Building a diverse, inclusive climate tech hub in New Mexico

Can New Mexico become a top climate technology hub?

The guests for the latest Business Outlook podcast say yes.

Paul Zelizer, cofounder of New Mexico Climate Tech, and Vicki Apodaca, cofounder of Techqueria New Mexico, talked about New Mexico's unique position to become a leader in climate technology.

Business Outlook podcasts are released on Monday afternoon and are available on YouTube, Spotify, Apple Podcasts and SoundCloud.

Here’s a preview of the conversation, edited for length and clarity.

What is climate technology?

Zelizer: "Think about what it's been like in New Mexico for the past couple of summers — we've seen fires happen that have been historic, burned whole areas. The largest fire that our country has ever seen happened here in New Mexico a few years back. We're seeing drought, we're seeing increasing heat and we're seeing water get more scarce in terms of using it. That's just some of the examples we're seeing locally, but those kinds of things are happening around the world.

And humans are going to have to innovate because we can't keep doing the lifestyle that we've been doing. Those innovators, those people who are solving those hard problems and working on some of the solutions to them, we generically put in a bucket called climate tech, and we have some incredible climate tech startups. ...

And so we have really smart people. We have one of the highest concentrations of PhDs because of things like (Los Alamos National Laboratory) and Sandia (National Laboratories) and Spaceport and all that stuff. And now we have the capital, and we've had a culture and an ethos of entrepreneurship in New Mexico.

So there is this confluence of things happening right now that nobody's ever seen before, and the world really needs it. So it's a really exciting time for climate tech in general, but especially here in New Mexico."

And we've seen this state trying to get away from its dependence on oil and gas for so long, so it's interesting to see it all sort of come together right now.

Apodaca: "That's a little bit of a tough battle. We're the second largest (oil) producer (behind Texas). I came from Texas, so I see what the impact is there. And if you go to southeastern New Mexico, that's what you see. It's in the air. It smells like oil and gas. So it's part of the state.

I think the tech industry is burgeoning here. I think climate tech is definitely an outlet. Me building grassroots tech organizations, I just see it all — I see entrepreneurs, I see established people. Let's make nerds cool. Let's make the Sandia and LANL people the Ph.D.s, let's make them cool. I'm all for it.

And so we're bringing out tech here, and I think climate tech is definitely an instrument to really support New Mexico and put us on the map. ..."

Paul, what is New Mexico Climate Tech and what is its goal?

Zelizer: "... So the basic idea here is to be a resource for anybody in the climate space, anybody who's thinking about sustainability and really accelerate. We've got this incredible group that's coming together. We're already becoming a climate tech hub, but we can accelerate that with just a little connecting the pieces and building that fabric, the connective tissue between lots of good pieces — and New Mexico Climate is that connective tissue.

It's a place where people can come to find out what they're interested in. But because we haven't been a really robust, high-growth startup ecosystem for that long, there are a lot of pieces that aren't yet wired together. The first goal of New Mexico Climate is to be that place where somebody can enter wherever they are on their startup journey, or trying to get into a startup who's doing something really interesting in climate, and find the resources they need. ..."

Vicky, I'd love for you to talk more about Techqueria New Mexico. It's really amazing to see a woman of color empowering others in the tech field.

Apodaca: "That's been part of my personal mission for a very long time, and I'm used to being the only woman of color in a leadership role or having a seat at the table. ... I know what it takes, and I really want to inspire people.

So Techqueria is a Latinos in tech nonprofit. It's a national nonprofit. Me along with two others, Joshua Rivera and David Tenorio, were the chapter directors for New Mexico. David and I are really the cofounders of that chapter, and we brought Josh in, who has a great network. We're really building up.

We provide mentorship, monthly meetups. We do coworking sessions at Q Station, a local coworking space here that's really great and inviting. And we have the (New Mexico) TechFest. In 2025, we're going to ... do a multi-day conference ... in early June, and it's going to be amazing, and it's going to have a lot of effect. ..."

Zelizer: "We're getting inbound from climate founders of color from other states, and they're saying, 'Something's going on in New Mexico that's really interesting.' Unfortunately, historically, climate tech has been a very white, male-dominated industry. And one of the things the leadership of New Mexico Climate is saying is we want to do it differently. It can't be that way in New Mexico. New Mexico, we're the first majority-minority state. If we were to build a climate community that was very heavily white and very heavily male, we would not be serving our community the way we should be. We would be failing.

And so right from the start, we've been having conversations and really working to build a diverse community. And not only are we seeing results of that in New Mexico, but we're getting inbound from Texas and Colorado, founders of color in the climate space. ...

We're really working hard to create a diverse and inclusive climate community and not make the same mistakes. Let's make new and different mistakes, not the same mistakes that climate communities in other states and other countries have made in terms of really not representing the full spectrum of humanity and then creating solutions that don't serve the full spectrum of humanity. That would be a terrible waste of an opportunity."

And this topic of inclusion, I want to tie it into this incoming federal administration that's been quite vocal about mass deportations. ... Do you have any advice or resources for people with this coming up in 2025?

Apodaca: "I wish I could save the world, but unfortunately, I can't. I can just do what I can. My grandma was an immigrant from Mexico City. I grew up in a household with very Mexican-American values. And so for me, obviously it's not the nicest thing to hear.

(Techqueria) provides resources. We provide job support. We have a free job board, so if anybody wants to apply and potentially get sponsorship or anything like that, we're here to help.

We don't have someone at the seat of the table in Congress, at least for Techqueria, but we hope that if we can get more people of color in leadership roles, then maybe there's an impact there. And I'm hoping that just me being in the position I'm in, I can really support people that look like me and feel the same way as me when it comes to our multicultural backgrounds that we can really excel."