Month: May 2025

LAUSANNE, Switzerland, May 27, 2025 /3BL/ – Tetra Pak has received the Environmental Initiatives Award at the 2025 SEAL Business Sustainability Awards for its Approach to Nature framework. The SEAL (Sustainability, Environmental Achievement and Leadership) Award recognises Tetra Pak’s framework as an industry-leading example of how major companies can leverage their expertise to guide and collaborate with partners throughout the value chain to realise their own sustainability goals and address regulatory requirements.  

Tetra Pak launched its comprehensive Approach to Nature framework in 2024 to address nature-related impacts across the value chain. This ambitious approach is built upon concrete actions and more than 20 measurable targets and practical actions, defining the company’s contribution to halting and reversing nature loss, supporting the restoration of ecosystems and enhancing water security.

As well as internal goals and actions, the framework also addresses supplier and customer nature-related impacts, including those connected to packaging end-of-life.

Significant progress has already been made against the framework. In its own operations, Tetra Pak aims to reduce total water withdrawal by 35% by 2030 (from a 2019 baseline). Tetra Pak’s Kunshan site in China is an example of success in this regard, with rainwater harvesting implemented to irrigate over 6,000m² of green plants, cutting annual water use by more than 120 tonnes.¹

Francesca Priora, Vice President, Climate & Nature, Tetra Pak comments: “We are honoured to accept this award from SEAL Awards for our Approach to Nature framework. This recognition highlights our commitment to reversing and halting nature loss by reducing the negative impacts of our value chain on nature and supporting landscape restoration.

“We are proud to collaborate with customers, suppliers and partners on our journey to restore ecosystems and improve water resilience. Approach to Nature is one of the ways we are working together to transform food systems to ensure a more secure, resilient and sustainable future for all.”

The framework has also been recognised by ‘It’s Now for Nature’, a joint global campaign led by Business for Nature – a coalition that brings together more than 100 influential partner organisations and forward-thinking companies to “drive credible business action and policy ambition to achieve a nature-positive economy for all by 2030”.²

Find out more about the SEAL Awards, alongside a full list of winners.

Discover more about Approach to Nature, including quantitative targets and practical actions.

Media contacts

Olivia Tomblin 
Brands2Life 
+44 (0)20 7592 1200 
olivia.tomblin@brands2life.com

¹ P.57 TetraPak_Sustainability_ReportFY23

² Business For Nature

As we move into May, my garden in Austin Texas is at its best, the Japanese Maple is flourishing, and the roses and lantana are giving pops of color. The garden benefits from the mild temperatures and gentler spring conditions to allow plants to establish strong roots before the summer heat arrives.

I find myself wondering if there’s an AI tool that would help me keep some of my more challenging plants alive before the weather machine turns to “broil”. This takes me back to my day job, which includes working with energy grid operators to help build the strong roots of cyber security.

April has been an eventful month for the world’s energy grids, let’s look at some of the key developments.

In the U.S., the House Committee on Energy and Commerce heard from former Google CEO Eric Schmidt about the impact and reliance of AI on the energy grid. Schmidt told Congress “Many people project demand for our industry will go from 3 percent to 9 percent of total generation, an additional 29 gigawatts by 2027 and 67 more gigawatts by 2030, this is at a scale I have never seen in my life in terms of energy planning.”

“If China comes to superintelligence first, it changes the dynamic of power globally, in ways that we have no way of understanding or predicting.”

AI’s dependence on the energy grid is clear and if the US cannot keep up with power needs, other countries like China could gain a competitive edge. The energy requirements of data centers are predicted to skyrocket, especially with more advanced and power-hungry systems on the way. The energy grid is being stretched beyond its limits and AI could push up energy prices and create shortages. The energy grid is essential to powering the boom in AI and makes it a prime target for threat actors seeking to destabilize AI leadership or dependent critical systems.

In April we also saw massive blackouts across Spain, Portugal and parts of France that halted public transportation, banking cashpoints and internet connectivity, in one of Europe’s biggest ever power system collapses. Spain, Europe’s fourth-largest economy had no electricity, Red Eléctrica de España, the grid operator, is working to figure out what led to this worst-case scenario, a system completely devoid of energy. Whatever the cause, it is an admonitory tale of the importance of a resilient energy grid.

Although some have ruled out cyberattacks as the cause of the recent blackouts, attacks in the sector are growing. Energy systems are increasingly dependent on IT at every stage of the supply chain-generation, transmission, and distribution- all of which must be protected. The need to strengthen grid security has become more urgent since the invasion of Ukraine.

Over the course of a series of blogs we will explore how Keysight is helping grid operators and manufacturers rise to the challenge of improving power generation and cybersecurity while maintaining agility and regulatory compliance. We will discuss the latest trends and how operators can stay ahead of attackers. You will see coverage of IoT, OT and device security, cloud, and network security, as well as the importance of resilient time in the energy grid.

