Latest / PlanetGeo: The Geology Podcast / Soccer, Mining, and Investing: Ashley Grosh of Breakthrough Energy Fellows

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Soccer, Mining, and Investing: Ashley Grosh of Breakthrough Energy Fellows · PlanetGeo: The Geology Podcast

• 0:02
  SPEAKER_00: Welcome to Planet Geo, the podcast where we talk about our amazing planet, how it works, and why it matters to you.
• 0:13
  SPEAKER_00: As usual, we are releasing today a short clip from our interview with Ashley Grosh, who is the vice president of the Breakthrough Energy Fellows program.
• 0:23
  SPEAKER_00: Follow us on all the social medias.
• 0:24
  SPEAKER_00: We are at Planet Geocast.
• 0:25
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• 0:28
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• 0:33
  SPEAKER_00: That really helps us out.
• 0:34
  SPEAKER_00: Take care.
• 0:38
  SPEAKER_01: Ashley, you live in Denver, and you said before you really do like the outdoors.
• 0:42
  SPEAKER_01: I'm gonna be in Denver this summer.
• 0:44
  SPEAKER_01: Actually, we're gonna catch a concert at Red Rocks and we're gonna climb Long's Peak and then we're heading out to the Tetons for three weeks.
• 0:50
  SPEAKER_01: Um, just my my family.
• 0:52
  SPEAKER_01: So, what's your favorite hike, backpack, climb, whatever in the Denver area?
• 0:59
  SPEAKER_02: Okay, I'll give you two.
• 1:00
  SPEAKER_02: So I went to the University of Colorado, Go Buffs, um, in Boulder.
• 1:06
  SPEAKER_02: And I do think just this will be your warm-up is you should go to Chautauqua Park and the flat irons.
• 1:13
  SPEAKER_02: And there's a couple hikes, there's the Bluebell one and two, and it's just a way to get acclimated to the altitude, but the flat irons are just incredible, and you can go up there and kind of look at the Boulder Valley.
• 1:27
  SPEAKER_02: Um, so I think that that would be your warm-up.
• 1:31
  SPEAKER_02: The other one I might have you do is come a little further south to Castlewood Canyon and or Garden of the Gods, too.
• 1:38
  SPEAKER_02: I don't know if you've done that one.
• 1:40
  SPEAKER_01: I've been there.
• 1:40
  SPEAKER_01: Okay.
• 1:41
  SPEAKER_02: So that's a more flat, but still from a geologist's standpoint, you know, pretty interesting.
• 1:46
  SPEAKER_02: But Castlewood Canyon, instead of going up, you're actually going to go down.
• 1:51
  SPEAKER_02: And so you actually hike down into um kind of this uh cave area, but it's outside too.
• 1:59
  SPEAKER_02: There's in inside and outside trails, but it's just incredibly beautiful down there.
• 2:05
  SPEAKER_02: So that would be my my couple ideas.
• 2:07
  SPEAKER_00: So Ashley, yeah, um, you were a collegiate soccer player.
• 2:11
  SPEAKER_00: I think you said you went to UC Boulder or CU Boulder, whichever one.
• 2:14
  SPEAKER_00: I always get it confused what it is, but I think you also coach as well.
• 2:18
  SPEAKER_00: And you know, Chris and I are, well, former athletes, I suppose.
• 2:22
  SPEAKER_00: Uh I don't know, Chris.
• 2:23
  SPEAKER_00: Uh one of us had a maybe a more successful, successful athletic career.
• 2:27
  SPEAKER_00: I won't say who, but wow, what a piece of work.
• 2:30
  SPEAKER_01: What a piece of work.
• 2:32
  SPEAKER_00: I love sports.
• 2:33
  SPEAKER_00: I think, especially team sports, I think they're like so instrumental into they teach you so many life skills.
• 2:39
  SPEAKER_00: Can you speak to that?
• 2:41
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, how has it impacted your life personally and in coaching?
• 2:44
  SPEAKER_00: What do you tell, you know, your players that you're coaching?
• 2:48
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, exactly.
• 2:49
  SPEAKER_02: And I mean, sports has played a fundamental role in my life.
• 2:55
  SPEAKER_02: I come from a crazy sports nut family that everybody's played sports.
• 3:00
  SPEAKER_02: I'm a third generation collegian athlete.
• 3:03
  SPEAKER_02: So my grandpa and my dad both played in college, played football.
