Jack Sim

Widely known as Mr Toilet, Jack Sim broke the global taboo around toilets and sanitation. He founded the World Toilet Organization (WTO), a global non-profit working towards a world with clean, safe toilets and sanitation for everyone, everywhere, at all times. Born in a slum in Singapore in 1957, he learned entrepreneurship and gumption from his uneducated mother who started a series of small businesses. He was also inspired by the gumption of Prime Minister Lee Kuan Yew and grew up watching the amazing transformation of his country from third world to first.

From school failure, he became a serial commercial businessman (sixteen businesses). After attaining financial independence he left the rat-race to become a serial social entrepreneur. After fighting the bureaucrats, he enrolled at Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy and graduated with a Master’s in Public Administration at the age of 56. He also graduated at Singularity University’s Global Solutions Program at age fifty-nine. Some of the awards he won are: Schwab Fellow of the World Economic Forum, Ashoka Global Fellow, Queen Elizabeth’s Points of Light Award, Clinton Global Initiatives Fellow, Time Magazine’s Heroes of the Environment for 2008. For his contribution to humanity, he received an Honorary Doctorate from the University of Strathclyde, Glasgow UK in 2022.

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