Alumni Profile : Tessa Clarke
Alumni Profile: Tessa Clarke (nee Cook) was at HLC from 1987 to 1994 and was in Balliol. Tessa is the Co-Founder and CEO of Olio – Share More, Waste Less. She recently delivered ‘The Surprising Climate Benefits of Sharing Your Stuff’ Ted Talk for Ted Conferences.
Tessa Clarke speaks at the TED@BCG: Brighter Future(s). TED World Theater, New York. September 15, 2022. Photo: Gilberto Tadday / TED
Please tell us more about your time at HLC – What was the best thing about the school experience? What are your fondest memories?
I grew up on a farm and went to a very small local primary school where there were only 3 other pupils in my year, so going to HLC was an enormously eye opening experience! It was where I was introduced to the modern world for the first time, and developed my first deep friendships too. I have so many fond memories, it’s hard to select just one. My overall recollection is one of incredible happiness, peppered with late night dorm chats, midnight feasts, cheese toasties at house fetes, lacrosse matches, sports days, tuna sandwiches on coach trips, quiet reflection in the chapel services, the mesmerising choir, a wonderfully eclectic set of teachers, and of course all the learning that got me a great set of GCSE results!
Are you still in touch with other girls you went to school with?
Thanks to the joys of Facebook I keep up with the fascinating accomplishments, ups and downs of lots of girls from my year, and have managed to attend a couple of meetups over the years too, which have always been great fun. It feels like no time has passed at all!
What did you do straight after you left school?
I studied Social & Political Sciences at Cambridge University, and then became a strategy consultant at Boston Consulting Group. After that I had a 15+ year corporate career as Managing Director of various digital businesses in the media, retail and financial services sectors.
Tell us about the journey from there to being the Co-Founder of Olio?
The Olio journey started when I was moving country and found myself on moving day with some good food that we hadn’t managed to eat, but that I couldn’t bring myself to throw away. And so I set off on a bit of a wild goose chase to try and find someone to give it to, and I failed miserably. Through the whole process it seemed to me crazy that I should have to throw this food away when there were surely plenty of people within hundreds of metres of me who would love it, the problem was they just didn’t know about it. And so the idea of Olio, a mobile app where neighbours and local shops & cafes can share surplus food, came about.
What prompted the focus on working with environmental issues?
Once I’d had the idea for Olio, I started to research the problem of food waste more broadly with my co-founder Saasha Celestial-One, and what we discovered shocked and terrified us. It’s no exaggeration to say that food waste is one of the largest problems facing mankind today. That’s because globally 1/3 of all the food we produce gets thrown away, which is worth over $1 trillion p.a. and it’s responsible for a whopping 10% of all greenhouse gas emissions. Alongside this we have 800 million people go to bed hungry every night – who could be fed on less than a quarter of the food we waste in the Western world; and as if that weren’t bad enough, we have another 2 billion people joining the planet by 2050 and we have no idea how we’re going to feed us all.
Tell us more about your Olio app that enables both businesses and consumers to give away, rather than throw away, their food?
Olio connects people with their neighbours so they can give away, rather than throw away, their spare food and other household items. It takes less than 10 seconds to add your items to the app, and a typical food listing is requested in less than 25 minutes, and a typical non-food listing is requested in less than 2 hours. You decide who you give your items to, and then they pop round to the pickup location – which could be your home or a public location – to collect them.
We also have 85,000 trained volunteers who collect unsold food from businesses such as Tesco, Iceland, Pret a Manger and more, and they then give that food away to their local community via the Olio app.
So far over 7 million people have joined Olio, and together they’ve given away over 100 million portions of food and 9 million household items. This has had an environmental impact equivalent to taking over 430 million car miles off the road, and has saved 16 billion litres of water.
Our community also love using Olio for the social aspect – 40% of our users say they’ve made friends via the app, and 66% say that sharing has improved their mental health.
What was it like delivering ‘The Surprising Climate Benefits of Sharing Your Stuff’ Ted Talk for Ted Conferences?
Honestly, it was absolutely terrifying. An enormous amount of work goes into creating a TED talk, as it’s unlike any talk you’ve ever given before. However luckily the TED team give you a lot of support. I also felt the pressure because of the gravity of the message I was conveying, and the responsibility of representing the Olio team and the Olio community as well.
Apart from the Ted Talk, what else has been the highlight of your career to date?
The absolute highlight is the impact of the work we’re doing at Olio – we’re genuinely impacting so many lives, and helping to solve the climate crisis in such a powerful way. Other stand out moments have been receiving an award from the United Nations which recognised Olio as a ‘beacon’ for the world, representing Olio at Number 10 Downing Street, and also sharing our message on so many mainstream television channels.
What advice would you give to someone looking to start their own business now?
My advice would be to find a problem in the world that you’re really, really passionate about solving. Next you need to embrace a learning mind-set as your key objective in the early stages is to experiment as quickly as possible, not to have all the answers – ‘The Lean Startup’ is a great book that explains how to do this. I would also make sure to spend any investment very carefully, because it takes a lot of time to build something that works and you need to make sure you don’t run out of cash before you hit ‘product/market fit’. Finally, although entrepreneurship can be the most fulfilling thing in the world, it’s also an incredibly long, tough journey, so make sure to carve out some time for yourself to preserve your health and sanity! It’s time well spent.
What’s on the wish list of future work?
We have one simple, but enormous goal – to get 1 billion people sharing via Olio by 2030. This is absolutely critical if we’re to avert the worst effects of the climate crisis. Put simply, we need people sharing, not shopping and Saasha and I won’t stop until we’ve achieved this.
How did your experience at HLC equip you for the successful role you are now in?
HLC gave me an incredibly well rounded experience that encompassed both the academic and interpersonal sides of life. And ultimately you need both of those things to succeed!
Facebook: @olioapp
Instagram: @olioapp
Twitter: @olio_ex
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