Climate Careers: Fiona Spruill

Today's guest is Fiona Spruill, Chief Product Officer at Overstory.

Overstory's mission is to monitor all of Earth's natural resources in real-time to reverse climate change. Its first project helps utilities track forest and vegetation growth to reduce the risk of wildfires and power outages by applying machine learning to satellite imagery.

In 2019, Fiona decided to shift her career to focus on climate. Before her career transition, Fiona was COO at Meetup and spent 14 years in journalism, focusing on digital at The New York Times. After taking a year to determine her future and spend time with her family, Fiona landed at Overstory in September 2020.

Fiona is an excellent guest as she is someone who recently transitioned into climatetech without prior experience. Fiona explains what motivated her to make this career change and her path to Overstory. She also talks about her process, how she learned more about climate change, and advice for those interested in making a similar career transition.

Enjoy the show!

You can find me on twitter @jjacobs22 or @mcjpod and email at info@myclimatejourney.co, where I encourage you to share your feedback on episodes and suggestions for future topics or guests.

Episode recorded February 24th, 2021

Advice Fiona has for those looking to make a career transition: - Narrow your focus as quickly as you can and being willing to pivot - Climate is everything; therefore, no one is unqualified to work in climate - Talk to as many people as you can - Learning collectively through various projects such as Project Drawdown, On Deck Fellowships, Terra.do courses, and the MCJ podcast and membership

If you are interested in connecting with Fiona, reach out to her via Twitter or LinkedIn.

Overstory is hiring for a Front-End Engineer, Data Scientist, Data Engineer, and Marketing roles. Please checkout their website: https://www.overstory.ai/