5/11 - Candidates and Careers in Climate
Welcome to the first email of Innovate Climate - Careers!
For a bit of context on why I started this newsletter:
I started Innovate Climate at the beginning of 2021. Innovate Climate is an online community centered around a weekly newsletter that highlights startups to the broader climate and sustainability ecosystem. Innovate Climate's mission is to help startups succeed and create impact, specifically by providing visibility to others in the sector and facilitating introductions.
Driven by the volume of people subscribing to Innovate Climate, who were also looking to work for a climate focused startup, Innovate Climate - Careers aims to connect job seekers with employers.
Furthermore, recently the White House released the American Jobs Plan, laying out $2T in jobs, infrastructure, and clean energy proposals. This plan is one the most significant climate actions to date, which will impact the next decade of climate innovation with the creation of new companies and jobs.
Job Seekers:
Casey Rieder
Greatest Accomplishment: I have helped build and launch ~8 IoT products for companies currently valued at +$50M.
Skills: Finance - Project & Corporate Finance, Modeling, Investment Valuation; Growth - Sales, Business Development, Partnerships; Technology - Product Management (Hardware & Software), Web * Mobile Engineering; Operations - Project Management, Program Management; Strategy - Business Model Innovation, Go to Market, New Market Entry
Looking for Next: I want to build the StratOps team (eg: COO, VP of Strategy) for a funded startup that is working at the intersection of fintech and climate.
Josh Shaeffer
Greatest Accomplishment: After helping scale and grow a community of millions of health and fitness enthusiasts at Runtastic (acquired by Adidas), I've worked with and helped many startups in the climate space, specifically focused on food systems, circular economy, and regenerative agriculture.
Skills: Strategy, Partnerships, Business Development, Sustainability, Growth, Marketing/PR
Looking for Next: I am looking to focus my energy full-time with an impact-focused startup that needs senior level help to grow their business.
Diane Cozian
Greatest Accomplishment: 8 years in M&A investment banking between Sao Paulo (Brazil), New York and San Francisco. And I loved it to the fullest!
Skills: Deal making (sourcing, execution, post-closing), strategy and negotiation
Looking for Next: M&A investment banker now shifting to VC climate tech.
Looking for a Principal position in a top firm in the space.
Greg Thomson
Greatest Accomplishment: Led teams that won three California Energy Commission grant awards for scaling clean energy systems; leader at startups achieving IPO, successful Fortune 50 acquisition, and industry-wide deployment.
Skills: Systems-thinker, team leader, and strong collaborator who thrives in start-up environments driving solutions, products, and business innovation while developing successful partnerships across all stakeholders. Proven communication and presentation skills.
Looking for Next: Help lead and drive an innovative cleantech/climatech startup to broad adoption and success.
James Booth
Greatest Accomplishment: Building, scaling, and leading a team of analysts and engineers to design and execute an analytics program supporting all of the Biden presidential campaign's TV, mail, and digital advertising to defeat Donald Trump
Skills: Experiment design and analysis, Statistical analysis, Survey design and analysis, Data visualization and story-telling, Audience analysis and marketing program planning, Growth hacking, Team management and leadership, Program and project management and delivery, Data infrastructure development and reporting, Principal, stakeholder, and vendor management, Decking, R, SQL, MS Office, Keynote
Looking for Next: Leverage my campaign/analytics background to drive impact in climate tech with growth management or growth analytics - looking particularly at B2C companies in growth phases.
Mike Schultz
Greatest Accomplishment: Scaling novel gas fermentation from pilot through multiple demos to secure the first commercial projects for LanzaTech.
Skills: Process technology scale-up, project management, carbon footprinting, process development, green chemistry, partnership development, technical due diligence
Looking for Next: I'm looking to help companies on a part time basis with scaleup of chemical and biological process technologies. I can bring engineering leadership to your great idea to help take it from the lab to the field.
