Climate Resilience Salon and Incubator

We are facing an irreversible climate threshold The recent Sixth Assessment Report (AR6) of the U.N. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) declared that the world is on the brink of an irreversible climate threshold with no more than 10 years to turn things around. 

Women are often the most negatively impacted by the climate crisis and they are also most often the first in their community to respond to the crisis. It is often the most vulnerable populations that are impacted most. Women therefore have tremendous knowledge about preparing for crises, appropriate responses, and more significantly, ways of avoiding such problems in the first place. Women are also intimately involved in managing food and water resources, and yet are rarely supported to contribute what they know best – building climate resilience. 

There has never been a greater need to build climate resilience. Climate crises contain the seeds of their solutions; threats often offer relative opportunities. It is therefore urgent that women with lived-impact and experience of climate impacts become part of the solution. 

More female founders of climate tech companies are urgently needed. Since women are often the first to observe climate impacts, in addition to being the first to respond to climate disasters they are more likely to identify problems and opportunities that their male counterparts ignore. McKinsey expects investment in the climate sector to explode to between $9 trillion and $12 trillion globally by 2030. Female founders are needed to create disruptive technologies to ensure a greener future for the planet, but have little access to venture dollars in the climate and clean tech space Women founders only receive 2% of venture capital funding in the US. 

Founders from most climate impacted communities are needed, but most ignored Natural disasters, one of the key impacts of climate change, puts communities of color in the US at the highest risk. Extreme heat, devastating floods and air pollution result in higher risks of death for African Americans and low-income individuals compared with their white counterparts as they are more likely to experience pre-existing health conditions and poor living conditions. Yet people from these communities, especially the women, the most likely to identify and create climate related solutions, are the least likely to receive necessary funding for scalable solutions. 

Black entrepreneurs, for example, have historically faced disparities in securing VC funding. They received roughly 1% of the total VC funding generated by startups in 2022, in spite of black people making up 13.6% of the US population. But even more disappointing is that of all VC funding over the past decade, Latinx women-led startups have raised only 0.32 percent while black women have raised only .0006 percent. By the end of 2022, adverse market conditions led to a 36% drop in overall VC dollars, but Black entrepreneurs saw a 45% decrease in financing. Obviously this downward ripple effect was even greater for Black, Latinx, and Native American women-led startups. Source

Climate Resilience Salons
The first true “salon” was held in 1610 in France. In a world dominated by men, the salon was one place where women ruled. The salons became a center of intellectual conversation, as well as a debate stage for social issues. Women exchanged ideas, gave and received criticism, read their own works and heard the works and ideas of other intellectuals. They served as ground zero for the ideas present in the Declaration of Independence and— eventually—the French Revolution!

Our Solution is Climate Resilience Salons combine the elements of a startup incubator with a climate technology rapid prototyping environment with a climate tech maker’s studio. Women will exchange knowledge and ideas to create and scale responses to climate impacts. These Salons are the modern day equivalent of the original French salons but they are designed to fuel the flames of the Climate Tech Revolution, which will be powered by women! Our solution is providing a new process for solving the challenge.

Women, especially those from most climate impacted communities, often communities of color, will be supported in leveraging their lived experiences, insight and observations to create businesses that will help the planet and their communities. These 1 day Climate Resilience Salons, with approximately 50 participants each, will be held in cities and communities across the US to encourage women from diverse backgrounds to unlock the untapped potential for creating climate change solutions.

The Delegates (cohort)  women-led organizations including: climate tech founders, nonprofits and community organizations, and Participants, proxies of market feedback, create “Think Tank” meets Shark Tank.

Speed is of the essence
Men broke the planet. Isn’t it time for women to fix it? Participation in these Salons will encourage women, whether they are already in STEM, or new to it, to create climate solutions. Bringing women with critical knowledge together with other key stakeholders – government, the private sector, NGOs, academia and climate investors – will dramatically shorten the research and product development cycle.

The cross-sectoral and multi-stakeholder groups will offer real-time support and critical knowledge to the cohort of women. Introducing women to potential partners, investors, customers and their networks in an intense one day incubator will provide the missing link for existing and aspiring climate tech founders.

