Work on Climate (Feb 2021): The power of 1000+ brains
Welcome to the February 2021 newsletter of Work On Climate. [Subscribe and read archives]
Our community is now over 1,000+ members! Wow! We are incredibly inspired by the energy and growing diversity of community members. Thank you for keeping our culture positive and action-oriented.
Need help with your climate project? Ready to offer others assistance? Drop into the Slack community with offers or asks and advance your or someone else's climate journey.
Add your climate friends to our community to keep making it stronger!
What's New?
🥳 February Events
We are hosting a number of incredibly exciting events throughout February:
Tue Feb 2 @5:00pm PT - Ocean Carbon Sequestration with Lennart Bach. RSVP here.
Dr. Lennart Bach is a marine biogeochemist. He currently investigates CO2 removal via Ocean Iron Fertilization, Artificial Upwelling, Ocean Afforestation, and Ocean Alkalinity Enhancement. He is listed by Scopus as one of the 100 most influential scientists worldwide for the United Nation’s Sustainable Development Goal Number 14: Life Below Water. Thank you to community member Veronica Tamsitt for inviting Lennart to speak!
Tue Feb 9 @2:00pm PT - Afresh: Sustainable Food Supply Chain Powered by AI. RSVP here.
About 30-40% of food produced worldwide is wasted, contributing to up to 25% of all greenhouse gas emissions. The CTO of Afresh Volodymyr Kuleshov will be describing a decision support system for supermarket operators that optimizes purchasing decisions and minimizes losses. Our system is currently handling ~2% of US produce volume and has led to waste reductions of up to 50%.
Fri Feb 12 @12:00pm PT - New Battery Technology with QuantumScape. RSVP here.
QuantumScape is bringing a new battery technology to market to enable long-range, low-cost, and fast-charging EVs. QuantumScape co-founder and CTO Tim Holme will talk about the opportunity for improving batteries, why this battery has been 45 years in the making, and the status of QuantumScape’s battery technology. QuantumScape is hiring across many engineering disciplines and business roles; join to learn more.
Thu Feb 18 @11am PT - Product Managing & Growing a Climate Start-Up. RSVP here.
Interested in learning about a career path as a PM in Climate? Or how to grow your climate start-up? Rahul Nihalani has more than 10 years of experience in start-ups, product strategy, and growth marketing, and will discuss his career path and share thoughts, including his experiences as a senior PM and Head of Growth at Aurora Solar. Discussion will be followed by Q&A.
Sat Feb 20 @2:00pm PT - Guided Brainstorm - Grocery Stores. RSVP here.
Grocery stores are low-hanging fruit for climate action. Open refrigerators, food waste, refrigerant leaks, and more. Join us for a guided brainstorm on how we can make groceries greener, using a design thinking process. We encourage participation by community members of all knowledge levels!
Thu Feb 25 @11am PT - Pitch Deck Practice. RSVP here.
Are you working on an exciting new early stage venture startup? Whether you're a pitching pro looking for a second perspective, or just still trying to figure out how to organize your slides, we can help! Come practice your pitch with us and receive candid and constructive feedback on content, performance and slide design.
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; find upcoming events on the calendar and on #events.
👩🎓 Accepting new Climate Fellows
Are you ready to volunteer with a world leading climate non-profit or get paid for part time consulting with climate startups? Fellow applications are open for the new cohort!
Climate Fellows is aimed at experienced individuals who want to commit at least 10 hours/week to climate. Our fellows have already launched exciting projects with World Wildlife Fund, Reflective Earth, WORLD Policy Analysis Center and Climate Neutral!
Do you know of excellent climate NGOs that need help? Startups that have part time work? Direct them to our organization application form so we can get Fellows working on meaningful projects!
Many thanks to @Niveditha (Nivi) Obla for taking over leadership of Climate Fellows! She brings an incredible background of program management experience at Google and we are excited about her plans to improve the fellows' experience.
🏢 Find your next job
Thank you for all the great community contributions to the #jobs channel in the last month. There were postings for UI/UX designers, data scientists, product managers, software, mechanical, electrical, thermal, and other engineering roles. And, in a welcome expansion, there were calls for many non-tech jobs including social media managers, finance and venture analysts, sales reps, and more!
Here are a few highlights:
Afresh an AI-based food waste forecasting startup with a $100M valuation is hiring for many roles including Head of People, Product Designer, Product Manager, Data engineer, Machine Learning Engineer, iOS Engineer, Sales Exec, and Marketing Manager. CTO Volodymyr Kuleshov will be giving a tech talk to our community on Feb 9 (RSVP).
QuantumScape, a next-generation EV battery company founded by CTO Tim Holme is hiring more than 70 positions including Deep Learning Expert, Sr. Software Engineer, Software Engineer, and many more technical and non-technical positions. Tim is giving a tech talk on Feb 12 (RSVP).
Iron and Earth is a workers-led organization that seeks to transition from fossil fuels to renewable and clean energy based in Alberta, Canada! The team is currently undergoing a leadership transition and is seeking a CEO and Executive Director. If you are interested or know someone who could be a great fit, please DM @Sally Lin on Slack!
