Work on Climate (June 2021): Announcing #europe! Plus, how to meet others with shared interests

The positive, action-oriented community at workonclimate.org

Welcome to the June 2021 newsletter of Work on Climate. Add your climate friends to our community to keep making it stronger! Subscribe and read newsletter archives.

🇪🇺 #europe channel and launch party

Did you know that 1/4 of new WoCl members are from the EU? We are delighted to announce the new channel #europe and our first European networking event on June 9th at 19:00 CET/10am PT - add it to your calendar.

If you are based in Europe and want to network, find jobs, attend and set up events — join, introduce yourself 👋 and tell us where you live. Please spread the news and see you there!

The WoCl core team is grateful to #europe organizers Tilmann, Sam, Róisín, Magaret, Gundeep, & Anne for starting this initiative! Way to live out the WoCl values!

🤝 Meet others with shared interests

Method 1: Try Sparkly Bot

Interested in meeting others with similar climate interests, like regenerative agriculture, data science, or investing? For the next ten days, you can try out the Sparkly App by DMing hello to the @Sparkly bot! Just select an interest (or add your own!) and the app will match you with others for a Friday meetup. Try it out, and let us know if you like it!

Method 2: Find your own buddy via our Braintrust Bot

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.

It also works for people's names - try /braintrust richard kim to find Richard's introduction.

Note: This command will find a lot more people than Slack search, because Slack searches only the last 10,000 messages, and we're at 80,000+.

🥳 June events

Missed an event? We got you: find recordings and notes at Past Events and on our YouTube channel. Add the WoCl calendar to yours to see upcoming events.

Huge thank you to community members Josh Shaeffer, Lilly Tong, Utkarsh Vaidya, Varun Tandon, Veronica Tasmitt, the WoCl EU team, and AirMiners for organizing events with us this month!

Wed May 26 @11am PT - Carbon Neutralization with Cooler. RSVP here.

Cooler focuses on helping businesses make more money by fighting climate change. They calculate and neutralize (not offset) product emissions and provide roadmaps to further reductions. Cooler's leadership team (with cumulatively more than 50 years of climate experience) will focus on the intersection between climate tech and climate impact – how to measure it and how to have it.

Thu May 27 @11am PT - Carbon sequestration potential of Sargassum seaweed. Add to Google calendar.

Veronica Tasmitt presents her Nature paper on Sargassum seaweed for carbon dioxide removal to the WoCl ocean learning group. Ocean afforestation is considered as an important method to remove gigatons of CO2 from the atmosphere. Here the authors use the Great Atlantic Sargassum Belt as a natural analogue to show that the efficacy of ocean afforestation is determined by complicated feedbacks with the Earth system.

Wed June 2 @5pm PT - Agroforestry with Blacksheep. RSVP here.

Blacksheep transmutes “trash” into treasure by using agroforestry to regenerate degraded pasture land into biodiverse forests and regenerative superfood products. The CEO, Josh, will share his story about how he ended up in Costa Rica, acquired land, and started practicing agroforestry. Blacksheep has replanted forests and sequestered carbon, while paying high wage jobs for the local community. There will be a special discount code for their products for those who attend.

Thu June 3 @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.

Wed June 9 @noon PT - Fixing Recycling with Glacier. RSVP here.

Today only 9% of plastic we use in the US is recycled - the rest is lost to landfills, incinerators, and our environment. Glacier is building AI-powered robots to evolve the facilities that power our recycling, with the mission of ending waste. Come learn about the challenges our small team faces in building a game-changing product for an industry on the cusp of a technological revolution.

Wed June 9 @19:00 CET / 10am PT - WoCl Europe Launch Party and Networking. Add to your Calendar

We are very excited to invite you to our very first European WoCl networking event. We want to help people in Europe to meet and connect with each other. We are looking forward to meeting you! - WoCl Europe organizers Tilmann, Sam, Róisín, Magaret, Gundeep & Anne

Sat June 12 @6pm PT - Solutions board game play test. RSVP here.

Solutions is a board game about hope & action for the climate, developed by WoCl's Sam Levac-Levey. Join us to try out the game virtually! We will play 'short mode', which takes 45-60 minutes to play.

Wed June 16 @noon PT - AirMiners and Work on Climate Carbon Removal Careers Networking. RSVP here.

We will have an open Wonder room for individuals to meet each other, organized by job function area (e.g. technical skills, operations, marketing). This is going to be a free-flowing networking session where you can have 1:1 conversations or enter into larger discussions with others about job opportunities in carbon removal.

Thu June 24 @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.

🏢 Find your next job

Some #jobs this month from organizations within our community include:

• Pachama is bringing the latest technology in remote sensing and AI to the world of forest carbon in order to enable forest conservation and restoration to scale. They’re looking to hire Full-Stack Engineers and more positions to join their team.

