Project Shields
Battling COVID-19 through mass-production of personal protective equipment (PPE)
I co-founded Project Shields at the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic to manufacture and donate face shields to frontline medical workers. Over the course of 10 weeks, we designed, manufactured, and donated 90,000 face shields to 34 states.
At Project Shields, I was responsible for:
Shield Design
In March of 2020, we launched a GoFundMe and immediately raised $9,000. I began using a 3D printed design so we could get the first face shields to nurses within days. We quickly realized the need was nearly infinite and began working on scaling up our production. With another community member, I designed the face shield above to be injection molded and worked with a local company to make a single shot mold that ran 24 hours a day.
Operations
Once our design was finished and our manufacturing partnerships were secured, it became a huge challenge to prioritize and fulfill the dozens of requests we received every day. I managed the operations. This included streamlining our entire process, from the way face shields were requested online to punching holes in the clear sheets to packing and shipping the orders.
Results
Within 10 weeks, we raised $120,000 and donated 90,000 face shields to frontline medical workers in 34 states. We provided free, lifesaving personal protective equipment for under resourced facilities at a time when hospitals reported paying up to $10 per face shield. I appreciated being able to find an outlet to use my engineering and entrepreneurial background to help during the early days of the pandemic.