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Tacit Knowledge

Tacit Knowledge

De : Renaissance Philanthropy
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AI is creating a new type of abundance, which raises the question: in a world with AI what stays valuable? We think one answer is ambitious people figuring out what problems to solve, how to solve them, and getting the work done. Every other Friday, Renaissance Philanthropy’s Kumar Garg sits down with someone doing hard, important work. We get their story, challenges, and lessons. From cleaning the air in kids’ classrooms, to stabilizing the Arctic, or pulling hydrogen out of the ground, you’ll meet people driving real breakthroughs. Across the season, you’ll hear from Renaissance Philanthropy’s network: fund leaders on the problems they’re addressing, fellows on the big ideas they’re scoping, and funders on what they’re backing and why. This season, you’ll learn what makes the best problem solvers so good at it. That’s the tacit knowledge: the hidden playbook. Join us.© 2026 Renaissance Philanthropy Politique et gouvernement Science Sciences politiques
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  • Momentum Wins with Ishan Sharma

    Momentum Wins with Ishan Sharma
    Oct 30 2026
    *Tacit Knowledge * Hosted by Kumar Garg Presented by Renaissance Philanthropy Subscribe to our Substack Produced by All Together Now FOLLOW ISHAN Twitter: (at)ishan_sharma3 Instagram: (at)ishan_sharma3 LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ishan-kabir-sharma3/ KEY QUESTIONS AND TAKEAWAYS What is geologic hydrogen, and how is it different from manufactured hydrogen? Geologic hydrogen (Geo H₂) forms naturally underground, for example when water reacts with iron-rich rock, so it can be found and produced rather than manufactured with expensive, energy-intensive processes. Ishan argues it is zero-emission and potentially a fraction of the cost of today's hydrogen. He cites the estimate that about 2% of the hydrogen thought to be in the ground could meet civilizational needs for centuries. What is the Chimaera Fund? The Chimaera Fund is Renaissance Philanthropy's field-building fund, directed by Ishan Sharma, aimed at making geologic hydrogen a credible part of the energy mix in the 2030s. Ishan says the field has already drawn roughly $1 billion in private investment, so the fund isn't trying to compete with startups. It aims to grow the overall pie with open-source testbeds, data sharing, and policy work modeled on what worked in shale and geothermal. Why does Ishan see geologic hydrogen as essential to decarbonization? He argues that cheap solar has largely solved the "green electron" half of the emissions problem. The remainder, in food systems and heavy industry like steel and chemicals, needs a cheap green molecule, and he doesn't see manufactured green hydrogen arriving before roughly 2045–2050. Industrial plants are making capital decisions in the next 5–7 years that could lock in emissions for about 40 years. In his view, geologic hydrogen is the only option that could affect that decision window. What can shale and geothermal teach us about scaling a new energy industry? Ishan points to a pattern: both industries spent decades in slow, localized progress before inflection points driven by government-backed testbeds and companies sharing subsurface data. Geothermal went from a first well in the 1920s to a Department of Energy testbed in Utah and, now, Fervo Energy's public listing. His conclusion is that opening up solutions and data early is the fastest path to scale, measured in years rather than decades. How did Chimaera get private companies to share subsurface data? It started small: one company, a grant of roughly $250K, and an ask for the metadata version of its data rather than the proprietary data itself. Researchers could then propose studies based on what the company actually had. Once that first company signed on and Chimaera announced it at a major geologic hydrogen conference, several dozen other companies asked to do something similar. Early wins then became proof of credibility, including work with the U.S. Air Force and real operating companies. What is Chimaera working on next? Ishan previewed a $10M grand-prize challenge with the Japan Cabinet Office to drill the first hydrogen well, and a test bed in East Africa. The East Africa work is framed around reducing smallholder farmers' dependence on imported ammonia, not just emissions. Both were described as upcoming, not yet announced, at the time of recording. What is the Law of Requisite Variety, and how does Chimaera apply it? Ishan describes it as the idea that the entity with the most flexibility in a system has the greatest control over its outcome. Chimaera applies it by staying deliberately nimble instead of building headcount. One example he gives is walking away from a donation of about 1,200 acres for test beds to pivot to a faster-moving opportunity. On careers, credibility, and field-building Ishan didn't start in energy. He studied industrial labor relations and economics planning for human rights law, and a paper on surveillance technology led him to defer law school and enter science and tech policy, first at FAS, then the White House, then Renaissance Philanthropy. His filter for what to work on is a Venn diagram: a problem that is neglected, where he can see a path to making a difference, and where he has a thesis worth pressure-testing. He says the overlap is small, and once you find it, "why not go hunting?" His tacit knowledge: there is enough good work to go around. Approaching a new field with "no pride of place," and wanting to distribute good ideas rather than own them, is what lets an outsider work with deep experts. To bring skeptical experts along, he asks whether anyone else has looked at their data and reached a different conclusion, which appeals to their humility instead of forcing a debate. He says credibility comes from early wins and demonstrated taste more than from the size of the funding. Kumar's framing: science progresses at the pace of discovery plus persuasion. Good ideas need advocates willing to walk into rooms and answer skeptical questions, one person at a time, like the lone ...
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    33 min
  • You Can Be The Adult In The Room