• Phaidra uses AI to directly control industrial processes, making them more efficient. The team previously built the technology powering Google's autonomous data centers, reducing energy usage by 40%. They're hiring for several engineering roles including a senior frontend engineer.

• Myst AI helps clean energy companies predict the near future. Our Myst Platform helps data scientists to build and deploy complex time series forecasting models in minutes. They're hiring their first Engineering Manager.

• Carbon Collective is making climate-investing = smart investing so you can safely focus investments like your retirement account on climate impact, and is hiring a Content Manager and a Research Intern.

• Jaro Fleet Technologies exists to accelerate the widespread adoption of electric semi-trucks and evolve the climate startup model. They are funded and hiring engineers and a business development lead.

Explore other channels to find full-time jobs on #jobs and #jobs-alerts, short-term or part-time work on #gigs, talk about job-seeking in general on #jobs-discussion, and help each other polish your resumes on #resume.

Fill out our survey to let us know whether Work on Climate has (or hasn't) helped you find climate work. We would love your feedback!

This month 8 people shared in #i-got-a-job that they found jobs in climate! They joined organizations working on topics such as food waste, energy, and atmospheric research. Read their stories, and share yours to inspire others!

✨ Climate Stories—Finding and Filling Jobs in Cleantech

@Sabrina Dove-Petrigh, cleantech recruiter and founder of Pacific Search Firm, sat down for an interview with Work on Climate. Read about her perspectives on the cleantech job market, the cleantech industry, and filling cleantech start-up roles in part 1 of our two-part interview. And keep your eyes out for part 2, coming in a few weeks!

Ongoing programs

🎯 See programs relevant to you

As we have dozens of offerings, check out 🗺️ WoCl How To in order to help you find the programs available to you as a jobseeker, climate employer, or startup founder. For example:

• 💡 Did you know you can Consult a Learning Group to co-brainstorm on a project idea?

• 💡 Did you know you can get feedback on your resume on the #resume channel?

• 💡 Did you know almost all WoCl events are recorded and posted to Past Events?

👩‍🎓 Need quick help for a company you're building?

Try booking a quick consult with one of the Climate Fellows. Here are some examples of how people have used this service this month:

• A climate professional talked to two experienced tech entrepreneurs about turning their Excel-based product into a software platform

• A founder consulted an ML professional about using ML to improve the effectiveness of their hardware solution

• A software founder asked a sustainability professional about industry best practices

• A hard-tech and education non-profit got advice from a start-up mentor on general organizational strategy

🧙🏼 Meet climate experts at Office Hours

Ask for advice on entering the space from climate experts at our Office Hours - simply book time on their Calendly. Here's what community members had to say about their experiences this month:

• I really appreciate the time @David Fork took to talk to me yesterday during office hours, it was educational, interesting, and helpful! If you haven't already, I encourage everyone to read his paper where he talks about a new approach to renewable energy R&D and how he and his co-author were wrong.

• Thank you @Joe Rollin for taking the time to chat with us! As complete noobs to bio-engineering, we learnt where the industry is wrt climate, how it's harder to compete with “low margin high volume” products, and [the] importance of policy in shaping the future of this industry. Joe was so elaborate and we learned a lot in this session!

📚 Learning groups - Work on a climate vertical

Join learning groups of people interested in the same climate vertical as you, and work together towards something actionable.

• Climate Finance Learning Group is running an "Idea Refinery". The group has brainstormed a dozen company ideas and will gather experts to vet them in front of an audience - follow #learning-group-finance for updates. Consider organizing a similar event in your learning group!

• Food Waste Action Channel is working to create a movement around reducing food waste, one of the top Drawdown Solutions. We're looking for a volunteer to take over the channel and drive it for maximum impact. Please message @Sam Levac-Levey on Slack for details.

• Regenerative Agriculture Learning Group has brought in Elizabeth Whitlow, ED of the Regenerative Organic Alliance to give a talk, and members shared what they learned. This month they are bringing in Joshua Hughes, the CEO of agroforestry company Blacksheep to talk about his work. RSVP here.

• Ocean Sequestration Learning Group will be bringing in @Veronica Tamsitt to discuss her Nature paper regarding the carbon sequestration potential of Sargassum seaweed. RSVP here.

💎 Starter packs of the best learning resources

New to the climate space? Want to learn from the best resources? Check out the WoCl Starter Packs!

New additions to the Starter Packs include My Climate Journey's Clubhouse summaries which cover aviation, nuclear, future of meat, and ESG in an information dense manner.

💝 Want to help WoCl?

• We would love your feedback! Fill out our survey to let us know whether we have helped you find climate work.

• We are fully volunteer run and would love help with running and scaling our existing programs. Message @Eugene Kirpichov on Slack to get involved!

Follow us on Twitter, LinkedIn, or Clubhouse for notifications about new events!