Work on Climate (Dec 2021): Lots of events, meetups, startup jobs, and founder resources
The positive, action-oriented community at workonclimate.org
Welcome to the December 2021 newsletter of workonclimate.org. Add your climate friends to our community to keep making it stronger! [Read past newsletters]
This month Work on Climate has crossed 5000 members. We are so inspired to see so many people joining the climate fight as climate-positive work becomes mainstream, and we look forward to helping all of you find the right opportunity!
🚀 Help us organize WoCl!
Are you getting value out of WoCl and want to give back? This month we are looking for help with some of WoCl's most important initiatives!
Program Manager for WoCl Subcommunities. Help WoCl scalably serve people in specific roles or sectors of climate by creating the resources, processes and support structures to empower organizers of our current and future subcommunities.
Program Manager for Slack Experience. Help make the WoCl member experience on Slack the best it can be by empowering people to navigate and participate on Slack effectively, creating automations and tracking metrics, and making the most out of Slack features for our community.
If you're interested and have the availability (~5 hours per week), express interest via this form (subcommunities), or DM @Eva Illescas on Slack! Mention what similar projects you've worked on in the past, why you're serious about taking this on, and what you're hoping to get out of it.
🥳 December events
We would appreciate it if you fill this survey so we can put on the best possible events for you. Feel free to add any additional comments in the survey.
Upcoming events
Thu Dec 2 @2pm PT - WoCl Community Project Spotlight. Join on Clubhouse.
Monthly event for our 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.
Fri Dec 3 @11am PT - Climate Careers: A Climate Investor's Perspective. RSVP here.
Join Elyse Crowston from Active Impact Investments to learn about job opportunities in climate tech. Active Impact Investment's portfolio of climate-focused companies are looking for talent.
Wed Dec 8 @5pm PST - Erik Cutter, soil & nutrition expert, and regenerative hero. RSVP here.
#learning-group-regen-ag and Erik Cutter (of Alegria Farmacy and the award-winning documentary The Need to Grow) will discuss healthy soils, nutrition, zero-waste systems, regenerative urban food systems, and more.
Fri Dec 10 @10am PT How (next-level) climate movements can be a game changer. RSVP here.
Join Justus Baumann (Future Matters Project) to discuss how social movements are a crucial component in building momentum to prevent "runaway" climate change and how the Future Matters Project boosts existing climate movements.
TBD Dec ?? @11pm PT - Climate Communication with Rethink Sustainability. RSVP here. (TODO Sam? - provide RSVP link, otherwise newsletter publisher take out this event)
Rethinking Climate's interactive workshop shares challenges and tips for a honest and improved sustainability communication.
Sun Dec 12 @7pm ET - 🍁 Montreal meetup & Chocolate! RSVP here.
Are you in Montreal? Meet new climate-minded friends our first ever WoCl Montreal meetup! We will meet at C'ChoColat on Bishop street to help keep us warm and fuzzy.
Week of Dec 13 - WoCl Book Club. Sign up and share you availability here.
We are starting a WoCl Book Club! The first book we will be reading is Regeneration: Ending the Climate Crisis in One Generation by Paul Hawken. You can join us on Slack #book-club.
Thu Dec 16 @4pm PT - Climate Trivia Night. RSVP here.
2021 has been a long year. Join us to let loose and celebrate the new year with a night of trivia on Zoom. Bring a friend, a drink of choice, and your most arcane climate knowledge.
Sat Dec 18 @1pm PT - 🌁 San Francisco meetup. RSVP here.
We will have another in-person meetup this month for folks out of the San Francisco Bay Area. Join us at Stable Cafe in the Mission district to talk about our ideas, plans, and hopes for the climate-positive future!
Dec 28 @11am PT - Startup Office Hours. RSVP here.
Need help with strategy, product, fundraising, hiring, or marketing? Join us to get help figuring out a way past your startup's biggest roadblocks.
📅 Follow us on Twitter, LinkedIn, or Clubhouse for notifications about new events. Or auto-add upcoming events to your Google calendar. Want to host an event with us? Propose your event to our team - reach out to @Utkarsh Vaidya or @Sam Levac-Levey on Slack.
Past event recordings
Find recordings and notes at ⏯️ Past Events and follow our 🎥 YouTube channel! 3 new recordings this month:
Transforming farming in Mexico hosted by #learning-group-regen-ag (video)
Interview with Bruce Strong, senior PM at Capital For Climate hosted by #pms (video)
Marketing for climate & oceans (video)
🚀 Climate expert office hours
Get advice on entering the climate space from friendly climate experts at our Office Hours - simply book time on their Calendly. Our experts have helped over 400+ people over the past year and are fantastic at helping with both introductory and sophisticated climate topics.