In today’s blog we will focus on the increasing susceptibility of AI to the hidden threats in IoT/OT and devices in the energy sector.

AI’s demand for electricity

The world’s data centers are using ever more electricity, the International Energy Agency (IEA) estimates that global electricity usage by data centers will double in just four years, increasing from 460 terawatt hours of electricity in 2022 to 1,000 terawatt hours annually by 2026. This demand is roughly equivalent to the total electricity consumption of Japan. With governments around the world announcing multi-billion-dollar investments in AI, data center electricity consumption is expected to grow at a rapid pace as AI applications begin to penetrate the market.

Goldman Sachs Research estimates that data center power demand will grow by 160% by 2030. Currently, data centers globally consume 1-2% of overall power, but this percentage will likely double to 3-4% by the end of the decade. The overall increase in data center power consumption from AI is expected to be roughly 200TWh/year between 2023 and 2028, with AI representing about 19% of total datacenter power demand.

This heightens the dependence as well as the risk profile of the energy systems that support the AI datacenters and applications, making them targets for cyberattack.

It is also worth highlighting the additional dependency on water consumption. Data centers use fresh mains water, rather than surface water, so that the pipes, pumps, and heat exchangers used to cool racks of servers do not get clogged up with contaminants. Microsoft’s global water use soared by 34% while it was developing its initial AI tools, and a data center cluster in Iowa used 6% of the district’s water supply in one month during the training of OpenAI’s GPT-4. Therefore, cyber-attacks impacting water supply to the datacenter operations may also be of concern.

The energy sector is a major target for cyberattack

The energy grid faces persistent threats from cyber criminals and hostile states such as Russia, China, Iran, and North Korea exploiting ransomware, AI, and advanced intrusion tools. State-linked cyber groups increasingly target industrial control systems pivotal to energy infrastructure. There are major areas of concern in the energy supply chain, where vulnerabilities exist in interconnected systems, for example GNSS and GPS for timing, and the targeting of subsea cables.

In 2021 the Colonial Pipeline Ransomware attack disabled its IT computer systems resulting in fuel shortages and panic buying in affected states. In 2022 a Russian attack on satellites knocked out communications and control of thousands of wind turbines in Ukraine. In 2023 the China-linked group, RedEcho, attacked India’s power sector during border tension.

According to the E-ISAC, Electricity Information Sharing and Analysis Center, the nation state actors targeting the US energy sector in 2024 included Volt Typhoon, Salt Typhoon, Lemon Sandstorm/UNC757, APT 29 – Midnight Blizzard and GRU Unit 29155.

Last year Volt Typhoon, a China state-sponsored threat actor, targeted energy, transportation, and water sectors in the US and Canada. Its campaigns affected industrial sectors including Electricity Power Generation, Transmission and Distribution. Chinese hackers were active in Massachusetts’ Littleton Electric Light & Water Departments (LELWD) for over 300 days without detection.

We have seen CyberArmyofRussia_Reborn (CARR) confirm attacks on US water and energy facilities. Hunt3r Kill3rs targeted internet exposed OT/ICS devices in the US, Europe, and Israel. And just in the last couple of days I saw a new headline about a cyberattack against a Canadian operator, Nova Scotia Power.

In addition to the IT-focused attacks such as Colonial Pipeline which have downstream impacts on industrial control systems (ICS), there has also been an increase in ICS-targeting malware intentionally designed for adverse effects on operational technology (OT) environments. FrostyGoop Malware is an ICS-specific malware tracked by Dragos. It interacts with ICS devices over Modbus TCP/502, a standard ICS protocol used worldwide. It is undetectable by common antivirus software and was used in Ukraine heating outages in 2024.

Legislation and proactive cyber security testing

Laws like the Network and Information Systems (NIS) Regulations and EO 13636 require enhanced resilience in critical sectors, including energy. The cyberattacks in the US and elsewhere are why regulators like Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) and North American Electric Reliability Corporation (NERC) are updating their requirements, to ensure power companies are preparing for the latest threats. FERC has begun to take steps to increase stricter cyber security controls for grid and power providers. FERC 887 and NERC CIP 003-9 are new regulations that impose stricter requirements on electric utilities for internal network security monitoring and remote access.

The costs of non-compliance can be significant. Back in 2019 NERC fined Duke Energy $10 million for cybersecurity failings relating to the CIP (critical infrastructure protection) compliance program.

How Keysight can help

With cyberattacks in the energy sector on the rise it is crucial to implement proactive security measures to safeguard your infrastructure and mitigate potential risks. It is important to validate new devices, networks, application workloads and traffic mixes. Our security testing solutions replicate your environment and support a wide range of protocols and applications with real-world test scenarios.

