In this episode I speak with Max Joshua, a commercial GTM specialist focused on applying satellite imaging technologies to climate problems. After we recorded our conversation, she joined the Earth Fire Alliance. She brings a unique perspective from her journey through exoplanet research to Earth observation, combining technical expertise with a commitment to community building. We discuss:
How her spiritual view of cosmic consciousness and interconnectedness drives her work in environmental monitoring and conservation.
Her experience building commercial operations from scratch at Blue Skies Space, developing markets for exoplanet observation data among scientists and space agencies.
The transition from studying distant worlds to using similar satellite technology to detect methane emissions on Earth through her work at Planet.
Why being LGBTQ+ brings unique perspectives to climate work, requiring the same radical imagination needed to envision systemic change.
The challenges and opportunities in commercializing satellite data for climate applications through her advisory firm, Atmos Impact.
How spending time in nature and building community are essential components of a meaningful life in climate work.
David Valerio: How would you describe your spirituality and the way it impacts how you engage with your work?
Max Joshua: First of all, great to be here, David. I enjoy the podcast. And I really like this question. It's pretty profound. So for me, I'd say spirituality is something that I've come to later in life. I definitely have a non-denominational approach to it. I feel like we're all part of the same cosmic consciousness, we're all made up of the same galactic space dust, and we exist in a kind of cosmic soup. That’s how I like to think of it. A big cosmic hot pot.
So really, we are manifestations of the universe observing itself. And how does that impact my work? I feel like I've always been really motivated to understand the world, and science is a great tool for doing that. The sense of interconnectedness with everything else on Earth and in the universe really gives me this desire to try and support and protect the natural world, because I'm just a part of it. We're all a part of this complex ecosystem. So it motivates me in the direction of conservation, restoration, climate work. I feel like I'm part of the world, I want to exist in harmony with the world, and I want to make my career centered around that because that's where we spend most of our waking hours.
David Valerio: I'd love to hear more about your understanding of cosmic consciousness. It sounds like your view is a for of pantheism. That there's a divine spark within the entire cosmos, humanity being one reflection of that? Or is it more naturalistic in that there's some form of spirit that embodies the entire world and we're a part of that interconnection?
Max Joshua: I think both frameworks can feel right to me, depending on my mood. Where I started was as a teenager thinking science is real and everything else is just interpretations that we place on top of the world. There is an objective truth out there and we're trying our best to understand it, but we're never gonna be sure. We're always interpreting what we see through our own lens.
I still think that's true, but I've gone a little bit beyond thinking in my recent years, and more towards feeling. I definitely feel connected to nature and to people. I feel like there is that divine spark within all of us that I can recognize. We're connected to each other and to the world in ways which are somewhat inexplicable by science. There is more than just science. There's more than just thinking. There is a felt sense of oneness with the universe.
I feel that most personally either when I'm out in nature in that sort of quiet stillness, or when I'm in community as well. Those spaces really make me feel whole with the rest of existence.
David Valerio: I love that you mentioned this connection between being out in nature and being in community as where you feel that spark the most. You mentioned originally coming from a background where science is the only way to find objective truth, but now have opened yourself up more to mystical, spiritual interpretations of reality. What drew you to astronomy and exoplanet science initially? What sparked your curiosity and interest in the natural world?
Max Joshua: I've always had this urge to try and understand what we know about the universe and the world that we live in. I found myself naturally drawn to trying to understand it at the largest scale, cosmology. What do we know about how the universe formed? What do we know about how our galaxies have evolved, and how everything led to where we are today? People, emergent life, observing the universe and existing in it.
I was really drawn to cosmology. I always enjoyed science. I liked this idea that we can try and learn how the world works, and by learning how it works, we can exist better in the world as well. So I studied science. When I went to university I mostly did physics, and I thought that I might become an astrophysicist.