The power of networks 
Systemic change requires multi-stakeholder collaboration. While the goal is to cultivate and harvest the ideas and solutions from women, they cannot do this without networks. The Salons consist of two groups – female Delegates, or the cohort – and Participants, the other key stakeholders. To maximize the value and network reach (scale) each Salon attendee will therefore be selected from the broadest cross-section of industries and domains of knowledge touching on or touched by climate change. All Salon attendees (Delegates and Participants) must represent an organization that is part of a larger network of organizations, thus creating a network of networks giving the cohort members access to a larger body of collective knowledge and relationships, and to enable them to scale through relationships.

Convening women solve climate change crises with first hand knowledge of climate impacts – displaced and migrant women, female climate tech entrepreneurs, first responders and climate activists – will solve problems as yet unaddressed. Encouraging women to surface their solutions to problems they have lived is giving them the opportunity to become mistresses of their own destiny. But because women make up half of the human population, the solutions they create will serve the world’s entire population.   

Cultivating the seeds
Many of the women we hope to include in the Salons may not yet be aware of what it takes to start companies that build scalable solutions to critical problems they understand from their own live-experiences or observation. Many will have been working in community organizations or nonprofits, working on the frontlines of migration, hunger, or natural disasters. Many will not be aware of the direct links between their work and potential climate solutions. They may not yet understand that their field level expertise can translate into scalable solutions, especially when enabled by technology.

Our team uses the power of its own networks to reach those who are most overlooked but who are mostly likely to see problems that have also been overlooked. For each Salon we identify key stakeholders in a community from government, the nonprofit sector, the private sector and academia to help us determine key issues and actors working on climate change. We ask them to partner with us for a particular Salon (or regionally) and ask them to help us find Delegates and Participants who would contribute to the Salons, or to introduce us to organizations and networks that would know individuals with potential to change the world. These conversations begin 2-3 months before a planned salon. We collect and maintain these lists, and then interview all candidates making sure to maintain diverse domains and experiences.

Alchemy
While the Salon attendees are curated to create the maximum cross-section of insights regarding climate problems, each Salon will target Delegates and Participants that reflect issues in local and specific communities along with national and international climate impact issues. Each Salon is unique in terms of its cross-cutting themes. The Salon sessions are facilitated and follow a tried and tested methodology, yet the outcomes are the result of alchemy. The women themselves are transformed by the validation and encouragement they receive during and after the Salo and their lived-experiences are transformed into incredible solutions.

Giving credit where credit is due
We use the Climate Resilience Salon website, Linkedin and social media communication channels to elevate the women from each Salon publishing videos, images and quotes. In addition to being incubators, our Salons are a Living Laboratory where we record everything and then publish post-Salon White Papers where the women in the Salons are cited as Sources. The White Papers are then broadly disseminated by the previous attendees to their networks, resulting in the women becoming known for their contributions, building their personal and professional brands and promoting their solutions.

The team is led by Shelley Taylor, a Silicon Valley veteran and inventor of User Interface. Her approach to problem solving is research and user centered - from designing websites (in the 90s) through to developing humanitari and and public sector supply chain software. In 2015 she created the RefAid mobile app for migrants, refugees and displaced people having seen the images of people drowning when trying to get to Europe from Syria. This passion project grew virally, with no financial support from anyone, to the current presence in 50 countries with more than 10,000 NGO, community organizations and government departments using the platform to publish their available services into the location-based app RefAid so people can find help they need wherever they are.

We learned the humanitarian sector (like the public sector) used paper to keep track of their “product,” at most excel or csv files to enter their services in the app. So Shelley created a single platform where all service providers could list, map and manage their services - creating the first ever multi-entity collaboration and coordination platform where networks of organizations can work together to respond to crises. Managing this RefAid app for 7 years, working with humanitarian and public services has given us direct knowledge of the causes of migration, much of which is due to climate impacts either directly or indirectly, like the lack of economic opportunities, other than drug gangs in Honduras, due to impacts of climate on farming.

