I am very excited to welcome Andy Stevenson as Calcarea’s new CEO. Andy is excellent and he comes to us from leadership roles at Twelve, Redwood Materials, and Tesla…
More on Andy soon, but first, some important background.
I met Calcarea’s cofounder, and until recently its CEO, Jess Adkins, before Propeller even inked incorporation docs. Over that first Zoom call, I was immediately taken by his knowledge, his passion, and his vision, taking his decades of experience in research labs at Caltech, WHOI, and MIT out to sea – to safely capture and store carbon dioxide in the ocean – the planet’s natural process, accelerated to address the climate crisis. Even in that first conversation, I remember Jess saying something to the effect of, ‘As this thing scales, I won’t be the right guy to run it.’
“Humble,” I thought. I love it.
Photo: Calcarea founding team and their humble, "parking lot prototype" reactor.
Fast forward a bit, and I was very proud to lead Propeller’s investment in Calcarea. It was an honor to support and work with Jess – a pillar of the oceanographic research community – and burgeoning startup CEO.
I’ll never forget our board meeting on January 7th of 2025 in Los Angeles. The Eaton Fire was burning through LA. For all we knew Jess’ house had burnt down. We went through with the board meeting, because Jess said something like ‘I’d rather be here doing this than sitting around worrying in a hotel room all day.’ He banged through hours of slides and strategy discussion. Then, as we started to wrap, Jess reflected and beat himself up for a while, criticizing his own work… He then showed a final slide in which the company had hit their milestones!
I loved the high bar he set for himself.
Under his leadership, Calcarea made tremendous progress so far… funds raised, reactors built, TEAs proven, multiple competitions won, pilots lined up… and yet, Jess has chosen to step down as CEO.
I won’t get into his reasons here. I’ll just say that it’s his choice, I support it, and I’m grateful to have had a chance to work with Jess so closely over these past few years. I will miss having our routine, and ad hoc calls on whatever needs discussing, whenever it needed discussing.
He won’t be far though – he’ll remain close to Calcarea as Chief Science Officer, and forever, a visionary founder in how we handle our CO2 problem.
Photo: Andy and Jess.
Now, onto Andy.
What a resume! Some highlights: Tesla, working directly with cofounder/CTO JB Straubel(!), then founding Redwood Materials with him, then onto Twelve. The through line, in case it isn’t clear, is that these are important companies, doing important, impactful work. Andy executes at extremely high levels but with low ego (my favorite combo!). Just a track record of successfully getting sh*t done, and references from former teammates who would follow him on the journey again. That’s the kind of leader I want to work with, who I want at the helm of Calcarea. It’s been a pleasure getting to know Andy and I am already enjoying seeing his brain wrap around problems and run at solutions for the success of the company and the future carbon economy.
Welcome, Andy. Let’s do this!
Finally, an important note: A huge credit to Calcarea cofounder, Pierre Forin, who had met and kept Andy’s name in the back of his head as someone he wanted to work with someday. Turns out someday is today. Great reminder for founders. Always be recruiting!