Co-Founder and CEO, Collective Energy
Joined the SDF Board of Directors in October 2024
Andrew MacCalla is the Co-Founder and CEO of Collective Energy Company, a social business specializing in bringing clean and reliable power to non-profit community health centers in the US and abroad. Collective Energy believes that everyone, no matter where they live or how much money they have, should have equal and reliable access to health services–even when the power goes out.
Andrew previously served as the Vice President of Emergency Response and New Initiatives at Direct Relief, the largest privately funded non-profit aid organization in California and the 3rd largest in the country. He spent two years living in Haiti after the 2010 earthquake and was on the ground overseeing responses to emergencies like Hurricane Sandy in New York, Typhoon Haiyan in the Philippines, the Ebola crisis in W Africa, the Syrian refugee crisis, Hurricanes Harvey, Irma, Maria, and Dorian, Wildfires in CA, and the Covid-19 Pandemic. Andrew also led the team in Puerto Rico, implementing over 400 recovery projects on the island since Hurricane Maria. Andrew has also overseen numerous post-disaster infrastructure and energy projects, including the installation of over 4 megawatts of solar and battery storage for critical health facilities and community water wells that lost power after Hurricane Maria hit Puerto Rico. And in the Bahamas, He has led efforts to repair and rebuild health facilities that were damaged or destroyed in Hurricane Dorian.
Andrew studied Philosophy at University of California, Santa Barbara and has a master’s Degree in Public Policy and Management from the University of Melbourne. He has written numerous articles for the Huffington Post and The Sacramento Bee and was recently featured in Kaizo, a documentary about gaming and philanthropy that has played at numerous film festivals around the world and in this profile about his humanitarian work and background. He has been a speaker at dozens of conferences, as a subject matter expert in a variety of topics such as disaster response and preparedness, community empowerment, solar and storage, workforce development, and humanitarian logistics.
Andrew also founded Sustainable Recycling Solutions, LLC, a social business in Haiti that provided a solution to Haiti’s plastic waste and large unemployment problem. Andrew was also a founding Board Member of World Telehealth Initiative, a non-profit that provides medical expertise to the world’s most vulnerable communities through a network of volunteer healthcare professionals supported with state-of-the-art technology.
Andrew was inspired to join the Search Dog Foundation’s Board as a result of 16 years responding to natural disasters all over the world, and seeing firsthand the important role that first responders with trained search dogs can play in the immediate aftermath of catastrophic events. The first 96 hours are when lives can be saved, and the use of trained search dogs can truly mean the difference between life and death.