This novel approach - the many-to-many single platform for mapping layers of data, locations of services or anything else, came to the attention of a federally funded transportation agency, MTC, in California who needed to help 50 transit agencies, 9 counties and 100 cities in the San Francisco Bay Area to work together to respond to fires and floods that crossed jurisdictions. Supporting them with software has created links with first responders to fire, flood or natural disasters - many of which are caused by climate change. Women are the first to respond to disasters and their observations are key to finding adaptations, mitigation and climate resilience solutions.

Shelley is a serial founder of technology companies, and even ran a Venture Capital Company at one point in her career. As a black, American woman she is personally aware of the challenges that women face in taking their ideas to scale. Her own journey into software for humanitarian and natural disasters is a perfect example of how women can solve climate related challenges, and how important their observations and ideas are. 

We held the first Regional Climate Resilience Salon in Brussels and it was a resounding success for all who participated, supporting women to take their companies and ideas further and fostering critical partnerships that will ensure their longer term success.

The first Climate Resilience Salon consisted of 50 people, and their networks. There are 3 more launching in the next 3 months. We measure the number of people being serviced by the total number of members represented by the organizations who attend the Salon, and the number of organizations in their formal networks.

I would imagine that from each Salon, due to the network of networks effect, that each one has a reach of 1,000 people. And then if you calculate the number of social media shares, comments and impressions from each of the attendees, it is likely that each Salon creates 30,000 touch points. Then if you calculate the reach of some of the largest agencies that participate, development agencies, UN agencies etc, their reach cannot be calculated.

So it is more realistic to think in terms of continents, countries, states, cities and communities where the Salons will be. Each of us have a network and these networks are powerful. Each female founder who succeeds in creating a business will be directly impacting her community, her customers, and the planet.

The Climate Resilience Salons are designed to support innovation by using the power of networks to source ideas, create and scale solutions. Each of the women Delegates must come from an existing women-led organization, whether private or nonprofit, and be part of its own network of organizations. All success requires cheerleaders, market research, healthy competition and feedback. Successful product development and scaling require a pool of partners and customers that are easily accessible. Creating these networks of networks - Climate Resilience Salons consisting of Delegates and Participants - across the US will be creating the brain food and network effect sadly unavailable to the women we are targeting for these Salons. Our once and future female founders need to be part of powerful networks like MIT Solve and Tiger Global Impact Ventures  - giving them access to even greater access and support. 

The Climate Resilience Salons are designed to respond to the Challenge’s focus area – enabling women STEM entrepreneurs to participate in the entrepreneurial ecosystem. But it is broadening the ecosystem to include adjacent ecosystems - nonprofits working in food insecurity, migration, water and air pollution, sustainable agriculture, natural disasters - where bridges must be built between the private sector, public sector and the nonprofit sector in order to create the solutions that are most urgent for climate responses.

While in the short term the Climate Resilience Salons will not be a pure or typical incubator or accelerator - in terms of making capital available to startups - the Salons will attract climate investors who hold the power to accelerate the work of the Women in our cohorts. The multi-stakeholder network that is being built in each Salon can be accelerated by the MIT Solve and Tiger Global Impact Ventures investor and private sector networks, providing other critical resources to aspiring and existing female climate tech founders. And belonging to a network that includes these two amazing partners will exponentially increase the network building that already exists in the Climate Resilience Salon ecosystem.

This MIT Challenge is designed to encourage STEM for women, but the starting point has to be encouraging innovation from women.  By exposing women to those who traditionally have held the keys to enter the kingdom, including government, the private sector, venture capitalists - all leadership being male dominated - through this diverse multi stakeholder approach to accelerating women in the direction of climate solutions, women will be shepherded into STEM. Women of color, migrants, communities that live the greatest impacts of climate impacts, will be supported to overcome the interconnected nature of oppression and privilege, and become part of the solution - creating a more equitable and inclusive society while saving the planet.

Shelley, the Team Lead is a black American woman who has lived-experience of racism and sexism - from the point of view of being an entrepreneur and seeking capital from the boys club, to being a social impact technology founder. Her work with migrants, displaced, disasters and emergencies, through her RefAid app, has given her direct experience with the populations we are trying to serve and surface in the Climate Resilience Salons. 