But I also took courses in environmental science and clean energy. I'd been hearing about the climate crisis throughout my life, but in these studies I really learned how catastrophic the situation was and how quickly everything was declining. This was in 2012, so already 13 years ago. I realized that I actually enjoyed applying science for the benefit of the world, not just for the sake of knowledge and understanding itself. I found environmental physics, atmospheric physics, way more fulfilling. Even the more applied stuff, like energy and transportation systems, I found way more fulfilling than pure astrophysics.
I was looking at doing a master's in clean energy and got accepted to a few places. But then I also had this very rogue job offer to work for a space science startup that was developing space missions to study exoplanet atmospheres. I got the job offer and thought, "Well, this is a crazy unique opportunity, and I can always do a master's later." So I got pulled back into astronomy.
David Valerio: How would you describe that shift from being drawn to cosmology and large-scale questions to more mesoscale problems of the Earth system? Personally, I wasn't one of those kids who was drawn to the stars. I was drawn more to trees and rocks and things I could perceive and interact with on a day-to-day basis. Do you feel like there was a transition between thinking about large-scale problems to these medium-scale problems? Or is it just a continuation of that same interest in nature?
Max Joshua: That's a really good question. What drew me to astrophysics? When I was younger, I had a lot of appreciation for thinking and intellectualism. In some ways, focusing on more abstract questions such as what the universe is like, what planets and solar systems are like. I think there's some escapism to it, honestly. You can really get immersed in the intellectual side of things and in trying to visualize and understand these really grand huge systems. But to me, it does feel a little bit disconnected from life.
Around the same time when I was studying in university, I'd moved to London. I mostly grew up in Cheltenham. I used to take a lot of walks in the woods when I was growing up. I was born in Scotland, and my parents would take me out for walks and bike rides in the forest. I think that probably sunk into my consciousness on some level.
When I lived in London for a couple of years, I started to really miss nature, and I realized how badly I needed it in my life. How badly I needed to spend time immersed in woods, forests, any kind of natural outdoors environment. I didn't appreciate that until I moved to a big city. That was something that was very felt as part of my everyday experience.
I had this real appreciation for thinking and intellectual things as I was growing up. But I didn't appreciate how nature made me feel and how it influenced my daily life until I moved to a big city. London really is a bit of a manic place sometimes. It's very fast paced, a bit chaotic, noisy.
That was partly what led me towards the climate focus, realizing how much I missed nature and how much I had needed it throughout my life and just didn't appreciate it. I was spoiled growing up. And then partly seeing these environmental crises unfold and thinking, "I need to apply myself to this." I couldn't justify to myself spending my time focused on abstract, more intellectual problems, instead of real world problems that actually improve people's lives.
David Valerio: That's so interesting, the shift to looking at the more tangible natural world around you came about because you felt its absence when you moved to London. I grew up in Houston, Texas—which is a giant concrete metropolis—so probably the opposite of what you experienced. Over time, through going on West Coast road trips through the US and seeing the just stupendous beauty of that part of the world, I came to appreciate nature more. Moving from the concrete, uber-urbanized area out into these quieter natural areas, I realized, "Whoa, this is amazing. How did I not see this in my day-to-day life?"
So it's interesting that our paths were sort of opposite but brought us to the same endpoint. Likewise, I'm an intellectually minded person, so I can get my head stuck up in the clouds. But whenever I'm out in nature, that part of myself is still and quieted, and I realize this is really what I'm here for. I can apply the knowledge and intellectualism, but I want to apply them to embodied problems that I can really touch, taste, smell, feel, and not just be wrapped up in my own head all the time.
Max Joshua: I struggle with that question of embodiment too. If you want to work on something that's really big, a really scalable approach to the climate, then it's gonna be abstract. Whereas if you want to work on something really tangible, usually those are the most localized, small-scale things. There's this tension between working on a big abstract problem that can move the needle or working on something that is tangible and embodied and really close to home. It's an interesting challenge.
David Valerio: Tell me about your experience with Blue Skies Space. What were your key learnings from helping to build that company?
