During San Francisco’s Climate Week, Sonen Capital opened its doors for From Seeds to Systems: Cultivating a Just Transition, a gathering designed to explore how bold ideas can take root, strengthen enduring principles, and blossom into transformative impact. Clients, investees, and friends joined us to celebrate Earth and hear two visionary leaders discuss how their organizations are building resilience into the core of communities and ecosystems.
Abby Ross, CEO of The Resiliency Company, shared how her journey, beginning as CEO of Network for Good in the wake of 9/11 – led to a profound understanding of how recovery from disasters can be deeply inequitable. She explained that while 90% of disaster recovery donations arrive within six weeks, rebuilding often takes six years or more. She cited the recent LA fires where the bureaucracy of building codes, coordination between agencies, and insurance companies, are all further challenged by the need to plan for increasing climate risk. Recognizing the urgent need for communities to adapt to a future marked by climate volatility, The Resiliency Company is pioneering financial models that offset the costs of resiliency projects to ensure wildfire recovery efforts don’t just rebuild, but build back better.
Zach Knight, CEO of Blue Forest highlighted how his organization uses finance as a catalyst for ecological restoration. Blue Forest brings together federal agencies, utilities, and investors to speed up critical forest restoration projects. They currently have six active projects across the West aimed at reducing the risk of catastrophic wildfires around at-risk communities and protecting their tourism, wildlife habitats, water and surrounding landscapes. The organization believes that while not all wildfires can be prevented – or even mitigated – the cost of inaction can lead to much more destructive events, especially when combined with dry conditions and extreme wind events. However, by aligning funding and incentives across sectors and through public-private partnerships like the ones they build, they are helping scale wildfire mitigation efforts.
Reflecting on the evening, one truth stood out. Resilience is not only about weathering change, it’s about creating systems that thrive through it. In nature, ecosystems that experience regular to moderate stress- like frequent, low-intensity fires – become more resilient over time. Similarly, by investing in adaptive infrastructure and community-driven solutions, we can build a future that is not only survivable, but sustainable, and in the process, future-proofing our clients’ investment portfolios.