Ecosystem Services Market Consortium a regenerative agriculture nonprofit, is looking for their Lead Engineer. It is a remote, full time position on an annual contract basis. Contact @Michael Leggett on Slack with questions.
Stripe is hiring a Climate Product Manager. This could be a dream job for a senior PM who is excited to drive and shape Stripe's Climate programs. Says Stripe: "The stage of our team is early and the degrees of freedom are many"!
Counterfactual Ventures announced openings for Chief of Staff to the CEO, Head of Venture Creation, Head of Science and Technology and Science and Technology Associate. These roles are focused on improving global health, environment and animal welfare by building a better food system.
If you are a software engineer, check out @Roman Leventov's brand new and amazingly comprehensive guide on how to find a climate tech job!
📚 Learn by reading
It's been awhile since we have showcased our community curated Starter Packs for getting started in various climate verticals. Shoutout to #learning-group-psy which has published a comprehensive list of resources on the intersection of climate and social science, and #learning-group-regen-ag which has produced one on regenerative agriculture. Check out their recommendations and our other starter packs for climate policy, climate finance, entrepreneurship, job hunting, and more!
We also wanted to highlight that two other extensive resources on important climate topics recently came out:
The Carbon Dioxide Removal Primer covers the scientific status for different carbon removal techniques like direct air capture, soil carbon sequestration, and ocean alkalinity enhancement. For the next several weeks, @John Sanchez is leading a technical discussion group with Airminers on this book.
@Nicholas Yiu produced a 70-page report on the State of Battery Technology and organizes the Battery Brunch community.
👋 New Slack channels
We have launched a few new channels that need love and nurturing! Help shape these baby channels into being useful community resources.
#content-creators for content creators across digital, print, media, art, podcasting, and more.
#fundraising if you are looking to raise money or invest in climate ventures or nonprofits! Use the channel to make connections and share asks.
#designers for UI/UX, web designers, graphic designers and those looking to hire them.
#entrepreneurship for those building a new climate venture and meeting co-founders.
#PMs for product managers, project managers, and program managers sharing tips on how to transition into climate.
🌱 ML & Climate Conference
The program is available and registration is open for PAW Climate taking place in May 2021. This is the world's first conference on industry applications of machine learning in climate tech, and was sourced by our very own @Eugene Kirpichov.
Meet speakers and panelists from 12+ leading climate tech organizations such as AMP Robotics, Terrafuse AI, Climate TRACE, and others. In organizing the conference, Eugene made a big list of ML climate companies that may be interesting to others.
Ongoing programs
📚 Learn via Learning Groups and curated resources
Join learning groups of people interested in the same climate vertical as you, and work together towards something actionable.
🌊 Ocean sequestration learning group recently discussed how to allocate $500M to marine solutions. We are looking for a new host to take over organizing the biweekly sessions. If you are interested, please message @Cassandra Xia on Slack.
🧠 Social science learning group produced a set of actionable resources. The group continues to function as a consultancy for community members on social science related topics! Join if you want to help or if you have something to ask.
👩🌾 Regen ag learning group has been brainstorming on how to incentivize farmers to switch from conventional to regenerative methods, and the #learning-group-regen-ag channel has been bustling with activity.
💰 Climate finance learning group investigated ways to finance climate solutions. See presentations on the group page, and join if you want to help do more research!
☢️ Nuclear learning group has started bi-weekly meetings. For their next speaker, they are looking for someone who knows about nuclear policy and regulation. Join #learning-group-nuclear to get involved.
🌍 Climate justice learning group is writing a Climate Justice 101 document.
🧙🏼 Talk to climate experts at hosting Office Hours
Ask for advice from climate experts at our Office Hours - meet with physicists, experts in modeling, entrepreneurs, and more. Our experts have volunteered their time to help people enter the space!
🙃 Consultations for climate organizations
We are piloting a new program to provide climate orgs and founders with free consultations with expert professionals. More than 10 people are offering their expertise in business development, strategy, marketing, pitch writing, messaging, design, software, SEO, and more.
If you are a climate org or solo founder and would like to use this service, please contact @Richard Kim on Slack.
If you would like to offer your expertise to climate orgs or founders, please contact @Eugene Kirpichov on Slack. There is high demand for more experts in sales, business development, fundraising, and content!
🤖 Browse a bounty of buddies with Braintrust Bot Beta!
As the community grows, we are building tools to help people keep finding relevant connections, programs and resources. The current iteration lets you search an archive of #introductions and is gradually getting smarter (help us by adding synonyms to improve the search!)
Type /braintrust [search term] in any Slack channel, and you'll see intros from people matching your query (don't worry, it's visible only to you). E.g. try /braintrust carbon capture or /braintrust canada.
Our next milestone is to proactively recommend resources and connections.
Want to help? Send feedback or requests to get involved to @Richard Kim.
🚀 Monthly climate goals
In a monthly tradition, please help us understand successful paths into working on climate by taking this 2-question survey!