Keysight can help you to validate and refine your security posture, improving resilience to cyberattacks and ensuring adherence to cyber security requirements. To safeguard your infrastructure Keysight helps you in several ways including awareness and training, configuration management, incident response, risk assessment, security assessment, access control, identification, and authentication, as well as system and communications protection.

Let us explore further how Keysight can help you with device and IoT security.

Spotlight: Device and IoT security in the energy sector

As the energy sector becomes increasingly connected, communications networks will include both terrestrial and non-terrestrial networks which open up additional attack vectors. Back in 2022, Starlink terminals were hacked using voltage fault injection and side channel attacks to gain access to the Starlink network.

Keysight can conduct security assessments of devices connected to the energy grid, including validation of Smart Meters to the relevant Common Criteria Protection Profile. We analyze the hardware (debug and test interfaces and memories), software design, secure boot process, OS (Linux, Android, RTOS), as well as application security and perform targeted reviews to understand the security of your device. We can also analyze the security of the chipsets by considering logical, fault injection and side-channel threats, as well as the immutable firmware on the chips and the overall architecture.

Upgrades, especially of production OT devices, can be very expensive. Do you really want to take a substation down because you need to upgrade the firmware to fix a security flaw? This is why it is so important to do extensive pre-deployment testing of smart inverters, relays, phasors, and other operational devices so you can fix as many problems as possible early. It is also important to maintain an SBOM of deployed devices so that you can get immediate notification if a vulnerability is discovered in a library utilized in a device’s firmware so that it can be remedied or mitigated before hackers can exploit it.

With a long history in the energy sector, Keysight is dedicated to safeguarding critical national energy systems. You can read more about how we keep energy grids safe on our Grid Modernization page.

Keysight is your partner for energy cyber security.

Originally published in GoDaddy’s 2024 Sustainability Report

Customer Experience

Delivering top-tier personalized support.

Each entrepreneur’s story is unique. Whether that’s where they come from or where they’re going, we believe every idea deserves personalized solutions. We strive to provide positive customer experiences by offering user-friendly interfaces, around-the-clock support, educational resources, and continuous improvements to our offerings. We believe expectations should be exceeded, and our GoDaddy Guides work to achieve this by helping customers get maximum value from the wide range of products and services we offer.

• 20.5 Million: GoDaddy served 20.5 million customers in 2024.

Customer Conversations & Support

Our personalized support for every stage of an entrepreneur’s journey sets us apart from our competitors and helps to improve customer satisfaction and retention. We meet customers how, where, and when they need. GoDaddy customers can choose their preferred channel, including phone or messaging.

Our GoDaddy Guides are knowledgeable and responsive, assisting customers with their unique needs and upholding our reputation for outstanding customer service, driving value for the business. Every Guide is trained and eager to WOW our customers with an outstanding experience, whether helping with a simple password reset or building an entrepreneur’s complete web presence. While our Guides conduct millions of conversations per year, each interaction with a Guide is characterized by real, human interaction. Our Guides are located globally and provide in-region support in several local languages.

While conversations with our Guides are an essential component of our customer service offerings, customers also have access to the GoDaddy Resource Library, an on-demand knowledge base with practical and actionable resources, and the GoDaddy AI Prompt Library, a free resource for small business owners to boost their business. On third-party sites like YouTube, we host tutorials that cover the most up-to-date, in-demand topics that shepherd entrepreneurs along every stage of their journey.

Community is key to building a global network of entrepreneurs and experts. That’s why we support an active online community through our GoDaddy Community LinkedIn page where customers can connect, share experiences, and seek advice, allowing our whole community to tap into a broader network of users and experts who can offer insights and solutions.

• 12 Million: Nearly 12 million inbound voice conversations and messages with customers.
• 4.6: Trustpilot rating of 4.6 out of 5.
• 18.36: NPS score: 18.36.

NATURAL LANGUAGE PROCESSING

With emphasis on innovation, we continue to upgrade our Natural Language Processing technology to further streamline customer interactions.

When calling in to get support, this technology allows customers to describe issues in their own words before being connected with a Guide, instead of being restricted to following a preset selection. Phrases like “I can’t get onto my website, it keeps giving me this error code,” will help our Guides assign the customer to a specialist more effectively, rather than the customer navigating a series of menu selections which may not be as targeted.

Our goal is to connect GoDaddy to our customers on a human level. Customers get better help faster. While this feature is currently only available in English speaking geographies, we aim to expand to additional languages in the future.

Voice It

Our customers deserve a voice that enables them to share problems and get fast solutions. Voice It, our internal customer feedback intake tool, allows customers to share their pain points with GoDaddy Guides. Through Voice It, GoDaddy Guides collaborate internally with our Care Product Team to address customer pain points and develop and share solutions to benefit our wider customer base.