Max Joshua: It was a really interesting experience, and I am glad I did it, even though it was a detour from the nature path. Blue Skies Space is based in the UK. It's a startup founded by a group of scientists and professors. One of them, Giovanna Tinetti, is also leading the European Space Agency's next big exoplanet mission, Ariel.
Their vision was to tackle critical data gaps in the highest demand areas of space science by operating an independent fleet of planetary science spacecraft, essentially selling commercial data to scientists who need that data to tackle critical challenges. This is something that's already being done from large ground telescopes. There are huge ground telescopes that sell scientific data to universities, research institutes, space agencies. But nobody had done this with satellite telescopes.
They were starting with a mission to reveal the atmospheric composition of around a hundred exoplanets. There have been over 5,000 exoplanets discovered now in solar systems beyond our own. But we know very little about these planets. We know where they are, roughly how large they are, sometimes their mass. But we really don't know if we're looking at something more like Earth, Venus, or Mars. We want to figure out these questions to understand where life forms and evolves. Could there be life within our observable universe? How did our solar system come to form? What brought us to life here?
I was one of their first two hires. This was pre-seed, pre-revenue, funded by research grants. I learned how to be scrappy and build something completely from the ground up. The role was business development, and I put together their whole sales operations process, their CRM, customer engagement. They sent me to Australia on a business trip to represent the company within the first few weeks. I was thrown in at the deep end and learned how to engage customers, close deals, sign contracts, develop commercial products and services, hire people. I ended up hiring a team of four in the business development group.
I learned how to articulate value for very different kinds of stakeholders. The value of getting this scientific data for a postdoc or PhD student is very different to the value for a professor, who usually cares more about their research group and attracting the right students. Which again is very different to a dean of a university, who cares more about the profile of their department and attracting students. And that's very different from a NASA bureaucrat, who probably wants some of the construction and manufacturing to be done within the US. It's quite a complex ecosystem, and there are different stakeholders who care about different parts of it.
David Valerio: It sounds like you were serving in a translator role, having to commercialize deep science and speak the scientists' language at whatever level they're at. What was your approach to meeting the demands of each of those separate stakeholders?
Max Joshua: It's very bottom-up. With scientists you have to capture their curiosity and imagination. Everyone in the field of exoplanet science is feeling the pain of this lack of good data. When you tell them there's another resource that can be available to gather those data, they get excited. You try to capture that excitement and frame what they want to do with the telescope. What could they actually discover with this? How does it extend and build on their work? How does it help them grow their own profile, their own research group, help them publish a paper that's gonna make them the next Einstein of exoplanet science? People are driven by their egos, of course. They're not in it for the money.
Then you've got to get money, and that's the hard part, because all these scientists are competing for pretty limited pots of funding. Then you have to go to the next level in partnership with your end users. Usually you'd approach a head of department if they're trying to get university funding. Or you'll support them to make a grant application if they're trying to get research funding. Or you can get together a group of scientists or institutions and author white papers or approach their national funding body, whether that's NASA or the NSF in the US or the STFC in the UK.
The bureaucrats care about different things. They often care that a certain amount of money is spent on local services with industry partners, which totally makes sense. They're trying to support innovation locally. Whereas the scientists really care about what they can do with the data. So usually you have to cover all of these aspects, whether you're trying to make the sale to a university or to a space agency.
David Valerio: That the most complex sales pitch process I've ever heard of. You were really thrown into the deep end there.
Max Joshua: Yeah, and it was tough because a lot of scientists... There are some big ground telescopes that do sell data in this way, but it hadn't been done with satellites. There were some scientists who are opposed to the model. They're like, "No, we shouldn't have anything commercial in astronomy." But then there are many others who say, "Oh, I love it. This is helping to solve the data gap."
To build credibility in the mission, we had to publish a whole bunch of peer-reviewed papers. I presented at almost 40 conferences in more than a dozen countries representing the mission. We built a research collaboration of about 35 scientists from many different research institutions, and together they formed working groups to scope how the capability could be used to do good science, and then they published on that.
