environmental-engineering
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John Oram Put a Lab Coat on California Cannabis - Then Built the Store Around It
Before California cannabis had a dependable rulebook, John Oram was buying used lab equipment and asking unfashionably precise questions. His next experiment was larger: turn quality control, manufacturing and retail into one coherent company.
Javier Marti Wants to Build the Google Maps of Water
After satellites, a desert observatory and a continent-sized climate project, the Spanish engineer chose a harder map to draw: water in motion. His Boulder company, Divirod, is turning reflected navigation signals into an early-warning layer for a wetter, less predictable world.
Alex Rappaport Bet on the Water Nobody Wanted
He started as a river guide, found a neglected piece of university science, and built ZwitterCo around an unglamorous industrial problem: filters that foul. The useful lesson is less about having an idea than learning how to carry one into the world.
Woodard & Curran
Woodard & Curran is a 100% employee-owned environmental engineering and consulting firm founded in 1979 and headquartered in Portland, Maine. With roughly 1,300 employees across 30+ offices in 14 states, the firm integrates engineering, science, design-build, and operations to solve complex water and environmental challenges for municipal, industrial, and government clients. From treating 11.7 billion gallons of drinking water annually to cleaning up Superfund contamination sites, Woodard & Curran positions itself as the firm that takes on the hard problems in water infrastructure and environmental health — not as a contractor but as a long-term partner.
Molly Morse
Dr. Molly Morse is the CEO and co-founder of Mango Materials, a Vacaville, California-based startup that turns waste methane into biodegradable PHA biopolymers. Founding the company in 2010 on the back of her Stanford PhD research, Morse has spent over a decade building a circular bioeconomy solution that converts a potent greenhouse gas into a commercially viable plastic replacement — branded as YOPP pellets. She has won the Postcode Lottery Green Challenge (2012), the C3E Entrepreneurship Award (2018), and was selected as an Unreasonable Fellow in 2022.
Alyson Watson
Alyson Watson is the CEO and Chair of the Board of Woodard & Curran, a Portland, Maine-based integrated science, engineering, design-build, and operations firm specializing in water and environmental challenges. A Stanford-trained chemical engineer and licensed PE, she became the firm's third CEO in 2021 — and its first woman to hold that title — after more than 20 years leading water resources projects and building environmental consulting teams across the western United States. A self-described 'water brat' with roots in the industry, Watson is a passionate advocate for clean water access, outcome-based contracting, and employee ownership, guiding a firm of 1,300 people across 27 offices nationwide.