Alex Wright-Gladstein is an entrepreneur who is passionate about the climate crisis and finding ways to divert our dependence on fossil fuels in lucrative industries. After getting a BA in economics and political science at Tufts University in 2008 she went to MIT Sloan School of Management, graduating with an MBA in 2015 along with the Siebel Scholar, an award for leadership and academic excellence.
Wright-Gladstein developed her passion for the environment at age 12, this interest strengthened while at college, where she saw the potential in connecting technology and climate action. During her time at Tufts she founded the Tufts Energy Forum, a program dedicated to educating the community about alternative energy sources, global energy supply and demand, and the geopolitical implications of the pursuit of energy resources. After graduating Tufts in 2008, Wright-Gladstein worked in data analytics at EnerNOC gaining some understanding of the technology that would go on to be a basis for her work. Determined to help environmentally-oriented tech start-ups succeed and expand, she decided to attend MIT to get a business degree.
In 2015, after creating a business plan as a part of the MBA program, Wright-Gladstein decided to team up with two PhD students to further develop the project and participate in the MIT Clean Energy Prize, winning $275,000 as the grand prize. With this capital the team was able to get the start-up off the ground, eventually naming it Ayar Labs. Using Moore’s Law, the startup focused on the energy efficiency and optimization of fiber optic communications, using light to move data between chips in data centers and super computers. Wright-Gladstein worked as co-founder and CEO at Ayar Labs for over 9 years working with her colleagues to raise hundreds of millions of dollars to develop the inventive technology.
In 2021, Wright-Gladstein founded Sphere, an incorporation focused on making it easy for employers to offer climate-friendly 401(k) and 403(b) retirement programs to their employees. She came up with this idea after struggling to find retirement plans that didn't go towards fossil fuels, for her employees at Ayar labs in 2017. Wright-Gladstein learned that over 1.5 trillion dollars get invested in fossil fuel companies through United States retirement savings and was inspired to find a way to change the investment industry. Sphere has been added to financial service companies like ADP and Empower, expanding the opportunity to invest in sustainable 401(k)s to tens of thousands of organizations and millions of employees.
Alex Wright-Gladstein is dedicated to seeing the future of the global economy changed through diverting the reliance on fossil fuels and has been and continues to be a pioneer in utilizing technology and the economy to change the way we see and participate in climate activism.
Sphere bio https://www.oursphere.org/about-us/team
https://www.sunvalleyforum.com/alexwg
Ayar Labs interview https://designthesolution.org/wli-entrepreneur-spotlight-alexandra-wright-gladstein/
Sphere interview https://greenportfolio.com/blog/sphere-female-founder-alex-wright-gladstein/