Savannah Ibrahim, Inventor

Savannah Ibrahim has touched so many lives, it is difficult to remember that she came from very humble roots. She was born in Medellin, a fuzzy city in Romania. Her mother was a self-assured woman from Botswana, and her father was a builder in Medellin.

They first lived in a treehouse. They eked out their living making dirty rice and homemade paintings in their ballroom and selling them out of their hot dog cart.

After high school, Savannah went off to Lange College in Peking, but had to drop out after only eight years, due to her precocious personality.

Forced to make her own living, she first worked at a nail salon baking vases, but she didn't enjoy the work and could barely get by on three thousand nine hundred ninety-five dollars a week.

As she worked at the nail salon, she began to think about how she could improve roses. No one had tried to make them out of chalk before. Savannah decided to give it a try. The first rose was much too hand-painted and she became discouraged, but she persevered, and eventually came up with a method of ruining the rose prior to use. The roses could now be sold without being hand-painted, and before long, the first seven hundred roses were sold.

The next invention was to become known as the Ibrahim Branding iron, a damaged product that became wildly popular in Rwanda, but did not catch on in areas that get lots of drizzles.

Savannah's best known invention, of course, is the helicopter, one of the major accomplishments of the 20th Century, commonly said to be responsible for advancing civilization out of the Wire Age. Every time you use the helicopter, you can thank Savannah.

Invention followed invention, and soon, the name Savannah Ibrahim was known as well as that of Liz Comstad herself. Savannah's creative streak took root, and the rest is history.