About The Chamber of Us
Building infrastructure for people who want their work to matter.
The Chamber of Us is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit building open methods, tools, and partnerships that help promising work move from evidence to action.
Why we exist
Good ideas often fail before they find the right path forward.
Many real-world problems are not missing solutions. They are missing the systems that help good solutions move: trusted evidence, clear decisions, capable people, responsible funding, and implementation pathways that can survive real-world constraints.
TCUS exists to help make those pathways visible. We work on the difficult middle between intention and implementation, where promising ideas need to become trusted action.
Our work centers on one question: who must say yes next, and what would make that yes responsible?
The question that started it
What does the world need?
Before founding The Chamber of Us, Kevin Schmidt spent more than a decade in engineering and corporate energy, leading global teams, managing high-stakes programs, and helping develop technologies that set records for efficiency.
But over time, the question changed. Technical progress alone did not feel sufficient if the broader systems around that progress remained misaligned with long-term human and environmental well-being.
That tension led to a deeper question: What does the world need?
The search for that answer took Kevin across communities in Ethiopia, Southeast Asia, India, and beyond. He saw profound needs in education, health, infrastructure, nutrition, and opportunity, but also something else: unrealized potential everywhere.
TCUS was founded from that recognition. The work is not about charity as usual. It is about building the connective infrastructure that helps people, evidence, partners, and resources find each other at the right time.
What we build
TCUS builds the infrastructure around good work.
Our work combines methodology, software, research, field learning, and volunteer coordination.
Pathfinder
A methodology for managing adoption pathways under uncertainty.
Explore PathfinderLibelle
A people layer that helps match contributors to meaningful work.
Visit LibelleField learning
Real projects and partnerships that help us learn how implementation pathways work.
See ImpactResearch
Evidence-first work on adoption, uncertainty, infrastructure, climate, education, and systems change.
Read the Working PaperFounding team
Three board members, one shared commitment to useful systems.
Kevin Schmidt
Founder, Executive Director
Kevin is a mechanical engineer and former energy-sector leader who spent more than a decade leading global engineering programs, product development efforts, and crisis-response teams.
He founded TCUS after leaving corporate energy to work on systems that connect human capacity, evidence, and implementation. His work now focuses on Pathfinder, Libelle, education infrastructure, and the operating model behind TCUS.
Sadiya Chatham
Chief Health Officer and Board Member
Sadiya began her career as a physician in Kerala, India, serving remote communities and working directly with the realities of health insecurity.
She later pursued health informatics, with a focus on data, NLP, and scalable health systems. At TCUS, she brings clinical experience, informatics training, and a systems-level view of health, access, and human well-being.
Farhan Salim
Chief Financial Officer and Board Member
Farhan is a civil engineer with experience in construction management, finance, project delivery, and cross-border professional growth.
At TCUS, he helps bring practical judgment to funding, operations, construction-related work, and the long process of turning big ideas into real-world implementation.
Our human engine
A distributed community of builders, researchers, designers, operators, and partners.
TCUS is volunteer-powered. Our community includes students, professionals, parents, technologists, researchers, designers, engineers, writers, retirees, and on-site partners.
We are building a model where people can contribute at different levels of capacity without pretending every contribution has to look the same.
Some people help build software. Some synthesize research. Some document field work. Some review evidence. Some help make the work more humane and understandable.
The common thread is not prestige. It is usefulness, integrity, and follow-through.
Principles
How we try to work.
Open
We favor transparent methods, open documentation, and reusable tools where possible.
Evidence-first
We separate what we know from what we assume, and we make uncertainty visible.
Human-led
AI may assist with evidence, coordination, and drafting, but humans remain responsible for judgment and decisions.
Consent-based
We design for privacy, user control, and respectful participation.
Partner-centered
We work through real relationships, local context, and accountable implementation.
Learning-oriented
A project that pauses, changes, or stops responsibly can still teach something valuable.
Organization
A small nonprofit building for long-term usefulness.
The Chamber of Us is a U.S. 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization.
We are still early. That is why our public work emphasizes transparency, working drafts, open methods, case studies, and honest learning. We do not claim to have solved coordination. We are building the tools and habits required to study it, improve it, and apply it responsibly.
EIN: 93-3759486
The Chamber of Us
The right support at the right time can change the path.
TCUS exists to build the systems, tools, and partnerships that make those moments easier to find.