Our Climate Journey with Gustavo Ocasio
“Making routes more efficient isn’t just about code—it’s about improving the experience of riding the bus for our children, and improving the quality of the air they breathe by reducing the time that bus spends on the road. All of that together is what sustainability means to me.”
Gustavo Ocasio
Senior Software Engineer
Gustavo Ocasio is a Senior Software Engineer at Zum. He joined the company in 2018. Since then, he has worked on the Back End Engineering Team to build exciting product features to modernize student transportation. Gustavo is originally from San Juan, Puerto Rico. In his free time he loves traveling, trying new foods, exercising, and having fun outdoors. He has visited 26 countries, and 26 out of 63 US National Parks. He likes taking cold showers in the morning to energize.
At Zum, we’re revolutionizing student transportation in order to build a green, sustainable future. What does sustainability mean to you?
To me, sustainability is knowing, and caring, about your environmental impact. It involves making choices that benefit our planet in the long term. Much of my positive environmental impact comes from my work. At Zum, among other things, I work on a platform that creates and manages school bus routes. Essentially, I create the tools that allow other engineers to easily build maximally efficient routes. Efficient bus routes reduce the time each student spends on the bus each day, and the number of buses required to transport students. Overall, this lowers school districts’ environmental impact.
In my job, I’m called on to solve difficult technical challenges, and it can be easy to lose sight of the big picture. It’s therefore refreshing to see the product actually being used, and to understand the impact you’re having on the community and the environment. Making routes more efficient isn’t just about code—it’s about improving the experience of riding the bus for our children, and improving the quality of the air they breathe by reducing the time that each bus spends on the road. All of that together is what sustainability means to me.
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?
Growing up in Puerto Rico, I spent a lot of time with my father on the mangrove island of Cayo Caracoles. I remember clear blue water and all of these trees. It was so beautiful. We’d take a little boat, careful not to anchor on the mangroves themselves, and I’d snorkel around, looking at all the fish and barracudas.Today, I live in California. As I’ve gone back to Puerto Rico over the years, I’ve watched the mangroves shrink a significant amount. People don’t take good care of the trees, they anchor their boats on the roots and step on them. And increasing ocean temperatures and rising sea levels all affect the health of the trees, and the biodiversity of the surrounding ecosystem. So much has disappeared, and it’s sad. That was my childhood, a very special place for me, and it’s slowly disappearing because we’re not taking good enough care of the planet. We all have to do better.
What can Zum do to be a leader in sustainability, to spearhead the charge in the fight against climate change?
I’m proud that Zum is transitioning our traditional diesel buses to electric buses. This will make a huge impact.
Of course, that’s a lot more work for us engineers—which is exciting! If a school bus has to return to the yard after morning drop-offs to charge, that’s an entirely new constraint. And then buses might get stuck in traffic leaving the yard midday after they’ve charged. So when we design our routes, we’ll have to consider the new electric buses. But that challenge is exciting, and I’m looking forward to it.
Electric buses make perfect sense for Zum, but I also want our company to pay attention to other types of transportation and renewable fuels, like hydrogen or biodiesel. Mineral mining for EV batteries is expensive and environmentally intensive, and in the future, there may be better alternatives. So I want to see Zum push forward into electrified transportation while not ignoring the other innovations going on every day. And lastly, we should all try and educate our kids about EVs and renewable energy—because one day, they will be the ones running companies like Zum, and helping us fight climate change and protect the planet.