Future Optimist

What would a future look like where wherever you go, you can plug in your car without worrying about who’s getting paid and how? Well it turns out, in addition to the vast hardware infrastructure requirements of electric vehicle charging, there’s a tremendous software need too. To balance power, to accept payments, to supply apartment buildings and more. And someone’s got to build that software. W...

Why should every building be green? Buildings, both commercial and residential, account for about 40% of annual CO2 emissions. It’s an enormously wasteful industry ripe for innovation. But how do we bring about the new era of eco buildings? My guest today is Tommy Linstroth, the CEO of Green Badger, an SaaS platform for automating sustainability. They make it much much easier for construction prof...

Tony Selvaggio is a Social Entrepreneur and the Founder of eSmart Recycling, a social enterprise whose primary goal is to recycle old technology to set up computer labs for kids, worldwide. It turns out that all kids need to be competitive in today’s digital world is some Betamax tapes, a few laserdiscs, and a few old paddle’s from the 1972 version of Pong. Alright, maybe it’s not quite that, but...

Carlos Meza is the President and Chief Executive Officer of Crowd Content, a content creation service that does millions in revenue per year. Many of you out there are interested in SEO, digital marketing, and how to get more people to look at your s***, well it’s no secret that great content is the key. But making content is a grind, trust me. What if you could have pieces written for you at scal...

Paige Peters is the founder and CTO of Rapid Radicals, a company that is able to treat wastewater much faster than traditional methods.  She developed this technology to tackle the massive problem of the over 850 billion gallons of untreated wastewater that go into our lakes, oceans, and rivers each year.  What’s worse? When it rains, these outdated systems flood and overflow, causing massive dama...

Alexander Olesen is the CEO & Co-Founder of Babylon Micro-Farms Inc. He’s a social entrepreneur, keynote and TEDx speaker, and urban agriculture expert. Today we talk about how he’s been building a successful business making produce much more sustainable than conventional methods. We get into the ups and downs of social entrepreneurship, and especially why this is such a timely concept for us all...

Masachs Boungou, a recent doctoral graduate of UMass Lowell, is a keynote speaker, Ph. D. holder, and Fulbright Scholar Alumnus. His childhood was completely upended when his village was ravaged and destroyed, forcing him into exile. He was forced to live in the jungle for a year, facing unimaginable circumstances. Somehow he never lost faith, educating himself and eventually getting an advanced d...

Can we get rid of all the plastic in the oceans?  Like the Great Pacific Garbage Patch, 1.6 million square kilometers of plastic trash floating in the Pacific Ocean.  Some see this never-decomposing trash as one of the biggest problems facing our species, others like Eleonore Eisath see that plastic as a “locked resource” that can be tapped into.  Her company Beworm is developing a biocatalytic re...

How do we eradicate extreme rural poverty? What can we do to build up communities?  Jacob Foss asked this question when travelling in Africa, and his answer was to co-found Agricycle—a brilliant start-up that connects women, smallholders, and youth in East Africa with global markets.  Don’t know what a smallholder is? I didn’t either, but we’re about to find out! Jacob’s been on Forbes 30 Under 30...

What if you could program a cell directly to fight cancer? What if you could solve the 7,000 genetic diseases facing our species? This type of science fiction is now a reality, thanks to today’s guests on the Beat the Often Path Podcast. Joining me today are Omar Abudayyeh and Jonathan Gootenberg, creators of the AbuGoot lab at MIT, two people leading the way in gene therapy, gene editing, and CRI...

What if you could create meaningful memories with loved ones around the globe?  My guest today Anieke Lamers has created Peekabond, a new app that makes it easier to not just connect remotely, but bond. She left a lucrative role as a VC to follow her passion and build her own company in a space she believed in. She created a kid-friendly platform with science-based activities, ethical games, and a...

Mai Shimada is a medical doctor, and the Founder & CEO of Isha Health, providers of ketamine-assisted therapy. She spent many years of her life as an ER doctor, and she came to understand that ketamine was a legal and underutilized treatment option for clinically-resistant depression, PTSD, and a wide range of other mental health disorders. In this episode, we are going to talk about DRUGS. Even t...

