Infrastructure doesn’t mean just one thing to Shilpi Kumar.
Whether it’s personal infrastructure – the relationships between people – or the physical infrastructure of the industrial world, she’s constantly looking for ways to use it to tackle climate change.
As Bakar Climate Labs’ Director of Partnerships, and its first full-time hire, Shilpi builds relationships with campus partners, research groups, startups, the venture capital ecosystem, and more. She joins Bakar Climate Labs from the venture capital investment firm Third Sphere, where she led 22 investments and supported a portfolio of 100 companies as a board partner.
She sat down for an interview to talk about her career, goals, and how art and venture capital coalesced to create a passion to combat climate change. These are her answers, edited and condensed for clarity.
Q: What’s the most important thing to know about you?
A: I really care about getting climate solutions into the world – that's the thing motivating me. I really believe in community and collectivism as a way to do that.
Q: Can you tell me more about yourself?
A: I grew up outside of Atlanta, Georgia. I had a big motivation when I was growing up to get out of the state. I can't even imagine what it would have been like to grow up in California. I had this suburban Georgia, “I don't really fit in,” experience. I went to Duke for school. I started in engineering, and I got pulled into entrepreneurship while I was in school.
I got really into hardware and building physical things, and how the startup ecosystem responds to that. I became more attuned to wanting to think about the hidden spots of our world, the things that we don't see as readily.
It took me a long time to really turn my full attention to climate. The thing that did it was art. I really love art, and this intersection of art and impact and community. I help run a gallery in downtown Oakland. We were doing an art exhibition on climate change and ecofeminism, and that brought me to my knees. I turned my whole career towards working on climate since then.
Q: Of all the ways to combat climate change, why venture capital and startups in particular?
A: Climate is going to affect all of us. Almost everyone can find a way to work on it. Joanna Macy is a thinker on this: how can you use what you have to work on the thing that breaks your heart the most?
Knowing how to commercialize and support early stage companies was a thing I knew how to do. The first part of my career had been focused on that. As I was moving to devote my attention to climate, I thought, “How do I use what I know how to do, and focus that energy?”
Q: What is the most rewarding experience you’ve had in your line of work?
A: I think that the experience of venture capital and finding investors can be a really difficult and disheartening one, especially for people who are less comfortable in that culture, which includes technical founders, minorities, people of color, and women, and I think being able to provide an alternative experience of an investor relationship has been really rewarding.
Being able to earn the trust of a founder that's growing and going through a series of difficult decisions, personal and professional, is something I’m proud of from my time at Third Sphere and hope to bring to Bakar Labs.
Q: If you could have dinner with one person, dead or alive, who would it be?
A: Octavia Butler, a science fiction writer who was very prophetic, especially about the current moment. I'm so curious to hear what she thinks right now. She both was visionary about this tension between the promises and perils of technology, and how power can corrupt and destroy good things. She really had a lot of vision about climate change. She unfortunately has passed away, but I read her books and really believe in science fiction as kind of a method for igniting that vision.
Q: Do you have a hot take on climate venture capital?
A: So many. Too many.
I think that venture capital likes to follow new hype areas. The interest areas might split, and climate tech might become more of a generalist area than its own category, especially in the next couple of years. It might be easier to get investment without the buzz word of “climate tech.”
Q: What’s something, personal or career-wise, that you wish you’d learned earlier?
A: Not tethering specific outcomes to my emotional well being. That attachment to things going a certain way can be really deflating. Don't let go of your self worth, or your dreams, or ambitions. I like to work on a few projects at a time, partially because when I'm working on one company, I take it really seriously.
I think there's a trope in entrepreneurship that it has to become your whole life. I wish I'd learned that earlier, that having some emotional distance and room for joy, creativity and other things could actually serve your work even more.
Q: What do you still want to accomplish?
A: I'm excited to grow the team that we work with here. We have the QWEST Internship Program and the Break Into Climate interns. We're also going to be recruiting for new team members in the next couple of years before the Bakar Climate Labs building opens in 2028, so building a team that I get to work with feels like a new thing that I'm excited for.
Q: What’s that Oakland art gallery called?
The art gallery in Oakland is called Dream Farm Commons. It is an artist’s run exhibition and project space in downtown Oakland focusing on sculpture, installation, social practice, performance and experimental works.
It's been a big part of my creative practice. I do stained glass, and I'm taking an upcycling fashion class at the Berkeley Art Studio. So I'm really excited to be on campus and bring together the creative parts.
I think storytelling and radical imagination are really important for what new climate futures can be. A lot of people are doing that for communities and social visioning, but I think it's also important to do that for our industrial infrastructure.
Q: Anything else you’d like to add?
Working on climate in the current moment, it feels more urgent. There’s people going through so much right now, and it’s more critical than ever to keep working towards solutions and not be distracted, because the attention on it might shift. I really think there’s room for everyone to be working on it and to devote skills to the movement.