README for Marc Zuluaga

Hi. I am Marc. A lot of people stumble pronouncing my last name. But it is pretty simple. Zulu – aga. Means “place of many caves” – which is fitting for someone who has been down a lot of rabbit holes. My father is from Colombia where I was born and my white mother is American, where I have spent 95% of my life. This mixed ethnic background is not something I have linked to my work until more recently in my career.

Who am I?

Outside of work

Outside of work, I have a family that means more to me than anything. Margaret and I met each other in college and have grown up together. I can’t imagine trying to navigate life and keep up with our three amazing children without her. Outside of kids and my marriage, I have time for… sleep? When we get there, I am sure Margaret and will enjoy a new chapter with a little more free time – that is not where we are right now – and that is ok. Perhaps because of this we all do really love unplugging on our vacations – our go to spots recently have been northern new England including NH and an island off of Portland, Maine.

At work

You know those people that on circuitous journeys to professionally finding themselves build a wide foundation of diverse experiences? I am not one of those people. When I was about 15 years old, seemingly out of know where, I did my science fair project on passive solar design, fell in love with the notion of engineering fluid and thermal systems for positive environmental impact and have wanted to do nothing else since then. You could call it a calling. I started at Steven Winter Associates (SWA) as my first job out of school, always thought I would go back to graduate school to become an academic researcher, but kept learning new things every day so stayed there for 20 years. In addition to picking up a bunch of technical building science knowledge, I was deeply shaped by the entrepreneurial culture at the firm and honed my selling skills. In the completely wide open world of green building of the last couple of decades, this has meant authentically selling ideas and subject matter expertise. In this role, I have been exposed to the cast of characters that is the real estate community and have some appreciation for many ways the world is broken that are relevant to anyone seeking to create change. I believe my greatest strength lies in research, finding the right questions and in seeing the forest for the trees – although every now and then I will make leaps from small sets of data that get me in trouble. When I started out, the complex systems I dealt with were all bound up in the physical world. At some point, I expanded to trying to understand and impact systems that involve both buildings and people. To figure this out requires more dialogue with a wider range of people and has made me seek to more closely tie my own cultural heritage with the work we do.

What do I think I’m doing?

I am Co-Founder and Chief Revenue Officer of Cadence OneFive. I am here because:

  1. Based on everything I have learned in my career to date, I believe that our vision to tackle buildings through a framework of city/community/network scale optimization has the potential to truly accelerate equitable decarbonization. And I’d like to make sure that the finite number of hours I have on this planet are as impactful as possible in moving the ball forward.

  2. Even if (when!) we are wildly successful in realizing this vision, we will still only represent a drop in the bucket at the scale of global emissions which to me makes the journey and people along the way truly more important than any destination. As such, I believe it is important to keep work in perspective (something I have a tendency to forget at times). And two goals I have that are intertwined with our vision are to (1) make positive and meaningful connections with others on the C15 team and with our partners and (2) set up C15 in a way that allows staff to be their best selves professionally and have a life outside of work

  3. I have been more fortunate than most. And I see this company as the most effective way for me to positively contribute to the world when it comes to my professional life.

Working with me

How I will try to support you

I believe I can be an effective mentor when it comes to sharing my experience and mistakes. This is something that I enjoy and find fulfilling… it is a two-way street so please don’t be shy about using me as a resource.

And when there are things you care about that I don’t know enough about, I might be able to connect you with a variety of people in my network with different areas of expertise that could also be resources.

I am generally pretty open to criticism – so also don’t be shy on that front.

I am happy to step back to allow others to step up.

And if (when…) shit hits the fan, I think you will find that I can be pretty flexible and understanding.

Preferred modes of working

  1. I generally work from 8:30 am to 5:30 Mon – Thurs and 8:30 AM – 1 PM on Fridays. I will sometimes work on weekends on solo work, but try to avoid.

  2. For internal communications, please ping me on Slack rather than emails.

  3. Please rely on either Calendly or Calendar availability for meeting scheduling. Please do not send me scheduling emails unless there are conflicting meetings.

Stuff I don’t do well

These are things I’m working on.

(Irony of ironies…) I have generally been a laggard when it comes to new workplace productivity technology. Please be patient with me when it comes to my adaptation of all the amazing resources Bomee has found for us. I am truly trying.

I have trouble asking for help.

I don’t think on my feet very well when it comes to responding to inter-personal challenges between people in real time. I understand that “in the moment” is the best time to say certain things. It usually takes me sleeping on such situations to process (ok…. I will come clean…. My better half is a social worker and often spoon feeds me bites of obviousness that help me be a better person and worker). Please don’t take any instances of initial silence for apathy though.

One thing I did perhaps too well as a consultant was to say “yes, we can do that” to all of our customers. This is fine for consulting but a weakness when it comes to C15’s productized approach…. So please call me on this when I start saying “yes” too much. To confirm, I still believe we can do anything at C15…. but in order for us to fully realize our expansive vision, we need to be focused.

I am not a natural project manager who excels at breaking a defined objective into tasks and sub tasks. But when others do this, I am happy to plug away at anything – like many people, just figuring out where to start is sometimes a challenge.

Personality assessment results

If helpful, according to the MBTI test, I am an INFP. I only have the slightest marginal preference for Feeling over Thinking. My strongest tendency which I believe is relevant to our product work is one for Intuition over Sensing. It will be interesting to see how this plays out with C15. There has been such a dearth of data in our industry to date that I have leaned pretty heavily on extrapolating from a few data points. Will be interesting to see how more data allows us to better blend sensing and intuition going forward.