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From Here Forward shares stories and ideas about amazing things UBC and its alumni are doing around the world. It covers people and places, truths, science, art, and accomplishments with the view that sharing better inspires better. Join hosts Carol Eugene Park and Jeevan Sangha, both UBC grads, in exploring solutions for the negative stuff out there — focussing on the good for a change, from here forward.
FHF | Dax Dasilva | Climate Change Response PT02
[00:00:00] Carol Eugene Park: Hello, friendly alumni. Welcome back to From Here Forward, your favorite UBC Podcast Network podcast. I'm Carol, and she's Jeevan.
[00:00:12] Jeevan Sangha: That's me. So, Carol, how many people have you met recently who've won an Emmy?
[00:00:18] Carol Eugene Park: You know, that's a really interesting question to start the podcast in the most subtlest way possible. I have actually met a lot of Emmy winning journalists, to be honest. But if you're talking about, like, cool Emmy winners that, like, people actually care about, I've met none. What about you?
[00:00:31] Jeevan Sangha: I have yet to meet a cool Emmy winning journalist. But in terms of other cool Emmy winners, I'm guessing I've met around the same amount as you. So that's our not-so-subtle way of introducing our guest for this month, a super cool Emmy winning UBC alum who wears many hats.
[00:00:47] Carol Eugene Park: For our two-part series on climate change makers, we sat down with Dax Dasilva, a tech entrepreneur, author, and climate activist from Vancouver. In addition to being the founder and CEO of the global e commerce company Lightspeed, Dax is also deeply immersed in the world of climate justice and conservation.
[00:01:06] By the way, if you haven't listened to the first part of this series with UBC student Bashar Rahman, make sure you do that. Um, you know what's up at this point, all the details, dillydoods, are all in the show notes.
[00:01:16] Jeevan Sangha: And a big part of his climate work is Age of Union, a book turned non-profit environmental alliance that supports several global conservation projects around the world. We covered so much in our conversation, I mean, from entrepreneurship and activism to the power of storytelling, to influence real and measurable action.
[00:01:32] Carol Eugene Park: Alrighty, well, without further ado, adieu, here's our conversation with Dax.
[00:01:38] Jeevan Sangha: Tell us a bit about what your time at UBC was like? What was your experience like there and how did it prepare you to be a successful entrepreneur?
[00:01:45] Dax Dasilva: Yeah, my time at UBC was, it was a while ago now. I just, uh, recently graduated about twenty-four years later with my Bachelor of Arts. But back in the day when I was at UBC, I think it was a really interesting exploration for me because I started in computer science and ended in the arts. And I think almost everything I studied has had some real relevance in how my career and projects, uh, have played out. So I started computer science because I was coding since I was thirteen on the Mac. And I thought it was an obvious for me to go into computer science.
[00:02:20] But it was so engineering focused and I'm really a designer at heart. When I completed my first year at computer science, then I moved into the arts after taking a gap year and then really enjoyed all of the art history, religious studies, economics courses. If I look at my life now, you know, the engineering studies that I did in computer science and environmental science plus religious studies and art history in particular, those have all ended up as projects like Lightspeed and Age of Union, which is software and environment. But also I had an LGBTQ art gallery that was called Never Apart, where the art history and some of the spirituality sort of flows into. So, very well-rounded education that I thought at the time, I didn't really know where all the pieces fit together. But now, in retrospect, it all makes so much sense.
[00:03:07] Carol Eugene Park: So, you said you took a gap year. That's kind of a scary thing to do after your first year. Most people would freak out. I mean, kind of walk us through how you came to that decision. Was it easy?
[00:03:17] Dax Dasilva: The gap year happened because basically had sort of my life written out for me in terms of being a software developer. I think I was taken aback by the fact that computer science wasn't for me. And I had already had a software development practice. I was doing contracts, making money, uh, all through my teens and twenties. And so I did that for a year and to really think and reassess what I wanted to come back into my education and do. And then I came back with a lot of clarity about pursuing the arts. I think it's the pieces of me that made a great software designer or software developer. It was like really the design aspects, creating beautiful user interfaces. And that really came from the artists, designers, curators in my family. And I thought, okay, well, if that's really where the computer skill comes from, maybe I should explore that. You know, so I think I had those realizations in the gap year.
