295 | Longtermism, Interdisciplinary Collaboration, and Climate Transition with Candice Ammori
Our guest this week on the pod is Candice Ammori. Candice is the Founder of Climate Vine, a membership community that combines elements of a continuous conference and an action-packed lab. Each curated group of experts has diverse backgrounds ranging from policy, investments, corporate, non-profit, entrepreneurship, tech & science.
This episode is sponsored by the coaching company of our host, Zelizer Consulting Services.
Resources mentioned in this episode include:
Interdisciplinary Collaboration and Climate Transition - an interview with Candice Ammori
NOTE: While it’s not perfect, we offer this transcription by Otter.ai for those who are hearing impaired or who don’t find listening to a podcast enjoyable or possible.
SPEAKERS
Candice Ammori, Paul Zelizer
Paul Zelizer 00:01
Hi, this is Paul Zelizer, and welcome to the Awarepreneurs podcast. On this show, we dive deep into wisdom from some of the world's leading social entrepreneurs. Our goal is to help increase your positive impact your profitability, and your quality of life. Before we get into today's topic, I have one request. If you could hit subscribe and do a review on your favorite podcast app that helps more people learn how to have positive impact through a values based business. Thank you so much. Today, I'm thrilled to introduce you to Candace Ammori and our topic is Longtermism, Interdisciplinary Collaboration, and Climate Transition. Candice is the founder of climate bind, a membership community that combines elements of a continuous conference and an action oriented lab. Each curated group of experts has diverse backgrounds ranging from policy investment, corporate, nonprofit, entrepreneurship, tech and science. Candace, welcome to the show.
Candice Ammori 01:02
Thank you, Paul. It's great to be here. Really appreciate
Paul Zelizer 01:05
the work you're doing. And just I like to be transparent about these things. Just so folks know, Candace and I know each other because we're both scouts for enduring planet Big shout out to Demetri and Erin have during planet and just like to be transparent about stuff like that. So, Candice, this work about climate and gathering up really smart people like give us a little bit of your professional backstory? What would somebody need to know about cannabis to understand like, what kind of experience and training you bring to this work?
Candice Ammori 01:41
It's great, complicated question to start off with. So my undergrad was a mix of environmental science, business and policy. And I think I know at the time, I was trying to figure out how do I make an impact, right? Like, how do I actually do something in the world that that feels like it's moving the needle. And so I combined these three areas of study, and that I think there's something here, you know, one of these three has to hit, if not, maybe the combo. And the first thing I did was I went to Singapore and taught business communications. And then I worked in Cambodia and microfinance, I came back to the States got into tech worked at TechStars was on the founding team of a VR company when I lived in New York City. And that was around the time when I was like, who I feel like I've strayed, I set out to do something impactful or more impactful. And I don't think I'm quite there. So I got really involved in the ethics of AI. I thought that was a fascinating question. And I went back to school day, Calc, 310 years after Calc Two took some computer science classes, got into a program at University of Michigan thought I was going to get a PhD in statistics work on the ethics of AI for the rest of my life. And of course, the first semester of that grad program, the 2018 IPCC report came out famous 1.5 degree one, and I read it, and I understood that in the same way that AI can create some, you know, messed up results really biased results, because of feedback loops, where it takes observational data makes you put it in a machine makes it more racist, homophobic, sexist, then then the average human is. And so it's either result based on that. The same way there are these positive feedback loops that create bad things in climate. And there are these tipping points. And so that made me realize that I actually really wanted to go back to the environmental climate routes that I had started with earlier on. And the problem was that I had no idea how to make a career out of climate. And I was pretty convinced that I would take over my family small store small, small business and become a climate activists on the side, because I just I truly cannot see a way to marry business and climate. This was in 2020, I got involved with my climate journey, and actually pitched an idea very similar to what I ended up starting. But but the general thing was, I didn't know how or where to meet climate experts that I knew that I wanted to meet. I assumed I didn't need to go get a climate PhD to make an impact. And I really just needed to partner and collaborate with people that had more of that background, but I couldn't find a place to do that. And so that was kind of the full story of what led me to the place to start on climate tech and then to spin out in climate fine.
Paul Zelizer 04:33
Cool. We're gonna talk about Climate Fund in a second. If you're new here, listeners, one of the things I'd love to do is try to get as many resources as possible in the show notes. So Candace, you mentioned the IPCC sea report. anybody doesn't know what that is. It's like some of the smartest scientists paying attention to our planet, all coming together saying we're in real trouble. We are not in track for living sustainably on planet Earth and having this be a good experience for future integration. So I'll put a link to that report. And my climate journey is an incredible brand in the climate space. I have an awesome podcast and great resources for anybody who's trying to figure out how do I get involved in doing climate work, synched up with your values, and hopefully, your professional goals, at least for many people. So anyway, links in the show notes. So you get involved there, you say, Okay, I'm going from VR to AI to climb it. And so the nonlinear path like most of us who are are connected to our printers, my first career was in community mental health, and now I do social entrepreneurship and climate scouting, and all sorts of things. So nonlinear path, and even land on this interdisciplinary approach to bringing people together tell us a little bit like, what were some of the early iterations of climate vine? And what were you trying to do as you were thinking of bringing these really smart people together?
