Building Concrete Canoes Leads a Civil Engineer to Start-up a Company Offering Climate-Improving Energy Services
Dr. Anthony Kinslow’s primary focus is on making a meaningful impact to mitigate global warming. Having spent the last decade of his life researching, implementing, and educating others on energy efficiency, the civil and environmental engineer now serves as CEO of Gemini Energy Solutions. That’s the start-up that Kinslow founded with the goal of providing energy efficiency and renewable energy services to businesses and communities that are historically underserved. As an added benefit, by re-engineering the job of an energy auditor, he has trained and hired community members who can fill jobs in a sector with enormous labor shortages.
Kinslow shared his motivation and journey in a recent discussion with Sandra Lee Heyman Fellows. He lacked clearcut plans while in high school in Baltimore, and STEM wasn’t a focus. “I was kind of this weird mix: I was captain of the basketball team, but also president of the Sci-Fi Club. I loved anime. Math came easy for me, but I was not good at science or biology, and I was terrible at physics,” he admitted. “The extent of technology for me was video games. And it wasn't even that I wanted to build video games. It was just I enjoyed playing video games on the weekend with my friends.”
When did he first know that he was interested in climate issues? “It was in eleventh grade when I watched a documentary called ‘An Inconvenient Truth’ by Al Gore,” Kinslow said. “He basically lays out where we're headed with global warming, with climate change, if we don't make substantial changes in how we consume energy, how we deal with the environment. And it was such a pivotal moment for me.”
Kinslow did not have a particular area of study in mind, but he was encouraged to pursue a civil engineering degree by an uncle who was a professor in that subject. “Since I didn't really know what direction that I wanted to go – I knew I cared about the climate and sustainability, but I didn't know what field in which I should focus – I just followed his advice,” he told the fellows.
When it came to selecting a college, he visited North Carolina Agricultural and Technical State University, knowing very little about the school. What he did know was that there were many other Black students, a big departure from his high school experience. He decided quickly. “It was a historically Black university which I didn't realize,” Kinslow said. The school graduates the most Black engineers of any college in the country, he noted. “I didn't realize that I was going to a really prestigious engineering school when I chose it. But it was more the environment, the people, that attracted me – and less about the credentials.”
Once enrolled, “I noticed pretty quickly that I loved engineering, whether it be wastewater treatment plants, water runoff or, designing bridges and buildings. All this stuff really excited me, and I was good at it,” Kinslow shared. It was one assignment, in particular, that hooked him: building a canoe out of concrete, which he called “the coolest thing.”
While earning his B.S. in civil and environmental engineering, he studied in Australia for six months, which he termed “amazing.” Kinslow advised the fellows, “That's my one piece of advice. If you're in school, study abroad. Full stop. It doesn't matter what else you're doing. That's something you should do.”
A summer research fellowship at MIT focused him on research and led him to pursue his Ph.D., also in civil and environmental engineering, at Stanford University, where he subsequently became a lecturer and where he still teaches. At Stanford, he was part of the sustainable design and construction program and very focused on construction management and buildings. Specifically, he was interested in reducing greenhouse gas emissions through energy efficient, high-performance buildings.
Wanting to make a positive climate impact, Kinslow decided to create his own solution and build a business around it. He figured out how to perform energy audits for buildings by leveraging technology – allowing him to hire people who didn’t have technical backgrounds but who could contribute to the climate-positive services his company provided.
Today, his company is also focusing on creating “clean energy hubs,” based on the concept of a solar-powered microgrid to which electric vehicle charging stations are added. This generates revenue for his firm while allowing him to return 80 percent of those revenues to the community. “We've been doing that with churches across the country. We're in seven states now,” Kinslow said. His clean energy hubs use the same technological approach his firm uses to do energy audits, allowing him to hire from among community members, even if they have lacked the technical expertise typically required for this sort of work.
Asked by a fellow about the job prospects for his field, Kinslow said “If you're in a clean energy space, you will never have to worry about a job.” And although he predicted that artificial intelligence (AI) “is going to be a “game changer,” he is convinced that “you're still going to need engineers and scientists.”
Asked what has been surprising about starting up and running his own business, Kinslow said. “It's really important to understand that when you're getting in this, if you're going to grow eventually, you're going to be in a position where you're in charge of people's livelihoods. Now that's the serious side. The fun side is you get to be your own boss. You get to wake up every morning pursuing what you want to do, what excites you, what makes you feel like you're having purpose and meaning.”
Looking back, that’s what Kinslow always wanted to do ever since he saw that documentary in eleventh grade. It is fair to say that he is living his dream.
The Sandra Lee Heyman Foundation is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization established in memory of Sandra Lee Heyman, a long-time mathematics teacher at the elementary, middle school, high school, and community college levels. The 18-month long Fellowship is aimed at promising high school students who have the opportunity to meet with STEM leaders, visit prominent institutions in the Washington, D.C., area, and access peers and mentors to support career exploration in STEM fields. There are multiple ways to support the Fellowship program, and donations to the Foundation are tax deductible.