Anagha Uppal
Greatest Accomplishment: Co-running a local participatory development nonprofit for a year.
Skills: GIS, Python, Operations, External Relations
Looking for Next: Carry out my my limited-term project ideas on distributed solar and wildfire detection.
Shantanu Singh
Greatest Accomplishment: Built a highly performant Automotive Edge platform for automotive IoT Devices using native code in a period of 6 months during my time on the Microsoft Connected Vehicle Platform team. The new platform brought down compute resource use on the devices by a magnitude of 40% and increased performance by a factor of 55% which was a considerable win for our customers and the company.
Skills: Distributed Systems, Cloud Services, Edge Computing, .NET, Building highly performant services, Software Architecture, Cloud Architecture
Looking for Next: I'm looking to meet like-minded people who are looking to leverage technology to help avert the climate crisis. I would personally like to dedicate myself to helping build a company in the Agri Tech or Smart Grid industry. I would also be interested in helping reduce the deplorable levels of air pollution in most developing countries around the world.
Rishi Purohit
Greatest Accomplishment: Personal: Establishing a 501(c)3 non-profit organization to raise funds for an educational institution and orphanage in rural Gujarat India, raising over $150,000 to finance infrastructure projects, student tuition, and most recently COVID relief. Professional: Establishing and growing a feature development roadmap for a surgical robotic system that defined the product release cadence over the next 7 years.
Skills: Medical Device Development, Non-Profit organization, Product Management, Galvanizing teams around a mission, Simplifying complex problems into bite-sized chunks, Distilling user needs into technical requirements, Wireframing, creating user stories, optimizing workflows, Agile SW development, Solidworks CAD design, Data Analysis (Minitab, Excel, Tableau)
Looking for Next: I’m laser-focused on leading initiatives that affect positive change and am looking to join a product management team delivering highly impactful solutions addressing the climate crisis. I'm particularly interested in ag tech, food tech, satellite imagery & analysis, and the intersection of hardware technology and climate solutions.
Aryuna Radnaeva
Greatest Accomplishment: Started my own nonprofit organization in Siberia, Russia.
Skills: Project Management, Communications, Strategic Development
Looking for Next: I would like to be a part of the company that creates an impact in lives of people and cares for the environment.
Grant Alpert
Greatest Accomplishment: My first few months at GM were creating a massive time-saving software tool to analyze data, allowing coworkers to do actual creative engineering work.
Skills: Systems thinking, in-depth knowledge of autonomous and automated driving solutions and challenges, willingness to nerd out
Looking for Next: Intern at a climate tech venture fund
Open Roles:
Web Developer @ The Impact
What is the single most important thing you are looking for in a candidate?
A maker personality (someone who enjoys building products)
Senior Software Engineer @ Packetized Energy
What is the single most important thing you are looking for in a candidate?
Someone who is committed to enabling a clean energy future
Business Developer @ Skytree
What is the single most important thing you are looking for in a candidate?
The art of negotiation and delivering new clients
Senior Software Engineer @ Felt
What is the single most important thing you are looking for in a candidate?
Ambition
Director of Renewable Strategy and Business Development @ Crusoe Energy
What is the single most important thing you are looking for in a candidate?
Deep understanding of renewable (wind and/or solar) power development
Environmental Commodity Manager @ Crusoe Energy
What is the single most important thing you are looking for in a candidate?
Experience in carbon credit markets (voluntary or involuntary)
Full Stack Engineer @ Crusoe Energy
What is the single most important thing you are looking for in a candidate?
Experience shipping UI products
Full Stack Software Engineer @ SINAI Technologies, Inc
What is the single most important thing you are looking for in a candidate?
Passion about climate change
Sr. Backend Software Engineer @ SINAI Technologies, Inc
What is the single most important thing you are looking for in a candidate?
Passionate about climate change
Looking for a job?
Fill out the form below to be featured in a future newsletter!
Looking to hire?
Fill out the form below to feature your job posting in a future newsletter!