[00:04:11] At the other side of there's a deep spiritual current through it, through my family. You know, Hindu priests and also later Catholic priests and nuns. That was something I really wanted to explore and also underlies all of my projects, this spiritual journey and being able to really dive into that with religious studies. It really became sort of how do I unearth the things in me that I think make me, not only a good software developer, but really actually looking ahead into how is it going to help me be a better entrepreneur?
[00:04:39] Because that was always my goal is to become, you know, to have my own company. How is it going to help me become a better person and a more complete person?
[00:04:47] Jeevan Sangha: That's really interesting. I think especially when it comes to like business and entrepreneurship, I think there's this idea that like, you only can pursue a finance route or a business route. I imagine that all these life experiences helped you a lot interpersonally as well while navigating entrepreneurship.
[00:05:01] Dax Dasilva: I mean, they've been huge. So it's, and it's maybe not even just the large themes of computer science, environmental science, art history and religious studies, all the other things that I was able to take in the arts degree.
[00:05:11] I'm amazed that UBC offers this interdisciplinary arts degree because I really took full advantage of that. And I feel like all of those things that I sort of took up in that period all became little seeds of interest. I mean, I took them because there was already an interest there, but then I sort of like, uh, you know, if I look back over the last twenty-five years, I can really see how a lot of those little seedlings became, you know, full blown interest or actually became material projects.
[00:05:39] I have a niece that's going into her first year and she often cites that she doesn't really know what she wants to do yet. And I'm like, well, you know, I think it's about planting those seeds. It's about really discovering the things inside of you that you want to nurture, that you want to water.
[00:05:54] Carol Eugene Park: Speaking of growth, um, tell us about Lightspeed's growth and general trajectory. Like how did it start and then how did it become this global enterprise?
[00:06:03] Dax Dasilva: So Lightspeed started in 2005. I was about twenty-eight. So a few years after my almost completed arts degree at UBC. I've been building software since I was thirteen. My father used to bring home a Mac. He was a graphic designer. He used to bring home a Mac in the Mac's early days. So I was playing with the Mac since I was nine, and built software all through my teens and twenties for local businesses. Before there was Apple stores, Apple had its own dealerships, kind of like a Toyota dealership where there's all these different stores that are not owned by Apple but resell Apple products.
[00:06:34] So they were the complex kind of retailer that the Lightspeed serves today. Um, we serve complex retailers and we serve complex restaurants. And so I built a lot of software for these dealerships first in Vancouver where I'm from, uh, and then later in Montreal. So the first customers for Lightspeed were the two hundred plus Apple dealerships around the world.
[00:06:54] What I realized soon after that is that, the workflows that work for a computer dealership also work for jewelry, also work for bike. They have repair shops, they have parts, they have serialized, um, valuable product, uh, and also work for apparel and other luxury goods. And so that's how Lightspeed sort of went from me building software pieces for these dealerships to realizing it was, there was a gap in the market for a product like this on the Mac. And Lightspeed's genesis sort of coincided with Apple's, you know, rise back to the top and, you know, within a few years of Lightspeed launching, you could walk up and down the streets of Soho in New York and every single store in Soho was using Lightspeed because they wanted the sleekest looking hardware. They wanted to understand their business, um, and not have a black plastic PC system that they put in their transactions.
[00:07:49] So it was like basically the Apple philosophy of making these complex retail businesses and having the business owner actually understand their business and be able to get insights from their business, understand the flows of purchasing and invoicing, have really nice looking point of sale, easy to use payments.
[00:08:07] So I just built a company the old-fashioned way, which was like, you know, you sell software, you, uh, you pocket a profit. And I bought lots of real estate for Lightspeed as we grew. In fact, uh, a lot of the later projects like the LGBTQ arts center and Age of Union. That building is because, that building exists with the outdoor pool and all this, like it's this amazing building. It exists because of all of the money we made as a bootstrapped company. And then I would, did for two years, uh, I was the executive chair of Lightspeed moving out of the CEO chair, which I was in for seventeen years. And then I just went back into the CEO chair last week. So, or like two weeks ago.
[00:08:47] So it's kind of been a long journey and the company will be twenty years old next year. And we're about three thousand people. We serve about a hundred countries, um, about one hundred and sixty-eight thousand of those businesses around the world. And we're nearing about nine hundred million in revenue.
