Taking Action on Climate, Sustainability, and Environmental Justice.
Founders, funders, corporates, government, and community stakeholders gathered in Long Beach, California to address climate, sustainability, and environmental justice issues and opportunities to solve them.
After an hour of networking, I moderated two panels covering: 1) investment trends, corporate and government customer needs, and funding; and, 2) innovative solutions. It is encouraging that solutions for climate, sustainability, and environmental equity are increasingly linked with more efficient and lower cost operations as well as benefits and cost savings in public health. Clean air, water, and land objectives should not be viewed solely as societal debt and regulatory compliance imperatives but as inclusive business opportunities driving greater economic growth.
Going Green into Space. Why SpinLaunch is Cool.
I asked SpinLaunch CEO Jonathan Yaney what was one of the most fun parts of his job.
“Proving people wrong who said this could not be done.”
Long Beach, California based SpinLaunch is changing the way payloads are sent into space by removing the complexity and reducing the dependence on carbon-based fuel. What is so fascinating about SpinLaunch is that they have created a greener, cheaper, faster way to launch based on technology that is not new but has not previously been applied to launching rockets into space.
Climate Impact + Circular Economy = Evolectric
Yup, they let me drive their truck. Long Beach, California based Evolectric enables and advances the electrification of existing fleets of vehicles through scalable software and hardware solutions. Co-Founders Bill Beverley and Jakson Alvarez have a vision that addresses currently unmet needs of small and medium enterprises which account for 50% of all commercial fleets and over 80% of all commercial fleet owners. They are incentivized by regulation (Inflation Reduction Act of August 2022) and economics to transition to green fleets. Evolectric ensures that this transition is timely, affordable, and does not run counter to its climate impact mission. This is where the circular economy comes in.
To reduce, reuse, recycle, and save clients money, Evolectric extends the life of existing physical assets an estimated 10-15 years.
Embracing Incremental and Radical Innovation for a Fair and Sustainable World
“Keep looking for doors that create more impact and that will lead you to a very fulfilling journey.”
Janice Tran, Co-Founder & CEO of Kanin Energy
The Columbia Climate School students know how to bring people together to enable what we need to do. We need to tackle climate change now. The climate crisis has made daily headlines with extreme heat, drought, fires, and floods affecting communities across the globe. For new ventures, urgent environmental sustainability needs are more than a societal debt. They represent a massive business opportunity for incremental and radical solutions.
Partsimony founders share their journey launching a climate impact supply chain optimizer.
Nobody was worried about supply chain disruptions six years ago.
My student founders and I welcomed Rich and Roland Mokuolu, cofounders of Partsimony, as guest speakers to Columbia’s H4H impact venture incubator course on Wednesday. The dynamic duo- who happen to be identical twins, engineers, former investment bankers, and distributed supply chain specialists- shared their story of launching a machine learning-enabled supply chain optimizer that addresses the pain points of commodity volatility, supply chain risks, and geopolitical disruptions.