This Week in MCJ (5/8/21)
A good kind of tipping point.
Hey all!
It’s been a crazy 2.5 yrs so far for MCJ. I am proud of what we’ve built, but at the same time, we basically have what feels like a giant MVP. The pod is an MVP for what a robust, multimodal content offering could be. The slack room is an MVP for what a , thriving, multidimensional community could be. And the rolling fund is an MVP for what a robust, multi-stage investment arm could be. And same with our team, we have an incredible group around the table, but only two of us are official (and only one of us draws any salary!), and the rest of the team is either consulting or volunteering, until we can unlock the ability to support a full-time squad.
We are getting close though! We’ve been nudging everything towards the middle, and it is feeling like (knock on wood!) things will flip in the next few months, and we can get more of the core squad in full-time, have a well defined plan to build out a more industrial strength offering (call it MCJ 2.0!), and start more aggressively marching down the path towards expansion that we have been eager to travel since we started this whole thing.
I am trying to be impatient and patient at the same time. Patient, since I know these things take time. And impatient, since I want to compress that time as much as humanly possible. Life of an entrepreneur! At any rate, I have never had more conviction in anything I have ever built. And the thing that gives me more conviction than anything is the people around the table, both on the core team and in the broader MCJ community. You are the people that give us the energy to keep going, and make us believe that anything is possible! Thank you for being on this journey with us. The next year is going to be an exciting one, for MCJ and for climate action. Onwards!
Jason
🎙Episodes
This week's episodes included an exciting discussion with Caroline Cochran, Co-Founder & COO of Oklo Inc., a company working to build powerhouses, advanced fission power plants on a microgrid scale. I also had a fascinating conversation with Paul Gross, Co-Founder & CEO of Remora. Remora is developing a device that captures carbon emissions from semi-trucks.
✨Highlights
Climate News this week! Canary Media announced Washington state now has the nation's most ambitious climate policy. Without much national attention, the last few years have seen Washington quietly put into place the most comprehensive and ambitious slate of climate and energy policies of any U.S. state. South Pole this week announced the development of the Next Generation Carbon Removal Purchase Facility together with Mitsubishi Corporation. The facility aims to procure at least US$300-800 million worth of certified carbon removal credits by 2030. New U.S. Climate Normals maps published by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) on Tuesday is enough for most climate scientists to say, "I told you so." And it's not just because the maps show a warmer and wetter nation, as one would expect with global warming; it's also the specific geographic pattern of those changes.
💼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.
EIR Fellowship at Prime Impact Fund (job listing)
Director of Impact at Prime Coalition (job listing)
Finance Director at EV Life (job listing) (careers page)
Head of People & Culture, Community Manager, and Sr Product Manager at DroneSeed (careers page)
Engagement Managers to run climate-forward projects at incumbent utilities and climatetech startups (job listing) (careers page)
Various positions across Engineering, Sales, Product, and Operations at SINAI (job listing) (careers page)
Deal Flow team member at Green Angel Syndicate (remote UK hours eventually in London) (job listing) (careers page)
Senior Manager for Climate Mitigation for The City of Philadelphia (Philly) (job listing) (careers page)
Various roles across Engineering, Data Science, and more at Sense (job listing) (careers page)
City Diplomacy and Campaigns Manager at C40 Cities (open to those in New York, London, Johannesburg, Rio de Janeiro, Bogota, Addis Ababa, and Accra) (job listing) (careers page)
Director of Corporate Communications at CarbonCure (job listing) (careers page)
Various positions across Growth Marketing, Customer Success, Engineering, and People Ops at Spoiler Alert (Boston) (job listing) (careers page)
Sales & Client Success at ecomedes (job listing) (careers page)
👋 Welcome New MCJers!
You can learn more about new members on #introductions, where you can welcome them to the community. Don’t forget to check out the Member Directory, you can learn more about fellow members and find people to connect with.
Andrew Montague: A software engineer working in fintech, Andrew is interested in learning from the community on all things climate, with a particular interest in measuring a scope 3 emissions.
Fabian Le Gay Brereton: Fabian is a co-founder of Gridcognition. He'd like to connect with MCJ members interested in decarbonized and decentralized energy systems.
Namratha Kothapalli: Namratha is an investor at Frontline based in London, UK. She looks forward to learning from & collaborating with MCJers to solve the climate crisis.
Zenetta Burger: Zenetta is an Investor at Anthos Capital. Zenetta is eager to chat with any/all entrepreneurs and investors in the space.
Connor Waslo: A junior at Vanderbilt University studying computer science & Chinese. Connor is a software engineer/product manager looking to learn as much as possible and to see what people are working on related to climate tech.
Naoise Irwin: Naoise is the co-founder of a company called Solarflux. Solarflux develops a solar parabolic dish concentrator (aka the most efficient concentrating solar power technology)- the FOCUS.
David Cutler: Davis is the co-founder of Fortuna Cools. David excited to join this community, learn from everyone, and see where he might be able to help others.
Chloe D’Agostini: Chloe is the founder of a creative agency. Chloe is extremely passionate about health & wellness of our planet and the wildlife and people who live on it.
Kyle Marchesseault: Kyle is the VP of Marketing at Nexamp. Kyle is excited to meet more MCJers and would like to talk more about solar, community solar, marketing, or anything else.
Suzanna Buck: 1Y at Chicago Booth transitioning from public market impact investing to climate tech VC. Suzanna would chat about climate tech thesis dev, including circular economy, and investable biodiversity loss solutions.
📌Community Board
News and initiatives from members of our community. MCJers mentioned can be DMed in Slack.
🌴Calling all Socal MCJers! Charlotte Mallo is organizing another hike for all MCJers hailing from Southern California. Please fill out this poll to choose a time for the meet-up.
📋Can’t find the MCJ Member Directory? You can now easily view it at myclimatejourney.co/members! If you have feedback about the directory or need to update your entry, DM Thai Nguyen and/or Tyler Steinhardt.
👩🏫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.
🙋🏻♂️ New #volunteers channel! We invite you to join this channel to learn about opportunities to help out in the MCJ Community. From welcoming new members to co-hosting MCJ Icebreakers, there’s no shortage of ways to get involved!
🎟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 Member Orientation (Friday, May 14th @ 3 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!
MCJ Town Hall (Friday, May 28th @ 4 pm ET)
Join us for the May Town Hall! Town halls are an open forum to ask questions, share feedback, and get more visibility into what we’re working on at MCJ. RSVP here!
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