[00:09:04] Carol Eugene Park: It's giving Steve Jobs energy.
[00:09:07] Jeevan Sangha: Congrats for stepping back into the seat. That's really exciting. Um, you kind of mentioned how the capital that was raised from Lightspeed, you know, went on to kind of fund Age of Union. Before we get fully into Age of Union, we're curious about your passion for conservation. Where did it begin? And can you talk a bit about why conservation is so important to the planet?
[00:09:26] Dax Dasilva: So the conservation piece was really important to me. As a kid, so my parents were refugees from Uganda, when they came and settled in Vancouver, my sister and I grew up in Vancouver and you know, the inexpensive activity that everybody in BC did was go camping. And so because of that, I was exposed to, you know, just these stunning British Columbia nature scapes and you know, fell in love with animals, fell in love with nature.
[00:09:54] So I think it's so important, especially as we're urbanizing and everybody's on their phone, for kids to get out in nature. Because at the end of the day, you only protect what you love. And if the next generation, even though the next generation seems so conscious, and so promising as a generation, if they don't fall in love with nature, then the planet has no chance.
[00:10:13] And when they started clear cutting the coastal temperate rainforests off the coast of Vancouver Island, thousand-year-old trees were being cut in places like Clayoquot Sound, I joined those protests. You know, I was seventeen, me and my stepbrother, we took my Mustang and we drove across the island and joined the protest. Tzeporah Berman leading, uh, an international protest. She was only twenty-three and I've actually gotten to, actually Tzeporah Berman presented me with my arts degree, uh, when I finally graduated this fall. So that came full circle too, for me, which was amazing. And she's such an incredible activist. Unbelievable.
[00:10:49] So I was seventeen, she was like, she was twenty-three. She took over this protest because everybody else had been thrown in jail. Over nine hundred people were jailed during the Clockwork Sound protests. It was called the War of the Woods. She turned it into an international outcry, and we saved Clayoquot Sound. And so that was like my first foray into activism. And we actually were able to protect this whole place, large place, Pacific Rim National Park, for future generations. And I've revisited many times. And I think I've only been begun to realize in later visits, what we were able to accomplish and how precious that is that we were able to save that.
[00:11:26] But I think what really turned me into an activist was the drive across Vancouver Island to get to Clayoquot Sound when I was seventeen. Because I drove through hours and hours of clear cut moonscape, and I just thought about all of the animals and just ancient thickets of forest and hillsides that used to exist there. And I think that's what really turned me into a lifetime conservationist.
[00:11:53] And I think that juxtaposed with what we were able to save. It showed us first of all, how destructive we can be as humans, but it also showed us what a single individual, Tzeporah Berman, and a collective, uh, outcry can actually do. And so, you know, I was well on my way to, you know, my Steve Jobs dream of having my own software company that had already started since I was a thirteen-year-old. But at seventeen, I already knew that, like, this was going to be a longer-term goal that I came back to when I had the experience and the resources to do something about it.
[00:12:28] And I would say I have tracked the environmental movement and the conservation movement very closely. You know, all those years I was building Lightspeed. And thinking about how I could bring something new to the table when I was able to build something like Age of Union.
[00:12:43] Carol Eugene Park: Is that like a typical kind of like a mindset that um, is common with like tech entrepreneurs? Like I feel like this is, you're kind of like meshing these two worlds and it's kind of almost jarring in my head because perhaps I'm of my own biases of, you know, tech bros and whatever.
[00:12:58] Dax Dasilva: I think that people that are beginning to build their own tech companies, or are successful, are starting to think about how they can give back and think about how they can contribute. And I would love to share that feeling of responsibility, you know, to those who much is given, much is expected. And I think what I really want to share with folks that are in tech is whether it's conservation or the environmental space or other spaces where help is needed, a lot of these areas where it's social good or serving the greater good, a lot of it needs startup energy.
[00:13:33] You know, the startup energy, the entrepreneurial energy is often lacking. You know, you've got very traditional NGOs that work at bureaucratic pace or are funding their own donor cycles and not really doing a lot on the ground, you know. And when young people join those organizations, you know, when the next generation joins those organizations, they're often very disappointed by the archaic way that they're trying to go about doing good. And it's well-intentioned people, and it's sometimes very old organizations. And I think they're going to start to transform, but the more of us that can inject some startup energy and some entrepreneurial energy into it, the better, you know, the more we can do. And that was my perspective starting Age of Union.
