Why I Couldn't Say No to Persefoni

It’s been a joy of my life to be involved in the sustainability movement. When I started working in this field in the mid-1980s, I was a regulator for the EPA working to control the worst excesses of pollution. Companies were the enemy.

Fast forward to the present and I am helping to build a company designed to solve the climate crisis. After decades of work first with the public sector, then within large companies (Intel, Apple and AMD), and finally the nonprofit world (GRI), I am now working with a talented team dedicated to building an enterprise-level platform to monitor and manage carbon emissions with transparency and confidence - in real-time. And today, we announced $9.7 million in Series A funding.

The carbon accounting market has arrived.

This is a breakthrough. Even the largest companies are managing carbon emissions on spreadsheets and most only report the data annually to ‘check the box.’ 

This approach won’t work anymore ... if it ever really did. 

Climate change is the existential threat of our time and companies cannot manage their carbon emissions by looking in the rear-view mirror. They need timely data. They need to be able to forecast into the future. In essence, they need to manage carbon with the same rigor as they do their finances. 

That is what we are building at Persefoni.

When I stepped down as Chief Executive of the Global Reporting Initiative, I was not planning to go back to full-time work. I was looking forward to a more freelance chapter of my career where I could spend more time with family. But, when I saw the promise of Persefoni's technology and the talented people behind it, I immediately changed my mind.

Today’s news of closing our initial round of funding is validation that this works. A strong economy can be compatible with a healthy planet and I am honored to be a part of this movement.