Meet Joel Krutz, Crown Electrokinetics’ Chief Financial Officer
Born in New Zealand, Joel Krutz had an agricultural upbringing where from a young age, he would rise at 5 am to milk cows on the family farm. It was through this early experience that he learned his first lessons in sustainability, coming to understand the importance of crop rotation, water conservation, and maintaining healthy cattle. New Zealand has long held a progressive attitude towards climate change, but Joel’s professional passion was first sparked when he enrolled in environmental accounting courses in college. That passion lay dormant for nearly two decades while he built financial infrastructure for global multi-media businesses across the world. But something was missing, Joel wanted to do more for the greater good. That opportunity came when he got a phone call referring him to an open CFO position with an emerging leader in sustainable smart glass technology.
What is unique about the opportunity at Crown?
The exciting technology, a stellar team, and the scale of what we can achieve is what really attracted me to Crown. To be involved at this early stage, where you’re building the infrastructure from a very small scale into something that has such immense global potential from both an economic and sustainability point of view, is a rare privilege.
There will be a lot of focus put on building strong processes, a high-performing organization, and best in class systems. But at the same time, the expectation at Crown is that everything should be done with a view to sustainability—that means ensuring that our metrics aren’t just traditional financial measurements but that we are also tracking and managing our sustainability goals.
What does sustainability mean to you?
I’m a strong subscriber to global warming, and the amount of carbon emissions generated every year is growing exponentially. As a New Zealander, we were at the forefront of environmental protection and reducing pollutants. Unfortunately, a whole lot of the world’s pollution gathers where we reside at the bottom of the world, and we have a super thin ozone layer down there. Just walk past any New Zealand school in summer, and you’ll see every kid covered in zinc sunscreen and wearing wide brimmed hats. Dealing with nuclear strength sunlight is a part of life.
Because of my awareness of the indirect effects of pollution and carbon emissions, reducing this on a material scale is something I want to be a part of. Windows are incredibly energy inefficient, and our inserts are an ingenious and affordable solution. They not only provide extra insulation for cold climates, more importantly, they have the capability to block nearly all infrared and ultraviolet light. This significantly reduces the need for air conditioning—we’re talking in the scale of gigatons of carbon emissions that can be eradicated with our technology. I am also confident that this will further motivate people who, seeing the amount of energy savings that just their windows can generate, will start to act sustainably in other areas of their life. That’s an amazing cause to be part of.
How do you feel about climate change, and how does it factor into your daily life?
We spend a lot of time educating our kids so they can in turn be a force for environmental good. During the pandemic they attended The Green School New Zealand, which has a curriculum focused on sustainability and accelerated their awareness. We watch a lot of documentaries, and they understand the impact of issues such as deforestation and loss of species. Climate change is a hard notion for them to comprehend but bit by bit, it’s a steady drum beat that will evolve them into warriors for good. It’s me doing what I can on a small scale, contributing here at Crown on a large scale, and educating my kids to be as impactful as possible for the future.
In your new role at Crown, what do you hope to accomplish; what are some of your goals?
My job is to build a financial infrastructure that will support and propel the Crown of tomorrow as it grows in scale, complexity, and global impact. I want to make sure that, alongside the traditional measures of a successful finance organization, we hold ourselves to a higher standard ensuring that the principles of sustainability flow through our processes, organization, and metrics. We are a magnet for talent, but that talent needs to support that same ethos and subscribe to a philosophy of creating a truly sustainable platform for building technology.