It takes one to know one

The Climate Resilience Salons were started and are led by a female founder of a software company, a founder currently working in the humanitarian and public sector supply chain space. It is unusual for a full time founder to launch a side project as massive as the Salons. In fact this is what is needed if we are going to support women to draw on their experience to step into the role of climate entrepreneurs. It’s probably the reason the Salons are having such an incredible response from all actors wanting to participate in the Salons, especially the women-led organizations and female founders. The women we are targeting need to know they are seen, heard, felt and understood.

Having participated in a few incubators I am acutely aware of how they are run – with the old school investment philosophy that has participated in creating or reinforcing the problems we have today. Traditional VCs, incubators and accelerators, whether run by men (or women who have adopted the values and behaviors of the dominant society) are responsible for the current climate crises. Technology, industry and even innovation have been focused on growth at any cost. That is man’s way. Even the biggest “solutions” to climate impacts, like carbon credits, are only virtual solutions with no direct impact on climate. 

Typical incubators and accelerators harness the talents of either former entrepreneurs, academics or investment professionals who are out of touch with what we need today. 

Our climate solution incubator, rapid prototyping environment, climate-tech maker’s studio approach is totally unique in that it is led by a startup entrepreneur currently engaged in supporting networks of organizations who are responding to climate crises, both humanitarian and natural disasters. Her platform is used by 10,000 organizations (nonprofits and government organizations supporting migrants, refugees and displaced people) who work in networks to respond to problems. Creating networks is in her product’s DNA and her trellyz software is totally unique in the market in how it facilitates coordination and collaboration. Her product, the company’s customers, and the company’s network create a ready-made ecosystem of organizations involved in helping many of the victims of climate change and from whom we can find and support to find solutions based on their experiences.

Over the next 12 months we hope to host a minimum of 25 Salons in the US, in addition to at least a dozen in other countries.

We plan to have supported at least 375 aspiring or existing female founders of climate technology companies in the US alone. We plan to bring together 12,000 participants from across all of the most urgent climate themes, from diverse organizations representing government, NGOSs and community organizations and the private sector, climate investors, and academia and to leverage their networks to support the women Delegates, our cohort, in devising and launching their climate solutions.

We expect that at least ⅓ to ½  of all of the female Delegates will come from communities of color, from some of the most climate impacted communities, who will be focused on helping their communities through their solutions. 

Beyond the successes we will support among women Delegates, we expect that the ripple effect in the climate tech investor community will be significant. Through regular outreach to them with our White Papers and invitations to participate and social media (primarily through Linkedin) we expect we will have influenced more than 100,000 people directly involved in the climate sector.

We are leveraging our existing networks, the networks of the Partners in each Salon (a core group of 10-12 people from organizations with networks who help us curate the diverse group of female Delegates and the multi-stakeholder Participants) to make each Salon a success.

We will distribute our White Papers to all of the attendees, to distribute to all of their own members, and to all of their networks, creating a grass-roots magazine of solutions, and elevating all of the women Delegates online, so they are searchable by Google and given credit for their ideas and solutions.

Number of attendees by Women Delegate and by Participants (other stakeholders)

Number of climate themes represented in each Salon

Number of employees in each of the organizations who attend

Number of organizations each organization that is represented in their network

Number of social media impressions, particularly on Linkedin, of shares and comments by Delegates and Participants of each Salon

Number of companies launched by Delegates within 1 year of the Salon

Number of partnerships created between attendees within a Salon within 1 year

Number of people who join the newsletter and communities created

Goal: To create a supportive and empowering environment for aspiring and existing female founders of climate solutions, equipping them with access to multi-stakeholder networks which will support and help them scale their climate solutions.

Assumptions:

1. Climate solutions are urgently needed and women have the knowledge of  to fix our planet.

2. Women from the most climate impacted populations have the aptitude and ability to become part of the STEM world and to create climate solutions.

3. By supporting aspiring female founders, particularly from most climate impacted communities, they can overcome challenges and achieve success.

4. Collaboration and networking opportunities for would-be female founders are crucial for fostering innovation and growth, providing access to capital and potential customers and partnerships.