WOW for Customer Care

We strive to satisfy and exceed our customers’ expectations and enable our customers to realize the full value of the products and services we offer. GoDaddy’s WOW Program is our specialized process designed
to maximize efficiency and value in our customer interactions. Each customer interaction is important to us, so operating a robust model of quality assurance allows us to ensure consistency and target areas for improvement.

In 2024, we introduced the latest version of WOW, amplifying our commitment to excellent customer care. We incorporated flexible voice and messaging guidelines enabling our Guides to deliver consistent
yet more authentic and personalized interactions. Our Customer Care team continually assesses the impact of this program to ensure we’re delivering the right results for our customers. The team found that a higher adherence to the framework leads to more satisfied customers and reduces the amount of time customers need to spend reaching out to us.

WE LOVE OUR CUSTOMERS EVENT

Being entrusted with our customers’ dreams is a privilege we take seriously. We Love Our Customers was an in-person event near our Kirkland, Washington office, hosted by GoDaddy leadership. We wanted an opportunity to connect directly with our customers, so GoDaddy leadership hosted the We Love Our Customers event near our Kirkland, Washington office.

The purpose of the event – to listen – was simple yet powerful. Small business owners are incredibly busy, and while we spend countless hours researching, watching trends, and spending time in the field, these face-to-face conversations allow us to dive deeper in a meaningful way. Here are the biggest takeaways and learnings from the event:

• Customers welcome ideas about how to make their business better. A great place to source ideas is through the GoDaddy Resource Library and GoDaddy Community LinkedIn.
   
• Trust is important to our customers, and we work hard to continue earning it because they trust us with their ideas.
   
• Customers are often hesitant to switch from the software they used when they started their business. New functionality we continually add to GoDaddy Airo® makes it easier for customers to keep up with the latest technologies through Generative AI.

To learn more, read our 2024 Sustainability Report.

About This Report

This GoDaddy 2024 Sustainability Report details our progress toward our corporate sustainability goals, strategies, and initiatives in support of our overarching corporate mission and values. Unless otherwise noted, this report reflects our corporate sustainability performance across our global operations covering the fiscal year period from January 1 to December 31, 2024. To demonstrate our commitment to transparent communication regarding our sustainability progress, we routinely share updates through our website and our annual Sustainability Report. We welcome your questions, comments, and feedback on this report by contacting ESG@GoDaddy.com.

This report references the Global Reporting Initiative (GRI) Standards, includes select Sustainability Accounting Standards Board (SASB) metrics for the Internet Media and Services sector, and the Task Force on Climate Related Financial Disclosures (TCFD). We also disclose our contributions and progress toward priority UN SDGs. For additional information on how we align with these frameworks and key indicators demonstrating our sustainability performance, please refer to the Frameworks & Metrics section.

Originally published on U.S. Bank company blog

Dave Loparco has been interested in building and taking things apart since he was a kid.

“I’ve been building cars since I was probably 13 years old,” said Loparco, who co-founded Later Dayz Customz in 2018 in Council Bluffs, Iowa. “I used to work on bicycles, tear them apart. I never was happy with a bike I had… and it kind of escalated from there.”

That escalation took Loparco from working on hot rods and motorcycles in his driveway to a garage space that takes up half a city block, giving him space to work on everything from the guts of cars to custom paint work. Each car and truck is a passion project for Loparco’s customers, he said, but it can be expensive. 

“Everybody’s like, ‘Can I throw it on my credit card?’” said Loparco, who has banked with U.S. Bank for decades. “At first, I was like, there’s no way I possibly could but then BJ hooked me up.”

BJ Pirie is a small business specialist with U.S. Bank. He helped Loparco set up a credit card processing machine at his shop through Elavon, a U.S. Bank payments subsidiary, to make it easier for Loparco to accept payments as well as cover the cost of parts needed for vehicles quicker.

“Being able to have money on hand from his customers accepting cards instead of waiting for a check to clear or potentially bounce, Dave has more security and peace of mind,” Pirie said. “Having just one payments terminal was impactful to him and allowed him the flexibility he needed to grow his business.”

Loparco, who became 100% owner of Later Dayz Customz last year and whose team has hundreds of car show awards to their name, is also thinking about the future. That might be an expansion into nearby Omaha in a few years, he said, but he’s also thinking about what could be next for his industry.

“I’d like to bring in about another five employees to train them and teach them what we know [in the next couple of years],” said Loparco, not long before a local high schooler he and his team are teaching arrived at his shop. “Nobody knows our talent unless we pass it on, so – by passing it on to the younger generation – hopefully it keeps these cars around.” 

Check out the video above to learn more about Later Dayz Customz.

