We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Gabriel Nagel. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Gabriel below.

Gabriel, appreciate you joining us today. Let’s jump to the end – what do you want to be remembered for?

I’d like to be remembered as someone who put their best into everything that they did, with a sense of creativity and passion. Although I understand that my impact on climate change may ultimately be minor compared to the billions of people living on earth, I hope that I can positively impact the people and planet around me. Through finding the intersections of entrepreneurship and climate action, I’m advancing this goal.

Gabriel, love having you share your insights with us. Before we ask you more questions, maybe you can take a moment to introduce yourself to our readers who might have missed our earlier conversations?

Light CO2 is a youth-led climate action nonprofit. We empower individuals to make meaningful change in the environmental crises through carbon offsetting and environmental insights. I started Light CO2 four years ago after learning about the severity of climate change. Previously, I lived in Boulder, where a massive wildfire had confronted my home. This led to my realization that the impacts of climate change are immediate. While it is one thing to learn about something in books, it is an entirely different thing to experience that reality.

As a young person, I felt that there was no meaningful way I could impact climate change. Although I had attended protests at the capital and worked to reduce my impact on the environment, these steps seemed meaningless without collective action. Light CO2 is designed to support people to take real, easy, and meaningful climate action. Through a three question survey on your zip-code, diet, and transportation, we find how much carbon dioxide you emit into the atmosphere and offset it through planting carbon capturing trees. Additionally, through our growing collection of over 100 youth-written articles on climate topics from ESG to the re-emergence of big horn sheep, you can learn how to reduce your carbon footprint.

My journey with Light CO2 was not straightforward. Especially as a minor, I’ve had to manage my classwork and confront institutional barriers of youth entrepreneurship. For instance, when registering my business with the IRS, I had registered myself as the owner (leading to an inquisitive call from the IRS on why a teenager was starting a nonprofit). Through pitch competitions, I’ve missed school to put forward my vision of a better future. In fact, I recently achieved the major accomplishment of pitching at Denver Startup Week last year, winning with youth rounds and advancing into the final round. This granted me a $5,000 credit from Amazon Web Services (AWS).

Today, I’m working on expanding Light CO2. Currently, our team of youth are meeting weekly. We are also working on developing a mobile application to support individuals in cultivating a greater impact on climate change and making climate action more personal. At times, I have felt discouraged in running my own business through the constant challenges. However, throughout this all, I think I’ve learned the valuable lesson that persistence is crucial, failure is inevitable, and passion is powerful.

Ultimately, I think that the world should know that Light CO2 is only one of many organizations attempting to make a positive impact on the environment. We are unique in that we are entirely run by youth and focus on empowering collective action. However, many other small businesses and organizations need to work together to scale up the change that we’re beginning to make.

Have any books or other resources had a big impact on you?

Yes! I would suggest reading some of the staple business books including Traction: Get a Grip on Your Business by Gino Wickman, Outliers by Malcolm Gladwell, and any others specific to your field. In terms of environmental justice activism, I have found Climate: A New Story by Charles Eisenstein to be especially insightful!

We’d love to hear the story of how you built up your social media audience?

When I began building upon a social media audience on Light CO2’s Instagram (@light.co2), I initially recognized that the most effective strategy was to simply try things out. Rather than immediately worrying about a strict posting schedule, making the perfect post, or crafting the ideal bio, I simply began trying things out. Over time, I refined our social media strategy to include a weekly posting schedule based on the content that preformed the best. Enabling business or influencer settings on social media is a must; it helped me gain knowledge of what posts were and were not working. If there is a certain post that is not working as well as others, do not get discouraged! As with most things in business, this is a significant learning opportunity.

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Contact Info:

• Website: www.lightco2.org
• Instagram: instagram.com/light.co2
• Linkedin: www.linkedin.com/in/gabriel-nagel
• Other: www.changecarbon.org (new climate action app) www.gabrielnagel.com (personal website)