Inevitable Climate Careers: Fiona Spruill, Chief Product Officer at Overstory
Today's guest is Fiona Spruill, Chief Product Officer at Overstory.
Overstory's mission is to monitor all of Earth's natural resources in real-time to reverse climate change. Its first project helps utilities track forest and vegetation growth to reduce the risk of wildfires and power outages by applying machine learning to satellite imagery. We are proud to be an Overstory investor!
Prior to Overstory, Fiona was most recently COO at Meetup, and spent 14 years in journalism, in roles of increasing responsibility at The New York Times. In 2019, Fiona decided to transition into working on climate. Like so many, she found the transition to be a difficult one (because it is!), but she navigated it brilliantly, and landed in a terrific spot.
This episode is meant for anyone else who is thinking about doing the same! It covers Fiona’s reasons for wanting to transition into working in climate tech, how she went about the process, lessons learned, and advice for others looking to head down a similar path.
Enjoy the show!
You can find me on twitter @jjacobs22 or @mcjpod and email at info@myclimatejourney.co, where I encourage you to share your feedback on episodes and suggestions for future topics or guests.
Episode recorded February 24th, 2021
Advice Fiona has for those looking to make a career transition:
- Narrow your focus as quickly as you can and being willing to pivot
- Climate is everything; therefore, no one is unqualified to work in climate
- Talk to as many people as you can
- Learning collectively through various projects such as Project Drawdown, On Deck Fellowships, Terra.do courses, and the MCJ podcast and membership
If you are interested in connecting with Fiona, reach out to her via Twitter or LinkedIn.
Overstory is hiring for a Front-End Engineer, Data Scientist, Data Engineer, and Marketing roles. Please check out their website: https://www.overstory.ai/
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*Editing and post-production work for this episode was provided by The Podcast Consultant