We were lucky to catch up with Gayatri Roshan recently and have shared our conversation below.
Hi Gayatri , thanks for joining us today. Let’s kick things off with your mission – what is it and what’s the story behind why it’s your mission?
The story behind Dashboard.Earth begins with my upbringing. I’m the child of a Sri Lankan revolutionary and a British ballerina who raised me without formal education, with the belief that you learn to think for yourself by questioning everything. That unconventional foundation shaped my worldview and sparked a lifelong curiosity about systems, interconnection, and our role within nature. Climate awareness became central to my life when I was seven, poking around my stepfather’s office and discovering that the Amazon was burning. I realized then that everything could go up in flames, how we humans respond to the loss of our life support system became my driving force.
Fast forward to my 40th birthday—a moment of profound transition. I was surrounded by friends, celebrating, but I couldn’t shake the weight of climate despair, especially as I thought about the future my two young daughters would face. I’d just read a climate adaptation plan for Los Angeles that was nearly two decades old yet untouched in implementation. The inaction was crushing. That night, I broke down. A well-meaning dinner guest misinterpreted my despair, telling me, “It must be so hard getting older.” It was almost absurd, but it gave me the clarity to see that waiting for systemic change wasn’t an option. If the world was moving too slowly, I would find a way to speed it up.
That was the moment I decided to pivot from storytelling to action. I co-founded Dashboard.Earth to address what I saw as a glaring gap: people want to take meaningful climate action, but they often don’t know where to start, or they lack incentives to do so. Our mission is simple yet ambitious: give every person an incentive to adapt to climate change. Through our platform, we connect hyperlocal actions to regional climate goals, turning individual efforts into Verified Climate Outcomes™ that foundations, corporations, and governments can fund. By valuing individual contributions, we’re building a system where the collective actions of many can drive measurable, meaningful climate resilience.
Gayatri , before we move on to more of these sorts of questions, can you take some time to bring our readers up to speed on you and what you do?
I am the co-founder of the Dashboard.Earth app. Dashboard.Earth connects the dots between people who want to make a difference and climate funding to create meaningful change. From composting food scraps, to taking car-free transportation, users log their climate actions on Dashboard.Earth. Every action earns users tickets to our weekly giveaways, and some come with direct payments.
Individual actions and lifestyle changes might feel small, but they plant the seeds of the systemic change we need to address climate change. We keep our users motivated by calculating and celebrating the real world impacts of their actions.
Can you share a story from your journey that illustrates your resilience?
The idea of resilience has been a thread throughout my life, but one metaphor captures it best: the story of the Yamana people from Patagonia. In their language, the word for depression translates to “a crab that has lost its shell and not yet grown a new one.” That image resonates deeply because resilience often feels like being exposed, vulnerable, and uncertain, yet moving forward anyway.
Turning 40 was my own “crab without a shell” moment. I felt raw and unprotected, grieving over the inaction I’d seen in the climate space despite decades of effort. But that vulnerability became the catalyst for change. I realized I could either dwell in despair or embrace the discomfort, find a new shell, and step into a different version of myself. That process wasn’t easy—it required redefining how I thought about climate solutions, action, and impact. It meant pivoting from telling stories through documentaries to creating a platform that could mobilize thousands of people at scale.
Resilience isn’t just about surviving; it’s about adaptation and growth. For me, it meant moving through that vulnerable space to build something new—Dashboard.Earth—because sometimes, losing your shell is the only way to create something bigger, stronger, and more aligned with the future we need.
Can you open up about how you funded your business?
Like many startups, the first people to believe in Dashboard.Earth were my childhood friends—individuals who had witnessed my dedication to climate and environment over many years. Their trust in my vision gave me the foundation to begin this journey.
After that initial support, I spent a year speaking with more than 300 people to secure further investment—of those, just three invested. The experience was a stark reminder of the barriers female founders face. In 2023, just 1.8 percent of total venture capital funding went to startups led female CEOs. Despite the uphill battle, the process ultimately led to an incredible opportunity to align with philanthropic capital deeply resonant with our mission. Thanks to non-dilutive, non-recoverable grants from a private foundation, we were able to build Dashboard.Earth into the platform it is today.
We are now fundraising once again to expand our hyperlocal playbook into new regions, opening additional cities and empowering individuals to take meaningful climate action. We started in Los Angeles—the most climate-vulnerable county in the U.S.—and we’ve proven our model works. But there’s no place on the planet that’s immune to the impacts of climate change, and this next phase will allow us to bring localized solutions to more communities. With thousands of people already taking Verified Climate Actions™ through our platform, we’re excited to continue expanding our work, bringing communities together to drive measurable climate resilience region by region.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://dashboard.earth
- Instagram: @dashboard.earth
- Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/company/dashboard.earth
