Work on Climate (Apr 2021): Climate banking, clean cookstoves, and more jobs resources!
Welcome to the April 2021 newsletter of Work on Climate. [Subscribe and read archives] Follow us on Twitter or LinkedIn for notifications about new events!
Need help with your climate project? Ready to offer others assistance? Drop into our Slack community with offers or asks. Let's advance our climate journeys together.
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🎉 Community updates
Wow! We have grown to over 1750+ members.
This month Lilly Tong and our core team launched a Work on Climate Club on Clubhouse! Join us there by searching for "Work on Climate" on Clubhouse or through this link for informal conversations and fun events.
We want to give a shoutout to community member Atticus Graven who started the brand new #resume channel, a place for you to share your resume and receive community ideas on how to improve it. You can also post your successful resume so that others can learn!
If you are actively contributing to our Slack channel, please check out our new Code of Conduct to avoid common gotchas like crossposting to too many channels.
We have adopted WoCl as the official abbreviation for Work on Climate, to prevent confusion with "WoC" which may be read as "women of color".
The #dip-your-toes channel has been renamed to #gigs, where you can find short projects for lightweight forays into climate.
🥳 April events
Note: The #events channel was split into #events-wocl (events officially hosted by WoCl) and #events-external (share your favorite external events there)
Throughout April we are hosting a number of exciting events across different sectors of climate.
Wed April 7 @9:00am PT - Agroforestry Q&A with Patrick Worms. RSVP here.
Marrying traditional and advanced agricultural knowledge is the most promising pathway to rural prosperity, a giant help to mitigate our impact on biodiversity and the atmosphere and, tantalizingly, peace in a warming world. Patrick Worms is the Senior Science Policy Advisor for the Centre for International Forestry Research and World Agroforestry.
Thu April 8 @2:00pm PT - Work On Climate monthly event on Clubhouse.
Monthly event for WoCl community members to discuss climate-related projects they are working on, and share tips/learnings with one another, as well as seek help from the community! If you have a project, this is your chance to talk about it!
Thu April 8 @5:00pm PT - Climate Banking Q&A with Atmos Financial CEO Ravi Mikkelsen. RSVP here.
Banking shapes the world you live in by deciding what infrastructure and projects to fund. The world's 60 biggest banks provided $3.8T in financing to fossil fuel companies in the 5 years after the Paris accords. Ravi Mikkelsen (Atmos Co-founder & CEO) will speak with us about the rise of climate fintech and ways we can participate.
Thu April 15 @9:00am PT - Clean Cookstoves Q&A with Tom Price. RSVP here.
Clean Cookstoves are one of the single most impactful technologies in the world from both a health and climate perspective. Over 3B people eat food cooked over open fires or simple stoves fueled by wood, dung, and coal. They release CO2, methane, carbon monoxide, and black carbon. Tom Price is the CEO of The Better Cooking Company, an advanced-biomass clean cookstove startup.
Fri April 30 @2:30pm PT - WoCl TGIF! RSVP here.
Let’s strengthen our community by getting to know each other better. Come along and connect through the best of digital facilitation, have fun with the people serious about working on climate!
Watch (or re-watch) Past Events
We've hosted a number of interesting talks from Climate leaders over the past year! Watch recordings & read notes at Past Events and on our YouTube channel; find upcoming events on the calendar and on #events-wocl (official events) and #events-external (external events).
🚀 5 habits of successful climate jobseekers
Thanks to our 2-question Month In Climate survey, we know how successful climate jobseekers use the community! Last month, people who have gotten an interview or a job offer highlighted some of their habits. Apart from reading Slack, they:
Connected with others and ask for help ("I asked another aspiring PM in climate for help prepping for an interview and they kindly did two mock interviews with me to prep!")
Got involved in Climate Fellows projects.
Signed up for Office Hours with our experts to find out about exciting companies in the space, get tips for interviews, and learn the space.
Participated in Learning Groups and attended Events.
Share your progress this month and help us understand in a data-driven way what works best by contributing your response to the survey!
🏢 Find your next job
According to our Month In Climate Survey, last month 64% of respondents have actively looked for a climate job, 50% of those have gotten an interview, and 33% of those have accepted a job offer. Way to go!
Hop onto #jobs for community full-time jobs postings, #gigs for short-term or part-time work, #jobs-alerts for new jobs from Climatebase, #jobs-discussion for general discussion around job-seeking, and check out the new #resume channel where people help each other polish their resumes for climate companies!
Based on community feedback, this month we wanted to highlight some jobs from outside the US:
Clowdr a climate-focused virtual conference company who gave a talk to the community this month is hiring software engineers from anywhere in the world.
Carbonbase (carbon offsets) is also looking for software engineers remote from anywhere in the world!