Candice Ammori 06:00
I was trying to solve a problem for me, very, you know, close to home sort of problem around? How do we get into climate and do the things that I want to be doing. And so the entire thesis from day one, has been that climate is this really complex systems problem. And that every single person has a role to play, regardless of the background, their skill set, whatever it is, we can all be doing something. And that we actually have to bring together all these different types of folks who are scientists, policy experts, entrepreneurs, investors, frontline community members, to, first of all, diagnose the problem at the highest level, let alone think about solutions and collaborate and put things into action. And so from there, I was like, Okay, how do we then create this really diverse curated group of people? And how do we get actions come out of it from this, again, like very diverse group of people that likely wouldn't meet without, without this curation without this unity program. And one of the ways that we structured it was having a cohort, right, so we choose the people, everyone goes through an application process, it's fairly competitive. And then to create this timebound forcing function of right now, it's a three month program. And that's the timing that has worked pretty well for us in the past, to essentially, like, I want to say force, but create the space where people who are open to new ideas, opens creativity open to thinking about things slightly differently, then meet other people that are have different perspectives, and can help them shift that view. And then for collaborations and companies and tangible outcomes to come out of it. Does that make sense? In terms of that early iteration, and where it came from?
Paul Zelizer 08:00
All the makes sense? And, and let's let's together put our heads we've seen some siloing in the climate space, and as in many impact spaces, but like, I'm thinking of some examples of like, let's say somebody's working on the energy part, right? They're working on decarbonizing energy, and whatever their favorite, you know, strategy, as let's call it solar, or let's talk about battery technology. So they're just like, all in on that. And like, if only everybody would go solar, everything would be fine. And then I'm like, Yeah, but I'm a gardener. What are we going to eat? You can eat solar panels? Or vice versa, right. Or, like, you know, people talk about like, well, you know, we got to talk about leadership we need Dei, like the leadership of the climate movement is, you know, disproportionately white, disproportionately male disproportionately, you know, the northern countries, you know, and we're having disproportionate impact on the less developed world, etc, right? So if we just pay attention to leadership and equity, then everything would fix itself. And I'm like, No, that's not what the research tells us. It's an important issue. But we also need really smart scientists, etc. Right? Like, what are some of the when you're talking about interdisciplinary collaboration, like if you look at the pre condition, where there's some siloing, what was some of the siloing you were seeing that was concerning you and that you wanted to bring people together to start sharing more information?
Candice Ammori 09:28
At the highest level, I had come from the tech world, and I've seen a bunch of people, including me, trying to get into the climate space, and not knowing how to find our counterparts who have complementary skill sets, complementary expertise. And I did see and continue to see a fair amount of climate tech companies that start without anyone who has more of a climate background on the on that founding team, and sometimes, you know, not on the early team at all. All right. So the highest level that was part of what I was solving for is how do we create climate tech companies that that are both climate deep and tech deep, right that don't don't leave one behind. And I think we've gotten really far. And I think we've done a much better job of that today. And so that makes me really happy. And I think that if, if we're taking a step back, and understanding why D siloing. Right, and bringing together these people with different perspectives is so important. I think that it's when we think about the system at the higher level, and we kind of have a bird's eye view. And we can see that like, a couple things. One, climate today is an industry. As soon as possible, let's say tomorrow, it should be a climate economy, right, like the entire economy should have to do with climate. And that is part of why everyone is so important is that we have a sustainable economy, everyone's de facto doing climate work. And so So climate as a space plus climate as this like larger economy, it's kind of this creative tension that we're working in today, in this in this transition that we're seeing. The other creative tensions are that there are some things that have to happen sooner, and there's some things that have to happen later. And there's some things that get more press, and there's some things that get less press. And they're all I think, equally important in the sense that we need to do all of them, right, we can't leave anything, any talent, any person on the sidelines. And so it's this idea of creating these microcosms of the macrocosm, where we can hold these seemingly opposing realities in this creative tension, and gather people who help all of us see things in different ways, so that we actually get the full picture so that we're not, we're not only thinking in this one dimensional siloed sort of way that I think can happen.