The Wesco Veterans Opportunity Liaison Team (VOLT) is proud to announce the launch of our annual Wesco Veteran Employee Scholarship program. This scholarship is open to the children of all full-time Wesco employees who are high school seniors (or equivalent) through age 25. The Wesco employee does not need to be a member of the VOLT business resource group; VOLT welcomes all military, allies and supporters. 

The Wesco Veteran Employee Scholarship program will award four (4) individual $1,000 scholarships to four (4) unique individuals who are pursuing military service, trade school or college.

This year, we received an overwhelming response to our 2025 VOLT Scholarship program this year topping at 20 applicants. The incredible academics and talent shown in this year’s students were impressive.

Congratulations to our 2025 Scholarship Recipients!

Payton Moore

Payton plans on attending Tarleton State University in Texas majoring in Construction and Engineering Management. She aspires to take over her grandfather’s construction business in the future. “Construction has always been a major part in my life, so I am happy to carry on in my family’s footsteps.”

Raul Alvarez

Raul will be attending The College of New Jersey located in Ewing, N.J. pursuing a degree in computer and electrical engineering. “My passion for technology, problem-solving and innovation drives me to explore how hardware and software interact to shape the future.”

Christopher Bruno

Christopher will be attending Syracuse University in New York majoring in business analytics. In addition, he was accepted into the accelerated Juris Doctor program to pursue his law degree after receiving his bachelors. “It is an honor to receive this scholarship.”

Adit Bhootra

Adit will be entering his sophomore year at the University of Wisconsin – Madison where he will focus on cancer research. His future plans are to attend medical school and pursue oncology. “I am honored to be selected as a 2025 scholarship recipient.”

The VOLT Scholarship program is a great opportunity extended annually to students of Wesco employees. Visit the Wesco VOLT page to learn more.

A recent article by Sustainable Biz Canada spotlights DP World’s latest step toward greener port operations: the field trial of its first hydrogen-powered rubber-tired gantry (RTG) crane at the Port of Vancouver. Authored by business editor Tyler Choi, the article – titled “DP World Field Tests Its First Hydrogen-Powered Crane in Vancouver” explores how this innovation could help the global logistics giant significantly cut carbon emissions – starting in Canada, with the potential to scale worldwide.

RTG cranes are a common feature at container terminals, lifting and moving 40-foot containers. But they’re also heavy diesel users. At DP World’s Vancouver terminal, the 19 RTGs account for half of the site’s diesel consumption, contributing thousands of tons of CO₂ annually. To tackle this, the company retrofitted one of the cranes to operate on hydrogen fuel cells, making it the first of its kind in DP World’s global network.

“We realized that we need to find a solution to electrify or decarbonize our RTG yard cranes,” said Joel Werner, COO of DP World in Canada, in an interview with Sustainable Biz Canada. The new hydrogen-powered crane emits only water vapor, eliminating up to 150,000 liters of diesel consumption per year. Werner added it’s also quieter, more reliable, and less polluting than its diesel counterpart.

The move is part of DP World’s broader plan to reach net-zero emissions by 2050. With over 1,500 gantry cranes in use across its global terminals, scaling the hydrogen solution could lead to major emissions cuts.

The crane is now in a year-long field trial to measure hydrogen consumption, productivity, and cost against a traditional diesel model. While the pilot initially used grey hydrogen (from fossil fuels), the ongoing trial uses green hydrogen sourced from HTEC, another B.C. company that produces hydrogen from renewable energy.

Hydrogen was chosen over batteries for several reasons. “We have a very energy-intensive application lifting 40 tons repetitively all day long,” Werner said. “If you go to the pure battery solution, we can quickly deplete that, so we needed a solution that could work in that use case reliably.” Vancouver’s role as a hydrogen innovation hub also made it an ideal launchpad.

If the trial proves successful, DP World plans to retrofit all 25 RTG cranes at its Vancouver and Prince Rupert terminals. The technology could then be deployed to terminals worldwide, including in the Netherlands and Australia. Hydrogen retrofits may also extend to other port equipment like reach stackers.

With port operations contributing up to 3% of global greenhouse gas emissions, DP World’s hydrogen-powered crane is a promising step toward cleaner, more sustainable supply chains.

Read the original article here.

Most small business owners are chief everything officers. Even when outsourcing or hiring to fill needs, their hands run deep in operations, finance, marketing, technology, and sales. Consequently, some meaningful relationships go underdeveloped—including the important relationship between small business owner and bank.

It’s not that small business owners don’t value their bank. Most do. Rather, for time-crunched owner-operators, the relationship is transactional. The bank is home to their accounts and the place to deposit and withdraw money. It’s where they turn to access capital and loans. For some, the bank is even a resource for managing cash flow. Yet for many, the bank—and by extension their banker—is not a trusted business advisor. It should be.

Conversations lead to more targeted solutions

At the close of 2024, there were nearly 4,000 FDIC-insured banks in the U.S. Most offer a range of similar solutions. Even rates and terms tend not to vary dramatically.