Brian Cook is the President of Local Bounti, a company that brings fresh local produce to the world using 90% less water and land than traditional agriculture. In a world that’s poised to hit 10 billion people not too long from now, we need all the help we can get finding innovative ways to feed our population food that isn’t just gruel, mush, mushy-gruel, or god-forbid, soylent green. Brian has d...

David Dellal is the Co-Founder & CEO of Floe Inc, a cleantech startup developing a smart solution to prevent the extensive, costly water damage caused by ice buildup on buildings' roofs in the winter. You know what I love? I love learning about amazing solutions to problems that I never knew existed, such as the fact that $9.5 billion in damage occurs due to ice on rooftops each year in the US alo...

Brett Thompson is the CEO of Mzansi Meat Co, Africa’s first cell-based meat start-up. Using cellular agriculture technology, the company hopes to produce cruelty-free cell-cultured protein products. It’s something that I personally see as the future of meat consumption on our planet, and a necessary step towards a more sustainable future. Today we talk about taking an unpopular stand for something...

Angela Wilson is the creator of Exploryst, a start-up that seeks to create a more accessible world. Their motto is “explore EVERYWHERE, whatever your disability”, and they seek to add valuable accessibility information to travel, experiences, and business in Colorado and around the country. Angela’s son has intellectual and progressive physical disabilities, and this led her to understanding that...

Michiel Vos is the Founder & CTO of CocoPallet, a Dutch start-up that makes circular, affordable transportation pallets from coconut husks only. They’re helping to save an estimated 200 million trees from being chopped down needlessly, and their solution is not only more affordable but is itself biodegradable and re-sellable as a potting soil enhancer. It’s an ingenious solution that uses the wast...

Beau Wangtrakuldee, Ph. D., is a scientist, entrepreneur, and founder of AmorSui, a modern protective apparel company redesigning personal protective equipment (PPE) to empower women with greater function and protection in lab and medical settings. She’s tackling two massive problems: one that traditional PPE hasn’t taken into account diversity and the needs of women and marginalized groups, and t...

Darius Mora is the CEO and Co-Founder of Vitality Therapeutics, a start-up using artificial intelligence to solve mental health problems. You might not know this, but machine learning can be used to detect patterns in our speech that can help us diagnose mental health issues like depression and burnout faster. In a world where therapists are scarce and expensive, applying AI to the massive mental...

Andrew Amann is the CEO of NineTwoThree Venture Studio, an award-winning software design and engineering studio. His company helps launch start-ups and products, developing apps, IoT devices, and software. They’ve built several clients to over a billion-dollar valuation, and they’ve been featured in the Inc. 5000 two years in a row. I’m a digital agency owner myself, and for me, Andrew represents...

Olugbenga Olubanjo is the founder & CEO of Reeddi, a Nigerian start-up that seeks to bring power to the 70+ million Nigerians who don't have reliable access. Over 600 million people in Africa lack access to reliable power, but how do we solve the problem? Olugbenga created the Reeddi capsule, a rechargeable power bank that people can rent for just 50 cents per day. Olu has already impacted thousan...

Saoud Khalifah is CEO, CTO & Founder   of Fakespot, a tool that seeks to eliminate fraud and fake reviews in ecommerce. Have you ever tried to buy a supplement online with thousands of 5-star reviews only to find out that it’s actually sawdust capsules? That’s exactly what happened to Saoud, and this experience led him to understand that online reviews cannot and should not be trusted. Between bot...

Kathy Hannun is the co-founder and president of Dandelion Energy, offering affordable home geothermal energy solutions. We spend so much money heating and cooling our homes, and in a time of uncertainty surrounding natural gas and oil availability, getting off of fossil fuels in our homes has never been more important.   Kathy left her job working at Alphabet’s prestigious X Lab to start her compa...

Mike Pappas is the CEO and Co-Founder of Modulate.ai, a start-up using cutting-edge machine learning to to make voice chat safe. In case you don’t play online games, there’s an entire universe of people out there who play games like Call of Duty, League of Legends, etc, and they use in-game voice chat to communicate with each other. The problem is, like other digital avenues, these spaces can be m...

Anna Luisa Beserra Santos is the CEO of Sustainable Development & Water For All, a Brazilian organization bringing water and sanitation to people who lack access. Proper water and sanitation have the power to reduce the number of deaths from waterborne diseases by as much as 65%, and Anna and her startup have already benefitted more than 15,000 people in 15 Brazilian states. Anna founded her start...