Meet Jess — Our Head of Workplace

Jess - let’s start from the beginning. Tell us about yourself and where you grew up?

I’m originally from Borger, Texas, a small town built upon the oil and gas industry, situated in the panhandle near Amarillo. My grandfather managed the carbon black plant and Phillips refinery, which is also where my father retired as an environmental scientist. Everyone there is tied to the industry somehow. My heritage is a major reason why my career trajectory took a left turn into climate work about 8 years ago. But before I got there, I spent many years in marketing, communications, and business consulting. It’s been a winding road but I wouldn’t change a thing—just don’t study my resume or you’ll get confused really quickly.

What brought you to Boulder from Texas?

Ha! That’s a funny story. My husband and I were married in ‘04 and a few months later began the process of buying a house. I wasn’t sure I wanted to stay in Texas but it felt like the next logical step. We were an hour from putting an offer on a house in Dallas when I was suddenly laid off along with my entire team. That was a pretty clear sign that it was time to move on! Through a series of circumstances we were led to Boulder. We thought we’d just check it out for a little bit…but fast forward 18 years and we’ve raised both our awesome kids, Edie and Simon, here in the foothills of the Rockies. It’s always been tough to be away from our Texas family but Colorado is hard to beat!

You have quite a bit of experience with pyrolysis – tell us more about your work with pyrolysis for decarbonization of some hard-to-abate industries?

Well, I have some experience, which is more than most people can say! Pyrolysis has been around for dozens of years but the average person has no idea what it is. I learned about it in 2013 and became fascinated with it as a solution for cleaning up harmful waste streams. Through a colleague, I met the founder of Bolder Industries, a cleantech manufacturing startup that turns waste tires into carbon black and oil. Given my heritage, it was shocking to find a team in Boulder extracting these products from old tires. So I jumped in with both feet, learning as much as I could and helping wherever I was needed for about 5 years. 

At Bolder I was focused on internal and external strategic comms including our investor relations, which taught me so much about the climate tech economy. Then in 2022 I took on a special project—building a first-of-it’s-kind training and development program for our growing team of operators. I spent hundreds of hours with our engineers, R&D team, and technical experts developing ways to educate a few dozen folks from an agricultural region about chemical decomposition, carbon chains, condensing gasses into oil, and the myriad of technical and mechanical aspects that one needs to understand to keep production flowing. It was quite the education for all of us, myself very much included.

What do you focus on as Head of Workplace at Charm?

I manage our EHS (environmental, health and safety) and facilities teams while steadily tackling our learning & development programs with many other fellow Charmers. I’m very eager to apply my many years of experience in strategic communications, organizational development, and culture creation to build a global powerhouse for good—where some of the best minds and hearts work together on returning our atmosphere to 280 ppm CO2.

What are some of the challenges you’re tackling scaling the Charm workplace & team?

Our top value is “First, Do No Harm” so it’s imperative that our team fosters a culture that protects the people, places, and planet we love—no matter what size we grow to become. I’m also intent on creating a workplace where every Charm employee is an owner; where each one of us can say we have a distinct and demonstrable hand in changing the course of human history. I know that might sound like hyperbole but it absolutely is not. 100 and 200 year old orgs start with a big, hairy, audacious vision for the future that is powered by the people that make that future a reality. We are doing that every day, right now…we only need to make sure we keep it going, indefinitely.

What problem are you most excited about solving at Charm?

One of the things that attracted me to Charm was the breakneck speed at which our team designs, iterates, deploys, learns, and optimizes. It’s one thing to do that in software, it’s an entire other to make it happen in manufacturing. So, as we grow to be a 1000+ person org, how do we ensure every Charmer has the most current and relevant information to make the best possible decision at the right time? And how do we do so without slowing us down—while in fact, moving our operations forward even faster? Time is incredibly finite and in this battle we cannot delay and we cannot lose.

Any good books you’ve been reading lately?

Yes! My wildly talented husband, Ben, is finishing up his first novel right now. He gifted the manuscript to me at Christmas last year and I was the first person to read it. Best gift and best book ever. It’s a beautiful and intense gothic ghost story set in the Texas panhandle. Ben pulls a dark character from an 18th century poem, Manfred by Lord Byron, into the present day and, well, all hell breaks loose. I cannot wait for the world to be introduced to his talents! I’m also reading All the Pretty Horses by Cormac McCarthy because his books are some of Ben’s favorites and I want to understand more about what inspires him.

Thanks for chatting with us today, Jess! Make sure to subscribe to get more stories like this in your inbox.