Our Executive Interview series highlights a CEO or other top executive who is leading the way in the fight against climate change.
Today we're featuring Laura Zapata, the CEO & co-founder of Clearloop, the climate solutions platform that helps organizations of all sizes—from small and medium sized-businesses to Fortune 50 companies to universities—tackle their carbon footprint and expand access to clean energy. Laura is a staunch advocate for accelerating grid decarbonization by investing in communities—like her own—that can benefit the most from the environmental, health, and economic benefits of new solar projects.
Laura built Clearloop, now a Silicon Ranch Company, to capture the broader purchasing power of organizations seeking to invest in tangible climate action and unlock innovative funding mechanisms to bring clean energy projects to life more equitably across the country.
Prior to starting Clearloop, Laura spent her career in hard-charging organizations across government and technology. Laura immigrated from Colombia with her family and grew up in Memphis, Tennessee. She graduated from Dartmouth College and lives in Nashville with her husband.
We spoke with Laura over email earlier this month.
Chris Moyer: What inspired you to start your company?
Laura Zapata: I was coming off a campaign loss in my home state of Tennessee, and it did two things for me: One, it reinvigorated me to figure out ways to be part and give back to the community that raised me. So, if government wasn't going to be the way, then why not the private sector. And two, it connected me to two people who would become my co-founders.
It also allowed me to get the angel investment and backing I needed to take a chance on myself and figure out how to help the private sector maximize their climate dollars by deploying clean energy infrastructure in underinvested communities, like my own. At the core, I was emboldened by the fundamental belief that communities, particularly like my own in the south, should have just as much access to clean energy and all of its environmental, health, and economic benefits as any other American community. There is a huge opportunity for communities that have been historically underinvested in to lead the way as we transform our economy with clean technologies.
CM: What is the biggest challenge facing climate tech companies like yours today?
LZ: I get concerned that we spend a lot of time debating at the margins of what we should do to drive down emissions and the community discussing climate tech can feel insular and be guilty of naval gazing. We need more creative solutions and to have a bias for action that is inclusive of a broader coalition of people to get projects deployed. We have to do a better job of growing the tent for people who are not thinking about climate change every day, but may have an opportunity to be part of the solution, while also reinvesting back in the economic prosperity of their communities.
As much as technology can enable better systems and improve efficiencies, the mark of success for climate tech companies like Clearloop will be whether or not we have sufficiently deployed our carbon emissions reduction solutions into the mainstream.
CM: What's the biggest risk you've ever taken?
LZ: Pivoting my career (and life!) after finding success as a communications professional was a big leap of faith. I spent a decade building my career as someone else’s spokesperson, so developing my own voice and using my own experiences to more effectively communicate our value proposition and ground our business in optimistic and actionable ways to accelerate grid decarbonization was a big risk—but one worth taking!
CM: What’s something about you that might surprise people?
LZ: I did not see myself as an “environmentalist”—my image of the people that talked about climate change as I was founding Clearloop in 2019 was of a middle-aged man wearing a Patagonia jacket and hiking boots. That’s not me. So, I didn’t see myself reflected in the stereotype I had in my head of who gets to work on climate tech. But what’s clear to me now is that the private sector can play an enormous role in not only coming up with innovative ways to tackle environmental issues, but also have a generational opportunity to invest back in clean tech as an economic development tool for America communities that have felt left out.
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