Alba Forns and Will Wiseman, graduates of Santa Cruz Accelerates program and Co-Founders of climate startup Climatize, have been selected among this year’s Forbes 30 Under 30 honorees in the Social Impact category. Forbes 30 Under 30 is list of young people changing the world and are judged a variety of factors, including (but not limited to) funding, revenue, social impact, scale, inventiveness and potential.

Inspired by the 2019 global climate strikes where they saw over 100,000 people protesting for climate action, Alba & Will ran an experiment to see if they could crowdfund enough money to fund a small solar array in Kenya. From that, Climatize has grown into a new tool enabling anyone to invest in renewable energy projects like solar & energy efficiency with as little as $5.

Other notable Forbes honorees with ties to Santa Cruz are Michael Sikand who founded Our Future Media, Inc. which was recently acquired by Morning Brew and Reed Hastings, cofounder and chairman of Netflix made it to Forbes 400 list.