So, what differentiates one bank from another? What makes a bank feel more than simply a checking or savings account?

The answer is simple. It is the relationship. It is a banker understanding the specific demands of a business and being able to provide much-needed advice and a tailored solution to a unique problem to achieve a specific outcome to help the business run better.

In addition to being the wearer of many hats, business owners are experts in their trade. Often times, that expertise is not financial.

But that’s where business bankers come in. Their knowledge equips them to address a range of complex scenarios. From a knowledge of products that may improve efficiency and profitability to experience helping address a host of financial challenges, business bankers can offer advice and expertise that small business owners neither have themselves nor can easily access.

Examples include payments and receivables, invoicing, liquidity management, process automation, and fraud protection. Business bankers are also well versed in cash flow management—the lifeline of every successful enterprise.

The challenge is that financial operations is a bridge typically not crossed together. And this is a mistake, for the business…and the bank. In fact, the shift to a more consultative approach to business banking falls more on the bank than the business. Banks thrive when their clients thrive. Helping business owners understand how the money flows through their operation and where there may be opportunities to benefit from managing their collection and payable processes differently creates opportunities for all.

Of course, this starts with conversations and building a relationship.

Transforming the relationship between business and bank

Banks realize differentiation is about more than the products and solutions they offer. Differentiation is about changing the relationship from transactional to consultative.

KeyBank, for example, has launched a Certified Cash Flow Advisor Program. The program empowers business owners to navigate their financial operations by providing them with a highly trained advisor who can work with them holistically across the business to reduce friction, improve efficiency, and identify and act on opportunities for growth.

This advice-driven approach goes beyond traditional banking and offers strategic insights that help owner-operators make informed decisions to reach their financial goals. It puts small business owners first and product-driven solutions second.

This is as it should be. If business owners view their banks only through the lens of product catalogs to navigate and choose from, banking is just another ball to juggle and hat to wear.

Conversations that matter

Small business owners are accustomed to facing more challenges than their larger counterparts—the impact of COVID-19, high-interest rates, and tariffs are recent examples. Yet what makes small businesses vulnerable—size and scope—is also their strength. Typically free from the red tape and stakeholder interests, they can be nimbler and more quickly embrace innovative practices.

Here are some conversations small businesses should be having with their banks.

• Assessing the health of the business. What are concerns? How are payments?
• Exploring ways to improve cash flow. Capital is extremely valuable. Are business operations insulated from supply chain disruption? Can the business pivot to invest in technology to streamline operations?
• Addressing workforce challenges. Banks can offer a platform of benefits and specialized products to attract and retain employees.

Small businesses are the backbone of our economy. As the challenges continue to grow, there is no doubt they are up to the challenge. And with greater commitment from banks to collaborate more than sell, small businesses are equipped for greater resiliency and success.

About the author: Mike Walters is an Executive Vice President and President of Business Banking at KeyBank. He can be reached at michael_r_walters@keybank.com

This is designed to provide general information only. All credit products are subject to collateral and/or credit approval, terms, conditions, availability and subject to change. ©2025 KeyCorp. All rights reserved. CFMA #250521-3232428

Extreme weather events are becoming more frequent, intense, and costly. In 2024 alone, global natural disasters resulted in an estimated $368 billion in economic losses, with 60% of these losses uninsured, highlighting a substantial protection gap (Insurance Business). Looking ahead, a 2024 World Economic Forum report predicts that by 2050, climate-intensified natural disasters could lead to $12.5 trillion in economic losses worldwide (World Economic Forum).

At the same time, corporate exposure to climate risks is expected to triple by mid-century, with over $1.14 trillion in market value at risk for companies listed on major global exchanges (Axios).

However, there is also a massive opportunity on the horizon. According to a 2025 report by FIC and Bain & Company, global revenues from climate adaptation solutions are expected to grow from $1 trillion today to $4 trillion by 2050, while the investment opportunity could soar from $2 trillion to $9 trillion (GIC, 2025).

These figures highlight an investable frontier for the private sector. It is a space where impact venture capital can play a catalytic role in accelerating technologies that can save lives, protect assets, and create economic value.

The Power of Adaptation & Resilience Technologies

Cisco Foundation is answering this call through its Regenerative Future Fund and grants to nonprofits. The Foundation strategically invests in innovative technologies designed to help communities adapt, respond to, and mitigate the impacts of extreme weather events.

The Regenerative Future Fund’s approach combines patient, catalytic capital with blended finance models, creating an enabling environment for companies to scale transformative adaptation solutions, even when immediate financial returns are uncertain.

Keep reading to learn more about five startups and organizations the Foundation is supporting and how they are helping communities adapt and build resilience.

