By Michael McCarthy By Michael McCarthy | September 20, 2024 | People, Featured,
Wendy Schmidt is out to change the world and the climate—one ocean at a time.
Wendy Schmidt aboard the new research vessel Falkor (Too) as part of the Schmidt Ocean Institute
Wendy Schmidt loves her job. She speaks with the enthusiasm and knowledge of someone who envisions the most significant discoveries of our lifetime. The philanthropist and investor has spent nearly 20 years establishing innovative nonprofits focusing on everything from clean energy to the ocean’s health.
Schmidt and her husband, Eric, the former CEO of Google, are just getting started. They founded The Schmidt Family Foundation (tsffoundation.org), and she launched the 11th Hour Project to create a just world via renewable energy, clean air, water and healthy food.
She’s also the president of the Schmidt Ocean Institute (schmidtocean.org), which supports oceanographic research by providing scientists with access to the world’s first year-round philanthropic research vessel (Falkor Too) in return for publicly sharing their discoveries.
A competitive sailor who was the first woman and first American to win the Barcolana, the world’s largest sailing race, Schmidt expanded her ocean restoration efforts to the sporting world by co-founding 11th Hour Racing (11thhourracing.org). The organization collaborates with the sailing community and maritime industry to promote sustainable practices that protect and restore ocean health. She talked with us about the lure of water and more.
Schmidt in Lisbon, Portugal, where she spoke at the Economist World Ocean Summit
Your passion and philanthropic focus is our climate. Where did this begin?
First, a little context. We have 200 years of industrial infrastructure behind us, and we can see its damage to the environment and the world’s future. When my mother was born in 1931, there were 2 billion people on the planet. But now the world’s population is nearly 9 billion. We have to rethink what we’re doing. For one thing, we have to stop wasting resources. We also have to stop using so much plastic. Fossil fuels should stay in the ground at this point. I think we know enough to understand the impact.
Over 20 years ago, Al Gore discussed the world’s climate crises. It impacted me greatly. No one in Silicon Valley was talking about this. But we live where people come up with solutions, so why weren’t we doing something?
The first act of the 11th Hour Project (11thhourproject.org) was to organize a chance for Al Gore to come to Stanford at Memorial Auditorium and speak to 2,000 people. An Inconvenient Truth eventually became a sensation. We organized dinner for 350 people afterward. Guests included government leaders, academics and people in the tech industry. We all said, ‘Let’s go.’
Was it daunting to figure out where to start?
First, it’s a human right in the 21st century to access clean, renewable energy. Think about it. The world’s citizens don’t have a level playing field. That’s why we focus our philanthropy on transformational ideas. We can use everything from microbiology to astrophysics to AI and machine learning.
Also, something I learned in Silicon Valley is that we believe in human connection. All of our endeavors, from the Schmidt Family Foundation to the Ocean Institute, are about providing opportunities for people and the idea that they can connect, share resources and form a network of communities with their ideas, skills and investments.
Our philanthropic role is to take risks that others can’t. If we’re contributing resources, let’s take risks, right? On all fronts, we can do things businesses and governments can’t. I won’t say we can solve all of the world’s problems—I don’t think we can—but we can be the first ones in the pool.
One important rule for us is that we don’t know everything. We don’t drop in from 40,000 feet to tell people, ‘Here’s your money. Do this.’ We want to understand the historical context and wisdom of indigenous people. It’s essential to listen closely to the people who are closest to the problem.
Why have oceans been your focus?
Our oceans have been under attack from overfishing, industrial pollution, plastics and microplastics. So, we wanted to use technology first to figure out what’s in our oceans, which cover most of our planet and supply half of our oxygen. Eighty percent of our oceans are unexplored.
I sense that you’re an incredible optimist and eternally curious. Is that true?
Yeah, I am very curious, and that does keep me learning
Regarding optimism, I’m a realist, but I’m also a glass-half-full person. I recently served as executive producer of A Brief History of the Future on PBS, and it showed examples of what’s possible. Let’s rethink the problem. Let’s not get stuck in it. Humans are incredibly adaptable, and we’re very innovative and intelligent. We have imagination. But unfortunately, we’re wired to react to short-term threats. So we don’t plan for the future unless we’re in some social structure that helps us do that.
