Doing Good by Doing Well: Fighting the Other Pandemic — A Few Places to start.

Part 2 of 2   |  go to Part 1
UtilityAPI is in Oakland, CA. Today in the SF Bay Area, we're choking on smoke from wildfires caused by thousands of lightening strikes (also, high humidity, thunderstorms and lightening? In the Bay Area? In August? Super weird). Climate change is responsible for creating the conditions for all this.  Fighting climate change is an all-hands-on-deck moment. It's no secret that diverse teams are essential. Let's get to it. 

Where Do We Start?
We’re not going to be able to fix the whole mess all at once. Here are a few ways to start:

Policy / regulatory

• equitable seats at the table in the room where it happens. Let’s make sure everyone can access and influence legislation negotiations and regulatory proceedings. In order to make that happen, we’ll need to reach out to and authentically engage diverse communities in decision making. That will be easier if we... 
• promote diverse and inclusive leadership at the highest ranks. One way to accomplish that goal is to simply make, retain and promote diverse hires at all levels.

Finance / business models

• top level staff are mostly white; promote diverse and inclusive leadership (again!)
• create and use culturally appropriate, accessible and relevant sales/outreach models, commit to and incentivize contracts with minority-owned firms and suppliers
• switch to and promote accessible, flexible and affordable financing and ownership options; stop using FICO credit scores to determine loan eligibility (more on that in next week's post)
• build local wealth through community ownership models and other community-led solutions

Structural / systemic 
We do need complex interventions to address the root causes of these issues. But we can start the work with our personal actions. 

• listen to the frontlines; intentionally reach out to and listen to the communities we are not serving/not serving well (remember, diversity is good business); let's serve these customers!  
• listen to/amplify the platforms/solutions/demands of BIPOC leaders already in our industry; seek out and mentor those with different backgrounds and identities to yours. 

Everyone in the energy ecosystem needs easy access to secure data from a system that actually works. That's UtilityAPI.

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This post, as well as the previous one, was co-written with Shiva Patel, MBA Candidate @ Berkeley, Haas | Energy & Climate Justice Finance + Investments.