Liza Chong

Stories accompany us every day of our lives. We find them everywhere, from tea packages to the first words of a good TED talk (Let me tell you a story…), and they even get namechecks in café and boutique signs. Because, of course, stories are what inform, entertain, and—ultimately—touch us to the heart. Take the story of the son who goes swimming in the ocean with his father and is horrified to discover that the waters contain more plastic waste than fish; as a result, he decides to clean up the ocean. At that precise moment, a story needs more than merely the telling. This story needs people and possibilities: financial, innovative, social. INDEX: Design to Improve Life is the organization supporting those people and their stories, complete with the ideas that lie behind them. Ideas that are united by a single mission: to make life better, amid—and, indeed, because of—the many-faceted global challenges of our age, from environmental pollution and the demographic shift to climate change and drug-resistant viruses. Over close to two decades of operation, the organization has grown into a platform of inspiration, of education, and of engagement. A catalyst for solutions that our world sorely needs. We talked to Liza Chong, CEO of INDEX, about solutions which first need the right form of access to be opened up, and about the right perspective for quantifying the positive impacts of individual solutions.