Cristina Gnecco

In June 2026, Cristina Gnecco brought the company she co-founded back to its roots. HOPE Hydration partnered with Miami-Dade County to install 15 free water refill stations at transit hubs across the county, putting an idea that began in Miami directly into the public transportation system used by residents and visitors every day.

The idea behind HOPE Hydration is simple: helping people find drinking water easily when they're out of their house. Its HydroStations dispense filtered, chilled water, with advertising helping support the model.

© Michael Kovac

The stations also double as public information screens, displaying messages and emergency alerts. Since 2023, they have recorded more than 5.2 million refills across five U.S. markets.

For Gnecco, water access was an interest long before she made it into her business. Born in Colombia and raised in Atlanta, she studied social entrepreneurship and sustainable global development at NYU. She later served as a UN youth representative and researched water-access models in Buenos Aires with Ashoka, a global organization that supports social entrepreneurs.

Entrepreneurship was also a part of her upbringing. Gnecco has described growing up with entrepreneurial parents whose kitchen-table conversations revolved around taking risks, solving problems, and building something from scratch. Years later, she paired that mindset with her interest in sustainability, co-founding and becoming the COO of HOPE Hydration.

The company has since raised more than $26 million and partnered with brands like Nike and the Formula 1 Miami Grand Prix. In March 2026, Gnecco was named one of Inc.’s Female Founders 500 for her work in expanding the HydroStation network and leading strategic partnerships.

Now, the Miami-Dade rollout brings her work into a different kind of space: the places people move through every day. It is a practical approach to two enormous issues, water access and single-use plastic, built around one very ordinary action. More than five million refills later, Gnecco continues to show just how far one small action can go.