Paul Zelizer 12:00
That's a beautiful vision candidates, and I really appreciate you sharing that with us. Because, like, I, I see a lot of that, you know, no, we need to do this first or this first and no, you're wrong. This has to be before that. And so one of the questions I had when I was thinking of, okay, so the cohorts are, you're aiming for 150 people, it looks like you might go over that, because awesome. Humans keep showing up. I'll talk about that in a little bit. But let's say okay, 150 people there from all these different sectors, and as a general, like larger culture, particularly in these very polarized times that we're seeing in the United States and many other countries around the world, like, how do you bring together so much diversity from background and experience and where people's priorities are, and have 150 people in the virtual room and like, get something productive done?
Candice Ammori 12:57
I think there are two big aspects to this. So the first is curation of just the type of people. And then the second is what actually happens once we bring them together. So on the curation side, we're filtering for, are you available to put in the time to put in the energy to have some skin in the game for this three month forcing function of a cohort? Are you action oriented? So do we have some sense and some evidence to say that you've created things in the past that you are excited about creating things about talking to people with different ideas about getting shit started? Or just getting shit in the ground? Right? Is there some sense that you're action oriented? And then I would say the other is, the spirit of generosity. And something that we talk about a lot is the willingness and actually like the desire and the urge to give two times more than you hoped to receive. And we try to, to live by that message on the climate buying team. And we filter for that in the cohort. And so are we only doing 230 interviews total for this cohort. And part of why I do that is to be able to understand more about the different people that we're inviting in. And just to make sure that like we are aligned on those values, pieces. And so when you're asking like how do we, how do all these really diverse people, and it is incredibly diverse. So it's half women, half men, or at least half the people are men and half of them are not men. So some gender diversity in terms of international and geography we've got right now two thirds in the US 1/3 International and 1/3 International is everywhere from Kenya, Nigeria, to Argentina, to the Netherlands to Saudi Arabia, and so very diverse in terms of geography. And all of them share this availability and excitement to go all in for this amount of time. Discussion orientation, and then the spirit of generosity. And if anyone doesn't, then then there's just not a right fit, right. And we sort of mutually agree that it's not not the right fit. So the second piece of it is, once we actually curate that 150 people, we make sure that each individual is really exceptional in terms of their expertise, their unique perspective, and, you know, their generosity, then we think about that larger composition of that 150. And so do we have enough people with a policy background at the science background, and that frontline community members, and activists, and we want to make sure that we have that even like age diversity, like I think our youngest person is probably 22. And our oldest is probably 75. I think that's really exciting. And when we're thinking about like, the cohort and the composition of the individuals, we do look for and actually left this out. But we look for expertise. And I've started expanding that language from deep expertise, to also unique perspective. And the reason why I've done that is because in the cohort, the 22 year olds, Bolivian indigenous activists, is just as important and censored as the 75 year old white man from the US who's been in the renewable space since it started, right. And there's no delineation of who's a mentor or mentee, everyone is a member, and everyone is there to give and receive equally. So that's curation. And then on the programming side, we essentially create this environment, where there's creativity, there's a sense of play, there's a sense of like taking you out of your day to day thinking in terms of long term ism systems thinking, further storytelling, you know, we'll go into those things in a second. And, and making sure that they're tangible outcomes that come out of it. And so everything that we do is, is in service of building those deep relationships and making sure that that people that wouldn't normally meet each other, understand where they can overlap, where they can work together. And that sort of collaboration, and the action that comes out of it is possible.
Paul Zelizer 17:13
Year upon and those tangible outcomes, I'm putting myself in the shoes of somebody who's like, sounds like an awesome group of humans, and to be a part of really rich interdisciplinary dialogue I can imagine just tell stimulating and things you might learn about spaces that are adjacent tears, but have a profound impact on your interest area and your expertise. I could see at a, like top level, how be valuable, but talk to us a little bit about those intended outcomes, like if somebody leans into climate buying raises their hands, but yeah, I'm super generous. I love being a part of a learning community. I love being part of a cohort, really passionate about climate have an expertise that I dive deep in, like, what's in it for me if I'm somebody who's checking those boxes and thinking about raising my hand?
Candice Ammori 18:08
Great question. So the tangible things that have come out of it mostly come from the two and a half years that we ran under climate, two cohorts. That was 650 people that went through and the the things that we were able to measure were that dozens of companies came out of it. So So truly people would meet at Honda climate tech start companies together, sometimes remote, sometimes in person. And that was one tangible outcome. The other was raising co
Paul Zelizer 18:39
founders of companies that didn't previously know each other, that kind of stuff.
