January 5, 2016 | Read Time: 1 minute
Jena Lee Nardella, 33
Venture Partner Praxis
Co-founder, Blood: Water
Nashville
Jena Lee Nardella’s high-school classmates voted her “Most Likely to Devote My Life to a Lost Cause.” They were only partly right.
Blood: Water, a nonprofit she started as a college senior with the Christian rock band Jars of Clay, plunged into Africa to bring clean water to communities hit by HIV infections.
Eleven years later, Blood: Water has helped build more than 1,000 wells, and Ms. Nardella has become a nonprofit star with a new book, One Thousand Wells; a cameo at the 2012 Democratic National Convention; and a gig training young faith-based social entrepreneurs through the New York-based accelerator Praxis.
“Lost causes are only lost if you leave them behind,” she says.
