Partner Profile: Jason Grillo & AirMiners | |
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“There’s an African proverb: 'If you want to go fast, go alone; if you want to go far, go together,' and while we have far to go to remove the first gigaton of carbon, the strength of our community means we can do it."
This newsletter issue features Jason Grillo, Partnerships and Operations Director for AirMiners
Jason Grillo works with AirMiners to develop the Launchpad program, host events, and create community in carbon removal. Having gained extensive experience doing market development in biopharmaceuticals and healthcare, Jason dedicated his career to climate solutions focused on carbon removal, striving to resolve the gap between cutting-edge innovations and real-world customer needs. He holds an MBA from Duke, and an undergraduate degree from Harvard. Jason enjoys communicating in many different languages, participates in endurance sports, and has collected an extensive collection of Dad jokes, having started decades before he became a Dad!
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How did AirMiners begin?
AirMiners was founded in 2017 with the goal to be "the LinkedIn for Carbon Removal". When I joined in 2019, there were 400 people in the AirMiners community. There are now over 1,600!
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We estimate there are only a few thousand people in the entire world involved with carbon removal, many of whom do not know that there is an entire group of people dedicated to carbon removal. Our goal is to help them by introducing them to a diverse group of people with a shared professional interest. There’s an African proverb: "If you want to go fast, go alone; if you want to go far, go together", and while we have far to go to remove the first gigaton of carbon, the strength of our community means we can do it.
Originally, AirMiners started out through an organization called ManyLabs. At that time the intent was to track the existence of carbon removal companies, which still continues today through our AirMiners Index.
As for the name "AirMiners", Sarah Harrison and Marc O'Brien of The Determined (and now, Climate Designers) came up with it by challenging themselves to describe the activities of removing carbon without using the word "carbon." And the name stuck!
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How would you describe AirMiners today?
We have three people in our core team: Tito Jankowski (Co-Founder), Adina Mangubat (Entrepreneur-in Residence), and myself (Operations and Partnerships).
There are four main ways in which we serve the carbon removal community.
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1. We have a Slack community of innovators who support each other in carbon removal, across all methods, worldwide. We want this to be the place to go if you have an idea about a carbon removal solution and want to start refining and growing it.
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2. Our Launchpad accelerator program is for early (generally Pre-Seed or Seed stage) startups. We are constantly refining this program and hope to expand to include more pointed guidance for startups to attain funding in the future.
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3. We hold various events that dive into the most important topics in the field to assist carbon removal organizations. We are constantly striving to better understand and fill our community's knowledge gaps in this rapidly changing industry. We also want to enable connections among the audience members, even if they aren’t members of our Slack community. That's why we have post-event networking afterwards!
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4. We also provide BootUp, a free five week course for those new to carbon removal. Through this course individuals can learn principles of carbon dioxide removal (CDR) in groups that meet twice weekly.
| To date, we have graduated 767 BootUp participants and 44 Launchpad teams. However, the number of Launchpad graduates will soon increase since we recently accepted a new batch of 15 teams. | |
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Tell me about the slogans that frequently show up on your channels, e.g. “Carbon removal is a trillion dollar opportunity disguised as an existential crisis,” “We need 1000 shots on goal,” etc.
AirMiners culture is extremely important to us. We aim to keep things light, fun, and forward-thinking in a community environment where anyone can generate new ideas for solving really tough problems. Our view is that achieving the scale we need might seem impossible, but it is necessary. Maintaining a sense of optimism keeps people focused on solutions, while acknowledging the many severe challenges that climate change poses. At its core, AirMiners exists to reframe pollutants as resources for a new industry that can positively impact climate change as well as create an engine for economic growth.
I should say, too, that we see carbon removal as a necessary endeavor among many other types of climate solutions going forward–carbon free energy, electric vehicles, innovations to improve our food system, or combatting plastic waste to name a few. Everyone I've encountered in the carbon removal field believes that halting emissions is absolutely crucial. That said, in a zero emissions world, there would still be over a trillion tons of long-lived carbon dioxide in the atmosphere–carbon dioxide that will linger in the atmosphere for at least 300 years according to NASA. That's where carbon removal comes in!
