John Christopher ’09: High-Stakes Decisions During a Crisis When the 2015 earthquake struck Nepal, John Christopher had to make some quick decisions on how the Oda Foundation could best serve the people of the region.

By Louise Uffelman
June 8, 2017

John Christopher ’09 with Oda Foundation clients. Now in its third year of operation, the non-profit has assisted over 50,000 people, including 31,000 patients at a cost of $2.31 per medical visit. It also employs 15 local residents and tutors 150 children daily.

Despite its remote location, several W&L alumni converged at the Oda Foundation in January. From l. to r.: Becca Dunn ’16 joined Oda in September 2016 as a community health/research fellow; John Christopher ’09; Blaise Buma ’13 visited Oda from his base at Bejing, China, where he is in the Shwartzman scholars program; and Dr. Sam Brusca ’10, who is in the midst of his medical residency at John’s Hopkins and is at Oda with his finacée as a part of their away rotation.

John Christopher, a 2009 graduate of Washington and Lee University, created the Oda Foundation in 2013 to provide basic low-cost, high-impact healthcare services and education to the people of Oda, located in the Kalikot district of Nepal (you can read about his start-up efforts here).

Two years after he opened Oda’s health clinic, John faced an urgent scenario in the aftermath of the devastating 2015 earthquake. Even though the community was not damaged, he wondered how he could mobilize his healthcare providers to serve a wider audience.

He turned to Cheryl Strauss Einhorn, an adjunct professor at Columbia Business School who had developed a system for solving complex problems called the AREA Method, an acronym for the names of perspectives that it addresses. They utilized AREA to develop and analyze strategies to maximize the foundation’s impact. She guided John through her AREA process and chronicled his decision journey in her new book out this month called “Problem Solved: A Powerful System for Making Complex Decisions with Confidence and Conviction” (Career Press, 2017).

Einhorn’s approach is to help her clients figure out where to start. As she writes in her book: “How do you know where to look for information and how to evaluate it? How can you feel confident that you are making a careful and thoroughly researched decision in such a volatile, uncertain world?”

John said, “The exercise became an inflection point for Oda, the result of which was more informed decision-making and greater reach. The book’s forward was penned by former United Kingdom Prime Minister Tony Blair, and the book extensively covers our work in Oda.”

He noted that 50 percent of the book’s proceeds will go to the foundation — good news indeed in these uncertain times.