Executive Director

We can’t fix the climate without carbon removal.

Yes, we have to reduce emissions. But every climate model out there also calls for carbon removal at gigaton scale—5–10 billion tons of carbon dioxide per year by 2050. To put this into perspective, we removed 10,000 tons in 2021.

Closing this gap means increasing our rate of carbon removal by 70% each year for the next 28 years. To do this, we need a gigaton-scale portfolio of CDR solutions. And building that requires a serious infusion of funding.

That's why we started Terraset.

Terraset is the only nonprofit that uses tax-deductible dollars to purchase permanent carbon removal. Our goal is to catalyze the carbon removal market—to accelerate and scale the industry so we hit our global net zero goals.

It’s a big, audacious mission, but it’s a problem we can’t ignore, and a challenge that gets us fired up every day.

It’s also one that requires an Executive Director! Our team today is a group of three people working on Terraset in their free time. We need someone to take the reins and lead Terraset into the next chapter.

WHAT YOU’LL DO‍

You’re our first Executive Director, which means your opportunity is to turn an idea with traction and into a market-shaping force. You’ll build and run Terraset, from the big-picture goal-setting to the day-to-day operations.

You’ll drive progress across three key dimensions:

• Moving money into carbon removal: Capital is the catalyst for the CDR market. You’ll be in charge of raising money, which will be deployed towards carbon removal purchases

• Growing our CDR project portfolio: You’ll help us increase the number and diversity of projects, which involves refining a rigorous methodology and process to evaluate CDR projects and make funding decisions.

• Establishing Terraset in the market: We don’t just want to move money, we want to help create the market. That requires playing a more active role in the most important CDR conversations and communities.

You’ll also be responsible for things like:

• Building a board of directors.
• Establishing a scientific advisory committee to evaluate and select CDR projects.
• Hiring and managing (future) vendors and team members.
• The nitty gritty details of running an organization (finances, budgets, accounting, culture, etc).
• Marketing and communications.
• Donor outreach.
• All the other things that you think we'll need to make the most impact possible!
  

WHO YOU ARE

• You’re excited about this mission, and want to do everything you can to tackle climate change!
• You’ve helped scale a nonprofit
• You’ve led nonprofit fundraising at scale
• You’re a scrappy self-starter who likes a blank canvas
• You like tackling hard problems that matter and building the scaffolding as you go
• You do big things without a big budget
  

WHO WE ARE

We're a small team spread across Colorado, North Carolina, and Portugal that's working hard in our free time to build Terraset (and can't wait to work with you!):

• Alex Roetter (Founder): General Partner at Moxxie Ventures. Investor in climate, health, and AI (among others). Former SVP Engineering at Twitter, President at Kittyhawk, software engineer at Google and other startups.
• Chris Wedding (Co-founder): Founder at Entrepreneurs for Impact. Faculty at Duke University and UNC Chapel Hill. Former environmental private equity investor and impact investment banker. Podcast host.
• Erzsi Sousa (Interim Director): Founder at More Lake. Brand marketing consultant for climate companies. Former head of brand marketing at Stripe and Google Cloud.
  

IF YOU WANT TO LEARN MORE

Good, we love a curious mind! These things go deeper on Terraset:

• Protocol covered our launch in extensive detail.
• Nori had Alex on the pod, and it’s fun to hear the story directly from him.
• Axios talked about how we reflect the need for more CDR funding models.
• CTVC wrote about our role in the CDR funding space.
• Entrepreneurs for Impact hosted a chat between Alex and Chris, which is like sitting in on a Terraset team meeting.
• We wrote a letter that captured our 2022 highlights and 2023 plans.
  

If you’re hungry to do deeper on CDR, here’s some extra credit:

• A mental model for combating climate change—from Nan Ransohoff.
• Scaling carbon removal—from Neil Hacker.
• CDR Primer—from Jennifer Wilcox, Ben Kolosz, and Jeremy Freeman.
• The Carbon Curve—from Naim Merchant.
• Who's got next?—on philanthropy and CDR, from Dai Ellis.