🌎 Welcome back to the CleanTechies PodLetter, founder edition.
Today, we are talking to Allison Wolff from Vibrant Planet.
I say wildfire prevention; you say FAANG technology…🤔
It sounds a bit silly, but that’s what Allison Wolff is doing at Vibrant Plant.
When it comes to preventing wildfires, there is a LOT of land to manage. Through Vibrant Planet’s tech they are able to help prioritize which areas to focus restoration and monitoring on.
This tech is what helps different groups apply for conservation finance (money from Uncle Sam to protect the wilderness).
The story behind Vibrant Planet is super fascinating because Allison has worked with so many big names. Are you sitting down?
Google, Meta, Netflix, eBay, Project Drawdown… and a few others
When you’ve got this experience, you naturally have (a) an enormous book of contacts + (b) a unique perspective on tech. This is a huge reason why they are crushing it at Vibrant Planet.
As you can imagine with someone like Allison as a guest, we could talk about many things — here is what we discussed.
What she learned from her time at Netflix algorithm
What’s broken with wildfire prevention
Convincing Silicon Valley to become greener
The decision behind becoming Public Benefit Corp.
Working with an open-data nonprofit
And more…
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The Guest: Allison Wolff
Allison Wolff is the CEO of Vibrant Planet.
Allison worked in Silicon Valley for 20 years on corporate strategy, product strategy, customer experience design, and marketing.
After overseeing the development of the Netflix brand and digital experience as their Director of Marketing, she advised corporate and nonprofit leadership teams on vision, strategy, and social and environmental innovation. Some of her clients included Drawdown, Google, eBay, Facebook, Chan Zuckerberg Initiative, Omidyar Network, Patagonia, Nike, HP, Conservation International, and GlobalGiving. (What a resume!)
With a passion for the role forests and soil can play in carbon drawdown, she fully focused on developing technology solutions that restore damaged ecosystems and, ultimately, build community and wildland resilience.
The Company: Vibrant Planet
One Liner: The common operating picture for achieving wildfire and climate resilience
The Vibrant Planet cloud-based platform unlocks real-time, collaborative scenario planning at any scale. Built to support agile, informed, and urgent responses to current and future wildfire and climate threats.
State-of-the-art wildfire hazard and risk modeling combines with Vibrant Planet’s decision support for strategically mitigating wildfire risk while enhancing ecological function to create enduring resilience.
The VP Data Commons makes Vibrant Planet’s novel data products publicly available for scientific pursuits and develops informative data experiences that generate public demand for resilience building.
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📝 Show Notes:
Topics
02:52 "Common operating picture" for land management.
04:17 Parallel between Netflix's recommendation system and land management
06:51 Cloud-based technologies in ClimateTech
12:25 Challenges in modern forest management
24:46 Geospatial data
36:17 Energy consumption concerns of AI/cloud technologies
44:19 Future challenges
48:35 Takeaways
Links
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🙏🏽 Thanks for tuning in, and see y’all next episode!
#177 Climate Resilience, Bridging FAANG to ClimateTech, Cloud Computing with Geospatial Data, & More w/ Allison Wolff (Vibrant Planet)