You really have to build up credibility through publications, through showing up at conferences, through white papers, and through building research collaborations. There's no easy way to just convince people to pony up cash for a new satellite. You really have to show that this is technologically and scientifically robust.
David Valerio: I'm curious how you personally built up credibility with your prospects. Academia has a lot of credentialism it. How did you experience people not valuing your opinion because you "just" had a bachelor's degree when trying to make these really complex sales?
Max Joshua: It was tough, especially in the early days. I got sent to Australia for a conference in the first few weeks of working there. I dressed in a suit because I thought, "I'm a business development professional. I gotta look the part." I get there and it's Australia, so everyone is wearing flip-flops and shorts. I just look crazy at this conference.
You can't engage these people like a businessperson. The scientists don't want to be sold to. It definitely helped a lot to be a real science nerd because then I could get into the weeds. I'm genuinely curious and I'd ask a lot of questions and want to learn about their research. Engaging with them on that level really helped because scientists love to talk about their research since it's driven by their own personal curiosity. Asking questions about their research, listening, trying to understand where we can genuinely support their work, not shoehorning it in. It didn't feel like sales.
As for my personal credibility, by the time I'd given five plus talks, I found that if people saw me give a talk and then we did Q&A, they respected what I knew because they could see that I had learned a lot about the field even without doing my own research. I would get credibility questions sometimes and people would be like, "Oh, where'd you do your PhD?" And I'd tell them I didn't do a PhD, and they're like, "Well, what are you doing here?"
Leaning on the credibility of the team was good. I co-authored a bunch of papers as well, mostly within my role, but I did co-author one outside of my explicit role just for fun. Getting involved in some of the research helped boost my personal credibility. But I did feel there was maybe a limit to where I could get to in the field as a non-PhD. This is a very non-traditional path. There are so few business development people in space science. The path doesn't exist and you're breaking new ground.
David Valerio: I asked because I have my own feelings about this with respect to working in nature-based carbon markets. I have a bachelor’s in geology and master's in oceanography, but was thrown into the world of all things nature-based carbon—soil, forests, wetlands, everything under the sun. I'm not an expert in any of these fields, but with the business development sales lens, that's a different combo of skills.
In as much as anybody is an expert in nature-based carbon markets from both the technical and business development side, I'm there. But there's still this lingering academic credentialism where I feel the lack of my PhD. Maybe it's because I mastered out, which is a different thing.
Max Joshua: That is totally valid. I know so many people who mastered out for very good reasons. For me, only having a bachelor's, I totally feel it. There was a ton of imposter syndrome, especially being the BD person at the company and trying to build everything from the ground up, but not having studied business. I was definitely figuring it out as I went along.
I was there for over six years. By year three or four I did feel confident that I had built up a lot of knowledge about the observational capabilities in the field. That was mostly what I contributed to co-authored papers, my expertise on which telescopes are out there for observing exoplanets and what can they do. How does our capability fit into that and fill data gaps? That was where I carved out my niche, understanding the research capabilities and understanding the market. That was what I was really an expert in.
But getting into the weeds about how you analyze an exoplanet's atmosphere… I could talk at a high level but I definitely couldn't do research. To some extent with the scientific community I was always gonna be on the outside looking in rather than being part of it myself.
David Valerio: Tell me about the shift to Planet and how that went. It sounded like going back more to your roots and wanting to work on these more applied, Earth system-scale environmental problems. What was it like working on them?
Max Joshua: Even after about four, five years in this esoteric field of exoplanet science, I'd been seeing the climate crisis unfold and I really wanted to spend my time and attention there. Your career is the best vehicle for you to make change in the world just given how much time most of us spend working.
I had started looking. I'd started getting back into the clean energy sphere, attended a couple of conferences. I joined a group called WRISE, Women of Renewable Industries and Sustainable Energy. From there I joined a group called Clean Energy Pride as well, which is an LGBTQ+ clean energy group.
