Bill Clerico had never encountered anything like the September 2021 wildfire in Hopland, California. The volunteer firefighter in Mendocino County was with a crew that literally could not find the fire—despite the fact that it blazed across more than 30 acres. “It was in such a remote location,” says Clerico, “and Google Maps is not going to take you there.” (Hopland, a rural community in the southeast corner of the county, is about 100 miles north of San Francisco.) The crew traveled up one winding road just to realize that they’d gone the wrong way. Only after flagging down someone to ask if they’d seen where other fire trucks had headed were they able to get to work.
“That was one of those moments where I was like, ‘Okay, there’s got to be a better way to do this,’” says Clerico, who is also a successful entrepreneur and investor. He realized that he could also help fight wildfires without leaving his desk.
In 2008, Clerico cofounded WePay, a digital payments solution for businesses, winning such high-profile customers as GoFundMe; he ultimately sold the company to JPMorganChase in 2017 for a reported price of up to $400 million after earn-outs. He spent three years post-acquisition leading a global team at the bank, leaving amid the pandemic in early 2021. Clerico, who was 35 at the time, was looking for a new challenge.
The Hopland fire wasn’t the first time that Clerico had wildfires on his mind. In 2020, he’d seen the apocalyptic orange glow that enveloped San Francisco on a day when wildfire smoke was so thick that the sun never emerged. That year, the state saw nearly 4.4 million acres burn, an area larger than Connecticut. Even earlier, in Mendocino County where Clerico and his wife own a cabin, a 90-acre fire had burned along the only access road to their home. Wildfires and climate change no longer felt like distant problems.
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