• 3:08
  SPEAKER_02: And so just sports have just been at the center of my life.
• 3:11
  SPEAKER_02: But you're to the lesson standpoint, I think, you know, having the grit to take on something like climate, you know, really comes from a love of sports and doing hard things, from resilience, determination.
• 3:27
  SPEAKER_02: But as a team, right, I don't know how to do anything unless there's a team involved.
• 3:33
  SPEAKER_02: So maybe that's why I, again, I go back to this people component is anytime you're going for something super hard, you can't do it alone, right?
• 3:42
  SPEAKER_02: And so you need a team.
• 3:44
  SPEAKER_02: And so I've just, you know, playing soccer, right?
• 3:46
  SPEAKER_02: I might be good at one thing, but the other person's good at something else.
• 3:49
  SPEAKER_02: And so the two, that's just how I thrive and feed to get to a mission and to get to a goal, is to working together, playing on different people's strengths and weaknesses.
• 4:01
  SPEAKER_02: And I do, even though I coach competitive soccer on the side for my daughter, you know, I do think a lot of what my role is within the fellows program is coaching and mentoring.
• 4:12
  SPEAKER_02: And I love that.
• 4:12
  SPEAKER_02: I love coaching people up that, hey, it's really hard, but you gotta keep, gotta get up again and don't let the nose, you know, wear you down.
• 4:22
  SPEAKER_02: You've got to develop the thick skin, you've got to be optimistic, you've got to keep trying.
• 4:27
  SPEAKER_02: And, you know, this notion of there's a whole team around you that's gonna help you.
• 4:32
  SPEAKER_02: So I do think sports and coaching, when you're tackling something really hard in life, having that mentality can help, right?
• 4:40
  SPEAKER_02: Can help you get through the resiliency that's needed.
• 4:43
  SPEAKER_02: And certainly at Breakthrough, we are a team that's growing.
• 4:47
  SPEAKER_02: And uh so, you know, we need we need a lot of coaches around us, a lot of advisors and mentors, all working together.
• 4:54
  SPEAKER_02: So, sports for me is the center of of how you how you really do everything as a team.
• 4:59
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I really appreciate that, Ashley, because I think you know, your your athletes are lucky to have you as a coach because you're deliberate about those lessons that they need to take off the field.
• 5:11
  SPEAKER_01: And I think that doesn't happen enough.
• 5:14
  SPEAKER_01: Sports and the the lessons that we learn should be it's a vehicle to take with us throughout life.
• 5:19
  SPEAKER_01: But it has to be deliberate about like, hey, this is what we learned, this is how it applies off the soccer field or off the football field, you know, those kinds of things.
• 5:29
  SPEAKER_01: And um, I can tell that, you know, that's that's what you believe in, that's what you do.
• 5:33
  SPEAKER_00: So, what position did you play, actually?
• 5:36
  SPEAKER_02: So in high school, I played sweeper, so that's the last person of defense, and then in college I played left fullback, so left defender.
• 5:46
  SPEAKER_02: So always more on the defensive side.
• 5:49
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, team sports.
• 5:50
  SPEAKER_00: I love team sports, and I I didn't really know much about soccer growing up in Michigan, but uh when I moved to Canada for grad school, I lived with a bunch of Europeans, and so every week.
• 5:58
  SPEAKER_02: Oh, you got ingrained, yeah.
• 5:59
  SPEAKER_00: Oh my god, you know, Premier League was on every Saturday and Sunday morning, you know, really got ingrained with soccer.
• 6:05
  SPEAKER_00: And I really learned to appreciate the similarities between soccer and basketball.
• 6:09
  SPEAKER_00: Like the flow is very similar, the passing and cutting dynamics, it's just you know a much bigger field with less points.
• 6:15
  SPEAKER_00: But otherwise, it's a very similar game.
• 6:16
  SPEAKER_02: Anyway, yeah, I stayed up too late watching uh right now I'm watching playoff hockey, the Aves, Colorado, still in it.
• 6:24
  SPEAKER_02: And then last night we were we watched the Warriors.
• 6:26
  SPEAKER_02: So yeah, uh big fan of Ted Lasso, too, obviously.
• 6:31
  SPEAKER_01: So we love it.
• 6:32
  SPEAKER_01: Great one.
• 6:32
  SPEAKER_01: We love Ted Lasso.
