This Week in MCJ (12/26/20)
Some reflection as the year comes to a close.
Hey everyone,
Happy holidays! I hope you are each getting some downtime to reflect and be thankful after this crazy year. I am going to try to take it easy this week, though I tend not to be very good at that.
In terms of MCJ news, as we wrote earlier this week, we tucked our 2nd public investment announcement in right under the wire before the holidays….
This was a special one, because we first got introduced to Overstory through our friends (and fellow MCJ’ers) at Pale Blue Dot, who led Overstory’s seed round. Then we had the CEO/co-founder, Indra, on the show. Then, Overstory hired MCJ’er Fiona Spruill as Chief Product Officer, whom they connected with via MCJ. By the time we ended up writing a check, we already felt like we were part of the company :)
I am heading into 2021 feeling stressed about the state of the world, but feeling encouraged that we are turning a corner and going to come out in 2021 swinging. I also feel so very fortunate to be in a position where my family has a roof over our heads, our health, and that I have a career I’ve been able to keep moving forward through this incredibly difficult period, unlike so many others who aren’t fairing nearly as well. This only increases my determination to plow forward and keep chipping away together at making sure that the future is not just as good, but even better than the past, both in the aggregate and at the individual level for each of the world’s inhabitants.
Thanks for being on this journey together! See you in 2021. 🌱
Jason
📼Episodes
Here’s this week’s episode, in case you missed it.
Episode 136: Nili Gilbert, Investment Committee Chair of the David Rockefeller Fund and Synergos
This week’s guest is Nili Gilbert, Investment Committee Chair of the David Rockefeller Fund and Synergos. Nili was Co-Founder and until recently was a Portfolio Manager at Matarin Capital, where she had responsibility for hedge fund and long-only equity strategies. Matarin has been recognized as a performance leader and as a thought leader, with its research cited in such publications as The Wall Street Journal and Barron’s. Nili regularly appears on CNBC and Bloomberg television to share insights, as well.
She holds an AB from Harvard University, graduating magna cum laude in a special concentration in Economics and Social Studies, and received her MBA in Finance and Economics from Columbia Business School, where she was a Toigo Fellow.
Nili chairs the Investment Committees of the Board of Directors of both Synergos and the David Rockefeller Fund. She has been honored as a World Economic Forum Young Global Leader, as Entrepreneur of the Year by the National Association of Securities Professionals, by Bloomberg Businessweek as one of the 20 “Ones to Watch” for 2019, by 100 Women in Hedge Funds as a Chartered Alternative Investment Analyst Scholar, by LinkedIn as one of 10 Top Voices in Finance and Economics for 2019, and with the Toigo Foundation’s Bridge to Business award. She is also a life member of the Council on Foreign Relations and a member of the Economic Club of New York.
Nili and I have a great discussion in this episode about her personal journey to find meaning in her work, and the dual tracks that took along the way, with a high profile finance career where she injected her values at every step, and through her philanthropic efforts. We also have a bigger picture discussion about these thorny systems problems and the best ways for us to address them as a society.
Enjoy the show!
📼Startup Series
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 watch it here.
Episode 23: unspun with CEO and Founder Kevin Martin
unspun is a robotics and digital apparel company building custom jeans for each consumer, on demand. Their mission is to reduce global carbon emissions by 1% through automated, localized, and intentional apparel manufacturing. By using the iPhone FaceID sensor to create a digital avatar, unspun can instantly tailor and build each garment to the actual customer, and delivers a completely custom product (style, fabric, stitching color, etc) at off-the-rack prices— all while eliminating unsold inventory waste: a $150B/yr loss in the industry as a whole. Recently included in Time's Best Inventions and PopSci's Best of What's New, unspun is leading one of the most wasteful industries in the world towards a more sustainable, and profitable, future.
In this episode, unspun co-founder and CTO Kevin Martin walks me through what motivated him and his co-founders to tackle this massive challenge within the fashion industry. We also discuss the future of apparel in a covid world, how unspun's core robotics technology fits with their consumer-facing brand, and Kevin's vision for the future of automated and localized manufacturing. Kevin was a great guest, and I learned a lot about the climate impact of the apparel industry.
🙋♀️Community Asks
Finch decodes products’ environmental and social impacts to help people make informed decisions. They’re looking for beta testers for their browser extension in January. If you’re interested sign up on their website: www.choosefinch.com
👋 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!
Brian Ames: Brian has spent the last decade in operation roles at various tech companies including Facebook, Snap, and, most recently, Activision Blizzard. He had decided to redirect his professional energies towards addressing climate change. He is looking for opportunities to move into growth equity investments supporting climate-related enterprises.
Nilesh Bansod: Nilesh is the Director of Partnerships at Terra.do, he oversees efforts to add new courses to the platform. He has experience in Mechanical Engineering and Management Consulting. Nilesh is excited to be part of the MCJ community and learn from fellow members.
Eli Mitchell-Larson: Eli is based at the University of Oxford where he focuses on research, consulting, and carbon storage. He splits his time between Carbon Direct where he works in strategy and a member of the Myles Allen’s research group at Oxford where he is a PhD candidate.
Jason Demeny: Jason is looking forward to being part of this community. Currently, he is a data-based Product Marketing/Management, Strategy and Business Development leader with 20 years of experience focusing on driving SaaS based enterprise software solutions. He is especially interested in energy, transportation, food and ag, and GHG emissions reduction solutions and sequestration approaches.
📚Startup Resources
Terra.co has teamed up with Moxxie Ventures and Techstars to offer a new, six-week “Climate Camp” for Venture Investors. Learn how seasoned investors are impacting climate change by backing world-changing climate tech startups. Conducted entirely online, this investor bootcamp helps you understand how climate change is transforming economies, as well as how the technologies and politics designed to combat climate change are rapidly evolving across the globe.
Each class is limited to 25 participants. Apply by Feb 10th, 2020 to join the first cohort on Feb 21. To learn more and apply, visit https://www.terra.do/climate-camp-for-venture-investors.
💼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.
Director of Program Offerings and Fellowship Experience, Manager of Fellowship Coordination, and Associate of Fellow Recruitment and Selection at Gates Ventures, which is building a new Breakthrough Energy Fellows program that funds both innovators and promising business leaders to commercialize critical climate technologies (job descriptions)
Senior Mechanical or Chemical Design Engineer, Hardware Test Engineer, Software Engineer, and electrical-leaning Technician/Fabricator at Charm Industrial (job listing)
Program Associate Supporting the Environment Program at The Hewlett Foundation. Additional information about the program is available here. (job listing)
Carbon Dioxide Removal “Wrangler”/Project Manager to help build new UK/EUCDR advocacy outfit (part-time) (job listing) (job description)
Engineers and Growth (Sales, Innovation, Account Managers) at Populus (careers page)
Software Lead, Firmware Engineer, and Chief of Staff at unspun (careers page)
📰🎧Recommended Reading/Listening
Below are recently published articles and content that we find interesting and/or that were shared by fellow MCJers.
Tech Crunch: “New stimulus bill includes $35.2 billion for new energy initiatives”
Vogue: “These Diamonds Are Made With Carbon Pulled From the Atmosphere”
Bloomberg: “East Africa’s Electric Motorbikes Are Fueling a Carbon-Free Future”
CNN: “A $5 billion foundation literally founded on oil money is saying goodbye to fossil fuels”
Quartz: “Geothermal energy, the forgotten renewable, has finally arrived”
🎟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!). These town halls are an open forum to ask questions to us, give us feedback, and get more insight into our roadmap and plans for MCJ and MCJ Collective, as well as meet some other MCJ’ers. 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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