girls. Let’s talk about a recent trip

that you made, and I believe that one was to Ethiopia.

It’s heavy.

I know it’s heavy.

We talked about this.