Charging Up: A chat with Belinda Gilbey, president of Bondi Energy
28 June 2023 | Maria Virginia Olano, Eric Wesoff
Belinda Gilbey: An entrepreneur who relishes tackling new problems
Belinda Gilbey is co-founder and president of Bondi Energy. This interview has been edited and condensed for brevity.
How did you end up on this career path?
“I studied mechanical engineering at university. When I graduated, I decided I wanted to get into business and sales, so I worked for a solar company, where I found a strong passion for green technology and clean energy. I then moved on to the world of HVAC (heating, ventilation and air conditioning), working for a large contractor with clients who wanted to make their buildings more energy-efficient and that were typically heated with gas. That is where I learned all about heat pumps, and I thought there was a real opportunity there. I ended up meeting my future business partner, who was a client of mine at first, and we started Bondi in 2019. We focus on retrofitting multifamily and commercial buildings with heat pumps. Since then, it has been off to the races — the company has been growing and doing really well.”
What’s the best piece of advice you’ve received?
“I get a lot of good advice from my business partner every day. One thing that he will often remind me of is: “No good days, no bad days.” In the context of entrepreneurship, what that means is every day is a new set of challenges. You can’t really over-celebrate your wins — if you get a new client on board, celebrate but don’t overdo it because you have to put your head down and get back to work. The flip side of that is you also can’t let the losses get to you too much. That advice has helped me navigate the day-to-day challenges of running a business.”
What is a barrier you faced, and how did you overcome it?
“For our business, the barrier is that heat pumps are not as widespread in North America as they are in different regions in the world such as Europe, Australia or Asia, for example. It is a proven technology that’s been around for decades, but it’s really only starting to pick up in the last couple of years here. So it’s a challenge to convince potential customers that the technology will work and that it is a viable solution. There are a lot of educational components to it, which can delay getting contracts signed with customers.”
“What we’ve done to overcome that is execute on pilot projects. Do a small piece at a time. So if we’re talking with an owner who has a 100-unit building, and we’re proposing to retrofit every unit with heat pumps, we’ll say, “Let’s just do one or two units — we’ll put in some energy meters, and we’ll let it run for a year to show you the energy savings and show you that it works.”
What do you think are some interesting, overlooked career opportunities in climatetech?
“There’s a lot of buzz around software applications and cloud-based solutions, which is great, but I would say don’t shy away from the boots-on-the-ground work that’s involved in climatetech. What I mean by that is working for manufacturers, working for contractors — the people that are actually executing these retrofit projects and getting dirty, so to speak. There’s a lot of interesting work in the space that’s not just in data, IT and software.”
What is your superpower?
“I’m good at bringing disconnected pieces together to solve problems for customers. I really like executing on a challenge and being faced with a problem that I haven’t solved before. I guess that goes hand in hand with studying engineering and how I’m trained — that’s how my brain works in business as well.”