I was exploring opportunities in energy, which is mostly where I'd focused by the end of my bachelor's. On Climatebase, which is one of the main jobs boards in the space, I found this dream opportunity to work on a mission deploying very similar satellite imaging technology to what I was familiar with—visible to near infrared imaging spectroscopy—but looking at Earth instead to detect methane super emitters.
Some of the work I'd been doing on the exoplanet side was detecting methane in exoplanet atmospheres, and now here was an opportunity to use very similar technology to detect methane on Earth. Methane is a huge short-term driver of global warming. I was really inspired by the project. I loved the team. I had literally seven interviews, it was kind of a crazy process to join Planet. But each interview I got more and more encouraged. I joined the team in September of 2022.
Planet's launching these hyperspectral satellites called Tanager to detect methane and also to do a whole bunch of other climate use cases. They're doing this as part of a methane and carbon dioxide coalition called the Carbon Mapper Coalition. It’s a public-private coalition that's detecting super emitters, which are massive methane leaks, so that they can be fixed sooner. Pretty often these huge methane leaks will go undetected for days, weeks, or even months. They're a huge contributor to the overall amount of methane in the atmosphere which drives global warming.
The coalition's mission is to make methane data open and transparent for the public good. All the methane data gets released to the public. I really liked the mission. For me it's really about understanding humanity's impact on Earth and creating accountability around those behaviors from the big energy companies.
David Valerio: What is the commercial angle there? Given that data is being made public and it's a non-profit coalition, how was Planet actually making money on that?
Max Joshua: It's a really interesting public-private partnership. The build out of these satellites and the team was funded upfront by philanthropy. The Carbon Mapper Coalition secured about $125 million upfront from the High Tide Foundation, Grantham Foundation, and Bloomberg Philanthropies to build these satellites to power a global methane observing system and make the data available to the public.
The upfront funding was philanthropic. You can do a lot with $125 million when it comes to building small satellites. But how the partnership worked was that the Carbon Mapper Coalition has a certain amount of time on these satellites, let's say it's about half the time. Planet, as the industry partner in the coalition, is free to commercialize the remaining capacity on the satellites so they can sell data.
The difference between Planet's methane data and the public methane data is that it's a different product with different analytics and that it's available immediately. Whereas the public methane data is only available after a certain number of days to the public, I believe it's 30 days. So if you want the data sooner, you can pay Planet. If you want more detailed analytics or derived products, you can pay Planet.
Also, the capabilities that you need to detect methane in the atmosphere are extremely powerful. That imaging capability opens up tons of other sustainability use cases. Things like measuring soil carbon, nitrogen or water holding capacity as well as identifying the community composition of a forest or identifying invasive species in vegetation. Things like analyzing water turbidity, water quality, and pollution. A ton of military applications as well.
The model is essentially the satellites were funded upfront for the public good with philanthropy, and then the data can also be commercialized. The plus side of commercialization the satellite constellation can be self-sustaining. With the commercial profits, you get to build out more satellites.
David Valerio: That's such a fascinating example of catalytic capital crowding in private sector work. Who are the key commercial buyers of this type of data?
Max Joshua: There are a few different categories on the methane side of things. The large oil and gas supermajors are definitely interested in this kind of technology. A lot of this for them is about mitigating the headline risk, the PR damage of having a massive methane leak that goes unaddressed. They're really interested in monitoring the upstream production and their pipelines to catch any of these big leaks.
Also, this is aligned with their profit incentives because if they have a big leak that loses a ton of methane, that's lost product that they're not getting to sell. So it's a bad look for them and they're losing money if they don't catch the leaks. Satellites can enable you to do that much more cost effectively than boots on the ground, or than planes or drones, because you can cover a much larger area with satellites.
All of the big oil and gas producers are using ground instruments to measure methane emissions as well, usually OGI (optical gas imaging). But the problem with these ground sensors is that they might miss emissions from further up the stack, or just from in between sensors. So pretty often they will miss something that you can catch from the top down with a satellite.
