Our Climate Journey with Constantine Gerasimovich
“To me, sustainability means living and working in ways that not only meet our current needs, but also ensure that future generations can meet theirs. It involves a careful balance between economic growth, environmental health, and social well-being.”
Constantine Gerasimovich
Senior Software Engineer
Constantine Gerasimovich is a Senior Software Engineer at Zum since 2022, focusing on enhancing the driver and parent experiences, improving the reliability, scalability, and maintainability of the infrastructure. Outside of work, Constantine is passionate about tennis, both as a spectator and a player, and enjoys water activities such as snorkeling and freediving. He also has an interest in flying FPV drones and loves to travel, exploring new places and cultures.
At Zum, we’re revolutionizing student transportation in order to build a green, sustainable future. What does sustainability mean to you?
To me, sustainability means living and working in ways that not only meet our current needs, but also ensure that future generations can meet theirs. It involves a careful balance between economic growth, environmental health, and social well-being.
In my role at Zum, I focus on making school bus routes more efficient. That means optimizing morning and afternoon routes, improving ETA predictions, and helping drivers streamline their daily routine. For instance, when we optimize routes, we model driver behavior and use reams of data to determine the most efficient way to get from Point A to Point B. Simply following Google Maps won’t work—you have to look at how other vehicles drive to determine the best route. Likewise, when we estimate ETAs, we look at driving patterns, including the speed of our own buses, to streamline student pickup and dropoff. This reduces the amount of time a driver spends idling on any given day, which in turn reduces fuel consumed and pollution emitted. Finally, I also optimize our entire software system to make sure it’s as efficient and uses as little energy as possible.
All together, this helps a more sustainable student transportation company, and a more sustainable future.
Climate change is the single greatest threat to our way of life, but it can sometimes feel abstract, far away, a problem for another time. How has climate change affected you personally?
I was born in Polessie, Belarus, a region known for its vast wetlands and bogs, which are often called the “lungs of Europe.” Historically, these wetlands have played a crucial role in reducing atmospheric carbon. In the mid-20th century, however, our wetlands were converted to agricultural fields, which ruined our natural carbon sinks and released tons and tons of stored carbon dioxide back into the atmosphere.
Draining Polessie’s wetlands and bogs, in addition to adding more pollution to our air, also negatively impacted our region’s biodiversity. Species that once thrived in these unique ecosystems are on the verge of extinction. Others are endangered.
On top of all that, global changes in climate have made our weather patterns more unpredictable, with increased frequency of extreme weather events. Just the other week, I was talking to my mom, who lives nearby in Minsk, and she told me how the winters have been terribly, bitterly cold. Before, the humidity from the wetlands prevented the air from getting too cold, even in the dead of winter. With that humidity gone, however, temperatures have been plummeting, making it hard to survive and freezing crops in the ground. The frost also frequently returns in June, which further destroys the yield of our grain crops, tanking our harvests and putting a dent in our grain reserves.
All of this change has made me more aware of the fragile interdependence between human activities and the natural world. Climate change isn’t just a theoretical problem that we’ll face in the future, but present-day reality that impacts our environment, biodiversity, and way of life. Our actions, even when well-intended, can lead to big issues if we don’t consider their long-term effects on our environment.
What can Zum do to be a leader in sustainability, to spearhead the charge in the fight against climate change?
We’re already doing so much, but we can do still more.
As a software engineer, I’m responsible for optimizing our software and school bus routing stack. There’s nothing wasted, everything is quantified and improved for maximum efficiency. We need to do the same optimization across the entire company—to improve efficiency, reduce waste, and lower our company-wide emissions.
Zum is now the leader in modernized student transportation. It’s not enough for us simply to follow others. Now, we have to set the standard for how efficient and environmentally responsible a company can be. Many others in the industry are now looking to us, and we have to raise the bar.
I’m excited to see what we can do when we, as a company, all try to optimize and be as efficient as we can.