Inevitable

Today's guest is Donnel Baird, Founder & CEO of BlocPower. BlocPower is a Brooklyn-based climate technology startup that is making American cities greener, smarter, and healthier. BlocPower analyzes, finances, and constructs renewable energy and energy-efficient projects on a building by building, block by block basis. BlocPower focuses on buildings in low-income communities and underserved neighb...

Today's guest is Jim Kapsis, Founder & CEO of The Ad Hoc Group. The Ad Hoc Group is a focused consultancy working to help startups succeed in complex regulated markets, such as energy, mobility, and smart cities.  Jim founded The Ad Hoc Group to help startups and investors scale innovative businesses to solve our most pressing climate and sustainability challenges. Jim has been a Senior Advisor to...

Today's guest is Garry Cooper, Co-Founder & CEO of Rheaply. Rheaply is empowering companies of all stripes to reduce their CO2e footprints by curbing internal waste. It does this by creating a circular economy of reuse, both within a company and through a marketplace of asset exchange with other companies.  While pursuing his Ph. D. in Neural Science at Northwestern, Garry was trying to find a cur...

Today's guest is Arch Rao, Founder & CEO of Span. Span is reinventing the home electrical panel. The existing home electrical panel has seen very little innovation over the last 75 years. Span is a smart digital electrical panel that makes it easier to integrate renewable energy and distributed energy resources into your home. After a few years of pursuing a Ph. D., Arch decided to drop out and wo...

Today's guests are Shashank Samala, Co-Founder & CEO, and Noah McQueen, Co-Founder & Head of Research, at Heirloom. Growing up in Southeast India, Shashank saw firsthand how climate change was impacting people. Prior to Heirloom, Shashank was an Entrepreneur in Residence at Carbon 180 and the Co-Founder & VP of Product at Tempo Automation. Before Heirloom, Noah pursued a Ph. D. in chemical enginee...

Today's guest is Jimmy Samartzis, CEO of LanzaJet. Lanzajet accelerates the global energy transition by using its leading technology to make safe, sustainable aviation fuels and diesel fuels from waste.  Jimmy has spent most of his career focused on climate change and advancing the decarbonization of industries reliant on fossil fuels. As a senior executive with several consulting firms, including...

Today's guests are Merrill Feather & Kristen Winzent, Co-Founders and Collaborators at The Regenerates. The Regenerates is a brand and marketing consultancy focused 100% on building momentum for climate solutions. Kristen and Merrill met in the MCJ Slack community when they were looking for marketing-focused jobs in the climate space. Realizing they were both up for 3 of the same positions, they d...

Today's guest is Bruce Friedrich, Founder & Executive Director of The Good Food Institute. The Good Food Institute is an international non-profit that promotes plant-based meat, dairy, and eggs as well as cultivated meat as alternatives to conventional animal products. GFI was founded to answer a fundamental question: how to feed almost 10 billion people by 2050 without burning the planet down. In...

Today's guest is Paul Gross, Co-Founder & CEO of Remora. Today, heavy-duty trucks move 70% of goods shipped in the United States and account for 7% of the US greenhouse gas pollution. Remora is developing a device that captures carbon emissions from semi-trucks. Its device will reduce emissions from these trucks by 80% without affecting payload, range, or trip time. Remora installs a container bet...

Today's guest is Caroline Cochran, Co-Founder & COO of Oklo Inc. Oklo Inc. is working to build powerhouses, advanced fission power plants on a microgrid scale. The team focuses on small advanced reactor generators that are waste and carbon negative. Unlike traditional nuclear power, its technology doesn't require water to cool the system, has vastly different security and safety characteristics, a...

Today's guest is Eliza Nemser, Co-Founder of Climate Changemakers. Climate Changemakers is a nonpartisan community action network organizing to support climate candidates and ambitious climate policies. The team mobilizes political support by transforming climate-concerned individuals into a community of climate changemakers. Prior to founding Climate Changemakers, Eliza was a consultant for the N...

Today's guest is Irving Fain, Founder & CEO of Bowery Farming. Bowery Farming is a modern farming company building smart indoor farms located close to its cities. Its farms are powered by its proprietary farm operating system, BoweryOS, creating a simplified, agile food system focused on flavor, freshness, and safety. Irving has a diverse background across varying industries. He started his career...