Then there are energy regulators. These could be state or national regulators who are responsible for measuring and regulating the emissions of their industries and potentially issuing warnings or fines to operators who go over the emissions limits. There are state regulators in California, Nevada, Texas, and Alberta. There are also international bodies, like the UN Environment Program has a program called the International Methane Emissions Observatory (IMEO) that monitors methane globally.
Also, it's not just about oil and gas production. Landfills are trying to monitor their methane emissions too. Often they're trying to capture as much methane as possible. A lot of the big waste management companies are now using drones and satellites to measure emissions from their sites from above. Often they're trying to capture the methane from their landfills so that it can be turned into something useful like renewable natural gas. If there are cracks in the system, if stuff is leaking out, they want to know about that.
There are banks and investment portfolios who want to know about the emissions in their portfolio as well.
David Valerio: How does satellite monitoring of methane work together with drones and ground-based measurements to help best identify methane leaks and plumes?
Max Joshua: Nobody is using a single sensor workflow here. All the big operators have instruments installed on the ground. Almost all of them are flying drones as well over select areas, like pipelines.
Essentially, the further up you get from the ground, the lower your spatial resolution. Most satellites have a 30-meter resolution. You can catch a methane emission above a certain size, let's say 100 kilograms per hour, and you can pinpoint it to within 30 by 30 meters of where it's coming from. But there might be a whole cluster of buildings in that vicinity. Then you're probably gonna need to send a crew out on the ground with a handheld sensor to figure out exactly where the leak is coming from. And of course satellites can't plug the leak so you're gonna need that ground crew to actually go and fix the situation.
These things work in tandem. The interest in using satellites is to catch the biggest leaks as cost-effectively as possible. It's way less expensive to use a satellite to monitor the same spot several times a week, month after month, than it is to use a ground crew, or even to send a drone or a plane, because drones need operators and planes need pilots who need to be paid. That gets expensive.
Planning the flight paths can be quite difficult, and there are some countries where it might be difficult to get permission to fly over certain areas from a legal perspective. The satellites solve a lot of problems here and make it a lot more cost-effective. But they can only catch the biggest leaks. I know that some of the plane instruments are claiming to get down to five or even two kilograms per hour of flow rate, which is a much smaller leak, so they can detect things with a lot more precision.
Ultimately, you're gonna need the ground crew to go fix the thing in the end anyway, but this is about operational efficiencies.
David Valerio: You were at Planet for about a year and a half. Tell me about the transition to what you're doing now. It's been a rough time for startups across the deck, specifically within climate and nature. What was it like moving on from Planet and going into what you're doing now with Atmos Impact?
Max Joshua: I love the mission of Planet and still do. But there were a whole bunch of layoffs. In 2023, I lost about half of my commercial team. Then we had to make do with a much smaller team and change our ambitions. Planet then laid off maybe 15% of the workforce. Then in February 2024, I got hit in the second round of layoffs.
It wasn't a huge surprise. A fair number of the space companies at the time were struggling with market traction and cashflow, especially on the commercial side. As someone working on a new upcoming mission, which wasn't yet launched at that point and wasn't yet making money, I totally get it. New missions are the first place to take a hit when a space company is struggling.
But I also wasn't so upset to leave. I'd already lost half my team about eight months earlier. Also, a lot of Planet's new business is coming from defense intelligence. The space industry largely is funded by defense, military, and intelligence interests. That is not something that I've ever wanted to work on. It's not really aligned with my climate focus. Even working on this very climate-focused mission, a lot of the most obvious market opportunities are about defense, even for a methane-monitoring mission. So that was a bit of a challenge.
I took a few months sabbatical, which was amazing. It was the best time of my life, honestly. Spent time camping, exploring national parks, spending time with family, went to my friend's wedding.