Candice Ammori 18:43
Exactly, yes. And so that sort of catalyzing of accompanies, that wouldn't happen otherwise, money raised, so over 350 million that we have measured, I think it's probably double that, at this point, at least. And so a ton of money raised. So people connecting with investors, investors, connecting with founders, grants being written all those things, and then hundreds of people transitioning into the climate space, getting new jobs, as well, if they were, especially if they were coming from outside of climate. Those are some of the least sincere like, for me, I think that these lightning bolt moments that are essentially life changing moments, new partnerships, new relationships, new ideas, 90% of them, we didn't measure, and we couldn't measure, because it was saying like, Oh, you know, I met so and so who introduced me to so and so and then I got introduced to this, this other person who I ended up, you know, like building this accelerator with. And it actually was catalyzed through climate by the through that community of people that all were there to say, hey, I want to help you essentially figure out whatever's next. So the way that I talked about it is that all those things can happen, right? Like you don't have like new policies that can come out of this at a sort of government level. And at the individual level, it's very personalized. And so you almost think about it as a personalized accelerator. We're in the first week, we do a goal setting workshop. And that's one of the only things that we expect everyone to come to, or at least do on their own time. Because you get really clear about what you want to get done over the next three months, like what is that goal? We understand it, everyone in the cohort understands it. And because we don't have a curriculum, everyone's not going from like a to c or you know, from one one place to the next, everyone's starting and ending at different places. It's much more personalized in terms of what you're trying to accomplish. And I think the cool thing is that because there's an elements, a big element of serendipity, and things that we can't expect, I think that some of the coolest things that have come out of this are the ones that were the least expected. And so you know, companies that started where someone's like, I didn't know that I was gonna start a company, I just came in with an open mind. And that actually excites me the most. And so tangible outcomes, we have a history of them, and it's very personal to the individual.
Paul Zelizer 21:09
So there's everything I'm doing the math, I'm pretty granular. So 650 People in the previous iteration, 350 million raise that you know, of, but you're guessing it might be double 650 People 700 million raise, you can do the math, folks. Right. That's, that's pretty nice outcome. But I love that you also have a lot of room for reverence for the synchronicity that not as easy put into a spreadsheet, right, that there are going to be surprises from bringing people together of this kind of quality, passion and openness to connect in the way you're describing that isn't as it's not always easy to find in modern day life, if we could say that it's not fair to say.
Candice Ammori 21:56
Thanks. So and I think it's it is continuing along the threat of creative tension, where with our curation with our programming with with kind of everything we do, we are optimizing for deep relationships, and we are optimizing for action. And at the same time, we're trying to balance having a lot of structure and having some pieces that are prescriptive. So a goal setting workshop, right, like goal setting workshop is very open ended, right? It let the goals that come out of it run the gamut. And so we're balancing that structure with with that serendipity. And essentially, the phrase that comes up is engineering serendipity where it's got like that math and science component. But it's also got that art and design and magic component.
Paul Zelizer 22:41
Engineering serendipity. I love that. That's so awesome. So let's do this in a moment. I want to come back in here more like how do the cohort meetings actually work? How many people sign up? Who's a good fit? How much does it cost? How does it work as an enterprise, all that great, granular stuff that we're known for and aware of printers. But before we do that, I just want to take a quick break and hear a word from our sponsor. Are you facing one or more important decisions in your impact business, and you'd like an experienced thought partner to develop a plan about how to proceed in the complex times we're living. But you don't feel the need for an extended coaching or consulting contract that's going to cost you many 1000s of dollars. You're looking for an affordable, targeted, and time efficient type of support. Through Paul zelizer.com, I offer a strategy session package. These packages are ideal for entrepreneurs who are facing 123 immediate decisions, like how to increase your positive impact, fine tune your marketing strategies to get more results for less effort, launch a new product or service successfully, or refine your pricing structure. So it's both inclusive, and provides you with a great quality of life. You can find out more by clicking below. And thank you so much for listening to this podcast. So in the second part of the show candidates, we like to joke about putting on our social entrepreneur glasses. So I think we've got this idea of all right, what do you mean by engineer? Serendipity, that's just so good. I love that right? And how things work at a top level, but give us a little more like, okay, in these three months, like what happened? How often do people meet? Like you said, there's like, lots of different ways people could come together. What are some of the options? It's like, a little bit more of like, if I lean in and say I want to do this, what might this three months look like?
