This Week in MCJ (5/1/21)
The MCJ events calendar is starting to fill up 😊
Hi all,
Another busy week! We had a great Town Hall Friday (which we forgot to record, unfortunately!), and it was nice to see a bunch of new faces and interest from the MCJ community. I look forward to those every month!
During Town Hall, Cody Simms (of TechStars and Climate Changemakers fame) announced he’s kicking off a project on behalf of MCJ to better understand the community, including identifying community personas, establishing KPIs for measuring community health, and mapping these things to future community events and programs. More info below, and if you are interested in joining the team that is working on this, get in touch with Cody in MCJ Slack!
We also got some great input from the community, both at Town Hall and in response to the newsletter last week, about the Slack platform decision. Still working through the best path forwards, but your input was tremendously helpful to inform this important decision.
Same on the ‘reverse job board’ idea I wrote about in the newsletter last week. There was a lot of interest from the community in participating in such a thing, so we are working through how to structure, but we do plan to move forward here. Stay tuned!
On another topic, looking at the list of events/programming below, I am heartened to see a bunch of great events/programming happening within the community, including the Office Hours that MCJ’s Sarah Adams has been organizing with a great group of mentors from within the community, another great MCJ Icebreaker event, another great Ideas Jam, the popular Book Club, another great DEI-Climate Justice Meetup, and a New Member Orientation session (which MCJ‘s Thai Nguyen was the brainchild of!). If you haven’t participated in an MCJ event yet, try one out! We are going to be putting on more of these over time, and encouraging others in the community to do the same, and it is great to see that we are starting to making some progress in this important area.
And lastly, congrats to our friends at Fervo and Pachama on their respective big news this week! One we are an investor in, one we aren’t (but wish we were!), but we are HUGE fans of both companies, Tim and Diego have both come on the show, and we are proud to have them both as members of the MCJ community.
Until next week!
Jason
🎙Episodes
This week's episodes included a lively conversation with Irving Fain, Founder & CEO of Bowery Farming, a modern farming company building smart indoor farms located close to the cities it serves. I also had a great discussion with Eliza Nemser on the Climate Careers series. Eliza is the Co-Founder of Climate Changemakers, a nonpartisan community action network organizing to support climate candidates and ambitious climate policies, which she started right here in MCJ Slack!
✨Highlights
Climate News this week! In a groundbreaking ruling, the judges of the Karlsruhe court, Germany’s highest, said the government now had until the end of next year to improve its Climate Protection Act, passed in 2019, and to ensure it met 2030 greenhouse gas reduction goals more immediately. On Wednesday, Senate Democrats deployed a once-obscure law to resurrect Obama-era regulations on methane that the Trump administration had wiped away. Hawaii became the first US state to declare a Climate Emergency. Targets like ‘net-zero’ won’t solve the climate crisis on their own. With ambitious new goals coming out of the US and UK, governments also need to decarbonize the economy and rethink how it’s planned.
SoCal MCJers met up for a hike on Saturday, April 17th! Thanks to Charlotte Mallo for organizing the event! We love to see MCJers meeting up in person.
💼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.
📚Startup Resources
Techstars Sustainability Accelerator is accepting applications through May 12th for their third class. This is a very unique accelerator, partnering with the world’s largest environmental nonprofit The Nature Conservancy, on a mission to supercharge early-stage startups who are protecting the planet, conserving our natural resources, and creating a world where humans and nature can both thrive. Participating companies receive up to $120K in funding, personalized mentorship from Techstars and The Nature Conservancy, and much more. The program starts in September 2021. Learn more on their site and at an upcoming Q&A with the team.
👋 Welcome New MCJers!
You can learn more about new members on #introductions, where you can welcome them to the community.
Larry Gloeckler: Larry is an atmospheric scientist. He hopes to collaborate with MCJ members and learn about climate-related career opportunities.
