Sungevity wouldn’t exist without its 200+ SFUNsters crunching away on everything from finance and engineering to sales and biz dev.  With that in mind, I think you’ll agree that it’s high time to start celebrating this eclectic family of folks who put the I in SungevIty (The I is an abbreviation for I AM AWESOME!).

I ask you now to focus on your cyclops eye (the one between your eyebrows), take a deep breath in, and as you slowly breathe it out, produce a  loud and proud “oooommmmmmmmmmm“.

Properly centered?

Good.

Solar Sales Consultant Matthew King, welcome to your 15 minutes of sunshine!

When I’m not busy advocating a sunshine-powered life at Sungevity, I do my best to power my own life with sunshine. One of my greatest passions outside of work is yoga, and I start off every day with Sun Salutations. Inspired by the ancient yogis of yore who arose from their contorted slumber to bow down toward the sun as it rises in the east, so I rouse myself every morning during the wee hours to make my way to the local yoga shala and perform my obligatory oblations to that orb in the sky that is our solar system’s power source, fueling all known life.

Before coming to Sungevity I spent 9 months living in Guatemala where my time was evenly spent between teaching yoga and working on my own solar start-up, Quetsol S.A., with my business partner and newly named TED Global Fellow Manuel Aguilar. We developed and commercialized micro-scale photovoltaic systems to run indoor lighting and universal cell-phone charging devices to help the 25% of Guatemalans (the poorest of the poor) who don’t have access to electricity and can’t afford to run copper wiring to their villages in order to extend the grid.  After less than a full year of operation, Quetsol has helped thousands of Guatemalans power their lives with sunshine.

When not working, I was living on an off-grid farm and yoga center that I helped build and evolve into a sustainable living demonstration project and yoga school.  At this center we learned, practiced, taught, and implemented concepts from permaculture and biodynamic agriculture, doing everything from harvesting rainwater, homesteading the surrounding landscape, and of course, practicing yoga.

It was those mornings sitting on the docks early before sunrise for meditation that I came to understand the awesome power of the sun as it would hit throw splashes of color onto my eyelids, gently warm my face, and fill me with energy for the day. My time on the yoga farm was the closest I’ve ever come to completely ditching fossil fuels and unsustainable habits, living mostly off of what the land could convert into edible plants via photosynthesis. It was a time of great freedom where I was able to pursue energetic independence via solar power, breathing exercises, physical postures, and meditation.

While it was a bit of bumpy ride reorienting myself to the United States, coming to Sungevity was a natural fit. I joined an incredible group of people working together to propel the mass adoption of a technology revolutionizing the way that we make power, providing independence and abundance to all – and we even have office yoga classes! If we all do our best to make use of the resources that we already have around us and that nature provides freely, like abundant sunshine, then we can create a truly sustainable world that is full of abundance and beauty for all to enjoy.

Namaste.