From June onward, I opened myself back up to work opportunities. I hadn't intended to do commercial advisory or consulting work, but when I announced that I was looking for my next role I actually got some inbound projects that wanted to pay me to help them. First on the satellite technology stuff. operators who are launching new satellites or new data products built on satellites wanted help figuring out how to go to market. Building up their sales strategy, which market opportunities to focus on.
I started taking these projects out of curiosity, for fun, and to make some money while I was looking for the next thing. It snowballed to the point where I've now registered my business in California. It's called Atmos Impact. It's something that I'm focusing on almost full time now, supporting a mixture of satellite technology organizations and climate tech organizations with their commercialization approaches and their go-to market strategies. Figuring out what help they need to target market opportunities and scale their offerings, and ultimately drive the adoption of their solutions, whether that's climate data or satellite data, with their ideal customers and users.
It has been a challenging time in climate tech, especially late last year. There were quite a few layoffs in the carbon space, for example. And obviously last year, there were a bunch of layoffs in space. But I am still seeing a lot of growth opportunities. There are a whole bunch of people trying to build new satellite constellations. There are a whole bunch of climate data startups out there that are getting funding. There's a lot of churn in the space, but there is a lot of opportunity as well.
David Valerio: What are the most exciting opportunities that you're noticing within this very broad space of applying satellites to climate problems? What are the most interesting kinds of problems that you're working on nowadays?
Max Joshua: It's a variety, actually. The weird niche that I've carved out is this intersection of satellite imaging technology and climate solutions. Where satellites are most appropriate in the climate sphere is for really large-scale environmental monitoring. Seeing these really grand-scale changes like deforestation and reforestation, or changes in water quality over large areas, or obviously catching methane leaks.
I just announced that I'm collaborating with a company called Planet Sapling, which is doing some really good geospatial work using a lot of public geospatial data sources, but bringing them together to measure climate impacts and risks.
I talked to someone this week about using satellites for certifying natural gas emissions along the supply chain, which is not far from the methane use-cases that I've tackled before. Admittedly, it's a bit more challenging because satellites are just part of the solution.
There's another company using an automated algorithm for detecting emissions in satellite data, because a lot of that is still done manually. There's a fair bit of interpretation involved from most people at most of these methane monitoring geospatial organizations. This group has found a way to do it in an automated way that's highly accurate.
A lot of this is about finding out where large-scale monitoring is truly useful. Where does it bring value that you can't get without satellite observations? And then where are there opportunities to scale something, by applying AI, by fusing datasets together to make an analytic that's actually useful to your end user. A lot of it is about building the right product your users actually need.
David Valerio: How have you found the shift from being an employee to working for yourself through your consulting business?
Max Joshua: I'm really enjoying it. It's sort of an explosion of possibilities and opportunities, and growing in a lot of different areas at once. The kind of projects that I take are great. Last week I was consulting with a company that's trying to build out a constellation of several hundred satellites for high-resolution imaging, which is very different to the geospatial climate work that Planet Sapling is doing, which is very different to certifying natural gas emissions intensity.
I really get to branch out into a lot of different domains and learn very quickly about all these different little market segments and technologies. I enjoy that. The downside versus the full-time job is just not being as deeply involved for as long in any given project. That is the one thing that I miss about the full-time role. the longer term immersion in a project and with a team.
I get to really broaden my horizons, learn a lot, and prototype careers for myself. Where do I really want to spend my time? Which of these use-cases or technologies speaks to me the most? But then you do miss the deeper dive that you get from being immersed in a full-time team.
David Valerio: LGBTQ+ issues are something that you're passionate about. I'd love to hear more about your experience tying that passion into your current work. I know you currently have a role with Out In Climate. What does that look like for you and what motivates you to be involved in that kind of work?
Max Joshua: At the highest level, it's really about community and giving people the kind of support that I would have loved to have when I was younger or when I was first coming out or realizing I was transgender.