[00:14:13] I put forty million of my own money, chose ten conservation projects that are on the ground, indigenous or locally led projects, and didn't just dump it into a big name NGO because what I recognized is it's those on the ground projects that actually make the difference. I can bring something entrepreneurial to conservation by supporting people that are being entrepreneurial on the ground. Um, that are under, underrepresented, under supported, and deserve to have their work funded and deserve to have their work shown to people who have given up on the environment. Because the main thing I want to show is not doom and gloom. I want to show people what's possible when those people that don't have the funding get the funding. And so that's an example of how you can introduce entrepreneurial and startup mentality and that kind of DNA into a space and show people results because as an entrepreneur, that's what you want to see as results. And nobody's going to be satisfied as an entrepreneur by putting resources into old school, you know, bureaucratic NGO, because you're not going to get that, you know? So, so I think that there's a big contribution that can be made.
[00:15:20] So I see lots of potential for people coming from industries where they've made money into this space and adding in tons of value. But maybe some examples need to be made, um, in terms of like what is possible and so. I'm happy to, at least in the conservation space, show what we did.
[00:15:37] Jeevan Sangha: Just to go back, backtrack a little bit, can you explain what Age of Union is? Like, what does the initiative do? You kind of touched on how it kind of serves as a way to extend your passion, but anything else you wanted to elaborate on there?
[00:15:49] Dax Dasilva: So it comes down to highlighting those changemakers, right? I wrote a book called Age of Union in 2019, and it's about, you know, four pillars of being a changemaker from my perspective. Leadership, culture, spirituality, and at the end, and nature. And ultimately the book in the end is about how do you bring together those four pillars ultimately to sit, to save nature? Because that's our foundation, that's the foundation for everything. And I think it's the most in danger right now, right? So how can we be leaders? How can we reshape culture? How can we understand spirituality in terms of the oneness of everything in order to be better humans for nature and be in harmony with nature and be in an age of union with nature.
[00:16:31] Uh, so that book came out and during the pandemic, I released the book as a free eBook and a free audio book. And just because I thought, okay, well, you know, we are in this situation in COVID because we're so disconnected from nature. And this is a good time to reflect on how do we get back in harmony? And so I started doing Instagram Lives with a lot of people I'd really admired in conservation. And it turns out that the people I admired in conservation had so much in common. They were like under, like those underfunded and on the ground folks that really were making the real difference and really making the real change.
[00:17:07] So I put forty million towards finding ten projects that would, that I would be able to tell the stories of these change makers, these incredible individuals. And because I could show what, how much they could, how much one person could accomplish or how much one person in a team could accomplish, that the hope would be that people could have hope for the environment by seeing action. You know, not be overwhelmed by the statistics or the bad news, but actually see themselves in some of these changemakers and be encouraged to support change or make change or be involved with change because it's incredible what a single person can do.
[00:17:44] You know, and I think the projects do show that. And I think it humanizes the environment and it quantifies it. And it shows that no effort is too small and that actually small efforts can turn into big efforts. You know, we don't need ten projects. We need ten thousand projects or if everybody could be a change maker we wouldn't have the kinds of problems we did on this planet. Supporting projects with like annual budgets so that they could plan for five years, build out teams, teams of rangers for protected areas. Like money to buy, expand their protected area, all kinds of different fundings that, uh, that were difficult when a lot of these projects were on survival mode.
[00:18:20] You know, they would get scraps of donations and so on. But then the other thing that we discovered is that, yeah, we were going to do storytelling through editorial, through social media. But I really discovered early on that film was such a very powerful part of the puzzle here.
[00:18:36] Carol Eugene Park: Speaking of film, so as you are part of the two-part series of our climate change, um, I keep saying series, but that's the right word. Um, our first guest is a filmmaker, and he went to Bangladesh, and he, um, produced a short film, and he was talking about the importance of storytelling, um, and how that's going to be the driver for actually creating change. Um, I'm just wondering, like, what is the value of film and is that something you agree upon, and do you see actual change happening from storytelling?
