about the careers in climate change panel:
This is the fourth, and final, panel of the series! It will be on November 14th from 10-11 AM (PDT), is will focus on careers in climate change. The panel will be composed of people with different jobs and career paths that relate back to climate change in some way or another. Through this panel, I am hoping to inspire people to look for ways that they can make an impact on the environment through whatever they already love to do and hope to do in the future, whether that be art or law or something entirely different.
Meet the panelists:
Julian Wong
Julian Wong is an attorney at Wilson Sonsini, an international technology law firm headquartered in Silicon Valley where he advises technology startup companies, many in the sustainability field, on corporate law matters. Julian is also deeply involved in education innovation and is currently engaging with several educational organizations to redesign pre-K through 12 education and schooling around the core tenets of ecological consciousness, civic participation, and ethics.
Julian was previously affiliated with A Whole Person Economy, a think-and-do tank seeking to develop new progressive economic paradigms for the 21st Century. Julian was previously a senior policy analyst for climate and energy issues at the Center for American Progress, a Washington D.C.-based think tank, and a policy advisor on U.S.-China energy relations at the U.S. Department of Energy during the Obama administration.
Julian obtained his J.D. at Duke Law School, M.A. in environmental policy from Duke University, and B.A. in Biology from Pomona College. He was also a Fulbright Scholar at Beijing’s Tsinghua University School of Law where he wrote extensively on China’s renewable energy and environmental policies.
Mimi Tran Zambetti
Mimi is a co-founder at Wren, a Public Benefit Corporation dedicated to helping end the climate crisis.
Wren empowers individuals to fund climate solutions in a way that brings trust and transparency to carbon offsets. The website makes it easy for anyone to live carbon neutral through a subscription: you calculate your carbon footprint, choose a carbon offset project, and then get updates showing your project’s progress, like photos of the trees planted.
Since Wren launched in June 2019, it has sent over $500,000 to its projects to offset 42,000 tons of CO2 (that’s like preventing 1.2m square feet of Arctic sea ice loss). It has received 19,000+ contributions from individuals in 60+ countries. It has raised $1.5m from mission-aligned investors like Union Square Ventures and Paul Graham.
At first, she and her two co-founders thought that they couldn’t do much to help because they were just college students, not climate scientists or politicians. Then they realized that many climate solutions, for example regenerative agroforestry and rainforest protection, were already being implemented. What they had to do was find supporters to help these solutions scale.
Mimi started Wren in her junior year at the University of Southern California, where she studied Arts, Technology, and Business at the Iovine and Young Academy. While at USC, she loved to build products with her peers and shared that passion by running an all-women makeathon for two years.
Lauren Weston
Ms. Weston has over a decade of leadership experience in several well-regarded nonprofits including the Breakthrough Collaborative and the Hiller Aviation Museum. Most recently, she was Director of Philanthropy for the West Coast Region at World Bicycle Relief. Originally from Northern California, Ms. Weston is an alumna of New York University, where she received her master’s degree, and holds a bachelor’s from the University of California–Davis.
Ms. Weston started with the environmental nonprofit Acterra: Action for a Healthy Planet in June of 2019, assuming the role of Executive Director with oversight of management, operations, and development of the organization. She is an impact-oriented, visionary strategist who is also a proven relationship-builder, a great combination for an organization in transition.
Acterra, a 50-year-old organization based in Palo Alto, CA, addresses global climate change at the local level by making it easier and cheaper for the public to reduce their carbon footprints at home, work, and throughout the community. The year 2020 marks a special milestone: Acterra’s 50th anniversary, which coincides with the 50th anniversary of Earth Day.
Ms. Weston believes deeply in the strength of collaboration, people working together to solve problems, and that the abilities of one person added to those of another can produce exponentially positive outcomes. She also believes that providing resources for children to thrive is key to our collective survival.
Ms. Weston’s areas of expertise include Financial management, capital campaigns, annual solicitations, foundation and corporate granting, major gift & major donor cultivation, endowment & planned giving, board development, and marketing & communications.
Shalini Unnikrishnan
Shalini Unnikrishnan is the Global Lead for Societal Impact in the Consumer and Social Impact practices at Boston Consulting Group.
Shalini’s work at BCG is focused at the intersection of the private, public, and social sectors. She is the co-author of “Total Societal Impact,” which explores how companies can gain business and societal value through their core operations. Shalini gained expertise in this subject through her work with private sector clients. She also supports public and social sector clients on private sector engagement. Shalini has worked extensively in emerging markets–on value chains of private sector companies in agriculture, financial inclusion, women’s empowerment, and economic development. Her experience includes supporting the UN Mission for Ebola Emergency Response in West Africa, working within presidencies in Africa as an advisor on economic development, supporting global health and education coalitions, and designing public-private partnerships for consumer companies.
Shalini has taken leaves of absence from BCG (2009-10, 2012) to serve with former UK Prime Minister Tony Blair's Africa Governance Initiative (AGI). She was embedded within President Kagame's government in Rwanda to support private-sector development, and she was a day-to-day advisor to President Banda in Malawi.
Shalini is a recent Presidential Leadership Scholar, a selective program led by former President George W. Bush, and she has written and published extensively on various topics in societal impact including a TED talk on new models for tackling humanitarian crises. She currently sits on the Board of Directors of the Tony Blair Foundation.
Scott Neuman
Scott is alarmed by the impact climate change is having on our world and is committed to helping utilities accelerate a clean energy future. In that spirit, he joined Opower over 8 years ago, and led efforts to take the company public and oversaw much of the strategy & go-to-market apparatus that led to Opower's acquisition by Oracle Utilities in 2016. With the addition of Opower, Oracle Utilities is now the largest software organization in the world completely focused on utilities. Scott sits on the executive team for Oracle Utilities and leads the Opower business.
While most climate change businesses focus on the supply side (e.g., renewables), Opower focuses on the demand side of the equation. We work with utilities to nudge their end customers to waste less energy and make more efficient purchasing decisions. Through the application of behavioral science, human centered design, and machine learning, we have now notched over 27 TWH in electricity savings alone. This translates into reducing utility customer bills by >$2.2B and saving enough energy to power ~4M EVs to circle the equator. In terms of emissions reduction impact, it's enough to unplug 4 coal plants for a year or plant over 300 million trees and allow them to grow for a decade.
Before joining Opower, Scott spent five years at McKinsey & Company. He holds a J.D. from Harvard Law School which he received after attending Stanford University and coding at a few early-stage Silicon Valley startups. He's got an awesome wife (his better half) and two lovely kids.