Candice Ammori 24:40
Yes, that's a great question. And I'm excited for the second half. It's more more tangible, more more outcome oriented, as well. And so the high levels if you if you look at the three months, and you understand that we're trying to maintain that tension of structure and serendipity The way that we do that is I think about it as a funnel, where in the first month, the funnel is super wide. And so I suggest to members, that you go in super open, and you come to all of our social and networking events, which I will describe. And you keep a really wide funnel and a wide net, in terms of who you're trying to connect with, obviously, you know, in the back of your mind that a certain type of person, you know, you definitely think that that relationship is something that you want to build, or one that you want to build. And you're open to like the random artists, if you're an engineering, you're like, Yeah, sure, you know, maybe maybe there is something here and something interesting here. So month, one funnel stage, right, you're just trying to learn as much as you can try to meet as many different types of people as you can. And doing it all within two or three hours a week, right. So it's still that time to value ratio, where if you want to do more, that's great. If you're in a transition time, you're you know, you've got more time for whatever reason, you can spend more time but but you should be able to get a ton of value out of the two to three hours a week, time, time bounded piece of it. month two is like a little bit tighter of a funnel, where you continue conversations with people that you've met, that you like you maybe meet some more new folks. But you go deeper with the folks that you've already met, that you think are interesting, and you want to continue those conversations, the last month is that narrowest piece of the funnel, where it's more about the outcome. And so in April and May and meeting a ton of people and the other thing that we're doing is climate mine is teasing out what the the topics, the gaps in the climate space, the the like many things that people are thinking about, and that are the biggest sort of problems to think about solutions for our because again, I'm not going to be prescriptive coming in there and saying, These are the things we are focusing on for the next few months at like a granular level, we tease that out through the experts in the cohort who have many more perspectives than any one of us. So by tune or sorry, by it by that three months, we've got a good sense of where we want to go deeper on, we've got a good sense of who we're clicking with. And that's when we essentially have like, two weeks that are focused on building so there's a week focus on throwing ideas out reading teams, and then two weeks after that around, essentially a focus Sprint's like a build sprint, sort of thing. And then at the end, there's a showcase of what around the buying. So that's like the high level every week. Beyond that, there are a few different things that happen. One is we've got the big group, and then we have small groups. And we have something called a brain trust, where it's essentially a mastermind. And I will go through the entire list based on timezone. And when people in chat based on background based on their goal setting, worksheet and decisions, create these groups of six people that meet every two weeks, and they meet only with each other so that groups don't change. And that's another place for them to build the relationships based on this small curated group that I've put together for them. That can be incredibly, incredibly beneficial and valuable. And there are groups that have met still today that started meeting about two years ago, because they just found that group to be to be so beneficial. And so they do it on their own time. And then the other pieces of programming, our workshops were where we bring in outside experts, workshops, where it's basically people in the cohort who are experts on whatever it might be, apply to do some sort of workshop that has some sort of action oriented piece to it. And then the socials and the networking pieces are are the last type of event. And over the two and a half years that we did on a planet tech, we built out a methodology around how to help people to build relationships, remote first, right because most of this is fully remote live one sort of retreat throughout or when full retreat three to four days throughout the year that we're planning. But beyond that, and informal meetups in person, but beyond that, like we want you to be able to if you're going to co found something, do that entirely virtually. And so so getting these different structures for social and networking events has been something that we've we've honed in on over the last couple years, they're all different. They're all meant to help people meet in different sorts of ways throw like, meant to be fun and playful as well, because I think that is sometimes lost when we think about meeting people and building relationships. So I'll stop there because you know, that's a lot but but that's that should give you a good sense of what actually happens.
Paul Zelizer 29:37
Super helpful. And anybody wants more information, certainly the climate bind website will be in the show notes. So let's pivot a little bit to the enterprise itself candidates. So I know a lot of folks in the climate space and in the impact space would be like yeah, we need more collaboration and we need community we need to bring people together. But a lot of folks have really struggled to find some sustainable revenue to keep that going. And I see, I can't even count how many in the 16 years I've been in business in some sort of community focus around impact. And the founder or founders of struggle to create any sort of sustainable revenue. And that community is not sustainable. That doesn't last like you've kind of hammered to the gates really strongly climate fine listeners, you can go look, but we're talking 150 People for the cohort that starts in a few weeks at the beginning of April, it should be live cohort, one of this iteration of climate bind, by the time this goes live, right? You can go look on the website, but it's about $3,000 is standard market price. And there's some other options in terms of scholarships. So please reach out even if that's not in your budget, but like, you can do the math lesson or like, like there's a there's a strong sense of like, we need to make this a real professional endeavor. So it can provide the value and the your team doesn't burn out. Talk to us a little bit about like, How did you land on that structure? And what was going on, as you were thinking about how do we sustain this as an enterprise?
