Inevitable

Prakash Govindan is COO and Co-founder at Gradiant .  Gradiant is a Series D stage company that develops technology for industrial wastewater treatment. They work with Fortune 500 clients across a range of industries, including semiconductor fabrication, food and beverage, pharmaceuticals, mining, and more, to help them reuse water in their operations. Prakash discusses his background, experiences...

Ben Hubbard is CEO and Co-founder at Nexus PMG , an infrastructure advisory and project development organization dedicated to reducing carbon intensity and enhancing resource efficiency. Ben co-founded Nexus PMG in 2013 after multiple years of working on complex metal refining facilities in locations including Mongolia and Saudi Arabia. In this episode, Cody and Ben cover how Nexus PMG got started...

This episode is part of our Skilled Labor Series hosted by MCJ partner, Yin Lu . This series is focused on amplifying the voices of folks from the skilled labor workforce, including electricians, farmers, ranchers, HVAC installers, and others who are on the front lines of rewiring our infrastructure. Roy Mittleider is the director of training for CalCERTS . CalCERTS is one of California's Home Ene...

Dr. Denise Baden is Professor of Sustainable Business at the University of Southampton and founder of Green Stories.  At Green Stories, Dr. Baden has run 16 writing competitions since 2018, focused around sustainability and storytelling. She is herself also the author of multiple eco-fiction novels, including Habitat Man and is the editor of a collection of short stories called No More Fairy Tales...

Sarah Lamaison is the CEO and Co-founder of Dioxycle .  Dioxycle is developing technology to produce sustainable ethylene from recycled carbon emissions. Ethylene is the world's most used organic chemical and it's a precursor to many everyday products including construction materials, plastics, and textile fibers. Indeed, it's a core feedstock for polyester. Ethylene is also an enormous market at...

This episode is part of our Capital Series hosted by Jason Jacobs. This series explores a diverse range of capital sources and the individuals who drive them. From family offices and institutional LPs to private equity, government funding, and more, we take a deep dive into the world of capital and its critical role in driving innovation and progress.  Bruce Niven is the Head of Strategic Venturin...

Scott Gale is Executive Director at Halliburton Labs .  Halliburton is a complex company. It’s a 100-year-old oil field services giant, known for its extensive fracking operations and infrastructure expertise in the oil and gas sector. It is not an oil and gas distributor like Chevron or Exxon, but it is a powerhouse nonetheless. With their Halliburton Labs program, Scott and team are actively inv...

Eloa Guillotin is the Co-founder and CEO of Beyond Aero. The topic of aviation emissions is complex. Flying is in many ways a crucial part of our global society, and although COVID lockdowns temporarily reduced frequent flying, the reliance on air travel in modern society is indisputable.  Aviation accounts for over 2% of global emissions. Lithium-ion batteries are heavy, which doesn't really pair...

Barbara Burger is the former president of Chevron Technology Ventures and describes herself as a "corporate graduate." She now spends her time advising and helping startups and venture funds working on the energy transition, including Greentown Labs, Energy Impact Partners, Emerald Technology Ventures, Syzygy Plasmonics , Heliogen, and many more. In this episode, we discuss her multifaceted career...

This episode is part of our Skilled Labor Series hosted by MCJ partner, Yin Lu . This series is focused on amplifying the voices of folks from the skilled labor workforce, including electricians, farmers, ranchers, HVAC installers, and others who are on the front lines of rewiring our infrastructure. Chris Higgins works for the city of Vancouver, British Columbia as a building planner, where he sp...

Tom Ferguson is founder and managing partner at Burnt Island Ventures , which is an early-stage venture capital fund focused on technologies related to water. Burnt Island's website notes that climate change is water change. And that water is the medium through which we will feel the effects of a warming earth. Tom has been working in water for over a decade, first at the sustainability consultanc...

Stanley Janicki is the Chief Revenue Officer at Sedron Technologies . Sedron is on a mission to revolutionize how waste streams can be processed to eliminate disposal costs and destroy pathogens while capturing valuable energy and recycling water. Their Varcor system takes liquid waste slurries and recovers nutrients for beneficial reuse. Their primary go-to-market implementations today are in thr...

Tisha Schuller is the founding CEO of Adamantine Energy . At Adamantine, Tisha consults with clients ranging from Fortune 100 energy companies to nonprofit environmental organizations on topics related to energy policy, business strategy, politics, and community engagement. With a background as the former president and CEO of the Colorado Oil & Gas Association and as a strategic advisor for Stanfo...

