FoundHER in Climate 2025: Lessons from the Frontlines of Women’s Climate Entrepreneurship
By Marieke McArthur, Marketing Coordinator at Women in Cleantech & Sustainability and Founder, AeroZona Farms
When I joined the FoundHER in Climate 2025 series this fall, it wasn’t just as part of my role at Women in Cleantech & Sustainability (WCS). It was also as a founder myself: someone knee-deep in building a sustainable agriculture nonprofit in rural Arizona. In both roles, I came looking for the same thing: clarity, courage, and community.
And that’s exactly what I found.
Over the 5 weeks, the FoundHER in Climate program brought together women founders, innovators, and investors to tackle the realities of entrepreneurship from fundraising and storytelling to legal structure, marketing, and leadership. But beyond the sessions themselves, something deeper happened.
I saw women, myself included, begin to step into our power.
Reframing the Money Conversation
In the very first session, led by Alena Solonina, Co-Founder of The RAR Studio, we faced one of the most intimidating parts of entrepreneurship: funding.
Alena didn’t just teach us about cap tables and equity; she challenged us to see fundraising as a tool for alignment, not just survival. Her honesty about the funding gap for women in climate tech was both sobering and motivating. As someone accustomed to bootstrapping, writing grants, pitching to community investors, and calculating the ROI of every seedling, I felt that conversation in my bones.
She reminded us that ownership isn’t just about shares. It’s about agency.
That lesson has stayed with me as I plan AeroZona’s funding roadmap. I left that session thinking: What if I approached fundraising not from scarcity, but from self-worth?
The Power of Story and the Courage to Tell It
The next session, led by Kirin Kalia, Founder and CEO of Grow Through Story, might have been the turning point for me. As a marketer, I’ve told countless stories, but Kirin reframed storytelling as something far more profound.
“Every pitch is a story about transformation,” she said. “Make them feel the change you’re creating.”
It clicked. My pitch for AeroZona Farms isn’t just about aeroponic towers and water savings; it’s about reclaiming food access and dignity in the desert.
Kirin’s workshop helped me connect the personal and professional: the human heart behind the technical mission. I’ve always believed in storytelling, but this was the first time I saw it as a strategy, not just a craft.
Legal Literacy as Empowerment
Week three was surprisingly emotional. Yes, even though it was about the law.
Attorney Aravinda Seshadri, Founding Partner of Venturous Counsel, spoke with such honesty and humor about the challenges of underrepresented founders navigating the legal landscape. She didn’t talk at us like a lawyer; she talked to us like a mentor.
Her concept of “legal debt” and the cost of cutting corners early hit home. She encouraged us to think of legal structure not as bureaucracy but as infrastructure.
It was the first time I saw contracts and compliance as an act of care for our companies, our teams, and ourselves.
Showing Up Authentically Online
As the WCS Marketing Coordinator, I was especially looking forward to Sarah Yasukochi, Founder and Principal Strategist of House Collective,’s session on digital presence, and it didn’t disappoint.
She introduced us to the five pillars of a healthy digital ecosystem, but what resonated most wasn’t the strategy; it was the philosophy.
“You don’t have to be everywhere,” she said. “You just have to be consistent, intentional, and true.”
That line echoed through me. In both my WCS work and my own venture, I’m constantly balancing visibility and authenticity. Sarah’s approach, grounded, ethical, and strategic, felt like a breath of fresh air in a noisy digital world.
Since her session, I’ve revisited AeroZona’s messaging, refining how we show up online to reflect the heart of our mission: growing food with integrity, community, and care.
Confidence, Connection, and Leadership
By the time we reached the final session on leadership presence and negotiation, something had shifted in me. I wasn’t just taking notes anymore. I was participating from a place of confidence.
Rasa DiSalvo, Founder and CEO of RD Coaching and Consulting, guided us through exercises on body language, communication tone, and the art of negotiation as a conversation, not a confrontation. For many of us, it may have been the first time we’ve practiced asking for what we deserve out loud.
I realized that leadership isn’t something you earn after success; it’s something you practice while you’re still figuring it out.
The Real Magic: Community
As powerful as the content was, what made FoundHER transformative was the community that formed between us as women founders across cleantech, climate finance, agriculture, and energy, all carving paths that often feel uphill and underfunded.
And through it all, the WCS Entrepreneurship Committee, led by Nagashree Manwatkar, Founder of Gaia-Force, and her incredible team, created a space that felt equal parts professional and human. Office Hours became safe spaces: part mentorship, part group therapy, part strategy huddle.
Nagashree opened the series by saying,
“Our goal isn’t just to teach you. It’s to help you believe that you belong here.”
By the end, I did.
What I’m Taking With Me
As I return to my day-to-day, toggling between social campaigns for WCS and farm system designs for AeroZona, I keep coming back to one truth:
Founders are storytellers, strategists, and stewards all at once.
The FoundHER in Climate 2025 series didn’t just give me tools; it gave me language. Language for talking about impact. For negotiating with confidence. For asking without apologizing. For leading with purpose.
Most of all, it reminded me that we, as women in climate, are not just building companies. We’re building a movement. And we’re doing it together.