[00:19:02] Dax Dasilva: So we started with the storytelling, with editorial, with social media, and I would go on the field. So out of the ten projects, I've been to nine projects, and I would do extensive social media to tell the stories of these projects on the ground, to take people to some of these places where there's like five travel, nine travel advisories of not to go there, like, DR Congo.
[00:19:21] Uh, so, you know, we were doing that storytelling, but it wasn't until the film that we did the film projects that we realized the power of that kind of storytelling. We did this film called Caught. And it was documenting Sea Shepherd France, uh, their mission to expose why ten thousand dolphins have started dying on the coast of France and washing up.
[00:19:42] We'd sponsored one of our ten projects is a ship. It's called the Age of Union and it's a ship with Sea Shepherd Global. And the main mission of the ship is to fight illegal and irregulated industrial fishing. And the reality is that all industrial fishing where they put drift nets for kilometers and kilometers and kilometers and pull everything out of the sea is super destructive, right?
[00:20:05] But what was happening here and what we documented in the film is as the trawlers from Europe and Asia come through off the coast of France and they vacuum everything, um, out in the sea. Dolphins have to come closer into the coast and then they collide for fish. And then they're, they collide with the local fishing fleet, the French fishing fleet, which had never had a problem with dolphins, but now they've got drift nets too.
[00:20:30] And they've now colliding. So this was a complete tragedy that is not sustainable. Like, you have ten thousand dolphins die every year, and they're going to be extinct in that area. So this incredible woman, uh, Lamya Essemlali, that leads Sea Shepherd France, she was taking dead dolphins to the foot of the Eiffel Tower, to the front of the National Assembly, and educating people that, you know, for your seafood, for your fish dinner, that tens of thousands of dolphins are dying. And so we documented her campaign. And some of the things that we saw on the sea with our own ship. And we premiered that in Paris, we premiered that in Toronto. We had it showing all over the place. And we had different screenings all over with different universities. And seven months later, we got the French court to order the French government to change the law. So that was our second film. So it's extreme.
[00:21:23] And that just, you know, that costs, that film costs us two hundred and fifty thousand dollars. It's not in a massive budget. It's not a tiny budget, but I just did it on faith. I was like, this is a story that needs to be told. And I didn't have any expectations of what it could do. But it's probably going to save potentially a hundred thousand dolphins. You know, it's well worth the investment to be able to not only educate, not only save those animals and save those lives. But also to raise consciousness because the French people didn't even know there was dolphins off their coast.
[00:21:55] The first film that we invested in of somebody else's film was Wildcat. We met these filmmakers in the Amazon while we were meeting our own project there. Trevor, Melissa, Harry. Harry's such a good friend of mine now, the star of Wildcat, the documentary about rescuing ocelots that are orphaned in the Amazon as the areas are deforested or their mothers are hunted. And Harry, who has a huge challenge with PTSD after fighting in the Afghanistan war, rehabilitates himself by saving two baby ocelots. Uh, and it's this incredible story and that film just won an Emmy. So it's incredible. I never thought I would have an Emmy in my home, but It's amazing how many millions of people have been able to see this film that tells an incredible, relatable human story, but also through the process shows the plight of animals in the Amazon and what's really happening.
[00:22:45] So that's the genius of what Trevor and Melissa are doing with their storytelling is bringing together those human stories and those animal stories so that more people can really understand what's happening.
[00:22:55] Jeevan Sangha: Okay, all those films sound so amazing. We're definitely going to link to them in our show notes so folks can watch and check out and support.
[00:23:02] Dax Dasilva: There's one film that we just released called The Corridor. Which is in the Democratic Republic of Congo. What I love about this film is, I didn't actually really understand it until I went there. It really showcases Congolese and African innovation, because what they've done for forest land titles in Congo is so revolutionary. If they could replicate that for Indigenous people in Canada, in Peru, in Brazil, that would be an incredible solution. So, you know, in a war-torn country like Congo, they've come up with something that is ground-breaking. You know, and I feel like when people watch that film, we just premiered it in Vancouver at Science World.
