Jurriaan Kamp

Mr. Solutions — Kamp Solutions

My name is Jurriaan Kamp. I’m the founder of KAMP SOLUTIONS, the media initiative entirely focused on solutions for people and planet. KAMP SOLUTIONS is a quarterly magazine as well as a TV show broadcasted on KCET, the PBS station of Los Angeles as well as nationwide and globally through LinkTV.

I was born and raised in the Netherlands where I studied international law at Leyden University. In 1995, I left a career as the chief economics editor at the leading Dutch newspaper, NRC Handelsblad. In the newsroom, and as a correspondent in India for almost 5 years, I had learned a lesson that all of us know: news is mostly about things going wrong. I was interested in finding the solutions to all these problems, dramas and disasters. I launched the magazine Ode as a tribute to the people and projects that are making our world a better place. 

Since 2004, I have lived and worked in California from where I started an international English edition of Ode. The English language is a much better carrier for news about innovation that should reach all corners of the world. Very few people speak Dutch…  Ode was renamed The Intelligent Optimist in 2012. In 2015, I launched a daily online solutions news service, The Optimist Daily. 

I have practiced “solutions journalism” for 25 years. I wrote my first story about sustainability in the early 1990s and I had to explain what the word meant. I wrote about microcredit long before it was discovered as a major instrument to alleviate poverty. I profiled the first pioneers who build bridges between ancient healing traditions and modern medicine. 

In the past few years, I have shifted my focus to climate solutions and to regeneration as the next step beyond sustainability. Climate change poses a major threat to the future of humanity. It also presents the biggest-ever opportunity to create a healthier, cleaner and more just world. There are enormous prospects for introducing new technologies that will reverse global warming while creating millions of jobs and regenerating nature. That is the mission and focus of KAMP SOLUTIONS.