About Us

We believe the climate crisis is something that we need to invest in now.

 

The question was:

“What do we do about it? How do we allocate our money, time, and brainpower to develop solutions?”

 

And thus RealChange was created.

 

RealChange helps clients get climate ready.

We provide the environmental consulting services that a future-thinking company needs. Fast and quality.

We serve businesses that have an interest in cost-savings through water resource management, improving energy footprint, and a mission for carbon net-zero.

The Team

Our core team has been dreaming of the future since our time together as roommates during grad school at University of Texas at Austin.

Five years later, we’ve come together to merge what we’ve learned from being top performers in different environmental career pathways.

We are knowledgeable and passionate about climate science and its implications. As environmental professionals coming from different sectors, we bring forward a synergy of academic knowledge, government policy, and consulting management.

Co-Founders

Gene Oh

Gene began his scientific career pursuing an interest in cellular and molecular biology. This quickly transformed into a specialized focus on cultivating and harvesting microalgae biofuels to use for our society’s transportation and industrial needs. With age, Gene’s passion for sustainability and the desire to create actionable impact on the environment caused a shift in his career to environmental consulting. At Gene’s current position, he has held key leadership and project management roles in programs involving watershed assessment, environmental impact,  hydrology, green infrastructure planning, stormwater monitoring, water quality, bacteria analysis, and harmful algal blooms. 

Gene has supported the USPS Office of National Preparedness as a GIS analyst to generate time critical maps and analysis summaries for the USPS during tropical storms and hurricanes. Gene has also been a task lead for the EPA and FEMA on superfund remediation and disaster site response, giving him firsthand experience of the enormous damage wildfire, hurricane, and other climate factors can cause to both the infrastructure and the community. 

Gene is currently traveling Latin America on his motorcycle with his surfboard.

Matt Dzaugis

Matt broadened his climate knowledge base and gained useful cat herding skills while working for the U.S. Global Change Research Program on the Fourth National Climate Assessment. Collaborating with scientists across many different fields to produce a leading comprehensive scientific assessment of our climate risks helped him better understand and appreciate the complex interactions between environmental and social systems – and the difficulties involved with doing climate assessments at the federal level. 

While at the U.S. Global Change Research Program, Matt learned there are a lot of resources out there that can truly help people adapt to and mitigate impacts from the impending climate crisis but much of it cannot be accessed or understood without in-depth knowledge. With this knowledge in mind, Matt moved back into the science production arena and works a data scientist and ecosystem modeler at the Gulf of Maine Research Institute where he can put to use his vast knowledge of climate data products. 

Recently, Matt has enjoyed testing vegan and gluten ravioli recipes even though he is not vegan or gluten free. He has had mixed success but is learning a lot about food science.