This Week in MCJ (12/19/20)
Our first official hire!
Hey everyone,
Another busy week! The biggest news in MCJ-land is after months of consulting (and busting his hump), we finally made Thai official! For anyone that has been part of the MCJ Slack community, you know what a huge role he’s been playing, and I am so pumped to have him as part of the core full-time squad.
We also added an awesome advisor, who will be a huge help as we scale our efforts with the fund.
And finally, for anyone with an Android phone, you may be familar with the Android co-founder (and longtime Google Ventures partner), Rich Miner! We were pumped to add Rich officially as a fund LP, and his expertise should be a big help to the growing portfolio of founders we work with, and to us!
Now that the fund is on a path (and going well, so far!), you can expect a similar slew of announcements as we seek to level up our content and community efforts. Stay tuned :)
Jason
🛠MCJ Make-a-thon — Wrapping Up
On Friday, we saw a wonderful showing of participants who worked on projects (details of each can be found here) during MCJ’s 2-week inaugural Make-a-thon. We’re so impressed by the passion and work participants put into their project and wanted to share them with the rest of community. And although we’ve wrapped up this first Make-a-thon, many will continue to work on their project and they invite others to join if there’s interest in collaborating!
“Canadian Energy Flows: Sankey Diagram” (@Ryder Bergerud, @Sophie Sheeline, @Chris Taggart, @Liam)
You can check out a demo of the Sankey Diagram the team developed.
“Offsets That Work” (@Evan Maynard)
Seeking those who could help with understanding the economic and verification aspects of RGGI offsets.
“Climate Market Map” (@Will Jackowitz, @Julien Soufflet)
Seeking help unifying data sources into an accessible website; join the project at #climate-map.
“Seeing Earth” (@Sam, @Charlotte Mallo)
Seeking help as they organize data around a set of climate solutions. Check out the Github repo.
“Project Exodus: Exploring Opportunities to Improve the MCJ Community Platform” (@Jeremy Jones, et al.)
DM Jeremy & Thai if interested in learning more.
“Climate Intelligence” (@vrushank)
To be presented in an upcoming town hall!
Thanks to all the project participants — bravo 👏!
📼Episodes
Here’s this week’s episode, in case you missed it.
Episode 135: Rob Niven, Founder and CEO of CarbonCure Technologies
This week’s guest is Rob Niven, Founder & CEO of CarbonCure Technologies, which manufactures technology that introduces recycled CO₂ into fresh concrete to reduce its carbon footprint without compromising performance.
Rob and I have a detailed discussion about the CarbonCure origin story, how their technology works, why it matters, where we are with decarbonizing concrete, where we need to get to, and the most effective ways for us to get there.
If you want to learn more about decarbonizing concrete, this longform discussion with Rob is an amazing primer!
📼Climate Tech Startup Series (CTSS)
The Startup Series features founders of early-stage companies, sharing their business and mission. The audio to this series is available wherever you get your podcasts. The pitch presentation and slides are exclusively available to My Climate Journey Members. If you’re interested in watching this episode, you can learn about becoming an MCJ Member here, or you can find the audio here.
Episode 22: I See Change with CEO and Founder Julia Drapkin
ISeeChange gives residents a way to quickly report climate and weather-driven changes in their community as they experience them, including impacts such as urban heat, wildfires, and air quality, as well as flooding and coastal changes. Cities and other local clients then use the aggregated data to inform and adapt policies, models, and designs. ISeeChange tackles the climate crisis by helping clients better respond to their constituents' needs while building capacity among those most acutely affected by climate change.
Founder and CEO, Julia Kumari Drapkin, walks me through her background as a climate journalist, why she started ISeeChange, what the company has accomplished so far and where it is heading.
👋 Welcome New MCJers!
Below are new members who joined the community and introduced themselves in the past week. You can learn more about them on #introductions, where you can welcome them to the community.
A warm welcome to the MCJ Community!
Ben Carron: Currently working at a consulting firm called Energy and Environmental Economics (E3). Ben started his career in energy policy. He is interested in the intersection of VC and policy and meeting more of the MCJ community.
Sam Hashemi: Previously founded and ran Remix, a city planning software company for local governments. He is looking to dive into the climate space career-wise.
Peter Scheuermann: Currently a postdoctoral researching at the University of British Columbia where he focuses on mine tailing and how to optimize carbon mineralization in wastes from industrial processes. He is looking forward to being part of the MCJ community.
Marisa Sweeney: Currently on the investment team at Generate with a background in finance. She is interested in meeting fellow MCJers interesting in finance and decarbonization.
John Pobojewski: Currently a Partner and Design Director at Span, a communication design studio in Chicago. He is interested in climate issues through communication design and excited to meet more MCJers.