    You Can Be The Adult In The Room
    Oct 16 2026
    In this episode, host Kumar talks to David Carel, Director of the Inspired Air Fund at Renaissance Philanthropy. David has spent a decade working on the most pressing problems in health and education, and his latest project aims to boost student health and learning outcomes by improving air quality in classrooms. David discusses the transformative potential of improving the air we breathe indoors, where we spend about 90% of our time, and the surprising things we’re learning about airborne illness. He also shares how he stays motivated in his work to sustainably improve conditions in the classroom, even when the going gets tough. David talks about the mentors throughout his career who have taught him to be the adult in the room when no one else is tackling an issue, and the power of using emotional intelligence to push through the self-doubt that affects all founders. Tacit Knowledge Hosted by Kumar Garg Presented by Renaissance Philanthropy Subscribe to our Substack Produced by All Together Now Follow David https://x.com/davidcarel https://www.instagram.com/davidcarel/ https://bsky.app/profile/davidcarel.bsky.social https://www.linkedin.com/in/david-carel-b433251b3/ KEY QUESTIONS AND TAKEAWAYS What is the Inspired Air Fund (formerly the Clean Air for Schools Fund)? A new fund at Renaissance Philanthropy, led by David Carel, focused on improving indoor air quality in schools — both to reduce airborne disease transmission and to improve learning outcomes. It sits at the intersection of health, education, and biosecurity policy. Why does indoor air quality matter more than most people assume? People spend roughly 90% of their time indoors, so indoor air quality — not just outdoor pollution — determines most of a person's actual exposure. Wildfire smoke advisories that tell people to "go inside" miss this: outdoor air gets drawn inside buildings too, and indoor spaces also generate their own pollution, from manufactured furniture, engineered wood, and even human aerosols from people who are sick. What's the evidence that clean air improves learning, not just health? Air filtration has been shown to cut school absenteeism by 10–20%, and lower carbon dioxide and VOC levels have been linked to measurably better cognitive performance. JPMorgan Chase's new $3 billion Park Avenue headquarters doubled its ventilation rate above code specifically because Harvard research found doing so yields a return worth thousands of dollars per employee per year in productivity. Why has indoor air quality remained a blind spot despite living through a pandemic? David argues it falls into a structural gap: philanthropy and policy are organized into verticals like health, education, and environment, and indoor air quality doesn't fully belong to any one of them, so it rarely becomes anyone's top priority even when it would meet the bar for impact in each vertical individually. Why did public health take so long to accept that diseases could spread through the air? For most of the 20th century, airborne transmission was accepted only for tuberculosis and measles; other respiratory illnesses were assumed to spread via large droplets or surfaces. The WHO initially stated early in the Covid-19 pandemic that the virus was not airborne. Science journalist Carl Zimmer's book Air-Borne traces this history and argues it left the world underprepared for Covid. What historical precedent does David point to for solving this at scale? The late-19th-century clean water movement, which built modern water infrastructure and dramatically cut typhoid rates within a generation. David frames indoor air as a comparable infrastructure opportunity: a relatively low-cost, low-administrative-burden intervention that could address multiple problems — disease transmission, pandemic preparedness, and cognitive development — at once. What is the Fund currently building? A cities competition focused on clean air in schools, designed to learn from the successes and failures of past municipal competitions and challenges. David's ask is for input from people with experience designing these kinds of competitions, and from people with insight into how to coordinate across the health departments, environmental agencies, school systems, and mayor's offices a program like this would need to touch. On agency, uncertainty, and following the thread David traces part of his drive back to working as an undergraduate with Gregg Gonsalves, then a nontraditional student and HIV/AIDS activist, which he says taught him that you don't have to wait for "the adults in the room" to act on something you believe matters. His path ran from co-founding Panorama Education (school data analytics) to running early literacy programs in South Africa to pandemic prevention work at Blueprint Biosecurity before arriving at indoor air — each step following a thread rather than a plan. A formative moment: at 19, volunteering on a tuberculosis study in Tugela Ferry, South ...
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    36 min
  • The Tri-Sector Athlete with Cara Eckholm

