A Conversation with Tommy Roch Querton, Co-Founder, CEO at atlasGO
Tommy Roch Querton, Co-Founder, CEO at atlasGO
Can you tell us a little about atlasGO?
atlasGO is a company that strives to create positive change in the world, one activity at a time. We based our mission and goals on the 3 pillars of atlasGO:
Take care of Yourself
Take care of Others
Doing it Together
Based off the 3 pillars, we created 3 products to meet the needs of our consumers:
Community app:
A wellness app that plants trees, when you do activities such as sports, yoga, gardening etc., these activities get converted into trees. It’s free and anybody can join. You are able to download the atlasGO app from the Apple app store or Google Play Store. Since our launch, we have planted 150,000 trees with our nonprofit partners. The trees are sponsored by corporations for whom we create visibility through our filters used by our community of sweaty changemakers when people share their sweaty selfies. Through the act of our users sharing selfies on our app, the sponsors get visibility for their donation. Joining this community is completely free and we invite anybody to join and convert their activities to trees for free.
The Employee Engagement Platform:
Utilizing the same platform as the community challenge, we then sell virtual challenges to organizations who want to engage their employees. Here we worked with hundreds of corporations and nonprofits as well.
Corporations are able to utilize our platform to create virtual challenges to optimize their corporate social responsibility budget, by creating challenges for employees to participate in and donating the money garnered by converting their employee’s activities to donations. This helps to raise awareness among employees about the organization’s values and also create a community among their employees when they join the challenges and work together toward a common goal.
Virtual Races:
We create virtual races for nonprofits where people can purchase tickets to participate in races for a cause that a nonprofit represents.
If someone wants to support a cause that is not trees, they can purchase a ticket on our app. We also have a peer-to-peer fundraising option where race participants can garner donations through their friends and family to donate to their Virtual Race cause.
Through virtualrace.org they can support hundreds of different charities using the same concept on our app.
How and why did you start atlasGO?
The ethos of how atlasGO came to be was when I met Professor Muhammad Yunus, Nobel Peace Prize 2006 and inventor of Microcredit. He inspired me to create companies that do good and are also sustainable in the world. I was really excited about that and I started thinking about how I can create a company where I can see myself for the rest of my life; something with a purpose.
At that time, I was also into running. I did the 20k of Brussels, I felt the runners high and the values that today are 3 pillars of atlasGO came together during that race : “Taking care of myself, Taking care of others and Doing it together.” This was what this race represented to me, and what I wanted to build in the world with atlasGO.
Taking care of yourself: With atlasGO, there are over one hundred activities you can take part in, running, biking, even gardening.
Doing it for others: Do these activities for a cause, for something that matters. That is such a powerful thing, you feel good, you’re part of a community.
Doing it Together: for a cause and all coming together to do something, not just giving a cheque.
At first, I wanted to create a social media platform where everybody had to do something to take care of themselves, take care of others and be part of a community. That was where I decided to move to San Francisco, that’s where things happen. I studied social entrepreneurship, I met Magali and Oliver (Co-founders of atlasGO). atlasGO has since grown and developed into a company with 15 people today.
The Well Beings team joined the app and started logging miles — as you know our campaign this year focuses on the Deforestation in the Amazon. Can you speak on how using atlasGO at home can help issues all over the world, like Bolivia?
It’s the biggest threat or challenge we are living in right now: deforestation. It is a challenge we are all facing, and we can all do something about it in our lifetime. Creating a community that can plant trees and raise awareness on why trees matter, how trees help with the ecosystem, the wildlife and all these different parts of nature to conserve and develop. Trees were also a cause that spoke to our community, people who do sports outside and in nature.
When you do sports outdoors, you understand the value and want to protect the earth you are part of. Join our global community on our atlasGO app to move and take action for the environment, specifically for trees because it is such an important part of our world and we want to rise to the challenge to protect it.
You have a new initiative with Orca whales. Can you tell us about it?
Our new challenge is called #FitForTrees. The aim is to plant 50,000 trees to help orcas in the Pacific Northwest. Planting trees help to regenerate and clean the water in the rivers. This helps with the growth of Chinook Salmon population by providing shade that decreases water temperature and decreasing toxic runoff from the cities by absorbing the water through their roots and regenerating the soil in the region. This means more food for the Southern Resident Orcas, a group of Orcas that specializes in eating Chinook Salmon. This shows the beautiful synergy of nature. How planting a tree helps to save an orca. Everything is connected, salmon and orcas need a cleaner environment, which is connected to trees and we see that, we see how trees impact the ecosystem.
How can our members get involved?
We have all the information on atlasGO.org. Download the atlasGO app from the Apple app store & Google Play Store, search for “atlasGO”. We’re on all the various social media platforms; Instagram, Facebook, LinkedIn. Look for atlasGO and we will be there!
