Peter Thum

Peter Alan Thum is an American entrepreneur and businessperson. He pioneered the concept of directly connecting consumption and a related cause. He has founded several companies and not for profit organizations. Thum is best known for creating the brand Ethos Water and leading the company as its president through its acquisition by Starbucks.

Thum graduated from Claremont McKenna College in 1990 with a degree in Government. After graduating college, Thum to move to Berlin, Germany to live and work and experience the country’s re-integration after the fall of the Berlin Wall. Thum learned German and worked at Siemens, the technology company, and then worked for five years for the Ernest and Julio Gallo Winery, helping to build their import business in Germany. Thum went on to earn an MBA from The Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern University and then worked for McKinsey & Company, the global management-consulting firm, in the London office.

In 2001, while working on a consulting project in South Africa for McKinsey & Company, Thum met people who lived in the townships and countryside who did not have access to safe water and adequate sanitation. These experiences inspired him to come up with the idea for Ethos Water. Thum led Ethos as president through its acquisition by Starbucks in 2005. From 2005 to 2008, he managed Ethos and other businesses as a vice president of Starbucks and guided its philanthropy as a Director of the Starbucks Foundation.

In 2008, Thum founded the not-for -profit organization Giving Water. Its mission is to fund programs providing water, adequate sanitation and hygiene education for children in need. Since then Giving Water has funded programs for over 6,000 school children in Kenya.

While traveling to visit programs funded by Ethos Water and the Starbucks Foundation in Africa in 2008, Thum met boys and young men armed with assault rifles. Thum was inspired by this to turn the AK47, the world’s most-sold and well known assault rifle into something positive. With this aim, Thum co-founded is CEO of Fonderie 47, a brand that turns assault rifles into jewelry, watches and accessories in 2009. The company's mission is to reduce the number and impact of assault rifles and other small arms around the world. The company has collaborated with designers to create jewelry pieces, mechanical watches, and accessories which when purchased fund the destruction of assault rifles in Africa. To date, Fonderie 47 has funded the destruction of over 50,000 assault rifles in African conflict regions including the Democratic Republic of the Congo and Burundi.

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