    The Tri-Sector Athlete with Cara Eckholm
    Oct 2 2026
    In this episode, host Kumar speaks with Cara Eckholm, the founder of Pilot City and a Fellow at Renaissance Philanthropy. An urbanist at heart, Cara has thought deeply about how to build relationships between local governments and their constituent researchers and technologists. Describing herself as a "tri-sector athlete" who has moved between government, academia, and the private sector, Cara talks about growing Pitch Fest, which pairs city government agencies with academics and civic technologists willing to help solve specific, openly shared problems, from 100 attendees and a few agencies in its first year to 40 participating agencies and 104 pitches, with 100 of those pitches drawing at least one interested expert. Cara talks about collaborations, cold-emailing, and the power of connection. *Tacit Knowledge * Hosted by Kumar Garg Presented by Renaissance Philanthropy Subscribe to our Substack Produced by All Together Now FOLLOW LinkedIn https://www.linkedin.com/in/cara-eckholm-506b2236/ KEY QUESTIONS AND TAKEAWAYS What is Pilot City A matchmaking program, started by Cara Eckholm in New York, where city agencies pitch specific problems they need help with and local researchers or technologists apply to work with them — flipping the usual model where academics pitch ideas in search of a government partner. How does the matchmaking process actually work? City agencies present problem statements in short, informal pitches (originally modeled on how Stanford classes help students find startup co-founders). Interested researchers and technologists then apply to work with a specific agency, and the agency chooses who they want to work with from the applicant pool. Why build a "buyer-first" model instead of starting with researchers' ideas? Eckholm observed that both sides were siloed: academics and civic technologists had ideas for improving cities but no government partner, while city agencies had unmet needs but no channel to reach outside talent. Starting with the agency's stated problem — the "buyer" — rather than a researcher's proposal solved the matching problem directly. What makes a city a good candidate for a Pitchfest program? A metro population of at least a million, a government champion willing to publicly share unsolved problems (which runs against how most agencies communicate), and either a research university or an active civic tech community — most U.S. cities already have the latter. What's a real-world example of this kind of collaboration paying off? Economist Al Roth was approached by an NYC Department of Education official who had read his work on medical residency matching and asked him to help redesign the city's high school placement process. The redesign was later adopted in Boston, and Roth went on to win a Nobel Prize for that work and related market-design research, including kidney-exchange matching. How much traction has the program gotten? In its most recent year, 40 agencies submitted 104 pitches, and 100 of those pitches drew at least one interested researcher — some drew as many as 20. The program is now expanding beyond New York to Boston, Hennepin County (Minneapolis), Los Angeles (water district), and Philadelphia (regional transit). What's holding academia back from more of this kind of applied work? Tenure and promotion structures reward publication in a narrow set of journals, not applied public-sector collaboration — to the point that one professor Eckholm spoke with left his work as a city and White House housing policy adviser off his tenure application, worried it would make him look like an activist rather than a scholar. On career and confidence Eckholm's own path into this work began with a cold email — she reached out to her boss's boss, former NYC Deputy Mayor Dan Doctoroff, offering to help with a post-pandemic economic recovery commission, with no idea if he'd respond. That opportunity ended up shaping the next several years of her career. Her tacit-knowledge takeaway is what she calls "delusional confidence" — treating open calls for applications ("apply even if you're underqualified") literally, and being willing to send many speculative emails knowing only a fraction will land. She distinguishes this from overconfidence: the goal isn't to claim expertise you don't have, but to clearly articulate what value you could add and let curiosity — not credentials — carry the pitch.
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    38 min
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