TECH TO NATURE

MEET EVAN RAPOPORT

I LEFT GOOGLE TO HELP NATURE.

Yep. I left the highest-paying job of my life. I was at the center of the artificial intelligence universe at Google Research. But, as much as I loved my colleagues, the prestige and salary just didn't matter anymore.

I needed more nature.

I needed to help nature in my own unique ways.

I needed to guide other people to follow their path from tech to nature.

HI, I'M EVAN.

Tech innovator, conservation leader, guide, & nature lover

In 2011, I left my tech job in Hawaii to move to Silicon Valley to and join Google Maps as a Product Manager. It was a dream come true and exceeded all of my wildest expectations. I worked with many of the most brilliant technical people on the planet, inventing and launching dozens of new products and features, including some that have been used by over a billion people. I cofounded a successful moonshot at Google X that leveraged AI for sustainable seafood and led the Google Brain "Moonshots Program" that incubated many of the generative AI breakthroughs we see today.

Along the journey, I also spent a few years as the founding CEO of Oceankind, one of the largest philanthropic funders of ocean health. It was a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity and I loved directing many millions of dollars towards impact investments and grants that helped the ocean.

MY DREAMS CHANGED

Along the way, even though my career was going really well, something inside me began to shift. I didn't choose it. It kinda just happened. And, it definitely wasn't convenient for "my plans".

Despite my success and the impact I was having, I started to feel disconnected... from myself and from nature. I was tired of living vicariously through the collaborators we had who were out in the real-world, getting their feet wet and muddy in nature.

And unfortunately, my frustration was starting to show. People could see it in me. I was working hard, but I just wasn't the same person anymore.

Something had to change!

THE FULL STORY IS MUCH MESSIER THAN THAT

I'm leaving out a lot of details. Lots of false starts and failures. Some very painful events in both my career and my personal life. It's easy to tell a simple "Hero's Journey" story by leaving out the messy parts. But that's not real life. And you likely won't have a Disney fairytale version either. But NOT growing? That's worse. Much worse.

In the Tech to Nature program, I don't hide any of the tough stuff because I'd mislead you if I did. If you're here, then you likely are feeling some of the same things I felt. You sense that you have a greater purpose. You don't know what it is, but it has something to do with nature. You're worried that this might impact your personal life as well. And your finances. All the things that have defined you.

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"Listen, are you breathing just a little,

and calling it a life?"

~Mary Oliver

WHERE I AM TODAY

Since I'm offering you guidance, you likely want to know how this whole process helped me. You may wonder what I'm up to now that I'm not at Google anymore.

Having spent a lot of time on the front lines of nature conservation around the world, from Africa to the Pacific and everywhere in between, I knew that technology was never a silver bullet. So, I knew I needed to get more tech people out into nature so they could see what I'd seen. So they could build better products.

There is always a shortage of technical talent in conservation. Since hundreds of Googlers had met with me in 1:1 coaching sessions to get guidance on using their tech skills to benefit nature, I knew that there was an opportunity to scale my impact far beyond what my own projects and calendar allowed.

Since leaving Google in 2024, my mission has been to connect people with nature.

In Tech to Nature, the courses and community we're offering scale up the work I used to do only through 1:1 sessions. It's incredibly rewarding to change people's lives like this.

I also founded Amphibian, a for-profit innovation lab whose mission is to build scalable products and companies that connect a billion people with nature. We have several very exciting efforts underway with world-class partners. They make me smile every day. And they get me outdoors sometimes.

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