Our season finale covers startup investments that are on the absolute cutting edge. We’re joined by Maryanna Saenko, an early-stage venture capitalist and the Co-founder of Future Ventures (early investors in SpaceX, Tesla, Neuralink, Planet, and Skype). Backing visionaries for over two decades through her firm, Maryanna gets to play a part in technology that ranges from Bee Immunology to Nuclear Fusion. She’s also worked on lunar rovers, martian landers, driverless cars, and long-range low-frequency communication systems.
On the show, we cover ‘frontier tech’ and companies in the portfolio at Future Ventures. We also got to reference all of my favorite sci-fi movies (some of which it seems like Maryanna is trying to bring to life) and we even talked about poetry in our rapid fire round!
Today’s guest, and her company, operate the largest mobile sensor network on Earth, and they use that network to track air pollution and greenhouse gasses.
Davida Herzl is CEO and founder of Aclima. Her company uses devices, as well as software, to turn emissions measurements into analytics so that companies, governments, and communities can become more eco-friendly.
On the show, Davida and I talked about the health impacts of pollution, climate justice, and the early days of our startups!
It’s hard to track our individual carbon footprints. Most people have no idea what emissions are associated with a bag of groceries or last night’s takeout. This type of information is hard to come by, which makes it even more challenging to make environmentally friendly decisions. Sustainability Data Service company, Cogo is trying to change that by empowering individuals and businesses to measure, reduce, and offset the impact they have on the climate.
Today’s guest is Ben Gleisner, founder and CEO of Cogo.
On the show, we dove into the individual side of sustainability, behavioral science, and the climate tech behind Cogo. ClimateTech with Kentaro is produced by our incredible team at Persefoni and Hueman Group Media.
For our final episode of Sustainability Decoded Season 1, we’re doing some self reflection with a fellow podcaster.
All season long we’ve talked about ESG – environmental, social, and governance, and we’ve spent several episodes on the environmental side. Mandi McReynolds is the Senior Director of ESG at Workiva and the host of ESG Talk.
In this episode, she broke down why the ‘S’ and ‘G’ in ESG are just as important as the ‘E.’ She told us that good governance is a base for good business, and that social impact is a growing interest area for businesses around the world.
Did you know that greenhouse gas emissions can be turned into leggings or even jet fuel?
Today’s guest, Dr. Jennifer Holmgren, is the CEO of LanzaTech. Her company has been working on carbon recycling technology for over 15 years. Now, LanzaTech has scaled up its technology from a startup and is almost ready to go public.
In the episode, Jennifer gave me an AP chem lesson on the conversion process and the myriad of ways the technology can be used. We also dig into her incredibly impressive biography which, spoiler alert, includes 50 patents, 30 scientific publications, a PHD and an MBA.