Responding to Rainstorms and Hurricanes: Real-Time Flood Monitoring with Hohonu

The 2024 Atlantic hurricane season was one of the costliest on record, causing approximately $200 billion in damages, with 20 named storms battering the United States and resulting in widespread damage (New York Post/ Fox Weather). Real-time water data at the neighborhood level is critical for life-saving decision-making. With hurricanes intensifying and moving more unpredictably, the difference of a few inches in water level can determine whether a neighborhood floods.

For example, many communities affected by storms like Hurricane Helene in 2024 lacked timely and localized water level data, leading to inadequate early-warnings, delayed responses, and increased damage.

Hohonu, which provides smart monitoring tools, fills this gap by delivering community-level visibility into changing water conditions. Their affordable flood-monitoring sensors deliver real-time, hyperlocal water level data to vulnerable coastal and inland communities, enabling swifter, more informed decisions around evacuations, infrastructure protection, and emergency response. The ability to track water levels on a block-by-block level can reduce emergency response times by up to 30% and has been shown to increase the efficacy of flood preparedness efforts by more than 40%.

With support from the Cisco Foundation Regenerative Future Fund, Hohonu is scaling rapidly and working with both government and commercial entities to bring real-time water monitoring to every community that needs it. As Kevin Mukai, Hohonu’s COO, noted, “With Cisco Foundation’s goal of building resilient and empowered communities – not to mention Cisco’s strengths in networking, IoT, and digital transformation – the fit could not be better.”

As of 2025, Hohonu has deployed more than 160 monitoring stations across 16 states, generating millions of hours of publicly available water level data. This open-access approach reinforces the importance of transparency and public engagement in resilient infrastructure and intelligent monitoring solutions. By helping communities build their own awareness and response capabilities, Hohonu’s platform strengthens local autonomy and preparedness in the face of rising weather and environmental risks. Learn more how Hohonu helps Lee County stay ahead of flooding in the video above.

Predictive AI Analytics for Wildfire Management: Vibrant Planet

In 2023 and 2024, the United States experienced some of its most destructive wildfire seasons in recent memory. According to the National Interagency Fire Center, wildfires burned over 8.5 million acres nationwide in 2024 alone. In California, Los Angeles County saw multiple wildfires exacerbated by dry conditions and fuel buildup. These fires displaced thousands of residents and caused tens of billions in insured losses — much of which might have been mitigated with a $9 million investment in fuels reductions along the wild-urban interface, according to post fire analysis on the Eaton Fire conducted by Vibrant Planet.

This is exactly where Vibrant Planet’s platform comes in. It is a first-of-its-kind decision support system that enables fire districts, states, counties, federal agencies and utilities to understand current risk and ecological health, pinpoint priorities for risk mitigation treatments, then simulate the effects of different treatments (such as defensible space, hazardous fuels reduction, forest thinning or prescribed burns) and, over time, quantify ecological and economic benefits. The platform also supports cross-jurisdictional coordination of plans and spending for implementation. In Placer County, California, which has the highest number of structures at risk of wildfire in California, local authorities used Vibrant Planet to prioritize and plan 20,000 acres of wildfire risk reduction treatments across forested communities. The result was a cohesive, community-supported roadmap that not only reduced fire risk but also improved water security, biodiversity, and carbon storage, approved within 14 weeks, compared to typical multi-year planning processes. Vibrant Planet is now contracted as an annual subscription across 73 million acres in eight western states, including about 30 million acres in California alone.

Vibrant Planet’s technology reduces the time it takes to develop and approve forest management plans from years to weeks and reduces conflict in complex socioecological environments. The platform provides forecasted outcomes of different types and intensities of treatment, and models their effects on wildfire probability and intensity, which helps managers weigh and communicate tradeoffs of different plans to drive public support and funding for implementation. Through numerous partnerships, Vibrant Planet provides a comprehensive wildfire resilience solution — from house-level defensible space to wildland-urban interface hazardous fuels reductions, to watershed-scale ecosystem restoration.

Cisco Foundation’s investment has supported the expansion of these capabilities, enabling broader adoption of Vibrant Planet and accelerating the development of new features, including slope stabilization planning and ecosystem recovery support. As fire risk increases, platforms like Vibrant Planet will be essential for building long-term resilience and protecting people, infrastructure, and nature.

Autonomous Wildfire Suppression: Rain

Through Azolla Ventures — an impact-first investor supporting early-stage technology companies that can achieve large-scale impact—Cisco Foundation indirectly supports Rain, a startup transforming wildfire response through autonomous aircraft. Building on the proven Sikorsky Black Hawk helicopter and MATRIX autonomy platform,

Rain’s AI firefighting pilot enables aircraft to autonomously perceive, understand, target, and suppress emerging wildfires, reducing response times and improving safety for human responders. This blend of artificial intelligence (AI) and autonomous robotics represents a cutting-edge approach to fire mitigation/management, offering communities a rapid, reliable tool to combat wildfires effectively.

