By J.P. McBride
The Huntsville Item, Texas
WWR Article Summary (tl;dr) Entrepreneur Katie Anderson and her team at “Save Water Co.” use a three-step process to eliminate water waste and lower the cost of utility bills for clients. Her success was recently recognized during the Cartier Women’s Initiative Awards in Singapore.
The Huntsville Item, Texas
Huntsville High School graduate Katie Anderson has garnered plenty of attention since starting her water conservation business, Save Water Co., in 2014, including being named to Forbes Magazine’s 30 Under 30 list in 2015 for the brightest young minds in their respective industries.
Now, Anderson can claim that she is the top female entrepreneur in North America.
Anderson was named the laureate of the North American region during the Cartier Women’s Initiative Awards two weeks ago in Singapore for the effort her company has made to save water in Texas.
Anderson said it felt incredible to receive such an honor, especially with her parents Ricky and Cindy in attendance, amongst a field of candidates that included 17 other inspirational women from six regions of the world.
“It was such a surreal moment to even be there,” Anderson said. “It was a mixture of emotions. There was a lot of excitement and definitely some nervousness. It was amazing to have support from (my parents) in the audience.”
Anderson was competing to become the laureate of the North American region against Angela Braren, who created an online platform called Instrumentl to help researchers find and apply for grants, and Rhonda Harper, whose company, Penrose Senior Care Auditors, assesses the living conditions of senior assisted-living centers across the nation.
As one of the six laureates of the award ceremony, Anderson received $100,000 to invest in her company, which she said will help her company in its mission to conserve water around the world. She will also be flown back to Singapore in December to attend INSEAD, a graduate business school that ranks among the top business schools in the world, for a week.
“We are working on several different things in-house that will help us with scalability,” Anderson said. “Our bigger goal is to create global impact, so that money is definitely going to be invested into the sections of our company that will help with our scaling.”
Anderson got to spend nearly a week with the 17 other candidates while in Singapore, learning about what challenges their companies face and what they are doing to solve them.
“It was incredible and super inspirational to be around them,” Anderson said. “All of their stories were amazing. They all care so much about what they are doing. Meeting people who see a problem, then act on it and do something about it was such an honor.”
A friend of Anderson’s named Marlee Peters, who now works for Save Water Co., was aware of what the company was doing and thought Anderson’s efforts were worthy of recognition by Cartier, so Peters recommended Anderson to be acknowledged. That led to Anderson being selected as a finalist for their Women’s Initiative Awards.
After it was announced that she was one of the three North American finalists, Anderson said she was reminded of her company’s humble beginnings and how far Save Water Co. has come, now employing 18 people.
“I can remember our very first project and it was just me and two guys who are still with me,” Anderson said. “Now, we’re being flown halfway across the world to sit in front of a global audience and discuss what we’re up to and what we’ve discovered over the last several years. That’s really cool to think about and fun to be a part of.”
Anderson and her team at Save Water Co. use a three-step process to eliminate water waste and lower the cost of utility bills for clients, who typically own apartment complexes, hotels and office properties in the Dallas area.
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