Wondering what happens during expert office hours? Here are some of the posts that attendees made on #share-your-path:
I chatted with the wonderful Olya ... about gaining some deeper / practical experience and knowledge in the space on my path to creating a company in the next couple years to help combat climate change. 1 thing I learned: Don’t take shortcuts around gaining practical knowledge!
I scheduled an Office Hours discussion with Joe Rollin to discuss my networking challenges ... and we had a productive conversation. We agreed that Work on Climate may very well provide the networking opportunities I am seeking.
Just had a great session with Patrick Sheehan ... My biggest takeaway from the session was how you should treat your career as hypothesis testing - find out the lowest cost way to test your hypothesis when it comes to career choices. ... Thanks a lot to WoCl and Patrick for this opportunity, I hope others make use of it too!
🏢 Get a climate job
🤔 Choosing between doing climate-positive work at your employer vs. joining a dedicated climate company? @Eugene Kirpichov gave a talk at Google (his former employer) covering just this, titled "How to work on climate as a professional".
There are a lot of new roles for you to check out in our #jobs channel! This month we are highlighting roles from a few early-stage startups active in Work on Climate - including:
Boomitra uses satellites, weather and other data to predict soil moisture, nitrogen, phosphorous and more for regenerative agriculture. They are hiring a Geospatial Data Scientist and a Lead Software Engineer.
Sway is hiring a Senior Polymer Scientist to help reinvent the plastics industry from kelp.
Yard Stick builds soil carbon probes to enable carbon sequestration in soil. They are looking for a Lead Mechanical Engineer and a Device Software Engineer.
Vayuh.ai builds climate risk models by combining physics knowledge and ML. They are recruiting ML engineers familiar with PyTorch and physics informed ML. You can contact founder Mayur at mayur@vayuh.ai
Evergrow is hiring for a number of roles to build a market for carbon offtakes.
Atmos Financial, a climate-focused neobank, is hiring a React developer and someone for customer success/education. You can reach out to founder @Ravi Mikkelsen on Slack.
🧲 Are you a recruiter wanting to attract others into climate? Terra.do is hosting a job fair for recruiters!
🏆 Success stories: This month several people shared on #i-got-a-job their stories of finding climate jobs - in marketing, product, software, and PM roles - browse the channel to learn from their experience! By the way, all of the companies they joined are hiring!
The idea that I could use my current tech and product skills to add value right away grew stronger every day, with every new learning - @Silvia Coimbra's My Climate journey: transitioning from tech to climate in 5 steps
🏗️ Become a founder
Looking to start a company or join someone as a co-founder? We have resources for you!
Hop on #founders, where lots of people post calls for co-founders, helpful resources, and share their experiences. This month @Olivier Corradi has shared his lessons learned from 5 years as a climate founder.
Want to practice your pitch & get feedback? Sign up for our Startup Office Hours or book time with an expert at Expert Office Hours. And check out Business Insider's 500+ strong pitch deck library!
Check out the Startup Resources library by Third Derivative and New Energy Nexus, covering topics from customer discovery to getting government funding for climate projects.
Ongoing programs
💡 Tip: Work on Climate is a lot more than Slack - we have a large resource library. See our crowdsourced Notion!
🎯 Looking for additional resources?
Check out 🗺️ WoCl How To to find other WoCl tools helpful to you as a jobseeker, climate employer, or startup founder, and #️⃣ Slack Guide to see an overview of our Slack channels. For example:
💡 Did you know that on the #resume channel people are happy to help you polish your resume with suggestions for improvement?
💡 Keep an eye on #learn-the-space to orient yourself in climate! This month folks shared useful resources on energy, the interplay between blockchain and offsets, and an extensive whitepaper on voluntary carbon offset markets.
📚 Learning groups - Work on a climate vertical
Want to learn about a new climate topic with others? 💡 Then check out our Learning Groups - they're a fun way to kick off your climate learning while meeting people who share your interest!
Our learning groups include:
🌊 Ocean Sequestration Learning Group
🧠 Social Science Learning Group
👩🌾 Regenerative Agriculture Learning Group
🌍 Climate Justice Learning Group
💰 Climate Finance Learning Group
And more! Learn more about learning groups and how to join one here.
💎 Starter packs
What is a starter pack? A starter pack is a curated, small collection of resources designed to give you a concentrated introduction to various climate topics. Check out the WoCl Starter Packs to learn more! Some highlights include:
New this month, Become a Founder
💝 Want to help fund WoCl programs?
👋 We are a non-profit run entirely by volunteers but we do incur software expenses to support our programming. Please consider supporting us on Patreon. Interested in helping provide funding for a specific program or WoCl staff? Reach out to @Jeremy B on Slack to discuss sponsoring a WoCl program or intern!