Talya Herring recalls the moment she became a dedicated environmentalist. Years ago, while vacationing in Nepal as a law student, she was told to burn her household trash in the open air.
“It woke me up,” she said. “I asked myself, ‘What are we doing with our trash? What does my role in this world look like?’”
Today, Herring serves as co-director of the Jewish Green Business Network, a program of the Jewish environmental nonprofit Adamah.
As part of this year’s Climate Week SF, the Jewish Green Business Network will co-host a free three-hour summit on April 22, alongside the Beersheva-based DeserTech & Climate Innovation Center.
The event will focus on climate policy and investment, emerging green technologies and business collaborations.
Climate Week SF takes place April 18-26. With more than 700 events planned, both in-person and streamed, the program features “thousands of people and organizations focused on accelerating climate solutions,” according to its website. Those solutions cover everything from alternative energy to carbon capture to greener construction materials.
Itamar Cohn, director of the Adamah SF hub for the Bay Area, said the April 22 event reflects that Jewish-inspired environmentalism is “broadening our engagement with both the Jewish and non-Jewish communities.”
Herring expects investors, climate policy experts and start-up founders to attend.
“One [start-up] has developed lab-cultivated smoked salmon,” she said. “Another has developed beer made from purified wastewater. We have a delegation of start-ups from Israel focused on clean energy, water infrastructure and agriculture.”
One of the summit’s speakers, Adam Bergman, is managing director of S.F.-based Eco-Tech Capital, a consulting and investment banking firm. A former investment banker with Citi and Wells Fargo, he focuses on agriculture tech, food tech, energy efficiency, electrification, renewable energy and water technology.
“I’ve spent the last two decades at the intersection of innovation and climate sustainability,” he said. “I say to my clients, ‘If you do not have economic viability, then you will have no impact on environmental sustainability.’”
For the upcoming summit, he plans to discuss entrepreneurship and investment.
“It’s important to have a community of professionals and industry leaders looking to solve problems,” he said. “We’re in the Bay Area, with some of the smartest, most innovative people around. We have to figure out how to bring more people to environmental sustainability.”
Herring agrees. Although Adamah devotes much of its energy to promoting environmental education, teen trips to Israel, farm fellowships and retreats, the Jewish Green Business Network focuses on solutions that tech start-ups and the corporate world can create to guarantee a better environmental future.
The Jewish Green Business Network, which launched last year, wants to be part of that future. “We brought together Jewish climate professionals, investors, founders, people working on solutions to mitigate climate challenges,” Herring said.
“The Jewish component is not only a bunch of Jews who want to shmooze, but an understanding of a shared mission to work together,” she added. “It’s not just transactional networking, but an added level of comfort. It feels different than a regular networking event because of this. Jewish values are a call to action to invest in the next generation.”
Prior to heading Adamah SF, Cohn served as executive director of Wilderness Torah, the Berkeley-based nonprofit that blended Jewish ritual and a reverence for nature. After 18 years as a standalone organization, Wilderness Torah was folded into Adamah in September.
Cohn said the Adamah SF has worked on expanding partnerships with local institutions such as the Oshman Family JCC in Palo Alto and the JCC East Bay in Berkeley. He sees the upcoming summit as an opportunity to broaden his hub’s outreach.
“I hope this event and others like it will cultivate a culture of community,” he said. “One of our goals is to bring people together, to work through disagreement to [create] a greater connection and community rather than canceling each other. We’re trying to create an ecosystem of engagement with Jewish nature connection and environmental care.”