It is important to note that we are also keenly interested in pursuing these aims by integrating diversity, equity, and inclusion into our work, as well as encouraging environmental justice efforts, which are crucial for carbon removal.
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In addition to many educational videos, there are also a couple of songs about AirMiners on your YouTube channel. AirMiners seems to be a magnet for creative people. In addition to musicians, what other types of creatives have become part of your community?
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Ah, you noticed the music! Indeed, we believe that encouraging art and creativity follows from the cultural values I stated previously. And it’s not only music: visual art, sculpture, and industrial design for carbon removal are important pursuits to many in our community. Art in all forms provides a means of creative expression for members of our community, and also makes the industry more relatable to the general public. Art is great in and of itself, and has a function as a bridge between those who work in carbon removal and the larger society.
Also, I would be remiss, not to mention our ever-popular #memes channel in Slack. It's all community generated content and is an outlet to have a sense of humor about an otherwise very serious topic. It's a crucial part of our culture in AirMiners!
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What are the Carby awards? Are they still around?
The Carbys! Yes, they are an annual year-end awards program that we hold every December. Tito and I wanted to design an event that showed appreciation for the community and to signal the industry's growth. It's a way to gather people who want to meet others and share the successes we have achieved as a group. Again, culturally, it's important to indicate that there are others who are active in the carbon removal space and that AirMiners is a place where you can contribute and learn from like-minded people across varied backgrounds.
Our first one in Dec 2020 was quite structured, with nominations, judges, voting, and award categories. We pivoted a bit for the December 2021 Carbys to be more of a celebration of the values of the AirMiners community rather than a process that elevates only a select few. The idea with the 2021 show was for individuals in the community to provide testament to the impact that others had on them in gratitude, and we aim to do so again with future Carby events. Watch for our next one in December 2022!
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What’s coming down the pike for AirMiners?
The goal we have set for ourselves is to remove a gigaton of carbon equivalent from the atmosphere by 2030. To help reach this goal, we offer a variety of support to people at every phase of their early stage carbon removal journey. Individuals might start off in a BootUp course to learn the basics, join our main Slack community, get inspired to start a company, apply for and participate in Launchpad, hone it with a follow-on program we're developing called "Booster" and get funding from an AirMiners fund that we plan to start. Carbon removal still needs new ideas and a means to get those ideas started. That's where we come in to incubate and support those nascent ideas.
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What upcoming events do you have coming up soon?
Applications for our next Launchpad batch are due September 30th, so check it out. Events are ongoing and we've also got designs on running another conference in September 2022–stay tuned!!
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What do you wish more people knew about AirMiners?
I wish more people knew that AirMiners is a place for those who want to refine and find support for their ideas in carbon removal - and that any stage of readiness is on the table, even if it's just a slide deck or notions in your mind! It's an inclusive community for advancing any method of carbon removal solutions; it doesn't matter if you are removing the carbon itself, or at an organization providing support in some way to fill in gaps in this still nascent industry. The carbon removal industry is very new, and needs more people to achieve its potential - we want AirMiners to be an inclusive, global community to make that happen.
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How can people find out more information about AirMiners?
To find out more information about AirMiners, people should go to our main website. And if they are running an early stage startup in CDR, they should consider our Launchpad program. Or if they just want to test the waters about what our community is like, they could come to one of our next events.
But don't be put off by the dorky guy who organizes them–he's actually even dorkier in real life! ;-)
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U-M is seeking emerging CCU companies to participate in "Innovation for Impact - Climate Change", a company-in-residence program, offered through U-M's Center for Entrepreneurship. This program offers emerging companies the chance to work with student teams for two semesters on a project defined by the companies. There is no cost to the companies but a company mentor must be available to meet (virtually) with their team weekly for progress reporting, feedback, and guidance. Please contact Tasha Beery for more information.
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August 4, 2022
Monthly AirMiners Orientation to "Ask Us Anything" about what AirMiners is, how AirMiners functions, and the direction for the future. Hosted by Jason Grillo and Tito Jankowski.
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Keep in touch
We want to hear from you! Is there something or someone that you would like to see featured in a future issue? Let us know!
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