Cameron Halliday is the CEO and Co-founder of Mantel .  Mantel is developing a point source carbon capture solution, which means they're developing technology that can sit next to industrial equipment and capture its emissions. Mantel's key innovation lies in their utilization of a high-temperature liquid-phase material for carbon capture, enabling operation at temperatures as high as 600 degrees...

John Melby is CEO at Xpansiv . Xpansiv operates what they claim to be the largest carbon offset exchange in the world, purportedly covering 40% of the voluntary carbon market volumes and 90% of exchange traded volumes. Beyond carbon, Xpansiv provides global market infrastructure for registering, managing, trading, settling, retiring, analyzing, and reporting a wide array of data-driven environment...

This episode is part of our Skilled Labor Series hosted by MCJ partner, Yin Lu . This series is focused on amplifying the voices of folks from the skilled labor workforce, including electricians, farmers, ranchers, HVAC installers, and others who are on the front lines of rewiring our infrastructure. Today we're talking about the US Department of Energy’s strategy on what it takes to create a succ...

Dr. Carlos Nobre is a Nobel Laureate and co-author of the IPCC AR4 Report that won the Nobel Peace Prize in 2007. He’s also one of Brazil's top climate scientists. Dr. Nobre is a member of the Brazil Academy of Science and a founding member of the World Resources Institute Brazil. He is known for his work on the risk of the savannaization of the Amazon rainforest due to deforestation and climate c...

Chris Tolles is the CEO and Co-founder of Yard Stick PBC , which stands for Public Benefits Corporation. Yard Stick is aiming to be the measurement backbone for soil carbon. Their handheld hardware enables onsite measurement of soil carbon in agricultural fields, and their software package provides data and analytics that help stakeholders in a soil carbon project to measure and track progress. As...

Shashank Sane is the Executive Vice President for Transmission at Invenergy .  Invenergy is North America's largest, privately held renewable power generation company. They have developed more than 200 power generation projects around the world and are responsible for more than 31 gigawatts of power on four continents, with the majority of that being renewable energy projects, including wind and s...

Julie Willoughby serves as the Chief Commercialization Officer at Circ , and in this episode, we are talking about fast fashion, the clothing industry, and Circ's role in bringing circularity to the world of polyester and cotton. According to statistics from The Ellen MacArthur Foundation, the equivalent of a garbage truckload of clothes is burned or buried in a landfill every second, and clothing...

This episode is part of our Capital Series hosted by Jason Jacobs. This series explores a diverse range of capital sources and the individuals who drive them. From family offices and institutional LPs to private equity, government funding, and more, we take a deep dive into the world of capital and its critical role in driving innovation and progress.  Michael Bruce serves as the Senior Director o...

Dr. Jen Wilcox serves as  Principal Deputy Assistant Secretary of the US Department of Energy's Office of Fossil Energy and Carbon Management (FECM) . Dr. Wilcox, an expert in carbon capture, authored the seminal textbook 'Carbon Capture' in 2012. Currently on leave as the presidential distinguished Professor of Chemical Engineering and Energy Policy at the University of Pennsylvania, she also ser...

Tom Price is the founder and CEO of EcoSafi , and in today’s episode, we're diving deep into the challenge of access to clean cooking fuels in developing economies.  EcoSafi builds cook stoves and biomass fuel pellets that aim to reduce deforestation, improve in-home air quality and health outcomes, and reduce emissions. They work in Kenya, Zambia, Malawi, and Uganda. The challenge at hand, as Tom...

This episode is part of our Skilled Labor Series hosted by MCJ partner, Yin Lu . This series is focused on amplifying the voices of folks from the skilled labor workforce, including electricians, farmers, ranchers, HVAC installers, and others who are on the front lines of rewiring our infrastructure. Today, we're taking a slightly different spin. Instead of focusing on what it'll take to electrify...

Kunal Sinha is the Global Head of Recycling at Glencore . Glencore ranked number 21 on the Fortune Global 500 in 2023. As one of the world's largest commodities trader and one of the world's largest natural resource companies, they have a very substantial role in the energy transition and in climate change. Over one-third of Glencore's 2022 revenue came from coal, so from a climate perspective, th...