Spotlight on the Mission

Julia Collins ‘92

When we thought about spotlighting an alumnus who truly embodies PHS’s mission, Julia Collins ‘92 was the very first person who came to our minds. Her work combating climate change through her company Planet FWD, her commitment to amplifying BIPOC voices, and her leadership as a Black female entrepreneur is inspiring. We chatted with Julia over Zoom about climate justice as social justice, her time at PHS, and how she stays optimistic about the future.

PHS: Can you tell me about your time at PHS? Julia Collins: I have so many favorite memories from my time at PHS. I loved my experience as a student. It’s really hard to pick a favorite teacher because they were all such a part of my development. I have amazing memories of being in Ann [Meissner]’s class and Patty [Jepson]’s class. In Erainya [Neirro]’s class, what was most exciting to me was to learn about the scientific method and this idea of going from hypothesis to conclusion with all of these discrete steps.

I think at that point in my learning journey I was really beginning to get excited about frameworks and structuring my thinking. I loved that even when the answer to these big questions about the world was unclear, that you could always apply this method to knowing how to ask the right questions and to creating experiments. I think that approach to discovery was something that I really kept with me as I continued to grow and evolve as a learner.

PHS: What was your journey after PHS? JC: I went to PHS through 6th grade and then I went to Marin Country Day School for 7th and 8th grade. After MCDS, I went to University High School and then off to Harvard College. I worked in New York City for a while, and then came back to Stanford Business School, and then began working in the restaurant industry and then food tech industry. This eventually led to me launching Planet FWD, our software business, and Moonshot Snacks, [our consumer packaged goods company], to use the power of food to help tackle climate change.

PHS: What inspired you to start these businesses? JC: Many of us have always been aware of and concerned about the condition of our planet. I’ve always considered myself to be somewhat of an environmentalist in the sense that I’m conscious about the way that I consume. I’m conscious about what I eat. When my first son was born, I went from being concerned to absolutely obsessed with addressing climate change within this decade.

When I learned that 34% of global greenhouse gas emissions came from land use and food systems, I was really shocked and a little bit angry, frankly. As I remembered from elementary biology, there’s this magical thing called photosynthesis which is all about the natural carbon cycle and the power of plants to sequester and trap atmospheric carbon. It just seemed crazy to me that food systems, which are built on agriculture, were emitting such high rates of carbon, methane, nitrous, and all of the greenhouse gasses as opposed to being at balance or in a perfect world, net negative.

I wondered what it would look like to build a product that was actually climate-friendly instead of destructive to the climate, and that meant wanting to source my ingredients from farmers who were using not only organic but also regenerative agriculture. It meant designing a supply chain that reduced emissions from transportation. It meant packaging.

It meant being carbon neutral. I did all of that, and I launched this brand called Moonshot. It was very hard. It was hard to understand my carbon footprint. It was hard to understand how to reduce my footprint. It was hard to source offsets. I realized that if it was that hard for me, that it was probably hard for everyone. Because I have my background in Food Tech, including software development, I decided to build a scalable software solution to solving the problem.

What we do at Planet FWD on the software side of things is we help consumer companies to measure, reduce, and offset their own carbon emissions. It’s a very unique business in the sense that we have two arms, a CPG (consumer packaged goods) business and also a software business.

PHS: You are doing such important work in climate justice but I also know you are deeply committed to social justice. Do you see these two things as being linked? JC: Yes. I think there is no social justice without climate justice, and there is no climate justice without really considering the degree to which communities of color are globally already facing the worst of what happens as our planet continues to rapidly warm. I really do believe that one of the most important things that we can do from the perspective of creating more equity is to fix climate change.

Just one example of this is the rates of asthma in inner city communities, proximity to infrastructure and how that causes emissions to be much more prevalent in inner city neighborhoods. The fact that inner city neighborhoods are often 5 to 10 degrees warmer than elsewhere in the same metropolitan areas.

What I would also say is that a perspective that I lean on very heavily is borrowed from indigenous wisdom and indigenous principles of being connected to and part of natural systems. Maybe the best thing that we could do from a climate justice perspective would be to return to those indigenous principles since indigenous people are holding only 5% of the land but also holding 85% of the biodiversity on the planet. Certainly, we have a lot to learn from the ways that indigenous people have been stewards of our land and connected to land for thousands of years.

PHS: One of the parts of the PHS mission that I find so unique but also, frankly, very difficult to live into as an adult is “empowering learners who are optimistic about the future”. How do you stay optimistic? JC: I am fundamentally optimistic. It is my choice to be optimistic. I guess what I would say, just to be very frank, is that the alternative is just unthinkable for me. To wake up every day, while I am still on the planet with my children, in a state of dread or fear, panic or anxiety, I don’t choose that. The way that I’m able to fuel my optimism is through activism and the daily practice of going to work and building a scalable solution to the climate crisis.

I know not everyone has the opportunity to get up and go work for a climate tech company or a climate-friendly CPG brand, but we all have this opportunity to do something every day. Whether that is choosing to convert to a more plant-based or plant-forward lifestyle, or choosing to walk to work, or better yet, DMing your favorite brand and asking them to go carbon neutral, writing a letter to a congressperson or a senator, attending a rally, reading about climate change, sharing it with your children. There’s something that you can do every day to be active. Then the framing that I always give is that it really is a privilege to be alive during this narrow window of time when it’s still possible to make a big difference and to stave off the worst of what happens within the context of a rapidly warming planet. Imagine being born a decade too late. It’s a privilege for everyone who is alive and in a body right now to be able to do something when it matters the most.

PHS: Do you have any parting thoughts to share with us? JC: This idea that the responsibility that I feel to stand up for people and the planet, that was foundational to the way that we thought about life at PHS. I remember early, early, early in [my time at PHS] the [emphasis on] composting, and recycling, and reducing food waste, and reusing things, and making structures out of milk cartons, or learning how to compost in the soil, growing things. I hadn’t really considered that until I was just sitting with you, but I wonder if the origins for what I’m building at Planet FWD really can be traced back to those early years at PHS in many ways.

PHS: That is a really lovely thought to end on, Julia. Thank you so much for your time.

Julia celebrating Halloween at PHS