Why Mia chose to focus on climate and how she ended up at Lowercarbon Capital

Mia was pointed into the direction of climate at an early age. As the daughter of biologists, she grew up with an appreciation for the natural environment and an understanding of our place as human beings in this delicate, fragile and extraordinary world. Her dad’s family is from Mali, West Africa, a region set to experience extreme heat and the bulk of the extreme events that we’re seeing as a result of climate change. After watching An Inconvenient Truth in high school and seeing that hockey stick curve, Mia began to question why climate isn’t the thing that everyone is focused on, noting that all other problems we’re working to solve – global inequities, health and economic distress – are significantly exacerbated by climate change and an absence of solutions to this problem. 

In college and in her careers thereafter, Mia sharpened her focus on climate and sustainability. She completed an interdisciplinary major in Science, Technology and Society and went on to get her Master’s in Civil and Environmental Engineering from Stanford, where she had the opportunity to learn about global energy systems and the intersection between those systems, atmospheric science and climate change. Through her fellowship at Rocky Mountain Institute, Mia started looking at market-based solutions. She joined Bain and Company soon after, advising executives on operational and business challenges across several industries, including utilities. Mia found her way to TPG, where she supported portfolio companies in measuring and reducing emissions and also set up TPG Rise Climate, their climate-focused impact fund. She explains that she really enjoyed the work at TPG, particularly the work within large organizations trying to move the needle and recognizing the scale of impact at a firm that has $90 billion plus in assets under management – however, it’s tough to transform really large organizations.

Through her experiences, Mia felt herself being drawn to earlier stage companies, building the solution sets and taking advantage of smaller, more agile teams who are at the frontier and forefront of developing technologies. That’s very much the thesis of Lowercarbon. That’s how they approach their work with companies and that’s what they’re looking for in investments. Mia’s path has led her to working with leaders who are building the tools and technologies that will ultimately make decisions that are best for the planet and everyone’s self interest.

Jamil’s climate work journey and support for investors and entrepreneurs

Jamil started to think about climate change in a more rigorous, systematic way when he was living and working in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA). For the first seven years of his career, Jamil was exclusively focused on the MENA region, and the intersection of international development and the world of startups and venture capital. His work involved looking at emerging markets and finding different ways to support them so that they can simultaneously grow and produce technologies, products, services, etc, that can have an impact on surrounding communities and their economies. 

Jamil explains that the MENA region is obviously very well endowed when it comes to sunlight. It also has a very arid, dry, and hot climate combined with very low water resources, all conditions which are becoming exacerbated due to climate change. To explore possible solutions for the future, Jamil started talking to different investors and entities that were supporting entrepreneurs in the region about where and how they can build environments that are more conducive to supporting cleantech entrepreneurs in general. He co-led a study looking at climate tech across the region with his company at the time, which was a venture capital / media platform, in parallel with General Electric back in 2014-2015. From Morocco into the Gulf, and everywhere in between, he sought to answer the question of: “What were the trends and challenges that climate tech entrepreneurs were facing?” 

Drawn to looking at climate change from different angles, Jamil has collaborated with a range of stakeholders across sectors and industries. He has worked with the Government of Pakistan, Egypt and Iraq on their own climate finance strategies, supporting foreign aid development finance. He also teaches a Systems Thinking and Climate Change course at George Washington University, which aims to help students look at things from a macro level to see all the different stakeholders and factors that affect climate change and how systems can be improved in order for us to be more adept at mitigating and adapting to climate change itself.

On the VC and startup front, Jamil has a portfolio of climate tech companies that he’s invested in at the early stage, primarily in the mitigation bucket. Along the lines of research and strategy, he co-leads a project out of Oxford Business School that focuses on climate tech writ large. He’s examining both developed and developing countries to get a pulse on sub-sectors, how technologies are coming to the fore, where the growth constraints are and where more resources are needed to build out ecosystems surrounding climate tech. 

What is the Climate Tech Bootcamp and who does it aim to support

Jamil met with a UK-based tech firm called Coleap a few months ago and began conversations about building an EdTech offering around climate tech. The bootcamp is designed to be a four week learning community that will bring together very, very early stage founders. Think talented individuals that have either been working on climate and have yet to start a company, or folks working in another industry that feel compelled to start converting their career to one that’s much more focused on climate. Historically, the opportunities for support are either to go to accelerators, angel investors, or family and friends to start trying to raise capital for your idea and build momentum and traction that way. Jamil explains that before even getting to that point, there’s a really important intersection that people reach where they need to start building out learning opportunities, relationships with mentors, and an understanding of the industries that they’re trying to work in. The bootcamp will be a way to give people a community in which they can learn from and access great advisors and experts such as Mia, who can help them navigate some of these early stage challenges. Once participants complete the four weeks, the goal is to be able to send them to the accelerators and investors of the world that can help them in that next stage of their development. 

Resources Mentioned

• Lowercarbon Capital
• Climate Tech Bootcamp
• Axios: Map of U.S. counties expected to experience heat indices above 125°F by 2053

Connect with Mia Diawara and Jamil Wyne

• Connect with Mia on LinkedIn and Twitter
• Connect with Jamil on LinkedIn

Connect With Jason Rissman

• https://InvestedInClimate.com 
• On LinkedIn
• On Twitter

Subscribe to Invested In Climate