Community Leaders Gather for Climatize's Santa Cruz Climate Consortium
Climatize hosted its first-ever Santa Cruz Climate Consortium in collaboration with Santa Cruz Works on Friday, April 29th, 2022. Climatize is an investment platform connecting individual investors with renewable energy projects. Climatize operates on a crowdlending business model basis– debt crowdfunding – a community of investors collectively lending money to projects.
Members of local climate organizations, industry leaders, government representatives, academics, and activists gathered during the event to connect, exchange ideas, and learn about the local efforts in place to support a cleaner and greener climate and economy. Will Wiseman, Co-founder of Climatize kicked off the event by sharing the following:
“[In the last 135 years]…Santa Cruz and the world have changed dramatically. The seemingly endless abundance of the forest and the sea collided with our accelerated rate of consumption. The shuttered fisheries of cannery row serve as a stark reminder of when we neglect our role as stewards. This group here has committed to embracing our role as stewards….This is the opportunity to innovate….to build more efficiently…to make the most of what we have…to right systematic wrongs and build an economy more representative of our constituent parts.”- Will Wiseman
Also in attendance was special guest Molly Wood, known for her background as an audio journalist, host of the podcast “How We Survive” and investor. Several local key figures like Tiffany Wise-West, Sustainability and Climate Action Manager for the City of Santa Cruz, Cruz Foam’s CEO and Co-founder John Felts, Amy Gross, Sustainability Lead for Electric Vertical Take-Off and Landing vehicle company (eVTOL) Joby Aviation (NYSE: JOBY), and co-founder of SupplyShift, Alex Gershenson were at the event and gave brief talks.
Wise-West mentioned that several jurisdictions in the Monterey Bay region have come together to fund a climate project developer and grant writer, the development of a giving campaign to ensure grant matching, and emphasized the need to bring in and keep the historically underrepresented and underserved people in the community at the forefront of all efforts.
Gershenson and Gross touched on the importance of having supply chain transparency in order to fully be aware of how their suppliers are impacting the lives of their workers, their community, and the environment in the creation of products for consumers.
Felts, who was a researcher at UC Santa Cruz prior to creating Cruz Foam with his advisor and co-founder Marco Rolandi, shared some of the company’s latest developments which include Leonardo DiCaprio and Ashton Kutcher as the company’s newest investors and advisors as well as a new R&D production facility where Cruz Foam can continue to innovate and fulfill increasing requests for their bio-sustainable plastic alternative packaging solution.
The night concluded with a message of gratitude from Will Wiseman, additional networking, and a cool ocean breeze. See photos from the event below:
