Bridging Big Tech and Climate Action: A Google Engineer's Fellowship Journey with ClimateIQ
FEATURE
By Twinkle Mehta
Twinkle Mehta's journey from Software Engineer at Google to the company's Sustainability team exemplifies how fellowships can transform careers in tech. Through a Google.org Fellowship with the Urban Systems Lab—six months full-time followed by six months at 25-50% capacity—she worked as a Product Manager on ClimateIQ, USL's advanced climate risk assessment platform that combines remote sensing with machine learning, designed specifically to serve frontline communities. This experience not only broadened her understanding of how technology can address climate challenges but also led to her current role working on Delve, a sustainable design tool within Google Earth. Her story demonstrates how passion for climate action can find its path within big tech companies.
KEY TAKEAWAYS
ClimateIQ demonstrates how AI and user-centric design can democratize access to climate hazard data for under-resourced cities
Successful climate tech solutions require both cross-functional collaboration and a focus on accessibility, especially for the Global South
Career transitions into climate tech can leverage existing technical skills while embracing continuous learning in new domains
Tech professionals can find meaningful climate impact roles within big tech companies, though the industry needs to significantly expand its climate investments
Background and Journey to Climate Tech
My path to climate tech began with a deep-rooted passion for environmental advocacy. During my time at the University of Waterloo studying Systems Design Engineering, I focused on understanding the societal and environmental impacts of technology. This culminated in my final year project - developing a climate risk assessment tool for health centers in Malawi, which validated my belief in technology's role in addressing the climate crisis.
Despite my interest in climate tech, I started my career as a Software Engineer at Google Drive in 2022. While this was not directly in the climate space, Google's strong engineering practices and mentorship provided an invaluable foundation for my technical skills. After a year of growing as an engineer, I found myself seeking opportunities that aligned more closely with my environmental passions.
The discovery of the Google.org Fellowship, particularly the ClimateIQ initiative, presented the perfect opportunity to combine my technical background with my interest in climate solutions. Taking on a Product Manager role for the fellowship allowed me to explore new professional territory while working on meaningful climate adaptation tools.
Documents detailing the ClimateIQ and Google.org fellowship goals, project background, and project motivation. Developed by ClimateIQ and fellowship leads.
The ClimateIQ Initiative
ClimateIQ represents an innovative approach to climate hazard assessment, using AI to make complex climate data more accessible and actionable. The initiative brought together three multiple partners including the Urban Systems Lab at The New School, ClimaSens, Beijer Institute, George Mason University, and Google's experience building intuitive products. As a Product Manager, I worked closely with this diverse team, learning from my PM mentor Maia Conrado who helped me quickly understand both the technical, strategic, and scientific aspects of our work.
Our core mission is to serve under-resourced communities who often lack critical information for comprehensive climate risk analysis. The project's strength lies in its unique utilization of skill sets—from climate modeling experts to ML engineers to product designers. Working in small, focused groups enabled high-trust, efficient collaboration that proved essential for rapid prototyping and iteration.
In my role, I focused on several interconnected initiatives that brought this mission to life. I led the development of the ClimateIQ data access portal and developer interface, while simultaneously working to create intuitive data visualization and download experiences that would serve diverse user needs. Through extensive user research with NYC sustainability professionals, we continuously refined our approach, and explored innovative solutions like LLM integration to improve user interaction.
This co-production approach to product development was further enhanced through my role as a workshop facilitator at major events, namely "ClimateIQ: Exploring the Potential of AI Tools for Climate Risk and Resilience" during Climate Week NYC 2024, where we conducted hands-on user testing of the ClimateIQ dashboard with key user groups. I also facilitated "Cultivating Trust with AI Climate Risk Tools" at the Cornell Tech Urban Tech Summit 2024, focusing on understanding user sentiment around AI-powered climate models and hazard data reliability.
From these sessions, I was able to connect with users and learn more about their climate data needs. The reality was, users came with different levels of technical ability, familiarity with climate data, and need for granular data. One of our most significant achievements was designing a Developer Portal that democratizes access to climate hazard data. Instead of limiting users to fixed interfaces, we created an API-first approach that allows organizations to integrate climate data directly into their applications. The portal was designed to be highly intuitive, providing an interface for users to experiment with different API endpoints before integration. This flexibility serves both large-scale users like government agencies and smaller organizations focused on regional analysis. We even explored innovative approaches like integrating LLM capabilities to help users write API queries, making the technical aspects more accessible to users with varying levels of expertise.
A product review led by Twinkle Mehta of a LLM semantic layer to simplify and enhance the in-product user experience. Detailed in the image is a description of the “Help me query” feature to assist users in translating natural language searches to SQL to query ClimateIQ data.