Intended Outcomes:

1. Increased awareness and understanding of the opportunities for women to build climate related solutions.

2. Greater exposure of the target population to STEM opportunities, to female founders working in STEM,  and to other participants and stakeholders involved in STEM. 

3. More and better climate solutions addressing the interconnected themes related to climate impacts

4. Expanded networks and connections among would-be and existing female climate tech founders to investors and other climate change experts.

Activities:

1. Curate a diverse group of women from women-led organizations, successful climate tech female founders, and multiple stakeholders - leaders from government, the private sector, climate investors, climate impact related NGOs and academia.

2. Offer a rapid prototyping environment where women can present their solutions and test their ideas for solutions on a broad group of participants for real-time and valuable feedback.

3. Facilitate networking sessions and structured opportunities for participants to connect with other women who are potential founders, investors, key stakeholders, and potential collaborators.

4. Enable the female Delegates to showcase their ideas or products or companies to all Salon attendees and receive constructive feedback.

5. Publish White Papers that source the women who participate as the authorities, raising their profile and contributions to climate solutions.

6. Connect the cohort to the Climate Resilience Salon ecosystem for continued support and access to other networks.

Short-Term Indicators:

1. High attendance and active participation from female founders, aspiring entrepreneurs, and industry professionals.

2. Positive feedback and satisfaction ratings from Delegates and Participants regarding the quality and relevance of the Salons.

3. Increased awareness and understanding of the impacts of climate change on women and the role women can and should play in creating solutions.

4. Formation of new connections and networks between female founders, female climate activists, women-led frontline organizations and the multi-stakeholder participants.

Intermediate-Term Indicators:

1. Increased participation of women in climate solutions.

2. Growth in the number of female-founded startups, successful product launches, and revenue generation from target populations.

3. Collaboration and partnerships formed among female Delegates and other Salon participants, leading to new business opportunities and innovation.

Long-Term Indicators:

1. Increased representation and success of diverse female founders in the climate-related entrepreneurial ecosystem.

2. Improved gender diversity and inclusivity within startup communities and investment networks.

3. Creation of a sustainable support network for female climate tech founders through networking and ecosystem.

4. Positive societal impact through the growth of female-led businesses, job creation, and innovation.

This project is not tech-based per se, but the solutions created by the female Delegates will be tech-enabled. And the entire project is based on the application of evidence-based knowledge to create critical solutions for Climate impacts.

In addition, the trellyz Network Communication platform will be used to encourage and support the multi-entity collaboration and communication that will result from these Salons. With greater functionality than the traditional community portals, this software puts location at the heart of communication, and allows for the ad-hoc creation of chat groups across organizations based on subject, location or any other relevant categories - to keep the conversations and support flowing!

The Salons are applying a scientific inquiry approach in the design of the White Papers that are one of the outputs of the Salons. The Living Laboratory is designed to give voice to women who are experts in their domains, through their lived experience. Everyone who is invited to attend - women from women-led organizations and all stakeholders - must be part of a network. This is for two key reasons: 1) if all participants come from organizations with other members, and that are part of broader networks of organizations, then they have access to the collective reservoir of knowledge from their community. This serves as a greater sample size for the same day collection of data. 

2)  the same composition is required for the publication of results, in the White Papers, because we rely on these participants to disseminate the resulting research through their networks in order to continue the feedback proces, much like the publication of scientific research in journals. 

The network effect is a critical aspect of these Salons - the more people who are touched by, supported by, and participating in the Salons, the greater likelihood that these practices and principles will be adopted by the larger population. One of our partners in Nigeria, UNDP, said that what they were interested in most is the lasting impact of the Salons and how they are proliferating the impacts throughout the year.

5 full time

4 part time

3-5 interns 

Plus partners who contribute to the success by helping with logistics, curating the invitees, facilitating the Salons and all other requirements.

The idea - since November

The planning and execution - since February

Less than 1 year

Our company was founded and is led by a woman of color, a black American woman. Our core staff is majority women, and our hiring practices emphasize experience in public-serving positions, like humanitarian aid, social services, or government. We often hire from the populations of people our RefAid app is serving - migrants and displaced people. Our team understands how social, economic, and environmental determinants of equity coalesce to impact people’s lives, and our mission is to make these equity determinants visible, mappable, and actionable to effect large-scale change. 

