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

Kelci , thanks for taking the time to share your stories with us today One of the things we most admire about small businesses is their ability to diverge from the corporate/industry standard. Is there something that you or your brand do that differs from the industry standard? We’d love to hear about it as well as any stories you might have that illustrate how or why this difference matters.

Sound Future is a non-profit that accelerates tangible climate impact through live events.

We make an easy button for artists, athletes, events, and venues to restore nature and directly reduce emissions, rather than the industry standard of buying carbon offsets to ‘mask’ the damage.

We bring the nerds into the equation to derisk taking real action in the live events space. In addition to being Chief Development Officer at Sound Future, I am a climate investor, which allows me to spot climate tech in the market that can be applied to live events. For example, robotic technology that normally operates at recycling facilities can be deployed in the basements of arenas and stadiums to divert waste at the source and eliminate unnecessary hauling emissions and costs.

Kelci , 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?

Yes. I am the Chief Development Officer at Sound Future and my path to this role was unconventional in a beautiful way.

I grew up spending the majority of my waking time outside, which likely contributed to my deep need to save the planet. I studied finance at the University of Washington, and worked at a startup that preserved the rainforest in the Democratic Republic of the Congo right after graduation.

After less than a year at that startup, I was eager to become more tech-savvy and took a job at Amazon working at Prime Video, supporting content acquisition out of Seattle. A few years in, I needed a bigger city and a new challenge and moved to New York with Amazon Web Services, working on data storage, management, rights, distribution, and usage tools. When the pandemic hit, I knew I needed to focus my brain power on sustainability, so I proposed the creation of a new program at AWS – AWS Sustainability Data Exchange. I spent the next 2+ years building it out, working with public sector agencies like NOAH, NASA, and the EPA, financial groups leveraging ESG data, major enterprises leveraging data to unlock efficiencies, and startups building sustainability tools using geospatial, transportation, and topographical data, among other things.

In the background, I had been following venture investing, working with startups whenever I could, and I joined the University of Washington Buerk Center for Entrepreneurship Board in 2021. Through this network, I left Amazon after 7 years to begin my career in venture investing at Madrona Venture Labs. I worked at Madrona Venture Labs for a little over a year, built their early-stage climate software investing strategy, and led the firm’s first investments in the space.

Before leaving Amazon, I asked myself, “what do you care about?” and wrote down “sustainability” and “music” (I still have that piece of paper). During my last year at Amazon and my time at Madrona, I crafted a thesis about live events being the perfect testbed for climate technology, as they touch every component of the puzzle (water, waste, transportation, built environment, food, energy, etc.). I spent my free time listening to music and entertainment podcasts, researching climate strategies by major corporations in the space, and forming lists of climate technology that could be applied to live events as well as business models that could support nature restoration projects.

During this research, I stumbled across the newly launched Sound Future website and reached out cold. I soon met with one of the co-founders over Zoom, and met the co-founders in person a month later. Four months later, in February 2023, I joined the board.

After a year at Madrona as the only climate investor, I yearned to work with a team of climate-focused people. I took a leap of faith in November 2023 and joined Sound Future as Chief Development Officer, investing in climate tech in a part-time capacity.

I am now bringing my live events sustainability thesis to life with the bad asses who founded Sound Future. Our non-profit enables the industry to do what it does best, while harnessing its influence to restore nature, deploy real climate solutions, slash emissions, and reduce costs.

We are just getting started and the future sounds good.

Are there any books, videos, essays or other resources that have significantly impacted your management and entrepreneurial thinking and philosophy?

Absolutely, yes. When I was at Amazon starting to think about a path to bringing sustainability to the music and live events industry, I went on a research spree and came across the Trapital Podcast by Dan Runcie, which focuses on business in hip-hop, music, and entertainment. The thoughtful financial focus gave me translatable industry insights which I was able to layer sustainability solutions on top of. His podcast with Kevin Shivers, Partner at WME, in particular, moved me to take the leap into the industry. Kevin said, “… to somebody who wants a career in entertainment, I think you should go for it.’’ And I did.

We often hear about learning lessons – but just as important is unlearning lessons. Have you ever had to unlearn a lesson?

Having borderline grown up at Amazon, I was accustomed to building an end-to-end program plan with layers of touchpoints, tracking tools, and numerous outcome goals. It’s key for a company of that size, but when I moved to an early-stage non-profit in startup mode, I rapidly needed to learn to streamline. Co-founder Brandy Schultz taught me how to be an entrepreneur and focus on one key goal, building the most optimized path to achieving it. In many ways, it has been freeing to adopt this new mindset and be able to imagine a new program, run toward it at full speed, and get the project in flight months later. We launched our nature restoration program ‘Surf & Turf’ in just 4 months due to a laser focus on the goal, necessary tools, and stakeholders.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://asoundfuture.org
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/thefuturesoundsgood/
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/company/soundfuture
• Other: https://www.linkedin.com/in/kzile/