• 6:34
  SPEAKER_01: It's a great show.
• 6:34
  SPEAKER_01: That's a great one.
• 6:36
  SPEAKER_02: Okay, one more one more story here quickly, just from a geology standpoint.
• 6:40
  SPEAKER_02: So what we love geology.
• 6:41
  SPEAKER_02: Here we go.
• 6:42
  SPEAKER_02: So one of the technologies we saw this week at RPAE is called impossible mining.
• 6:49
  SPEAKER_02: And so mining, right, is a big issue because we've got to have it for everything we're doing from limestone and cement for lithium for energy storage.
• 7:00
  SPEAKER_02: And so impossible mining is a seabed technology exploration.
• 7:05
  SPEAKER_02: So in the ocean, but in in more of the shallow piece, there's these rocks, and I'll send you a picture of it.
• 7:10
  SPEAKER_02: You guys probably know the name more than me.
• 7:12
  SPEAKER_02: But this gentleman has developed an AI robotics machine that can go under, and similar to like I was saying in the field and can sense where life is.
• 7:23
  SPEAKER_02: So this machine uses these arms and pulls up a rock, and it can sense if there's any life on it, it puts it back.
• 7:30
  SPEAKER_02: If there isn't, then it collects it.
• 7:32
  SPEAKER_02: And what's incredible about these sediments is they have nickel, copper, and one other one I'll have to send it to you.
• 7:41
  SPEAKER_02: But those can then be taken back.
• 7:43
  SPEAKER_02: And he uses a biologic enzyme to break down the sediments in there and is able to cleanly, you know, get those materials out.
• 7:52
  SPEAKER_02: And so it's a really interesting way to think about mining.
• 7:55
  SPEAKER_02: He's launching it in the Cook Islands.
• 7:58
  SPEAKER_02: So a little plug for impossible mining, but I'll send you the video because again, back to my visual learning.
• 8:04
  SPEAKER_02: But just seeing this, like those are the types of out-of-the-box things without disturbing the environment, but finding those materials.
• 8:13
  SPEAKER_02: And so, anyways, that was just a really cool way uh to think about a different way of unlocking resources.
• 8:20
  SPEAKER_01: That sounds amazing.
• 8:21
  SPEAKER_01: Is this cohort one then?
• 8:23
  SPEAKER_02: No, so this is something we're looking at um right now for potentially cohort two or three.
• 8:28
  SPEAKER_01: Gotcha.
• 8:28
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 8:29
  SPEAKER_01: Hey, Ashley, did anybody reapply from cohort one that didn't make it through?
• 8:33
  SPEAKER_02: They did, yes.
• 8:35
  SPEAKER_02: And so um, I'm not sure because we're just wrapping up cohort two, but we encourage that.
• 8:41
  SPEAKER_02: We encourage people to continue applying because they may have made gains, right?
• 8:45
  SPEAKER_02: From the first time they apply.
• 8:47
  SPEAKER_02: So again, keep taking the shots on goal, right?
• 8:50
  SPEAKER_02: Keep keep applying.
• 8:51
  SPEAKER_00: Wow, very cool.
• 8:52
  SPEAKER_00: Love some cool geology mining.
• 8:55
  SPEAKER_00: I know I had to get that in there for the geologists in the room.
• 8:57
  SPEAKER_00: So we appreciate that.
• 8:58
  SPEAKER_02: I'll send you the video and and the link because I yeah, that'd be great.
• 9:03
  SPEAKER_02: I'd be amazing.
• 9:03
  SPEAKER_02: I really think it's a cool idea.
• 9:05
  SPEAKER_02: So thank you both.
• 9:07
  SPEAKER_00: Awesome.
• 9:08
  SPEAKER_00: Thanks, Ashley.
• 9:09
  SPEAKER_00: Take care.
• 9:09
  SPEAKER_00: This has been great.
• 9:10
  SPEAKER_00: You can follow us on all the social medias.
• 9:12
  SPEAKER_00: We are at Planet Geocast.
• 9:14
  SPEAKER_00: Send us an email, visit our website, give us a rating and a review.
• 9:18
  SPEAKER_00: Those really help the algorithm, and reach out if you have questions.
• 9:22
  SPEAKER_00: We'd love that stuff.
• 9:24
  SPEAKER_01: We're done.
• 9:25
  SPEAKER_00: Take care.