Candice Ammori 31:19
Great question, it does, I do want to throw in the long term ism thing, just just because we've got that in the title, I think it actually ties in really well here, which is that it's again, that creative tension, actually, maybe it's a theme, where we've essentially been walking into this walking running into the climate crisis for generations. And there's a sense of urgency that we I want to balance with a spacious view of time. And I also want to surround myself with people that can balance these things can run at times and have that sense of urgency and can also create intentional space and time to stay home stay full to know that this is a marathon. And that this is I think, my life's work. And I think a lot of people who are in a space are getting into this space, also want it to be their life's work and are committed to that. And so the things that I think are really important, and what we're doing, and that make it possible is that we're not going for a large number of people. And that's by design, like it is highly curated it is there is a competitive application process, we'll be at about 15% acceptance rate for this first one. And I think it'll potentially get more competitive as it goes on. People refer people that they respect. And so yeah, whenever we're trying to just like blow up in terms of numbers, we're trying to always stay intentional. And, and while the cohorts are small, be able to take the insights and the value in that the educational learnings that can only really happen in a group of people like that, where clinic space is changing so quickly, being able to be surrounded by people who are like doing the work and at the peak of their careers. Taking some of those learnings outside of the cohort is really important to us and sharing that with the larger community. And so, so that's, again, what we're trying to balance is saying, in some sense, curated and knowing that we will never try to scale to a really large community for the just because that's different than what we're trying to do doesn't solve the problem that we're trying to solve for. And that we're gonna be able to take the value and give it to the larger community, I think is really important for myself to remember like that, that we're doing this also for the larger community beyond the cohort. And so the three month cohort, is that forcing function and that sprint sort of piece where you come in, and you get a ton out of that three months. And then there's that longer term alumni membership tier, where we're still, you know, we're essentially building this with the people with the members and figuring out what works really well. And so this may change. But the general thinking is that as long as this gives people a ton of value, and as long as they're engaging, and we're going to we're going to measure engagement to make sure that there's no one who's you know, capable of paying really excited to be there, but just happens to be looking and not not adding value that giving back in that way that we expect, then that's not a good long term community member. And so the goal is that as we grow, we grow sustainably. We also are able to grow in a way where people are still engaged. There's not too much, you know, noise signal, it's actually the opposite. There's a lot of signal to noise. And again, that like value of the time that you're putting in to the amount that you get out is really high. And there isn't a good comparison. And I would love for people to share with me. They have better ideas, there's not like a great comparison of an exact business that does what we do. The two that I've been thinking about more in terms of programming or MIT Media Lab where it's like interdisciplinary collaboration on conventional mixing and matching, we're not quite there or like them, really. But I like to think about, you know, that sort of ethos, this idea of CO lab where it's very focused on prototyping and design thinking, and I think we have some components there. Because I do think actually, one of the tangible outcomes is being more creative. And being and taking that creativity in every part of your life, in climate outside of climate. I think that's something that every everyone gets out of this, but there isn't really a good comparison. The other thing that even though it's not a good one to one, there is a good sort of values comparison is with conferences, and so I went to like a two day conference that was $5,000. I didn't pay. So they invited me and that was great. And at the same time, there a lot of people there that did pay for two days by pay, because it was a small curated group focused on government, and you knew that everyone that was there was incredible. And you would want to meet them. I was just thinking like, Okay, if people, you know, like people or their employers paid 5k for two days, doing something for three months, where they can actually build really deep relationships, and pay $3,000 for that. And of course, get scholarships, if it's, you know, need based scholarships, we have a ton of people who are as Frisco were emerging market activists, right. And like, that's super exciting. And they are not paying anywhere near $15,000. Right, like, and they still want to be a part of it, they find the value out of it. And so, so that's one sort of comparison that I do in my own head that I think can be helpful to other people, and you're thinking about the value. I think the value is there. And I think it's also really important for people to have that time buy in, but also that resources buy in, so that they are engaging, they are giving and essentially being a team player with other people.
Paul Zelizer 37:12
I was thinking of like, so cap, which is a very significant conference in the impact both social entrepreneur and impact investing space, and I know how much it costs. It's a pretty short conference, and I'm taking the value that a participant if they were the right fit in a climate buying cohort, like Yeah, I could absolutely see the value proposition there. So how do people find you speaking of participants, like how much have you they proactively recruiting? How much is it like somebody hears about it from a colleague like talk to us about how do people hear about climate?
Candice Ammori 37:51
Thanks. Luckily, it's mostly because we had those people who are part of on that climate tech who found a lot out of it, and knew that climate buying would continue a similar thread. And they they pass it on. And so mostly, it's been very tactically, I've posted on LinkedIn, I've asked, you know, some of our past fellows and current members as well, to share on their LinkedIn on their Twitter's kind of it. I got really lucky with the design firm for the website. And one cool thing I guess I'll throw out there is that I've gotten to trade a lot of really great things for people who I would accept into the program, and said, like, hey, you know, potentially, can I just give you my skill set for some x number of hours or some X number of projects? As a trade? Like, hell? Yes, I've got PR as a trade. I've got the website design as a trade. I think they have some content marketing as a trade. So thinking about, you know, how do we take content from what happens in the cohort and make sure that that's available to the larger community, I can't do all of those things. And we have a small team of two people. So we can't do all of it. I'm an intern this summer as well. But But that's one thing I guess I should throw out is that we can kind of punch above our weight because people are excited about this and are willing to share with their own voice and with their own brand. And we have help that that we can trade, which is great.