Yasha Tarani: Yasha is one of the founders at THE CLIMATE CHOICE. Prior, he founded resmio.com - a SaaS company serving >10k restaurants.
Angela Gelnaw: Currently, in the tech industry, Angela is interested in sustainable supply chains, deforestation and food and agriculture redistribution.
Danny McGee: Danny is a Sustainability Consultant focusing on chemicals, energy, policies engineering, and design. He looks forward to making connections throughout MCJ.
Itaru Shiraishi: Currently working at a venture capital based in Tokyo, Itaru is looking forward to support others and learn from everyone’s latest projects, discussions, and initiatives.
📌Community Board
News and initiatives from members of our community. MCJers mentioned can be DMed in Slack.
Announcing the MCJ May Office Hours! As many of you know we debuted this offering last month. Mentees can expect a 30 minute 1:1 session with the mentor of their choice. For more info on the mentors and how to sign up, check out this post in MCJ Slack.
💡We are kicking off a mini-project to learn more about the MCJ community, including identifying community personas, establishing KPIs for measuring community health, and mapping these things to future community events and programs. If you’d like to join the team that’s working on this, DM Cody Simms in MCJ Slack.
👨💻Underdog Devs is working to provide skills to formally incarcerated folks. Every year, 600k people are released from prison in the US. Many of them face harrowing job prospects, but some especially driven returning citizens have schooled themselves in technology and are starting new lives as software developers, all helping each other in a growing and powerful community at Underdog Devs. If your company is open to hiring anyone, please get in touch Tim Cull via email.
📨ClimateRaise is a newsletter that showcases climate startups led by female founders and connects them with climate ecosystem stakeholders. It was founded by five MCJ members and has made over 50 introductions between investors. If you are a female founder and want to be connected to investors and stakeholders, sign up here. If you are an investor or climate ecosystem stakeholder and want to connect to top female-led climate founders, sign up here.
📩Innovate Climate is a newsletter that highlights startups the the broader climate and sustainability ecosystem. The mission is to help startups succeed and create impact, specifically by providing visibility to others in the sector and facilitating introductions.
🎟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 the details at events@myclimatejourney.co. For third-party events, please use the #events channel in the MCJ slack!
Upcoming
MCJ Book Club (Tuesday, May 4th @ 6 pm PT)
The third and final meeting for the All We Can Save book club. Let us know you’re joining by RSVP’ing here! For more info and to vote for the next book, check out the #study-group channel.
MCJ Ideas Jam (Wednesday, May 5th @ 8 pm 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. We’re pleased to announce this month we have Sam Suskind from Valo Ventures and Ted Dillon from Clean Energy Ventures will be joining us as guest experts. RSVP here!
MCJ Member Orientation (Thursday, May 6th @ 5 pm ET)
A weekly event to help onboard recently joined and existing members to the community. Attendees can expect a casual conversation about how to navigate the community, opportunities to engage in various events, programs, groups, and anything else folks would like to discuss. RSVP here!
DEI-Climate Justice Monthly Meet-up (Friday, May 7th @ 12 pm ET)
Maki Tazawa and Charlotte Mallo host the monthly meetups for the #dei-climatejustice channel. Please DM Maki Tazawa your email address if you would like to attend so she can add you to the calendar invitations.
Meet-an-MCJer Icebreaker (Friday, May 7th @ 1 pm ET)
Meet a fellow MCJer from the comfort of your computer. Enjoy several 10-min 1:1 casual conversations with a fellow community member, facilitated by the video chat platform Icebreaker. RSVP here!
This Week in MCJ is a free weekly email curating news, jobs, new MCJ episodes, and other noteworthy happenings in the MCJ community.
📨If someone forwarded this to you, sign up!
💭If you have feedback or items you’d like to include, feel free to reach out
🗓Stay up to date with the MCJ Events Calendar
🐦Follow us on Twitter
🤳 Follow us on Clubhouse
👂Check out the Podcast
🌳Become an MCJ member