Opportunity Miami

Since Miami has been identified with the problem that is the climate crisis, a problem shared by coastal cities around the world, why not own it? That’s what Michael Berkowitz with the University of Miami’s Climate Resilience Academy wants to accomplish: make this region the climate solutions hub. "If the U.S. is going to think about climate resilience, what better place for that to start than right here in Miami,” he said in our latest Interview. “A lot of what we are pioneering here today is going to get used in cities and communities around the world." Berkowitz, the Executive Director of the academy, explains how he is a connector within the university and the community here, as well as the focus areas for the academy such as climate migration here.

The first botanical garden in the United States was founded in 1936 here in Miami. What started as an introduction to tropical plants has expanded to countless workshops and education at Fairchild Tropical Botanic Garden. Now, many students are asking for a greener city – to grow up in a tropical oasis. With the initiative City in the Garden, the goal is to make Miami a garden similar to how Singapore has done it. “Miami can be a city of gardens. We are working with developers, community leaders, municipalities to transform Miami into an emerald city – to take the same mindset that’s been happening in Singapore for the past 25 years and create that in South Florida,” said Nannette Zapata, Chief Operating Officer at Fairchild. The ultimate goal: for Miami’s iconic emblem to be that City in a Garden.

Food waste is a big problem. More than a third of the food we buy each week is thrown into the trash and that’s the single largest source of waste in landfills. Rotting food releases voluminous levels of climate-warming methane into the air. One company is trying to change that.

Mill is a home appliance resembling a trash bin that turns food waste into animal feed.

“We’ve managed to take something awesome, food that we love, and turn it into poison for the world,” said founder Matt Rogers. “This doesn’t make sense to me. I started this company to make it really easy to take food out of the landfill.”

Standing a little more than two feet tall, the Mill churns and dehydrates food scraps - from meat and cheese to fruits and vegetables - and turns it into animal feed in a matter of hours. Once a bin is full, a button on the Mill app on your phone prompts the U.S. Post Office to pick up the grounds and ship it to farms for chickens to eat.

Rogers aims to drive massive behavior change by making food recycling easy.

The town of the future is here – and can be found in Florida. Babcock Ranch sits on about 20,000 acres of preserved – and restored – land in southwest Florida, about an hour north of Naples. And it is serving as a new model of how to live and build with community and sustainability in mind.

"We're trying to prove that a new town can work hand in hand with the environment,” said Syd Kitson, chairman and CEO of Kitson & Partners who founded and is now Chairman of Babcock Ranch.

Babcock Ranch is America’s first solar-powered town, with over 20,000 homes expected to also include about six million square feet of commercial space that can accommodate up to 60,000 residents.

"I think people really want to be a part of something unique like this,” he told Opportunity Miami. “People really embrace the sustainability, they embrace environmental responsibility." Kitson, a former Green Bay Packers and Dallas Cowboys player, has said that the goal is for others to replicate their efforts at Babcock Ranch and even to “do it better.”

Hear CEO Rodrick’s Miller’s plans for the Miami-Dade Beacon Council and how Miami’s economy can compete in a changing environment. Miller describes a five-strategy approach to help make Greater Miami’s economy more inclusive, competitive, and sustainable. One, to help grow the economy through business attraction and retention of high-value jobs. Two, champion Miami through marketing campaigns and outreach across the country. Three, investing in people to cultivate talent by supporting workforce initiatives and other efforts. Four, shaping the future through Opportunity Miami and building a robust research capability. And, five, to closely track progress.

Stonly Baptiste Blue was born in Haiti, but eventually made his way to South Florida where he built multiple companies and helped pioneer Miami’s tech community when efforts were starting a decade ago. Today, he’s the co-founder of Third Sphere, a $100 million venture capital fund investing in companies building a sustainable and prosperous future. Blue and his co-founder, Shaun Abrahamson, are all-in on addressing climate change - or as Blue calls, “climate changed,” noting that the shift has already happened.  “Everything will ultimately become impacted by climate,” said Blue. “Investment decisions, personal decisions will all ultimately be influenced by climate factors over the next coming decades. So why not get ahead of that,” he told Opportunity Miami. “The job to be done for us is identifying the key pieces of tech, the key teams, that are going to be a part of the solution set that we can tap into.”

A conversation with Dr. Alejandro Portes, author of "Emerging Global Cities," which traces the rise of Miami, Dubai, and Singapore. This conversation was part of Opportunity Miami's Academic Leaders Council, which includes the presidents of the local colleges and universities, as they collectively focus on meeting the talent development needs of the future. The event was hosted by Miami Dade College.

What can we do with all that seaweed washing up on our shores? Algas Organics has a possible solution: harvest that Sargassum and turn it into bio-fertilizer for farms across the country and Caribbean. The St. Lucia-based company was founded in 2014 by Johanan Dujon to help combat the invasive seaweed that continues to threaten tourism-dependent economies globally. Once harvested by Algas, the seaweed is turned into a biological fertilizer that can reduce chemical fertilizer costs by up to 20%, he said. "My neighbors are farmers and they have always gotten the short end of the stick. This was an opportunity I saw to empower them, not just in Saint Lucia, but globally to put food on our tables because I think farmers are the most important people on earth. The world can feed itself sustainably using this product from this invasive seaweed,” Dujon added.

Miami-based OBE Power is betting on the EV revolution by identifying places where there will be significant car charging activity and assuming all of the upfront costs. They have launched charging locations at apartment buildings, offices, and government facilities. “We identify properties that are suitable for good demand levels for charging. We approach them,” said Alejandro Burgana, Co-founder and Managing Partner of OBE Power. He calls it “charging-as-a-service.” Rather than requiring apartment buildings or shopping malls to spend large sums to install EV charging infrastructure for customers, OBE Power is taking on all of that expense and risk. In return, it takes a cut of the proceeds from people charging up their cars.

How can artificial intelligence shape Miami’s workforce in tech? Colleges and universities already offer courses in AI, but Miami Dade College is taking one step further: it is the first college in the state that will offer a Bachelor’s degree in AI beginning in 2024. It’s already offering associate degrees and certificates in AI, with classes provided across its campuses. The college also has two centers devoted to AI, and the courses will prepare students for jobs such as AI analysis, machine learning specialists, and AI programmers. “We've reached that inflection point where artificial intelligence is going to go from being this generally used system to something that's used on a daily level,” said data scientist Aaron Burciaga who founded DataPrime and helped to design the programs at Miami Dade College, where he serves on the Artificial Intelligence Advisory Committee. “And as we do more and more of that, it's not about having these large computers. It's about having many small computers and many small artificial intelligence systems, and to do that, we're going to need a much larger workforce.” Those jobs include what Burciaga calls “blue-collar workforce” such as data engineering, data operations, data pipelines and application development.