Paul Zelizer 39:32
So many, and I can speak from experience. These days. I don't invite too many people on the podcast not because I'm a pollster, because I'm busy and also because we've been around for six years and one of the better known in our space like a pit so often I don't have to but I reached out to you. And a large portion of the reason I reached out to you is because we have some folks in common, who I really respect and they're super excited about climate by and I'm like well they're super excited, I'm gonna want to know what's going on. So I can just speak from, like, just on the ground experience as somebody has a very robust network, you've done a great job to get really smart, really committed really experienced people in the space excited. And I noticed and I was like, hey, Candace, you want to do an interview? Right? And you're very gracious and said, Yes, but I just share that listeners to give you a sense of like, there's a care and something that's happening that very busy people. And I mean, very busy. People are making time for this and are excited about this in a way that I don't know. We'll see. So congratulations on that. Candace.
Candice Ammori 40:44
Thank you. Thank you. I appreciate you saying that back to me, because I think it's important for me to remind myself, that's, that is what is happening.
Paul Zelizer 40:55
So one of the other things about the structure is each cohort has sort of a theme or a focus. Tell us a little bit about that. And the thinking behind that.
Candice Ammori 41:04
That was the last unlock to climate fine, and so, so on the climate tech, on deck, let go of climate tech program for their own strategic reasons, it was one of the most profitable and have, you know, once weightless of the sector's and is doing really well. A lot of people only, you know, knew about ondeck, especially in the climate space because of the climate program. And they let go of it a week after I had resigned and was planning on doing my own thing. And first of a kind project finance. And so a bunch of people reached out to me being like, can't see, you've got to build this, like this thing was amazing. You did a great job. And I think you're uniquely well suited to doing it in its future iteration. I got enough of those messages that I wanted to think about it and think about it seriously. And also know that like a startup is a minimum 10 year commitment. And so is this what I want, right? Yes, no 100%. And I actually think like, I would love for everything that I do career as in the future to be under the climate, Vine brand. And whatever way it is, you know, it's going to shift and I don't know exactly what it's gonna look like in 10 years. But I hope, I hope it's shifted in a really interesting way. And it grows with the climate space. And so, so two and a half years ago, when I started on the climate tech, the climate space was actually much smaller than it is today, for a lot less attention a lot less money. And two and a half years later, it was much bigger. So to think about doing a generalized climate cohort didn't make sense it was it was going to be too many people, we're just trying to get into climate, which is great. We need all those people. But we also need the people who have been in climate and have opinions. And those people would not want to be in a general climate cohort. The lucky thing is that in the same way that I was building this for myself, two, two and a half years ago, I also am essentially building it for myself now as well, because I get to choose themes that I think are personally really interesting, and also really impactful and important for the larger climate space. And I get to create these cohorts and learn alongside everyone that's in it. And then alongside people, like, hey, I want to be surrounded by so. So that gives me a ton of energy. And I think it's just the natural evolution of something like this. And so the theme for this first cohort is the intersection of government and climate. And it's meant to be essentially focused on how do we make sure that government and the private or nonprofit philanthropy, climate spaces are working together, there's a bunch of money on the table in the US. And if we don't use it, it goes away. And I think there's a lot of confusion on the government side in terms of who should get the money who needs it, that confusion, but but a lack of, we're not bridging the gap between the people that that could use the money, and the people that have money. And so that's, that was kind of the, the spark moment for this first theme. And I'm also being, you know, very open, because I think that there are going to be a lot of things that come out of this intersection that are interesting, I think there'll be a lot of focus on deployment, that is incredibly important right now, to think about how do we get things in the ground, quickly, efficiently. And then our second cohort is, first of a kind project finance. And it's this, you know, semi niche space if you're outside of the climate space. And it's something that I've been personally thinking about for over a year now. It's this gap in the climate capital stack that absolutely needs to be solved for, and it is such a hard problem to solve for. So in a lot of ways, the second cohort is going to be a bit different than the first in the sense that in the first there's gonna be a A lot of topics across the government climate space. And the second, there gonna be a lot of experiments across the first of a kind project finance space types of people will be slightly different as well to their expertise and what they're focused on. And then beyond that, we'll probably do more sector focused themes. So you can think about water, right, which sometimes gets left out of the climate conversation, but is so important, and so integral to to our future and to what we should be thinking about. Home decarbonisation. That's also this thing that that is super important, really hard to solve. From a business perspective, from a policy perspective, from all the above regeneration, think about like biodiversity thinking about agriculture, circular economy. So those will be the ones to look forward for. Look forward to in 2024.
