Climavision has been doubling down on its hiring efforts as the company fine tunes its global weather prediction model ahead of its national radar network rollout.
The new Louisville-based company, which has been developing a weather services and intelligence platform powered by a private network of high-resolution radars, GPS-RO data and proprietary software, made its grand entrance in June with a $100 million private equity investment from The Rise Fund. Since, Climavision has recruited a string of experienced technologists and scientists to join both its executive and non-executive teams.
I caught up with Chris Goode, CEO and co-founder of Climavision, on Monday to discuss that talent acquisition and what's next for the company. He told me he's had preexisting relationships with all of his hires thus far, some dating back to more than two decades ago at the start of his career within the industry.
"As with any startup and business you start from scratch, it's often a collection of relationships that you've garnered throughout your career," Goode said. "You're intimate with their skill set and expertise and know how they will match with the broader team. It's a mix of relationships — some longstanding, some newer."
Here's who Climavision has brought on in recent months:
- Peter Childs, chief numerical weather prediction (NWP) scientist (formerly chief scientist at Priogen, an international energy company)
- John van Doore, chief technical officer (formerly CTO at Remitter, a digital communications platform)
- Alex Baldassano, global head of energy transition (formerly Wood Mackenzie’s head of energy management for the energy transition practice)
- Christy Hartman, executive vice president of finance (formerly directed financial reporting at Appriss Inc.)
- Tad McGuire, vice president of sales and business development (formerly served at The Weather Channel, an IBM business)
- Tara Leigh Goode, vice president of strategy partnerships (co-founded Fleur De Lis Communications and formerly senior global communications manager at Genscape Inc.)
- Apoorva Bajaj, government business development executive (formerly served at the Center for Collaborative Adaptive Sensing of the Atmosphere at the University of Massachusetts)
- Dr. Yonghui Wu, senior atmospheric scientist (formerly a senior scientist at Priogen)
- Daniel Cookes, director of information technology (formerly director at IT consulting firm Crane)
- Emily Pawsat, ops manager and HR consultant
- Allan Huffman, senior meteorologist (formerly a senior meteorologist at Priogen)
And that's just the beginning. Goode says he expects to hire between 20 and 25 new employees — split between Louisville and the company's research and development office in Raleigh, North Carolina — within the next 18 months as Climavision's first two radars roll out in November.
In case you missed it, the company is looking to fill gaps in the existing radar network in the U.S., and eventually, across the world with the use of a high-resolution, X-band radar system. It will use data gathered through those systems to build a global weather prediction model, enabling companies, governments and citizens to be better prepared for extreme weather events and other natural disasters.
"The global model that we've stood up is bringing in all of the publicly available data that exists today, and we're also already bringing in the GPS-RO data that provides us a really critical data set for medium- and long-term forecasting," Goode said. "Then as the radars roll out, we assimilate that information into the model and that gives us a very accurate, short-term prediction window, or what many people refer to as a 'now casting' application right so that would span from 30 minutes to five or six hours — that's when the radar information has its most dramatic impact on the model."
Within its first two years, Climavision will roll out about 50 radars, Goode estimates, and it expects to have well over 150 radars across the U.S. within the following phases.
Climavision's newly-minted team has also been building up its sales pipeline, which has seen some significant developments that Goode could not disclose at this time. Goode did note the energy sector has been a primary focus, as Climavision has the ability to provide insights both for the production of renewable energy and the consumption of energy via weather events.
"Right now, a lot of companies are grappling with grid balancing," he said. "If you looked at the sources that make up a grid — we don't know how much will be available from these renewable sources and it's very difficult for us to balance the need for other sources. That can create havoc in managing the grid."
For additional updates on Climavision, check out the company's LinkedIn page here.