Today's guest is Bill Weihl, Executive Director of ClimateVoice. ClimateVoice is a non-profit that mobilizes the voices of employees to encourage companies to go "all in" on climate. Large corporations and companies have historically shied away from lobbying against the fossil fuel industry. ClimateVoice was founded on the idea that these companies need to engage in climate policy and use their po...

This week's guest is Val Miftakhov, Co-Founder & CEO of ZeroAvia. ZeroAvia is building the world's first practical zero-emission aviation powertrain. ZeroAvia utilizes hydrogen power to accelerate the transition to sustainable aviation.  Before focusing on climate solutions, Val held several senior business and product positions at Google and McKinsey & Company and was a nuclear researcher at Stan...

This week's guest is Joshua March, Co-Founder & CEO of SciFi Foods, formerly known as Artemys Foods. SciFi Foods is on a mission to empower humanity to eat sustainably. It's working on the next generation of meat alternatives by cultivating meat. To replicate the full flavor profile and aroma of meat, SciFi Foods uses cell-based meat, growing real muscle and fat outside of the animal in bioreactor...

This week's guest is Mike Hall, CEO of Borrego. Borrego is a leading developer, EPC and O&M provider accelerating the delivery of large commercial, community solar, and utility-scale solar and energy storage projects in the United States. With a background in Chemical Engineering, Mike is the 3rd co-founder of Borrego, then Borrego Solar. The origins of the company date back to the early 1980s whe...

Today's guest is Lyndall Schreiner, Director of Product at Afresh & Founder at Earthrise School.  In 2018, Lyndall had her climate aha moment after the IPCC 1.5 Degree Report came out. She was invested in redirecting her career to focus on climate. After 18 months of learning as much as she could about climate and volunteering with the Sunrise Movement, Lyndall landed at Afresh as Director of Prod...

This week's guest is Erin Burns, Executive Director of Carbon180. Carbon180 is a climate-focused NGO that partners with policymakers, scientists, and businesses worldwide to build a world that removes more carbon than it emits.  Before Carbon180, Erin focused on energy, environment, labor, and agricultural issues, including staffing for the Energy and Natural Resources Committee and the Public Lan...

This week's guest is Joel Jean, Co-Founder & CEO of Swift Solar. Before joining Swift, Joel served as Executive Director of the Tata-MIT GridEdge Solar research program, which focuses on scale-up of new solar photovoltaic technologies for India and other developing countries. He developed ultra-lightweight, flexible solar cells that the 2017 Katerva Award recognized, and he was named a Forbes 30 U...

This Week's guest is Josephine Cheung, Director of Research & Development at GCP Applied Technologies. GCP Applied Technologies is a leading global provider of construction products technologies that include concrete and cement additives, building materials and technologies that ensure quality and enhance business productivity. In 2016, GCP Applied Technologies spun off from W. R. Grace. With a Ph...

Today's guest is Andy Towne, Founding Partner & CEO of Hobbs & Towne Inc. Founded in 1997, Hobbs & Towne Inc. is an executive search and advisory service firm. Partnering with venture capital, private equity, and family office investors, as well as global companies, HTI manages retained executive searches for high-level business leaders and C-suite positions. The firm's advisory services include r...

This week's guest is Scott Stringer, New York City Comptroller, the chief financial officer and chief auditor of the city agencies and their performance and spending. Scott has served in elected positions since the early '90s. He was elected to the New York State Assembly and represented Manhattan's West Side for 13 years. After working in the State Assembly, he became the Manhattan Borough Presid...

Today's guests are Josh Santos, Co-Founder & CEO, and Daniel Cavero, Co-Founder & CTO, of Noya. Josh and Daniel met a few years ago when they were roommates in San Francisco. In 2020, they founded Noya together. Noya captures CO2 from the atmosphere and resells it for half the cost of current options. The company works to retrofit existing industrial equipment to enable carbon capture and resale....

This week's guest is Alicia Barton, CEO of FirstLight Power. FirstLight Power is a renewables and storage company that integrates and delivers clean power to New England homes and businesses. It operates the Northfield Mountain energy storage facility and other hydroelectric, solar, and energy assets in Massachusetts and Connecticut.  I was excited about this discussion because Alicia has been on...

Today's guest is Fiona Spruill, Chief Product Officer at Overstory. Overstory's mission is to monitor all of Earth's natural resources in real-time to reverse climate change. Its first project helps utilities track forest and vegetation growth to reduce the risk of wildfires and power outages by applying machine learning to satellite imagery. We are proud to be an Overstory investor ! Prior to Ove...