Last week we had the pleasure to interview Camille Goldstone of Xylo Systems for the Bondi Innovation Forum 2022.
Camille is the Founder of Xylo Systems Australia, a biodiversity tech startup turbocharging wildlife conservation. Camille is an experienced wildlife conservation scientist. She has a background in species population management and genetics in the zoo industry and also works at University of Sydney in international research partnerships. Camille has been lucky enough to work with endangered species here and globally in her career, including Tasmanian devils, orange-bellied parrots, Sumatran tigers and red pandas. Camille is also currently studying an MBA (UNSW), with the aim to apply her business learnings to support the conservation world.
In this interview she discusses this along with how she sees Bondi’s future growth.
Reach out to Camille on the BIA platform or on Slack to discuss sustainability, environmental issues and women in tech.
Transcript
Hi I’m Camille and I am the founder and CEO of biodiversity tech startup Xilo systems. species extinctions are accelerating globally, and we’re losing biodiversity at unprecedented rates. So we need new tools, and new ways of thinking to preserve our species and biodiversity for the future. So Xylo systems is a cloud based platform to connect, track and manage wildlife conservation projects. We’re using AI and advanced data analytic to help save our species much faster and much cheaper than we currently Ken. I have a lot of experience as a wildlife conservation manager, I worked for a number of years in the industry. And I really became quite frustrated with how inefficient and ineffective wildlife conservation can be. We are running out of time, and we already don’t have enough money. We’ve got about 10 to 15 years left to act. And we often get funding in the millions when we actually need funding in the billions. So resources are extremely, extremely limited. So I saw an opportunity for technology to really help us better deploy our resources, the limited resources that we have, and to achieve our goals much faster than we currently can. We’ve had a bit of success. So far, we’ve been very lucky to win a few awards and a few prizes. Last year, I was the winner of the Australian women’s weekly women of the future award. And more recently, we’ve been awarded the Women in AI Trailblazer award and women in ai ai and climate award. Not only that we’re getting a lot of momentum with the platform itself. We actually have an MVP now and we’re testing that with leading conservation organizations like Taronga Zoo and the New South Wales Government. Ambitions, global domination, so we want to launch this Australia wide this year, and then we’ll be taking it global next year. Really, the overall plan is to turbocharge wildlife conservation globally, so that we can preserve biodiversity for future generations because I want my grandchildren to be able to say koalas in the wild. There’s so much potential for innovation in Bondi particularly in the environment and sustainability space. I think living along the coast and in nature, everyone is very much inspired by our coasts and wanting to preserve it for future generations. So there are a lot of sustainability startups like absolutely hustling in Bondi. And it’s really, really cool to say, so so much potential, I think the sun inspires everyone. So we are happy hustling startups here and bye bye.
Think there’s a few ways in which we can really tap into the innovation potential in Bondi, one of those is through funding and support from not only our local council, but also our state government. Other governments, other state governments, like Launchpad are doing a really good job of fostering innovation in their states, but I think New South Wales has a long way to come. And secondly, I think there’s a lot of support required for female entrepreneurs and female founders, particularly in Bondi where it is a bit of a hub in New South Wales, we have to jump through a lot more hoops than our male counterparts. So I think there is an opportunity there to harness out the amount of talent.