[00:23:42] But when people see that film, I love the conversations that come after it because people are full, filled with like ideas, possibilities. It shows a solution. It doesn't just show like, oh, this is horrible thing happening in the Congo. It actually shows people coming together for like a real solution. And there's a cliff-hanger because we're not sure if they're going to get the land titles at the end. Even we didn't know because we had to go back three months later when they actually just when the government actually decided to issue the land titles. So we didn't even know what the end of the movie was going to be. But the end of the movie is so powerful because not only did they get those land titles, but then later they got thirteen out of the twenty-one. But now they have twenty-five. They wouldn't even be on the original project. It's a million hectares of protected land title where the indigenous and local people protect the forest around their villages and create contiguous areas for animals to travel between two gigantic national parks. So it's an integrated story of humans and animals and providing for people with land title.
[00:24:44] So I found like that's, the dolphin story was very sad, and we got action that way, but showing people's stories of solutions is just as powerful.
[00:24:52] Jeevan Sangha: One thing that came up in our conversation or with our last guest as well was, you know, listening to folks on the ground, listening to people who are affected most harshly by the climate because they're coming up with solutions. And you know, we are a UBC alumni podcast and thinking about, you know, local action and keeping hope for local solutions. Like, do you have anything to say to folks who are in BC? How we can keep hope in solutions-focused action?
[00:25:20] Dax Dasilva: So, you know, we have two of our conservation projects are in BC. Uh, one is the Pitt River watershed where we're reflowing, uh, water into streams, uh, that are heavily used by animals and obviously salmon.
[00:25:33] And it's all been damaged by logging. But restoration in a country like Canada where there has been environmental damage done by industry, restoration is a really, really big part of the story. And then our other project is on the Island. It's an eagle sanctuary where it's surrounded by subdivisions. So we saved this last little area so the eagles can migrate through.
[00:25:54] And I think that the lesson there is people sort of disconnect the, uh, the topics of conservation and biodiversity loss and climate change. But conservation is the frontline fight against climate change. If we can save natural areas and high carbon, carbon rich and carbon dense areas, or carbon dense potential areas, then that is the nature-based solutions that are the proven solutions for sequestering carbon.
[00:26:21] And so restoration in a place like Canada lets us restore those natural carbon sinks. And it's worth over the next decade, over twenty-five trillion gigatons of carbon. And we don't have solutions that are equal to that. There are people cooking up devices that can sequester tons of carbon. But nowhere close to gigatons of carbon, you know, or, uh, we might have slow rollouts of electric vehicles or other things, but there's nothing like nature that can be, that can bias time on climate change. Nature is, must be the solution.
[00:26:58] And the Canadian government is starting to really respond to this. I saw last year, there were many ads about the value of Prairie grasslands and marshes. I don't know if you saw the same ads, but it's like very in line with, you know, using some of these large areas that we have in Canada and restoring them to their potential if they've been damaged by industry or development so that they can be, with a carbon sink, for individual action.
[00:27:24] If you can support local conservation efforts and look into them and find how you can help them, because there is so much biodiversity loss happening. If you can help a local situation of an area that needs to be protected or a species that needs to be supported, that serves against the timeline for climate change. I think it's our responsibility and obligation to all other living things on this planet. Because at the end of the day, if we have a better environment for animals and for us, every, you know, we all win.
[00:27:54] Jeevan Sangha: Hearing Dax talk about his journey and his passion for climate activism was really cool. I mean, there was surprisingly a lot of overlap for my episode with Bashar, including using storytelling to inspire and the power of the hope and activism. Carol, any closing thoughts?
[00:28:08] Carol Eugene Park: No. In all seriousness, it, was a breath of fresh air speaking to Dax specifically, who is an entrepreneur and speaks like a human, not like a robot. So that was really nice. But the moral of both of these episodes seems to be use your brain, and be cool, and you can save the world. And that's not really me, but I love that for everyone else.
[00:28:27] Jeevan Sangha: I literally could not think of a better note to leave this episode on.
[00:28:31] Carol Eugene Park: Thanks, everyone, for listening. Make sure you catch our next episode by subscribing or following our show on Spotify, Apple, or wherever you get your podcasts.
[00:28:40] And if you're feeling your feels, please drop us a review. You can find me on Twitter @CarolEugenePark. And me at@JeevanKsango. From Here Forward is an alumni UBC podcast produced by Podium Podcast Company.