Grace Sai: Helping Businesses to Be More Carbon Conscious and Reduce Emissions

Ladderworks is a publishing platform of diverse picture books and an online curriculum with the mission to empower over a million kids to become social entrepreneurs. Our current series features interviews by our interplanetary journalist Spiffy with inspiring Social Entrepreneurs, Entrepreneurship Ecosystem Builders, and Changemakers who are advancing the UN SDGs. 

Spiffy here with the scoop on the entrepreneurial leaders of Planet Earth. As the only interplanetary journalist stationed on this blue planet, I’m thrilled to present this galactic exclusive with Grace Sai, the co-founder and CEO of Unravel Carbon. Let’s learn about what’s happening there and how Grace is making a positive impact in the world.

Spiffy: Hi Grace, thanks a million for talking to me today. Tell me, what challenge are you addressing through Unravel Carbon?

Grace: Thanks for having me, Spiffy! We help companies be 'carbon curious' and then 'carbon smart' by helping them know how much their business activities affect climate change in the world, and then we help them see what they can do to reduce their 'carbon emissions'. We have built an AI engine that can generate magical carbon results in a short amount of time! Large companies use us to know where they can do better, and then, hopefully they do!

Spiffy: What motivates you to do it?

Grace: I have a daughter, Lea. She is four and a half years old. When she was two years old, I thought about her future, and the planet that she will live on. I got scared when I learnt that 75% of the world might not be habitable when she is an adult because the world is becoming hotter and hotter. Floods, droughts, forest fires, and tsunamis will occur more and more, and maybe one day, she would have no place to live! As her mother, I wanted to use everything I know to help fix that problem—a very large problem! So I got to work and found a big and grand idea! 

Spiffy: Hear, hear! What would you say is the impact of your work?

Grace: In the last two years since Unravel Carbon was built, we have helped many companies understand their carbon emissions. From Asia’s largest salad shop chain to the most popular fashion brand to the world’s largest airline cargo handling company—we have worked hard day and night to help sustainability leaders around the world take action to help our planet. We also help country leaders, youth leaders, and schools to educate more people about the environment and what we can do to help fight climate change.

Spiffy: Thanks for speaking with me today, Grace—it’s been an honor!

After a successful 15-year career in building startup and impact ecosystems, leading a VC fund, and influencing multi-sectoral collaborations, Grace Sai’s next 15 years will bring everything together to help fight climate change. Grace is a graduate from Oxford, INSEAD and a Kauffman Fellow. And she is the mother of Lea! (Nominated by Max Kahn. First published on the Ladderworks website on April 5, 2024.)

The views and opinions expressed herein are those of the interviewee and do not necessarily reflect those of Ladderworks LLC.