Daniel Gonzalez

At Cadence OneFive, I Am…

A Climate Fellow! In my first three months, I’m focused on the Business Development / Operations / Customer side of Cadence. Will update as I learn more.

Who am I?

As soon as I read this question, I immediately thought of the movie musical Les Misérables, track 7 titled: “Who am I?”

Name Pronunciation

I prefer the Spanish pronunciation (eeek), the name Daniel is pronounced “dah-NYEHL”, with the stress on the second syllable. The “d” is pronounced as in English, the “a” as in “father,” the “ni” as in “knee,” and the “el” as in “ell.” Perhaps a helpful video Link.

That said, if it’s super complicated for you, feel free to use the English pronunciation.

Origin Story

Throughout my life, I’ve lived in 4 countries and 10 cities. I was born in Bogota, Colombia. My childhood was in Orlando, US. Teenage years back in Colombia. I wrote my college statement about being bi-cultural and its relationship to string theory (lol, I was creative once).

Most recently, I spent 9 months in the south of France in 2024 and have been in the US since April 2025. I’ll be in Boston August / September 2025. After that, unsure. Perhaps NYC, perhaps Spain.

At Work

Why I Do the Work I Do:

Climate change is one of humanity’s greatest challenges.
Decarbonization and electrification are critical steps to meet that challenge.

Throughout my career, I’ve worked/partnered/collaborated with 10+ orgs in climate/energy. Some highlights:

World Resources Institute: Researched 300+ environmental datasets, creating dashboards and synthesizing methodologies.
Esri: Worked as a product engineer and technical writer for ArcGIS Pro, a mapping software used by 300k organizations.
Google: Helped launch GeoMap, a product that helps geothermal developers price their infrastructure costs.
Con Edison: Spent a few months on their E-Mobility side, focused on EV charging stations.
DJourneys: Started my own strategy consulting company, focused on energy and green talent.

Education:

Undegrad: Lafayette College, Engineering and International Affairs
Masters: Yale University, Environmental Management (Focused on Business + Sustainability)

Schedule and availability

Technically, I’m on the East Coast right now. I would love to use my time at Cadence to experiment on the scheduling side. One of the reasons I started my own company was to have flexibility on when I did work. If I wanted to run at 2pm (or am, I guess), I could. If I wanted to work at 9pm or 6am, I could, and often do!

For meetings, anything on my calendar is fair game during 10:00am-4:30pm, just give me a day or two notice (ideally). Truly happy to accommodate for different time zones, just let me know what works!

I prefer stacking meetings as much as possible. For me, 3 straight meetings is better than 3 scattered meetings throughout the day.

Strength Areas

Things I Naturally Enjoy Doing:

Negotiations: Figuring out how to find common ground and collaborate with external parties.
Systems Thinking: Finding patterns and unity in what seems like utter chaos.
Research: I can dive deep into 100 page policy papers.
Testing: Figuring out why things break

Clifton 5 Strengths:

Significance: I want to do important work and to make a difference. I prioritize projects based on the influence they’ll have.
Arranger: I like organizing and coordinating people, resources, tools, you name it. I’m flexible in complex situations (supposedly).
Connectedness: I enjoy building bridges between people. I find meaning by looking at the bigger picture.
Responsibility: I take psychological ownership of what I say I will do. I have a deep sense of commitment.
Maximizer: I focus on quality and try to empower everyone to do their best (myself included).

Areas for Growth:

Things I’m still learning how to do better:

I’m not great at asking for help from others, which can come across as having everything under control (when it’s not).
I find it difficult to turn down other people’s requests, which means I overcommit.
Internalizing that sometimes “good enough” is… well, good enough. I can overthink trying to achieve (false) perfection.

On Teams

I’m very much the type of person that likes to talk through ideas. I will say things out loud and then think about whether those things make sense. So sounding boards, feedback sessions, and general “thinking in pairs/groups” is helpful to me.

This goes both ways - very happy to brainstorm / problem-solve.

Communication-wise, Slack is the way to go. Just make sure to tag me. Please, please follow up if I don’t get back to you on something.

Feedback preferences

For work- or product-related matters, I prefer feedback in the moment while it’s still fresh. For interpersonal or more human-centered feedback - like something I said that didn’t land well - I prefer scheduled time to talk for meaningful conversation.

I respond best to feedback that’s includes specific examples, verbal or written. Generally, it takes me time to think about and process feedback.

Goals

Career Goals

Generally, the next 5+ years of my career will be focused on decarbonization, especially from an energy perspective (including the built enviornment).

In a traditional, non-horizontal org I would say that my ideal next step is a senior level role (e.g. “Head of”, “Director”). I’m still figuring out what career progression looks like in a horizontal org. (TBD!)

I spent the earlier part of my career in the pure data analysis / tech world. It informs how I think, but isn’t my focus nowadays. I’ve moved to the customer/investor facing side, including parternships, strategy, and operations.

I truly enjoy talking about career-stuff so feel free to DM / set up a time to chat about it!

Learning goals

Baseline, I will be learning a lot about the built enviornment as I’m new to this part of the industry.

Areas I’m Generally Interested In:

Operations: What are best practices to keep a business running?
Finance: What does it mean to interact with investors? What do they look for? How is that communicated?
People: How do you build an organization where people want to work, that celebrates and holds space for the nuances of individuals.

Away From Work

I love anything related to music: dancing, musicals, spotify playlists.
I enjoy traveling. It’s helped me understand that there’s more than one way to live a fulfilling life.

Other things I enjoy: long distance running, nature walks, and watching sunsets!

Mentorship is something I hold dear, especially supporting the underdog. I sometimes host Q&A career chats for people who are:

trying to enter the climate/energy space
navigating immigrant/visa issues
from a low income / fist-gen background
generally anyone else who wants to show up

I’ve spoken to 300+ people from these chats.

I also write, though mostly on LinkedIn (work-adjacent) right now. Perhaps one day I’ll publish a book.

The End

Thanks for reading this whole thing! Always, always feel free to slack me with any questions / thoughts!