From the Ground Up: Heidi Adams and the Streetlight Built for Now

Heidi Adams sees what most people walk past. She spent 25 years as a production designer in film and TV — building worlds from scratch and solving the unsolvable, all in an industry where failure simply isn't an option. But that's the backstory. What she is, at her core, is a design thinker who tears problems down to first principles and builds them back up for what's needed in this time. The streetlight she has reimagined as CEO of BaseStudio — climate-resilient, wifi-enabled, EV-charging, grid-independent, self-financing in two to three years — came from that mind. And so did her approach to the communities the LA fires hit hardest. Heidi doesn't just show up with a product. She pulls people together around solutions — hers, and everyone else's, doing the work of hardening landscapes, neighborhoods and cities for what comes next. Andrea dials in on Heidi's community-centering as leadership, and why it's the part of the innovation story that usually goes untold. This is a conversation about what happens when you trust your instincts, follow the doors that open, and refuse to let the scope of the problem talk you out of showing up. https://basestud.io/  @baseStudio_io linkedin.com/in/heidi-adams-base-studio https://basestud.io/pilot.html (Archive of ReGrow Altadena program) linkedin.com/in/estelle-reyes-laci laincubator.org (Los Angeles CleanTech Incubator)  https://climateresolve.org/resilience-hubs/ Follow Andrea between episodes: https://www.linkedin.com/in/andrealearned/  https://bsky.app/profile/andrealearned.bsky.social https://andrea-learned-climate-influence.ghost.io/ Name & Fame was created, and is hosted and produced, by Andrea Learned. Edited by Syd Gladu and Kristie Taiwo-Makanjoula. Theme music by Adam Captured. Art by Nancy Bolan.