Challenges and Learning Experiences
With only a brief past stint as a PM, I had forgotten a lot of the challenges that came with the role. As one of two Product Managers in the fellowship program, I had to quickly build my confidence and learn to think beyond the technical implementation. While my engineering background made me comfortable with the "how" of building, ClimateIQ challenged me to step back and consider the bigger picture - including user needs, market trends, and the overall impact of the product. This broader perspective has been invaluable in developing my product management skills, giving me confidence in building products from 0 to 1 and trusting my own ideas.
The transition from Google's structured environment to a research lab setting presented unique challenges that pushed me to grow in unexpected ways. Another significant challenge was adapting to a more agile work environment. Coming from Google's structured and process-heavy approach to building products, I had to quickly adjust to ClimateIQ's much more lightweight and flexible style. Working with limited time, people, expertise, and knowledge taught me to be adaptable while still preserving quality. This often meant making tough choices to pause certain areas of work to support higher-priority teams - a valuable lesson in valuing team success and being flexible with limited resources.
A presentation of ClimateIQ user personas created by UX researcher Jenna Robinson, presented as part of the ClimateIQ UXR Kick-off. Includes descriptions of primary user groups such as city planners, NGOs, homeowners, academic researchers, and professionals in the private-sector.
From Fellowship to Career Transformation
What started as an eleven-month fellowship evolved into a complete career transformation. During my time with ClimateIQ, I discovered that my experience with geospatial data and climate tech could open new doors at Google. By June 2024, I had successfully transitioned to the Geo Sustainability team, where I now work on Delve, a tool within Google Earth that aims to decarbonize the built environment through intelligent geospatial design.
This role lets me help real estate developers create sustainable building designs, considering strategies like sustainable materials, electrification, solar panels, and parking reduction. While the architectural terminology and emission calculations were initially intimidating, my fellowship experience had taught me to embrace learning new domains. Through both ClimateIQ and Delve, I've seen firsthand how big tech can contribute meaningfully to climate solutions, though there is still significant room for growth. The scale of the climate crisis demands far more substantial investment from the tech industry as a whole. As tech professionals, we have both the opportunity and responsibility to advocate for expanded climate initiatives within our companies - whether it's making climate data more accessible or helping design more sustainable buildings.
Zooming Out: The Global Climate Challenge
As climate tech continues to evolve, I see several critical areas for innovation that merit our attention and investment. Working on ClimateIQ has helped me understand where we need to focus our efforts for maximum impact.
First, climate health-tech should be a high priority. We are on track to reach a point of no return, with global temperatures projected to exceed 1.5°C by the 2030s if current warming trends continue. The increasing frequency and intensity of climate-related events is already visible worldwide. We urgently need innovations like highly portable and effective air purifiers, better solutions for flood-proofing urban areas, and technologies to prevent heat stroke especially among vulnerable populations.
The energy infrastructure sector presents another crucial challenge and opportunity. Our current energy grid is fragmented, unreliable, and outdated, making it particularly ill-equipped to support renewable energy sources like wind, solar, and geothermal. This is not a minor upgrade - the grid needs to be fundamentally rebuilt. We need innovative solutions to accomplish this massive transformation while minimizing disruptions to energy distribution.
Perhaps most critically, we need to focus on developing affordable clean energy solutions for the Global South. Countries like India, with the world's largest population, must transition to renewable energy sources, but cost remains a major barrier. Innovation in this space means rethinking the materials and approaches we use to build renewable energy infrastructure, making it financially accessible to regions that currently cannot afford expensive renewable solutions.
These areas for innovation stem from my direct observations of current challenges in climate tech. Through my experience with ClimateIQ, I have learned that the most effective solutions emerge when we focus on making technology accessible and practical for those who need it most.
Reflections and Advice
For other tech professionals eyeing the climate tech space, I want to share something I learned that might surprise you: your software skills are more valuable to climate action than you might think. Where I once believed physical, environmental problems required solely physical solutions, I have discovered that software can be a powerful catalyst for climate adaptation and mitigation. It frees up resources from time-intensive processes, allowing us to tackle bigger, more complex challenges in climate policy and regulation.
Do not let unfamiliar terminology or a new industry context intimidate you – I certainly felt overwhelmed at first by the complexities of climate science, often feeling behind and unaware of the latest advancements in the field. Instead, let your passion for change fuel your learning journey. My time with ClimateIQ taught me that while coding skills open doors, it is our ability to understand core problems and develop empathy for users that truly drives impact. The climate tech field needs people like you who can challenge traditional approaches to innovation and build solutions that serve real needs.
Remember, the best climate tech solutions are not always the ones that are most complex – they're the ones that make climate action more accessible to all. Whether you're an engineer, designer, or product manager, your unique perspective could be the key to unlocking new solutions in our fight against climate change. The opportunity to contribute is here; all you need to do is take that first step.