Out In Climate is an organization that supports LGBTQ+ professionals who are either working on climate issues or who want to work in that space. I'm relatively new, I joined last September. I've established the local chapter, Out In Climate LA. I'm running local events. We had a potluck recently, talked about the wildfire response and areas where we can get involved. We've got a queer ecology hike coming up where we'll get to learn about all the different gay plants that are out there. There are a lot, it turns out.
I'm also on the national steering committee for Out In Climate as well, trying to figure out strategically how can we reach more people, what kind of support do people need, how can we support companies that want to attract a more diverse group of professionals.
It can be tough trying to have a career in any field being visibly queer. I'm quite obviously transgender and for whatever reason, people find that polarizing. Being visibly LGBTQ+, opportunities are more constrained. Not every company is going to be welcoming. There are a lot of places that I can't go to. You can't send me to the UAE to negotiate with oil executives, for example. It's illegal for me to exist there. I think it helps to give people all the support they can get. And selfishly, to get that myself as well.
Part of being LGBTQ+ is about living a life that is outside the usual sexual norms. To go beyond them, recognize your full true self, and grow into that is an act of radical imagination and creativity, usually in the face of a lot of social opposition. You really have to get to know yourself and have a vision of who you are.
I feel like that's an ability that is really needed in the climate movement. The status quo and the way we've been doing things has obviously been destroying our planet on a lot of levels, and we need people who can envision a better world and create systems-level changes to make that a reality. We really need some outside-the-box thinking, and we've got to overcome a lot of social opposition as well. This is something that queer people do in their lives all the time. So I do feel like queer people have something unique to bring to the climate struggle.
Plus, it's all hands on deck. We need everybody that we can in this field. With Out In Climate, it's about supporting these people to get into the field. I try to create community through events and get-togethers, and at conferences as well, running big networking events. We try to support each other, share opportunities for roles or projects, share best practices with companies that want to create a good space for LGBTQ+ people and even other underrepresented groups as well.
We try to uplift the profiles of senior leaders in the space who are queer, just to increase visibility and representation so that future generations, young people can see that you can have a climate career. It is possible. If you're transgender or lesbian or asexual, it doesn't matter. There's nothing wrong with you. There's a place for you in society, you can have a good career, and there's a home for you in the climate movement if that's what you want to spend your time doing.
David Valerio: What does a good life look like for you and how will you attempt to live it going forward?
Max Joshua: For me, it definitely involves spending a good amount of time in nature for that embodied feeling of stillness, calm, peace, oneness and connection with the world. That's what I get from spending time in nature. So I want more of that.
I want to make supporting the natural world my main career focus. Whether that is more abstract like by bringing down methane emissions, or whether that is really direct like doing fieldwork on the ground for conservation. Regardless, I want to make it my career focus.
Also I want to feel connected to community. Whether that's friends, just spending more time intentionally with friends. Whether that's neighbors, I have some really sweet neighbors, a lot of elderly neighbors. We're inviting them around for Lunar New Year. My girlfriend's Vietnamese, so we celebrate Lunar New Year. We're inviting the neighbors round for great Vietnamese food and it will be really cute.
And then of course feeling connected to the LGBTQ+ community as well and trying to support people who are working in climate or who want to get in climate. I'm also expecting to join the board of PFLAG, Parents and Families of Lesbians and Gays, which is one of the longest-running LGBTQ+ organizations in the world. I'm expecting to join their board here in LA. It's specifically about supporting queer kids and their parents. I'm really excited for that. I'll be running community events and giving talks and meeting parents. It'll be really sweet. Feeling connected to community and then spending time with my own loved ones as much as possible.
Something I definitely work on is not rushing through life, but actually reflecting on it and enjoying the ride. Trying to slow down, avoid overstretching, avoid burnout, more focus on being and less on doing. I used to live my life very stringently by a list of tasks and actions and to-dos. But now I try to focus on, did I like who I was today? Did I like how I showed up in the world? Rather than focusing on what did I do today? What did I achieve? And then of course, keep learning, keep growing, keep making money.
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