The autonomous technology behind helicopters equipped with Rain is crucial in tackling fires during hazardous conditions, such as nighttime or in rugged terrain, when traditional firefighting efforts face significant barriers. This advanced capability can save valuable response time and protect firefighters by reducing their exposure to extreme risks.

Advanced Forest Management: Earth Force

Earth Force is advancing forest management through remote-controlled machinery and real-time digital monitoring. By modernizing vegetation management, Earth Force enables safer and more efficient wildfire prevention at scale. This technology not only mitigates wildfire risks but also enhances local economic resilience by creating safer, technology-driven forestry jobs.

Earth Force’s remote-controlled equipment allows for safer and more precise forest clearing, significantly reducing the danger to workers in wildfire-prone areas. This modernization addresses labor shortages in forest management and positions communities to proactively address wildfire risk more effectively.

Cisco Foundation Regenerative Future Fund supports Earth Force through an investment in Third Sphere, an early-stage fund backing AI-native founders transforming global systems through climate-aligned technologies.

Empowering Communities to Build Resiliency: Open Future Coalition

Open Future Coalition (OFC) works alongside communities to design adaptable workflows, build capacity, and foster ecosystems of practice across sectors like regenerative agriculture, watershed restoration, and Indigenous land stewardship.This work has been especially impactful in Western North Carolina, where OFC is partnering with North Carolina A&T State University and Warren Wilson College to support flood response efforts, citizen participation in scientific research, and regional biocultural mapping as part of broader post-disaster recovery and resilience strategies.

The Regional Resilience Fellowship program—launched with grant support from the Cisco Foundation—played a key role in shaping these tools through real-world use across 35+ project sites, laying the groundwork for a “living library” of community-published resources, templates, and curricula from projects across the OFC network. By strengthening a common infrastructure for local action, OFC is helping communities from Appalachia to the Amazon scale their impact and mobilize the resources they need to build resilient communities.

Building a More Resilient Future

Cisco Foundation’s Regenerative Future Fund and resiliency-related grants are integral parts of the company’s broader environmental sustainability strategy, the Plan for Possible, as well as our long-standing disaster response efforts. This starts with employee fundraising campaigns and grants to nonprofits that support communities in the immediate aftermath of a disaster. It extends to Cisco Crisis Response deployments that use our technology to support first responders, and to longer-term resilience and recovery efforts with our technology, our people, and our resources.

Learn more about how the Cisco Foundation supports resiliency on cisco.com

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In part three of this three part series, we explore how the Columbus City Schools (CCS) student Green Team built an ambassador team that shared their community garden with other students and other clubs.  While the subject is about gardening, the gardening program is also about their social and emotional wellness.

The magic that grows as kids discover gardening

Our purpose to GroMoreGood takes many forms. One of those special moments happened with Columbus City Schools in Ohio, where the magic of a single idea blossomed beyond its original intent and became something bigger, something greater. The growth journey of the Columbus City Schools program epitomizes GroMoreGood. A new generation of kids is developing a lifelong connection to the earth.

The idea 
Early in her career, school teacher Katie Young had a writing assignment for her students that was based on a simple question: Do you know where food comes from? Not one of the students answered that it comes from the earth. Katie knew this had to change.

In 2018, the Columbus City Schools Farm to School program was born in partnership with ScottsMiracle-Gro, The Scotts Miracle-Gro Foundation and The Ohio State University Extension. Teachers were given tools and Miracle-Gro supplies to teach kids how to create, tend to and harvest gardens full of fresh vegetables.

Starting to grow 
The initial group of teachers embraced the program, and students did, too. Soon, more schools and teachers were brought into the program, and it started delivering results that exceeded all original expectations.

Benefits beyond expectations 
Students experienced mental health benefits from touching the dirt and taking care of the plants on a regular basis. 

High school students talked about the therapeutic aspect of gardening and the way working with plants brought them a sense of peace. 

Another group of students created ways to invite the community to participate in the gardens, which went beyond the classroom. 

While elementary school students discovered that fresh foods are delicious, sometimes on their own and sometimes when added to a smoothie or pizza!

Read more about ScottsMiracle-Gro and the partnership with the Columbus City Schools.

Watch the video here.

About ScottsMiracle-Gro 
With approximately $3.6 billion in sales, the Company is the world’s largest marketer of branded consumer products for lawn and garden care. The Company’s brands are among the most recognized in the industry. The Company’s Scotts®, Miracle-Gro®, and Ortho® brands are market-leading in their categories. The Company’s wholly-owned subsidiary, The Hawthorne Gardening Company, is a leading provider of nutrients, lighting, and other materials used in the indoor and hydroponic growing segment. For additional information, visit us at www.scottsmiraclegro.com.