Through our work with governments, social service providers, and humanitarian aid organizations, we emphasize mission-driven achievement. We use maps to help public-serving organizations visualize and assess resource distribution, identify inequities, and improve community-level asset availability for the public. While our organization is private and for-profit, we believe our business will succeed because our greatest value derives from helping our customers achieve their mandates - to provide the best service to the most people, improving lives and building equity in the process. Our Climate Resilience Salons are an integral part of how we do business - launching initiatives to serve the people who need the most help. We often do this with no clear business opportunity, but have found that by becoming active members of networks that there is always the opportunity for us to find more people to serve through our software and by virtue of the networks we build - to help the communities and populations we are focused on serving, such as the women from women-led organizations with lived experiences related to climate impacts. 

There are concrete ROIs to this approach - for us and our customers. By incorporating equity impact reviews into our project development process, seeking partnerships with equity-driven organizations, and developing accessible pricing models (including making our product free for grassroots and nonprofit organizations like we are doing with these Salons), we’ve steered our business towards initiatives that build social justice and create impact for everyone. We believe that information is a basic human right and our software (our product) is designed to help our customers make information about their public and social services more freely available, enabling greater access to services. Our CSR initiatives such as the Salons enable us to work with other motivated people, especially women and women of color, to make the world a better place.

While this product is live we are primarily in the freemium stage and will look for monetization opportunities as we progress. However, the key is that they are already self-sustaining in that their cost to host is very low (between $5,000 and $15,000 depending on the travel and accommodation that has to be provided to the female Delegates). This means that ticket fees from the 35 or so participants can cover the operating costs.

We have many foundations, and companies and agencies that are interested in funding these initiatives. But the goal will be to figure out what products can be produced and sold, in order to devote all other resources to supporting the female Delegates.

We have only just begun. Our first Salon was on May 9th and was only in the planning for 2 months. We launched it without knowing how it would become financially sustainable. The next ones are now in the works and due to the success of the first one and the thousands and thousands of impressions we’ve had on Linkedin and social media, we are involved in many discussions possible sources of funding including private sector sponsors and foundations.

We expect to achieve financial sustainability from these primary channels:

• Grants from foundations 

• Fees from and sponsorship from government and international agencies who want to provide speakers and participate in the learning and processes 

• Registration fees - depending on the community where the Salon is being held, private sector companies will be asked to pay a registration fee of $500. This will help offset some of the costs since we intend to have an average 

• Sponsorship - there are many private sector companies, and other entities, that are aligned with the mission of our Salons that would like to be associated with a concept. Capturing the zeitgeist of climate impact and opportunities is crucial for brands to remain relevant, meet consumer expectations, gain a competitive edge, enhance their brand image, uncover business opportunities, and have a lasting positive impact on the environment. 

• Information products - our White Papers can be consumed in many ways and we expect that there will be audiences who will subscribe to the more detailed versions for helping with their product development, investment, market knowledge.

These are early days but we are already getting so much incoming
interest from climate change agencies in Europe and Africa that we
expect similar results in the US. We have not even begun to organize the
US Salons and yet we have the full support of large agencies like the
United Nations Climate Change PCCB Network throughout the world. They
are sponsoring the presences of the Climate Salons at COP28. This is an
idea who’s time has come - the world needs women to be part of the
solution, and no one so far has figured out how to catalyze them to this
degree. 

We have attracted an average of 10 key partners (organizations like UNDP, UN Climate Change, government ministries, major environmental organizations, and organizations of women in business) that are each working to find potential sponsors. Incubators traditionally either charge a fee or take an equity stake in the startups. We will do neither! Others are subsidized by organizations such as municipalities or universities.  We may attract these types of institutions to be part of our ecosystem and potential funding partners. But I think it is safer to imagine the huge ecosystem we are already building and that there will be partners and participants that will contribute funding through one of the channels listed above.

In previous startups I have found that becoming a global thought
leader leads to the business model and the products. This Salon is the
rapid prototyping and agile way to create a business that leads to
revenue. If everyone wants and needs something the money will follow.