Career Buzz interview with Martina Ernst, President & CEO, Wo-Built Inc.: Part Three

CIUT 89.5 Show: Career Buzz Canada, Wednesday, 11-12 pm
Be inspired by ordinary people with extraordinary stories
who share the secret twists and turns in their own careers and lives.
Screenshot credit: ciut.fm/career-buzz

This is part three of a transcript of Career Buzz interview with Martina Ernst, President & CEO, Wo-Built Inc. (Click here for part two.)

Martina Ernst interview on Career Buzz Canada with Mark Swartz



Part 3:
What Peapod Life is about?

Mark: All right, in terms of your current business and you have mentioned that you are beginning to moving into this whole green sphere: the eco-building or building and design what is going to be an environmentally-friendly in sound. So, you have an initiative that you are working on right at this moment. I have gone to trade shows to visit you and I’ve seen you at your booth and you were whipping up a storm and chatting it, chatting it away. What about this initiative?

Martina: Well, we call it Peapod Life. And it a glass enclosure that is for both living and working and growing plants on a larger scale. So, you can do both live in it, you can work in it, and you can grow plants, and, we actually growing food plants in it, as well.
What we did over the last couple of years was to identify that there were other issues in society that needed help. One of them is food. We are always concerned about food. Yesterday, I was at an event which was hosted by FoodForward Toronto and people were talking about food shortages in Toronto, so that people cannot actually get fresh foods in some areas and so on. It just emphasizes that there is need out there for people to supplement their food sources.
We came up with the product that allows both living and growing off plants. We have solar cells to produce the energy to help run it, we have rain water recovery to help watering the plants, so it is more than just having an energy-neutral building. We are looking at having an energy-gaining and energy-producing building.

Mark: This is not simply adding a green house to your backyard. You are talking about building a living space – an extension to your existing home that allows you to be like a living room with plants and stuff growing in it. Is that essentially it?

Martina: Yes, that is exactly what it is. Because you cannot really live in your green house: it is not insulated enough, it has not the right ventilation, and you don’t have humidity control, so we have to integrate all these elements in it. And our social mission in that sense is a) to provide a different way of looking at buildings and b) to provide possibility of people having an alternative to their food sources.

Mark: That’s great. Just to remind to our listeners that I am speaking on Career Buzz Radio and I am chatting with Martina Ernst, a founder of Wo-Built, a women's build social entrepreneurial company for profit that not only designs and builds in this case some green space, additions to homes that their newest product but also helps to bring young women into the workforce within a construction trades, so - social mission and for profit.

Please click here for part four: Career Buzz interview with Martina Ernst, President & CEO, Wo-Built Inc.