Chesapeake Bay Green Entrepreneur Roundtable
Please join us on Zoom to hear from several entrepreneurs addressing ecological and collective health in communities across the Chesapeake Bay watershed. This online space is intended to highlight environmental and social entrepreneurs, helping to connect them to resources, build awareness of their work, and amplify their current needs (including funding, partnership-building, customer introductions, team-building, and more).
On April 17, we will hear from several entrepreneurs and organizations, including:
Greenlift (Vanessa Bright, President)
Vanessa is leading an effort to transform natural spaces through conservation maintenance, stormwater management, and eco-friendly product creation in Anne Arundel County, while providing meaningful career opportunities for returning citizens.
Ridge to Reefs (Paul Sturm, Executive Director)
Paul is leading the development of bioreactor gardens, a nature-based method of treating septic wastewater, across the Chesapeake Bay watershed.
Green Mechanics (Larry Davis, Business Lead)
Larry is leading an effort to build algal turf scrubbers to remediate nutrients in waterways across the Chesapeake Bay watershed while generating algal biomass, which can be used in a variety of products including concrete, fertilizer, and more.
GaiaXus (Lee Brindel, CTO)
Lee is developing affordable and easy-to-use sensors that allow citizen scientists to measure and share environmental data.
NomadIQ (Joe Sexton, Founder)
Joe produces satellite-based land use, biomass, biodiversity, and climate risk data for governments, businesses, and nonprofits; and he is developing NomadIQ, a mobile app to make this information accessible as maps to homeowners, land managers, and other individuals with a personal stake in the health of their environment.
NextStep Living (Patrick Jordan)
Patrick is managing NextStep Living, which uses green, efficient homebuilding to create pathways for underloved residents to build wealth through real estate development.
This online event is open to all. If any of the below describe you, you will likely find this series of calls helpful:
You are interested in understanding novel and entrepreneurial approaches to ecological and social challenges in the watershed.
You are seeking to build partnerships and collaborate with ecological and social entrepreneurs the Chesapeake Bay watershed.
You are interested in finding an internship or job with an organization working on ecological or social challenges.
You want to fund novel and entrepreneurial approaches to ecological and social challenges.
Each entrepreneur will speak for no more than 7 minutes each and will end their portion with a summary of their needs. Examples of needs might include talent, fundraising, customer intros, stakeholder and government connections, etc. Q&A for each entrepreneur will happen after all presentations in breakout rooms.
The value of this event is in increasing connectivity between different stakeholders in the regional climate and entrepreneurship ecosystems. By holding this call, we hope to facilitate connections between entrepreneurs, supporters, funders, government, community members, and more.
We intend to hold this event on regular basis going forward. Entrepreneurs interested in participating in future roundtables should email Scott Christensen at schris14@umd.edu.