I’ve heard you discuss how everything on the planet is connected. Could you explain?
Look at this summer’s weather worldwide. We’ve seen record-breaking heat and rain. It’s unbelievable. We should look at the world through a systems lens and say everything’s connected. That’s a recent illuminating discovery resulting from technological developments—finding unexpected pairings of things that influence each other. I believe AI may help us figure out even more. That may be our salvation. Wouldn’t that be interesting?
Sailing has become your passion. How did you get into it?
I didn’t grow up sailing—I learned it. I’m around people all the time who have spent their whole lives doing this. What I glean from them is phenomenal.
We bought our first boat in 2007 at the urging of a Silicon Valley friend. He spent his summers on Nantucket. And he said, ‘If you buy this boat, we can race each other.’ That’s how it happened. I like a challenge.
I also love the cooperative nature of sailing. If you have an 80-foot boat and 22 people from 10 different countries speaking nine different languages all doing the same thing together with the same goal, it’s pretty cool to experience. You’re on the water—out in sometimes challenging elements—and you have a dialogue between people, a sailboat and nature.
It’s a fascinating model of cooperation and responsibility.
Schmidt says research teams aboard Falkor (too) plan to visit all seven ocean basins during the next decade.
What is it about being on the water that impacts you?
The waves. It’s the movement of everything in our bodies. We are mostly water, and studies reveal that immersing yourself in saltwater can have many health benefits—even if you’re in for just a few minutes. You absorb minerals, and it slows your heart rate. It improves your circulation and your digestion.
As I began sailing, I wanted to know what was under the water’s surface. That led me to scuba diving and then to the Schmidt Ocean Institute.
Great segue. Please share how this effort began.
Eric loves to build things. So I said, ‘Why don’t we try to build research vessels to discover what people don’t know?’
We acquired a German fisheries vessel [and revamped it] and operated for 10 years, from 2013 to 2023, as Falkor.
We then donated it to a research group in Italy, and in 2023, a bigger research vessel launched. It expands our research capabilities and allows scientists to undertake ocean projects and share information that they couldn’t before.
Our ship now operates 24 hours a day. It’s Falkor (too). Our research vessel will visit Antarctica by the end of the year and into early 2025. There’s so much we don’t know about this place. Oh my goodness, there’s no mapping of the undersea there. We will study the sea melt of the glaciers, ecosystems and the ocean interface.
The plan is to visit and research all seven ocean basins over the next decade.
Please tell me about SuBastian, the robot.
Many of the things we build are named after characters from The NeverEnding Story, which we read to our kids when they were young.
Anyway, SuBastian is a robot we built with off-the-shelf parts. We initially tested it at the Monterey Bay Aquarium, and it has now completed 700 dives.
What does SuBastian do down there?
A little of everything. It has cameras and squishy fingers, so the robot can pick up objects and take pictures and samples.
Plus, SuBastian can carry scientific equipment and discover something that wasn’t even supposed to be there. Last year, at the bottom of the ocean floor in roughly 10,000 feet of water, the robot discovered hydrothermal vents in an ocean field. They’re boiling sulfuric chemistry; you don’t think anything could live there, but it’s teeming with life.
Our robot picked up the crust on the bottom of one of the vents, turned it over and discovered life—a whole different ecosystem underneath the crust. Some people will say there’s nothing down there, just a bunch of rocks in a vast desert. We are proving that’s not the case.
What are you excited about this fall?
In September, we’ll be in the Rolex Maxi Worlds in Sardinia to race with my boat, Deep Blue, a carbon fiber 85-footer we started racing in 2021. We’re also visiting our grantees in Uganda. While we aren’t visiting DRC’s [Congo] Virunga National Park right now, we helped support the development of hydro dams and clean, renewable energy that brought electricity to 1 million people around the park. The best part? All sorts of little industries have sprung up. The power of change is remarkable.
I’m also excited about a virtual reality organization we recently launched called Agog (agog.org). It’s amazing. You feel like you’re outside of your body—for example, immersively seeing our planet from space amid complete silence of the solar system—and experiencing the world in ways that will forever change your life.
Photography by: BEN GIBBS