Startup Series: ISeeChange
ISeeChange is an online platform and mobile app that combines community voices with microdata to help cities, engineers, and utilities inform local infrastructure design and adaptation that scale. Communities are struggling to facilitate meaningful dialogues about climate risk and mitigation actions. When community voices go unheard, valuable insights and critical data get missed, funds and time are wasted, and public trust erodes. ISeeChange gives residents a way to quickly report climate and weather-driven changes in their community as they experience them, including impacts such as urban heat, wildfires, and air quality, as well as flooding and coastal changes. Cities and other local clients then use the aggregated data to inform and adapt policies, models, and designs. ISeeChange tackles the climate crisis by helping clients better respond to their constituents' needs while building capacity among those most acutely affected by climate change.
Founder and CEO, Julia Kumari Drapkin, walks me through her background as a climate journalist, why she started ISeeChange, what the company has accomplished so far and where it is heading.
Enjoy the show!
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Synopsis:
• Mission: Connecting people to their changing environments and developing solutions together.
• Team: Julia Kumari Drapkin (Founder & CEO), Lindsey Wagner (Designer & Co-founder), Jared Genova (Business Development & Resilience Lead)
• Product: Mobile app and web platform available in 180 countries facilitating data-driven dialogues about climate risk and adaptation planning.
• Traction: Raised $1.4 MM to date. The team won the “AI for the Betterment of Humanity” award from MITSolve and the McGovern Foundation in 2019.
