This Week in MCJ (4/3/21)
Introducing (expanded) MCJ Office Hours!
Hi all!
We sent out the member survey this past Friday, which we look forward to getting the results from every quarter. The responses have been great and are still coming in. If you are an MCJ member and haven’t filled it out already (and want to), you can search your email inbox for ‘MCJ member survey’ to find the link. These quarterly surveys are invaluable for us to gauge how we are doing as we continue to grow this community, and we take the input we get from you all very seriously.
We are also very excited that the expanded MCJ Office Hours (with several MCJ’ers as mentors!) rolls out this week. If you haven’t signed up for office hours yet and want to, you can do so here. The response we have seen so far is highly encouraging. This is a pilot, and if it goes well, we can see this offering expanding a lot, and incorporating a lot more MCJ’ers as both mentors and mentees, covering a much wider range of topics.
Other than that, not much new to report! We are mostly heads down working on improving our offerings (while keeping up with delivering the existing ones!), and working on a plan to scale out our internal machine that builds our offerings :)
Have a great week!
Jason
🎙Episodes
This week's episodes included a fascinating discussion with Josephine Cheung, Director of Research & Development at GCP Applied Technologies, on the MCJ Pod. Throughout her career, Josephine has pioneered numerous groundbreaking sustainable product solutions for the cement and concrete industry.
I was joined by Joel Jean, Co-Founder & CEO of Swift Solar on the Startup Series. Swift Solar is designing and manufacturing lightweight solar panels and cheaper, more efficient systems than existing products.
During this week’s MCJ Live session, we had a lively conversation about Climate & the Future of Meat. Guests included Frank Wooten (Vence), Isha Datar (New Harvest), Patricia Bubner (Orbillion Bio), Mike Salguero (ButcherBox), and Bruce Friedrich (Good Food Institute).
✨Highlights
🤳Next Week’s MCJ Live will focus on Climate & the Future of Aviation. Jason will be joined by guests from across the aviation industry, including Val Miftakhov, Founder & CEO of ZeroAvia.
📰Climate News this week included Kinder Morgan planning to expand its carbon-capture business in a clean energy investing push. The world's largest chemicals producer by sales, BASF, pledged last week to spend up to 4 billion euros to slash GHG emissions. And President Biden announced his $2 trillion infrastructure plan. Much of the plan will look and feel like a Green New Deal but sold under a package of infrastructure modernization and service upgrades that the country desperately needs.
💼Climate Jobs
Jobs, fellowships, and career opportunities shared by members of the MCJ community. More opportunities can be found in #climatejobs in the MCJ Slack. Check out this google doc for the jobs from this week!
👋 Welcome New MCJers!
You can learn more about new members on #introductions, where you can welcome them to the community.
Owen Mason: Owen currently works at a climate tech investment bank in Zurich and covers advanced transportation, hydrogen, and energy technology.
Adam Hearne: Adam is CEO of CarbonChain, spends each day trying to reduce carbon emissions in supply chains. Ex-Amazon supply chain leader.
Alec Gelfenbein: Alec is a Growth Equity Investor looking to apply his experience scaling software businesses at a climate-tech startup. Here to learn from MCJers.
Greg Zales: Greg is a Product Manager in the credit card industry looking for a climate tech job! Interested in demand response and grid management software.
Wilson Morse: Wilson is an undergraduate at the Wharton School, learning how to scale ventures with the goal of reshaping agricultural, energy, and housing systems.
Robert Höglund: Robert advises organizations on carbon removal & climate policy, looking to connect with other climate enthusiasts and work on solving the crisis.
Marc Houghton: Marc is a naval flight officer, about to transition out of the military after 8 years. He hopes to start a career in the clean-tech/renewable industry this summer.
Mariko Ogawa: Mariko is an MBA/S.M. candidate at MIT with a background in the chemical industry. Strong interest in sustainable fashion. Here to build a network!
Casey Leist: Casey works at CarbonCure where he leads their carbon credit and CO2 sourcing programs. He’s looking forward to collaborating with you all.
Shane Manciagli: Shane has been working at Tesla for the past 7 years, yet only recently became aware of the emerging climate tech solutions. He is excited about the talent and honest passion everyone in MCJ has.
Yee Lee: an early team member at Terraformation, Yee is developing technology and business models to rapidly scale global forestry to be able to plant 3B acres of net new trees in the next decade.
Catherine Vaughan: After founding an organization in the 2020 election called Flippable, Catherine is dedicating her time to focus on democracy and climate.
Dhruv Pillai: Dhruv is a Mechanical Engineer turned Product Manager with experience in commercial energy storage and industrial IoT. He is interested in dedicate my career to climate and sustainability.
Marc Turenne: Marc is a mechanical engineer, and now works at Procter & Gamble on Packaging Research & Development with a focus on sustainability.
Matt Casey: Currently the Head of Americas Sales for Woodmac Power and Renewables, Matt is hoping to get involved with an early-stage startup in renewables and sustainability.
📌Community Board
News and initiatives from members of our community. MCJers mentioned can be DMed in Slack.
👨🏫The MCJ team is debuting mentor office hours! Each week MCJers will have the opportunity to meet 1:1 for 15 minutes with one of our great mentors. The first event will take place next Thursday. If you'd like to attend, please signup here: Mentor Office Hours Sign-Up.
📃MCJ Members Marilyn Waite and Hannah Davis are organizing a list of women and BIPOC Climate Friendly Fund Managers and Financial Advisors. This list is primarily intended to help retail and institutional asset owners allocate capital to diverse climate fund managers and investment advisors. Other uses include syndicating with women and BIPOC-led funds, finding diverse investors for your company’s growth, and seeking speakers with this expertise. If you would like to nominate someone or a firm to be on this list, please fill out this form. Self-nominations are welcome.
🎟Climate Events
Check out the MCJ Calendar! Stay up to date with all things MCJ. We encourage members to host community events such as expert Q&As, book clubs, topic discussions, location-based meet-ups, and more! If you want to add your event to the calendar, email us at events@myclimatejourney.co with the details. Please note, the MCJ calendar is for community events. For third-party events, please use the #events channel in the MCJ slack!
Upcoming
MCJ Book Club (Tuesday, April 6th @ 6 pm PT)
The first meeting of the book club is next week! Please read through the Root and Advocate sections of All We Can Save. For more info check out the #study-group channel. Let us know you’re joining by RSVP’ing here.
MCJ Ideas Jam (Wednesday, April 7th @ noon ET)
For those new to MCJ, this is a monthly pitch event where 2 MCJers pitch their climate business or idea to the community and guest experts. This month @Alex Roetter from Moxxie Ventures is joining us as a guest expert. Please use the RSVP form to register for the event and submit your pitches.
MCJ Live on Clubhouse (Wednesday, April 7th @ 9 pm ET)
This week, Jason will deep dive into the world of Climate & the Future of Aviation, with a great group of guests tackling this problem from diverse perspectives. If you’re on Clubhouse follow the ‘MCJ Live’ club. If you are an iPhone user, download the app and you can use the sign-up link in the #MCJ-Live channel.
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