Chris Taggart: Currently the lead software engineer at Canvaspop an online wall art company. He has also worked at Hydro Ottawa. He is interested in ways to drive mass electrification.
Joshua March: Currently Founder and CEO of Artemys Foods. Artemys Foods is focused on cell-based and plant-based meat in San Francisco where Joshua is based.
Kelly Hering: CTO and Co-founder of Charm Industrial, her background is in technical engineering. Kelly is excited to be part of the community and meet more MCJers.
Brent Davidson: Currently a UX Designer at Adobe but he is looking to start a new company and for climate co-founders. He is interested in electricity but not exclusively. Brent is looking forward to meeting more MCJers.
Gavin Nachbar: Currently, the lead of Operations Strategy & Infrastructure at Waymo. He can’t wait to connect with MCJers in the EV and clean transportation spaces.
Daniel Velez-Lopez: Currently in business development for a corporate venture capital group at a large utility. His experience is in environmental and energy policy and he’s looking forward to being part of the MCJ community.
Gabrielle Jorgensen: Currently building grassroots advocacy campaigns at a public affairs firm headed by Democratic political strategists. She is interested in climate work and is interested in learning more from the MCJ community and exchange ideas. She has insight into the political arena.
Robert Cooper: Currently the co-founder & CEO at Embue. He is looking forward to working with the MCJ community to learn more about the climate crisis.
🗺”Want to Work on Climate? Start Here.”
MCJer Susan Su wrote a wonderfully comprehensive guide to learning about climate change and climate tech. It’s a recommended primer for anyone new to climate! Check out her piece here.
💼Climate Jobs
Here are some jobs shared by members of the MCJ community that we think might be of interest to you. Many of these opportunities and the MCJers who shared them can be found in #climatejobs in the MCJ Slack.
Principal Engineer (great for someone coming from the tech side of project development or with experience as an EPC contractor) and Business Development (requires some technical background) at New Energy Risk (Job listing) (careers page)
Software Developers and Digital Marketer at Joro (job listing) (careers page)
Senior Data Analyst Fellowship at Circular Carbon Network (job listing) (fellowship info)
Senior Product Designer and Head of Sales at Ride Report (PD listing) (Head of Sales listing)
Research Software Engineer or Full Stack Engineer at International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis (IIASA) (job listing) (careers page)
Machine Learning Research Engineer at Open Climate Fix (job listing) (careers page)
Various positions at Emmi (creating a rating to provide institutional investors data driven metrics relating to the carbon financial risk of corporates.) (Australia) (job posting) (careers page)
A not-yet-announced soil measurement startup in need of a first engineer (maybe cofounder-level?) software lead (job listing) (job post)
📰🎧Recommended Reading/Listening
Below are recently published articles and content that we find interesting and/or that were shared by fellow MCJers.
Wall Street Journal: “Unilever to Give Investors Advisory Vote on Climate-Change Plan”
PR Newswire: “Swift Solar Secures Over $8M in Series Seed 2 Funding with Climate Tech and Deep Tech Investors” (Check out MCJ member, Joel Jean’s company!)
Princeton.edu: “Big but affordable effort needed for America to reach net-zero emissions by 2050, Princeton study shows”
Washington Post: “Biden picks former EPA chief Gina McCarthy as White House climate czar”
The New York Times: “Al Gore: Where I Find Hope” (PDF)
Green Tech Media: “Con Edison Contracts Its Biggest Battery to Date in New York City”
Business Insider: “The 46 top climate-tech startups to watch in 2021, according to VCs”
Axios: “Downward march of lithium-ion battery prices is making EVs more competitive”
🎟Climate Events
As a reminder, we have a MCJ Events Calendar, where you can view and post events for the rest of the MCJ community to attend. When posting an event, please refer to this checklist.
*We’re highlighting a few upcoming events below; please refer to the events calendar for a complete list.*
Upcoming
Open to All: MCJ Town Hall (Wednesday December 30th @ 1pm ET)
We’re hosting our last town hall of 2020 to discuss the latest with MCJ and get feedback from the community (that’s you!). If you’ve been following along with the newsletter, you know that much has happened since our last town hall and this forum provides an opportunity to discuss a variety of topics of your choosing with fellow members of the community. If you would like a calendar invite, please drop us a note or DM Sarah Adams on slack.
Meet-a-MCJer via Icebreaker (Friday January 8th @ noon ET)
We’re hosting an Icebreaker for members of the MCJ community. Come join us for several rounds of casual 1:1 conversations with a fellow MCJ Member whom you have not met. Each round of conversation is 10 minutes and there’s fun questions to help break the 🧊! RSVP by dropping us a note.
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