Courtesy Tom Ferguson

“Climate change is really water change,” says Tom Ferguson (MBA 2014). From the deadly floods that deluged western Europe in the summer of 2021, to the once-in-a-century drought conditions that have ravaged Brazil for three years, and the estimated 100 million people in China, India, and Bangladesh alone under threat from rising sea levels by 2100, “our ability to steward the water molecule is going to be fundamental to our ability to respond to whatever inevitable climate change we’ve baked into our future,” Ferguson says.

That understanding—and the realization that water entrepreneurship ecosystem is lagging behind other sectors that are on focused climate and sustainability—led Ferguson to found Burnt Island Ventures in 2020. The company invests exclusively in entrepreneurs building technologies and providing services that are designed to improve water management worldwide. The fund has already invested more than $9 million in 12 companies that address such pressing problems as flood tracking, water waste and reuse, and sewer infrastructure and maintenance.

“This is an overlooked, giant industry that is at the base of society. Water is essential to our ability to exist,” Ferguson says.

Burnt Island Ventures is committed to finding and implementing solutions to everyday water concerns around the world. Some countries lack the means to provide clean water to their residents. That is not just a water problem but also an education problem, Ferguson says, because a student who is severely dehydrated or afflicted with diarrhea can’t learn effectively. Water can also be a matter of gender equality. In some communities that lack adequate indoor plumbing, women and young girls are responsible for transporting their family’s water each day, a task that can impede attendance at school or a job.

But we can address these issues with technological advances and increased entrepreneurship in the water sector, Ferguson says. “There is a water crisis going on right now,” he notes, “and there is something that we can do about it.”

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