Paul Zelizer 45:48
So you started to hint at this with some of the coming cohorts but like, as you look ahead, three, maybe five years of climate buying, knowing, obviously, serendipity and that the market of just the space of climate, like you said, in the past two or three years, it's absolutely exploded, knowing it's changing quickly, what do you some of your goals, or what some of your vision for climate buying three years down the road.
Candice Ammori 46:19
So for individuals, it's that they found, and they accelerated their own climate impact, whatever that impact might be. And so for some people, it's even understanding what industry within climate to focus on. And for others, it's, you know, putting shit in the ground and getting much more efficient and better at that, given the things that they learn the people that they meet the things that they do through climate line. So that at the individual level, I hope each person can say, at least one life changing thing happened to me or came out of Clementine one life changing relationship, maybe a wedding friend, that they invited to their wedding, right, or would have invited to their wedding. That's a huge one as well. And then, on the macro level, in three years, my like, hope, at the higher level is that we somehow create this like generative story and have some imagination around, you know, what's possible beyond what the math tells us. And I'm sure it's a weird thing to be inspired by maybe. But I do think about how solar prices dropped more quickly than any mathematician economist predicted, like, truly, no one predicted how quickly those prices would drop. And I know the atmosphere and the environment is very different. And I'm sure this is not a great analogy. And it does give me some hope that maybe we could beat the math. And, and, and in the same way, that there are these positive feedback loops that are actually negative and create bad things. And the environment, there are positive feedback loops, in terms of the impact that we can make. And those potentially can be quicker than we expect them to be. So that's like my macro goal in three to five years, it's like holding on to that hope, that that what we do matters, and that we should be doing things. And then from that place, and that's because everyone's risen up, right, that's like an ecosystem worldwide thing. And then from that place to be able to say some of these critical things that accelerated climate impact the most, and allowed us to beat the math. We could see that they were, you know, planted, seeded, grew at climate vine. And, and they wouldn't have happened otherwise. Right? Like we can bet those two people would not have met or would have met much later in their careers or whatever it might be. And they were able to make that impact.
Paul Zelizer 48:56
And if they could hang out and talk to you all day, and I know you're super busy and our listeners are super busy. If there was something you were hoping we were going to get to on our topic. Long termism interdisciplinary collaboration and climate transition. We haven't touched on it. That's such a big topic. We could spend years, but you really want to make sure we touch on it before we leave. Or there's something you want to leave our impact founders with some thing you've learned or resource, an invitation as we start to say goodbye. What would that be?
Candice Ammori 49:33
So I've been listening to Andrew Yang, another great podcast and Krista tippet. Life Life advisor in my mind, I've never met her but but I like to think that you know, she advises me when I listened to her, this idea that like our cooperation is actually our superpower. And that to the slime that every factor insists on wholeness. I think that is what I hope for with climate violence. Uh, you know, the silos are broken, they're bridged, and that the hole is clearly greater than the sum of the parts. And that we remember that, like, we're always more powerful and powerful and like, you know, the not dictator sense, but powerful. And then we can move mountains since when we were together.
Paul Zelizer 50:24
Beautiful. Thank you so much for being on the show.
Candice Ammori 50:29
Thank you, Paul. So it's really fun. I'm glad that you invited me on.
Paul Zelizer 50:32
Good. That's better than this suck? Not at all. What a waste of an hour, Paul?
Candice Ammori 50:41
No, absolutely not. Now, this is lovely.
Paul Zelizer 50:44
Thank you. So listeners, please go check out climate bond, check out the site, check out some of the courts and what's you know, moving and happening there. Tell your friends, this is such important work, we'd really appreciate it. Go take a look. And if you know somebody think would be a good day. Send them on down. I did mention the price. But if you are somebody who's like, Yes, I think this would be awesome. There are scholarships and Candice mentioned some trade. So please, if this feels at all like it could help move the needle in your impact goals. You're somebody who cares about climate, reach out to climate reach out to candidates and then team at climate bind. link in the show notes. Before we go I just want to remind you we love listener suggested topics and guests. So if you have an idea for a show, go to a where printers website and look at our contact page, we have three simple guidelines. And we try to be really transparent about what we're looking for. If you know somebody you know, an impact business that feels like it checks those boxes, please send your ideas on it. For now, I just want to say thank you so much for listening. Please take really good care in these intense times. And thank you for all the positive impact that you're working for in our world.