Ismaël Bawah is the SciTech Community Coordinator at the Good Food Institute Europe and the man behind the Alt Protein Project, a global student-powered initiative to transform universities into hubs for alternative protein innovation. Alongside him, we also heard from Lisa Neidhardt of Imperial College London and Jorge Guadalupe of Brazil’s Federal University of Minas Gerais—two campus leaders putting alt proteins on the academic map.

In this episode we talked about:

🌱 How the Alt Protein Project scaled to 63 active university chapters and sparked more than 20 new courses and 40+ research projects
🧬 Why fermentation is Lisa’s lab obsession—and how she’s using microbes to upcycle agricultural byproducts into food
🐔 Jorge’s role in creating Latin America’s first fried cultivated chicken (yes, really) and a new university course that ends with Shark Tank-style startup pitches
🧪 How mentorship, money, and microbes are building the alt protein talent pipeline from scratch
🎓 What it takes to get 13-year-olds (and their grandmas) excited about cultivated meat
📈 Why Brazil’s meat giants are pouring money into cultivated alternatives—and how geopolitics might do more for climate action than vibes ever will

#climatetech #alternativeproteins #futureoffood

🪸 Transform your company's milestones into impact, like trees planted and coral reef restored: impacthero.com/podcast

🧑‍💼 Growing across Europe? Grab a free consultation and hire without hassle: parakar.eu/climate

📈 B2B content to create and capture leads: book 30 minutes with Tom for free at grizzle.io/climate

Veronique Hördemann is Managing Partner and CFO at Future Energy Ventures, a climatetech VC firm investing in the software layer of the energy transition. From her base in Essen (with a side of Berlin), Veronique talked about going from corporate VC to a fully independent impact fund and why they’ve made a deliberate choice to stay clear of hardware.

In this episode we talked about:
🏙️ How they segment their investments across “future energy”, “future cities”, and “future technology”
📉 The real reason they avoid hardware investments (spoiler: it involves capital, time, and regret)
👩‍💼 The diversity problem in VC and why she wants more female-led startups in her pipeline
🔁 What it’s like going from corporate-backed VC to managing a regulated, independent impact fund
🏫 Why she thinks the school system is stifling innovation—and how that’s become personal

#climatetech #impactinvesting #venturecapital #VC

🪸 Transform your company's milestones into impact, like trees planted and coral reef restored: impacthero.com/podcast

🧑‍💼 Growing across Europe? Grab a free consultation and hire without hassle: parakar.eu/climate

Anastasia Pavlovic is the co-founder of Eion, a carbon removal company that accelerates Earth's natural rock weathering process to lock away CO₂—permanently. Eion works with farmers to deploy enhanced rock weathering (ERW) in agricultural fields, creating a carbon sink disguised as soil amendment, with benefits to landowners and climate alike. Anastasia joined the podcast from Detroit to talk about carbon, kids, and the importance of remembering to eat.

In this episode we talked about:

🪨 How volcanic rock dust turns farms into carbon capture sites (and why the best rocks might be in Norway)
🌽 How Eion aligns climate goals with farm economics
🚢 The surprising math that makes ocean shipping rock across the Atlantic more carbon-efficient than it sounds
💰 Why climate tech founders need to think like infrastructure financiers and not just software bros
📉 How Anastasia regulates the highs and lows of startup life—with a side of mac & cheese

#Climatetech #CarbonRemoval #Agtech

🪸 Transform your company's milestones into impact, like trees planted and coral reef restored: impacthero.com/podcast

🧑‍💼 Growing across Europe? Grab a free consultation and hire without hassle: parakar.eu/climate

📈 B2B content to create and capture leads: book 30 minutes with Tom for free at grizzle.io/climate