Climate Rising

Ashley Fill, Global Director of Sustainability at P&G Home Care joins Climate Rising to discuss how consumer behavior and innovative technologies can reduce household carbon and water footprints. Ashley shares how life cycle assessments reveal that 87% of the emissions in P&G’s Home Care portfolio come from product use, particularly dishwashing. She describes how their products are engineered to deliver superior performance while reducing water and energy. Ashley also discusses P&G’s partnerships with appliance manufacturers, NGOs, and coalitions like the 50L Home Coalition to encourage sustainable home practices. She reflects on regional water use trends, behavior change challenges, and how P&G ensures credible sustainability claims. Ashley also shares career advice for those entering sustainability roles in consumer goods

ClimateAi co-founder and CEO Himanshu Gupta explains how his company uses machine learning to forecast extreme weather and help businesses adapt to climate volatility. Himanshu shares his journey from rural India to co-founding ClimateAi while he was an MBA student. He describes how ClimateAi's "biophysics-driven AI" combines limited weather and crop yield data to inform procurement, logistics, and planting decisions for a quarter of the top 200 food and beverage companies. He also shares examples of government partnerships focused on food security and national supply chain resilience and offers insight on the future of adaptation technologies and enterprise AI. Finally, Himanshu gives advice to those looking to work at the intersection of AI and resilience in the food and agriculture industry. This episode is a part of our series on Climate Resilience, which also features Sarah Russell, Managing Director at Google X; Jacqueline Novogratz, CEO of Acumen; and Alex Berkowitz, CEO of Coastal Protection Services. Visit climaterising.org to explore the entire series!

This episode is another in our series on Climate Resilience featuring Alex Berkowitz, Founder and CEO of Coastal Protection Solutions (CPS), a startup developing nearshore infrastructure that reduces wave energy and enhances climate resilience. Alex shares how her personal experience with Hurricane Sandy in her hometown of Rockaway Beach led to the creation of the Wave Breaker—an innovative floating barrier designed to protect coastal communities from storm surge and erosion. She explains how CPS integrates landscape design, marine engineering, and microgrid energy into its solution, and how it differs from traditional seawalls or breakwaters. Alex also discusses navigating public policy, permitting, and insurance incentives, and finally, Alex shares her career advice for those who are interested in climate resilience. Host and Guest Host: ⁠Mike Toffel⁠, Professor, Harvard Business School (⁠LinkedIn⁠)      Guest: ⁠Alex Berkowitz⁠, Founder & CEO, Coastal Protection Solutions (⁠LinkedIn⁠)

In this Climate Rising episode in our series on climate resilience, Jacqueline Novogratz, Founder and CEO of Acumen shares how impact investing is agriculture is helping smallholder farmers build climate resilience. Jacqueline shares insights from two decades of investing in poverty alleviation that includes climate resilience and adaptation social enterprises engaging in agriculture and off-grid solar.  She explains how Acumen uses blended capital, including philanthropic first-loss investments and commercial impact funding, to scale business models in underdeveloped markets where traditional investors hesitate. Jacqueline also shares examples of companies solving food insecurity and extreme climate risks for smallholder farmers and discusses how a “post-aid” world demands new tools, structures, and partnerships for impact investing. 

This episode, part of the Climate Rising series on climate resilience, features Sarah Russell, General Manager of Project Bellwether at X, The Moonshot Factory at Alphabet (formerly Google X). Sarah shares how geospatial data and artificial intelligence can help communities and businesses anticipate and respond to climate risks. Sarah shares insights from her work building predictive wildfire risk models using satellite imagery, AI, and systems design to enable more targeted insurance underwriting and disaster preparedness.  She also explains how Bellwether is creating geospatial AI infrastructure and tools to support natural disaster response by the National Guard. Sarah also shares how emerging foundational geospatial models will transform adaptation, and she offers career advice for those in climate tech and applied AI. 

Patrik Frisk, CEO of ReJu, joins Climate Rising to discuss his company’s mission to recycle textile waste and build circular supply chains for apparel made of polyester fabric. Patrik brings his prior experience leading Under Armour and other global brands across the textile and footwear industry for over 35 years.  Patrik describes how ReJu turns discarded apparel made of polyester blends into new polyester, and how it tackles the logistical and technical challenges of sorting, processing, and regenerating blended fabrics at scale. Patrik also describes relevant policy trends such as extended producer responsibility and offers advice for those pursuing careers in the circular economy. 

James Reinhart, CEO of ThredUp, one of the largest online resale platforms for secondhand clothing. James co-founded the company while he was a Masters’ student at Harvard and has spent the last 15 years scaling a national logistics and digital infrastructure platform for resale.  In this episode James describes why the company decided to handle physical goods rather than act as a pure marketplace, how ThredUp helps brands run their own resale channels, and how AI and automation are reshaping their operations. James also describes related public policies like extended producer responsibility (EPR) and provides advice for those pursuing careers in circular economy innovation. 

Karen Pflug, Chief Sustainability Officer of Ingka Group (IKEA), shares her journey towards embedding circularity in IKEA's business model. She discusses innovative redesigns of iconic products like the Billy bookcase for easier disassembly and repair. Pflug highlights the impact of secondhand retail initiatives and the importance of policies like the Right to Repair Act. She also explores how storytelling can enhance customer engagement in sustainability, and emphasizes collaboration and financial support as essential for scaling circular economy practices.

Lauren Rodriguez, the Head of Partnerships at Circular Services with Closed Loop Partners, shares her insights on scaling the circular economy. She highlights innovative investment strategies that support recycling and reuse initiatives, emphasizing the importance of policy like Extended Producer Responsibility. Lauren discusses the role of emerging technologies such as AI and robotics in waste management. She also provides valuable advice for aspiring professionals eager to engage in sustainable practices, urging a shift towards circular business models across industries.

Fabian Barthel, Co-founder and CEO of Vytal, is on a mission to revolutionize the packaging industry with his startup focused on reusable containers. He explores how behavioral science and innovative business models can change consumer habits around take-out food. Fabian discusses the shortcomings of deposit systems and emphasizes the transformative potential of Vytal's 'borrow and return' strategy. He also addresses challenges in scaling sustainable practices internationally and offers advice to entrepreneurs on integrating profitability with environmental impact.