Marina Fujihara Encouraging Investments in Sustainability #podcast

http://www.poppingthebubbl.com/single-post/2018/08/23/Exponential-tech-to-combat-climate-change

Here's the blog post by my partner @Sandramp

Exponential tech to combat climate change
August 23, 2018

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Sandra Ponce de Leon

Pete and I were delighted to chat with Maria Carolina Fujihara founder and CEO of Sinai Technologies.

If there is one word to describe Maria it would be courageous. After losing her job in Brazil, Maria on a whim decided to move to California to pursue new challenges and start fresh. Yet, as soon as she landed in California she met with tremendous adversity and almost became homeless.

Life took a turn for the better when she got accepted into Singularity University exactly a year ago to participate in the Global Solutions program with a focus on climate change. She credits her approval to participate in this program to Paul Hawken, author and environmentalist who had just published his book called Draw Down.

This program at Singularity was focused on creating exponential technologies, and the positive impacts these technologies can have on the environment to actually reverse climate change. Even though she didn’t have a background in technology, she realized that leveraging exponential technology is the only way to truly move the needle and make real impact to a such an important cause. This was the realization that sparked the idea for Sinai technologies.

Sinai is an acronym that stands for sustainable investment with artificial intelligence although the name Sinai has a much deeper meaning as it is also Mount Sinai, the Mount that unifies all the three of the biggest religions in the world, and also signifies sturdiness and longevity as the Pyramids in Egypt were built in the Sinai Peninsula.

Sinai technologies’ mission is to encourage investments in sustainability. To accomplish this, Sinai uses machine learning to gather information. Using an algorithm embedded with artificial intelligence, the technology can evaluate the impact of sustainability and ways to expand, multiply and scale companies that wish to make a lasting impact on the environment. Sinai technologies enables companies to understand their carbon footprint is and how to reduce it at scale.

Maria aspires to create a paradigm shift where both corporations and citizens change the way they see and evaluate the environment. “This shift should bring us past talking about tons of CO2 carbon emissions and greenhouse gas emissions,” she says “but instead start a discussion on the monetary value of these emissions”. This is a similar approach to what Nori is doing, Paul Gambill, CEO was on recently to discuss their creation of a marketplace for CO2 removal. For Maria, it is more important to talk about the way we can put a price on emissions and to enforce this through policies which should happen at different government levels.

Currently, Maria is gearing up for the launch of her first product at the end of 2018 which will be an internal carbon pricing software which companies with a sustainability team can use to understand what their next investment should be. Sinai technologies will also perform carbon risk analysis and climate change risk analysis for companies impacted both physical and non-physical to the the company’s assets.

This was a super insightful conversation with Maria Carolina Fujihara, who is extremely driven and ambitious. If you would like to know more about Maria you can find her on LinkedIn. Have a listen and enjoy this fascinating conversation.