From the Ground Up: Heidi Adams and the Streetlight Built for Now

Heidi Adams sees what most people walk past. She spent 25 years as a production designer in film and TV — building worlds from scratch and solving the unsolvable, all in an industry where failure simply isn't an option. But that's the backstory. What she is, at her core, is a design thinker who tears problems down to first principles and builds them back up for what's needed in this time.

The streetlight she has reimagined as CEO of BaseStudio — climate-resilient, wifi-enabled, EV-charging, grid-independent, self-financing in two to three years — came from that mind. And so did her approach to the communities the LA fires hit hardest. Heidi doesn't just show up with a product. She pulls people together around solutions — hers, and everyone else's, doing the work of hardening landscapes, neighborhoods and cities for what comes next. Andrea dials in on Heidi's community-centering as leadership, and why it's the part of the innovation story that usually goes untold.

This is a conversation about what happens when you trust your instincts, follow the doors that open, and refuse to let the scope of the problem talk you out of showing up.

https://basestud.io/

@baseStudio_io

linkedin.com/in/heidi-adams-base-studio

https://basestud.io/pilot.html (Archive of ReGrow Altadena program)

linkedin.com/in/estelle-reyes-laci

laincubator.org (Los Angeles CleanTech Incubator)

https://climateresolve.org/resilience-hubs/

Follow Andrea between episodes:

https://www.linkedin.com/in/andrealearned/

https://bsky.app/profile/andrealearned.bsky.social

https://andrea-learned-climate-influence.ghost.io/

Name & Fame was created, and is hosted and produced, by Andrea Learned. Edited by Syd Gladu and Kristie Taiwo-Makanjoula. Theme music by Adam Captured. Art by Nancy Bolan.