Overstory monitors natural resources with satellites. They are looking for a VP of Eng, a Senior Data Scientist, Full Stack Developer, and a Geospatial Data Engineer in Amsterdam and Boston.
Hoxton Farms (working on artificial animal fat) is looking a Machine Learning Researcher, Stem Cell Biologist, Tissue Engineer and more, all in London.
And two non-profit jobs:
Climate Cabinet is looking for a Data Product Manager. They provide district-specific data to political candidates to run, win and legislate on climate change.
Carbon Removal Advocacy Europe, which advocates for carbon dioxide removal, is looking for a founding Executive Director.
👩🎓 Expert help for climate orgs
Quick Consults (formerly Reverse Office Hours) is now merged with Climate Fellows and open to any impactful climate organization! Climate organizations that are stuck with a quick problem can sign up for a one-off consultation with one of our experts.
Our fellows have deep expertise across a wide range of areas including front and backend engineering, data analysis, machine learning, business development/strategy, marketing (SEO, paid), fundraising, communications, design and more.
Looking for longer term help? Non-profits can sign up for volunteers and for-profit companies can hire our fellows for 10+ hour/week engagements.
Interested in becoming a Fellow to help Climate orgs? Learn more and apply on our site.
🚸 Community projects
Our Community Member Projects directory is growing. Put your project on the list and we will try to help you get the collaborators and resources you need.
This month, we would like to call out these amazing projects:
🎲 Sam Levac-Levey has created the Solutions board game based on almost 100 climate solutions from Project Drawdown. The game is a starting point for meaningful climate action: after playing, you can pick your favorite solution and turn it into a real-world project.
💎 Olya Irzak, Zeina Fayyaz Kim, Jeremy Brewer, and Cassandra Xia launched Diamond List, a list of early-stage climate companies nominated by investors.
📈 Inspired by the Diamond List companies, Jeremy Brewer, Sam Levac-Levey, and Ajay Gupta created an AngelList syndicate to support climate and high social impact startups at the earliest stages.
🎉 Eliott David from Carbonbase is organizing the Greenlight Climate Festival, a two-day event for CUNY students featuring "thousands of sustainable jobs, inspiring speakers, and amazing organizations that are making NYC and the world greener". WoCl will also have a booth at the festival. Employers especially welcome!
Keep doing great things and tell us about them on #share-your-path or by adding to the Community Member Projects directory.
Or, do you want to help run the WoCl community itself? Your help is much appreciated. See areas where help is needed at the Work on Climate Wishlist!
Ongoing programs
📚 Learning groups - deep dive or co-brainstorm on a project
Join learning groups of people interested in the same climate vertical as you, and work together towards something actionable.
Learning groups have been very active this month. Here are some highlights:
🧠 Social Science LG hosted a talk on successful social movements (see Past Events)
☢️ Nuclear LG hosted a talk about next-gen fusion technology (see Past Events)
🌍 Climate Justice LG is planning a launch party on March 31st for their Climate Justice 101 document.
💵 Climate Finance Learning Group is looking for a new host! Contact @Eugene Kirpichov if interested.
Do you have a project that could use a brainstorm within the scope of a learning group? 🧐 Consult a Learning Group to co-brainstorm on it with group members! Examples of past brainstorms include Jim Russell's Climate Nudge and Matthew Hoffmann's Taking action for sustainable cities.
🧙🏼 Talk to climate experts at Office Hours
Seek advice from climate experts at our Office Hours - simply book time on their Calendly. This month Dan Fitzgerald of ReGen.VC, a climate investment veteran, has started offering his time!
Our experts are very friendly, and help dozens of people every month:
"I learned [from Olya Irzak] about a number of NGOs and companies that would be worth looking into for internships."
"After our discussion [with Troy Hodges], I have a much better sense of how FERC, ISOs, utilities, SPUCs, and IPPs interact, and the incentive structures for each piece of the puzzle."
"I want to plug Christopher Round’s office hours for anyone looking to dive deeper on climate policy."
🤖 Search community members by interest
Looking for someone interested in the same things you are, or located in the same area as you?
Search people's #introductions for keywords by typing /braintrust X in any channel (don't worry, it's visible only to you), e.g. try /braintrust carbon capture or /braintrust canada.
This command will find a lot more people than Slack search, because Slack searches only the last 10,000 messages.
We are also developing an experimental Slack bot that will proactively connect you with people and programs relevant to your requests. Want to help? Reach out to @Richard Kim or @Eugene Kirpichov.
🧞 Help run Work on Climate
Are the community programs helpful to you? Running them is both great joy and hard work for our all-volunteer Core team, and we could use help. "Much of the WoCl core team are up to our ears in projects" - @Richard Kim
Give back by running the programs together with us, or running your own program - see areas where help is needed at the Work on Climate Wishlist.
If you want to help, reach out to @Eugene Kirpichov with thoughts on what you want to do and how much time you are able to commit!