We were lucky to catch up with Tanya Rogers recently and have shared our conversation below.
Tanya, thanks for taking the time to share your stories with us today How did you come up with the idea for your business?
For the past 10 years, I’ve worked at NASA. My day-to-day involves developing environmental technology to help sustain human life in space. A few years ago, I wanted to apply that skill set to Earth applications – specifically climate change. When you want to do something, you should look around and ask yourself “what’s already being done? What’s working? What isn’t?” I realized there are technologies tackling climate change and carbon capture at the industrial level but no options for individuals to partake in removing carbon dioxide from the air. I wanted to create a tool for everyone to have the ability to make an impact, analogous to individuals having the ability to clean water with handheld purification devices. I started brainstorming what this technology would look like, listing out the important factors and constraints. The technology needed to be affordable, environmentally friendly, accessible, and remove more CO2 from the air than the cradle-to-grave CO2 generated. From there, I came up with the idea of paint! I built a chemistry lab in my house (my PhD in chemical engineering proved to be very handy for this!) and invented a paint formula from scratch that removes carbon dioxide from the air. It’s eco-friendly and a way for everyone, scientists, artists, DIYers, to take part in the fight against climate change.
Great, appreciate you sharing that with us. Before we ask you to share more of your insights, can you take a moment to introduce yourself and how you got to where you are today to our readers.
I’m a scientist by training. I built my way up from high school dropout to PhD in chemical engineering and spent the past 10 years of my career working at NASA. Embarrassingly, the world of art is new to me. Paint is new to me. I’ve always viewed the world in molecules and equations, color and texture are words I never took the time to appreciate. I’m constantly learning and motivated by finding ways to make a helpful impact. My passion for environmental technology and bringing people together has led to a wonderful new endeavor of scientists and artists working together.
Can you tell us the story behind how you met your business partner?
Everything successful in my life has been a result of the people around me. When I started The People’s CO2, I knew I had to bring the right people on board if this had any chance of succeeding.
I first recruited Rawand Rasheed. I met Rawand during my college years at NASA. We spent weekends in garages brainstorming fun space machines and building leidenfrost machines – we’re kindred spirits who work well together through the iterative process of product to market.
My next recruit was Slade Ham. Unlike myself and Rawand, Slade has zero science background. Zero formal education training. And these reasons are exactly why we brought Slade on board. Slade is a professional stand-up comedian and author. Slade knows how to tell a story and speak to an audience. Slade has entrepreneurship experience ranging from honey products in grocery stores to film production companies. Slade complimented the areas Rawand and I lacked.
We’d love to hear a story of resilience from your journey.
I used to loathe the word resilience. Resilience made me bitter. It felt like a blanket feel good word for accepting hardships.
These days I allow myself the grace to be called resilient. Life has pushed, pulled, tugged, and flipped me upside down at every opportunity. I’m the oldest of six kids, we grew up in a low income single parent household. It took many years for me to shake the traumatic experiences from my childhood but I got a second chance in life when I was adopted at the age of 14.
Around that same time, I started getting sick. At first with a stomach bug (or so I thought) then my symptoms went from an upset stomach to days where I couldn’t get out of bed. I’m well into my 30s now and over the past 20 years, I’ve spent more time in hospitals than one should have to spend in their lifetime. There’s a long list of tests and scans and pokes and prods that I’ve undergone. All of the results come back normal. Doctors cannot figure out the cause of my chronic medical issues. During college, I was so sick I failed out the first time due to poor performance. Running a business and working as an engineer, there are days where I have to pause and cancel everything planned. It’s debilitating at times. But despite living with this condition, I’ve still managed to finish my education, land a dream job at NASA, and start a business.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://www.thepeoplesco2.com
- Instagram: @peoplesco2
