Hi. This is Paul Zellizer, and welcome to the Awarepreneurs podcast. On this show, we dive deep into wisdom from some of the world's leading social entrepreneurs. Our goal is to help increase your positive impact, your profitability, and your quality of life. Before we get into today's topic, I have one request. If you could hit subscribe and do a review on your favorite podcast app, it helps more people learn how to have positive impact through a values based business. Thank you so much. Today, I'm really excited to introduce you to Ben Schultz, and our topic is water innovation rising out of the desert.

Ben Schultz is a dedicated product marketing manager at AquaMembranes, where he combines his background in environmental planning and design with strong relationship building and event planning skills to drive innovative water treatment and provide clear messaging to customers and investors alike. Having started as a production technician, Ben quickly demonstrated his ability to adapt and excel, gaining hands on experience in membrane technology and design that led him to his current role. Today, he collaborates closely with engineers, researchers, and customers to understand their needs and deliver products, meet high standards and expectations, Driven by a commitment to providing clear and sustainable water for all, Ben actively supports Aquamarine's mission to be a leader in the industry. And just a side note, a shout out, wanna say thanks to Christian Slough for suggesting this interview. Ben, welcome to Awapreneurs.

Thanks for having me. I'm excited to to have the conversation and rep the desert well.

Right. We were just chatting before we hit record and said New Mexico is representing as the state with the least surface water in The United States. Thanks to my son for that stat. So no surprise that there's a strong New Mexico connection for aquamarine. So give us a little bit of sense, like, your journey with water and why you think water innovation is so important, Ben.

I think my my journey with with water starts with my childhood. I moved I've lived to West Texas for the early part of my life and then moved to Albuquerque when I was young. And one of the things that sticks out about Albuquerque that everyone talks about is that there's no lawns. All the landscaping is rocks. And I just have always remembered growing up the commercials about water by elephants and when not to water and how we need to conserve water. And that's when my fascination with water started, really. And so as a kid, I was always noticing, you know, drip irrigation. I wanted to know how that worked.

And then it grew and grew until I was in high school and learned more about why we have less water, the how we're getting our water in the city. And then into college, I did tours of both treatment plants and did a lot of work around working with communities on the acequias and became fascinated with how wastewater the water treatment plant here in town works. So and then into my I did not expect to be in this role, for sure, but I think it actually fits you know, sometimes life just puts you in places you need to be, and I think it's one of those.

Yep. Now come on. It's not totally fair. We have more than rocks in our landscaping. We have cactus. Come on, man. We have cactus and rocks. Right? And a lot of dirt.

A lot of dirt.

Yes. A lot of dirt. And don't get me wrong. I have recently discovered how cool dirt is. So sometimes people ask me what I think is I think dirt and rocks dirt, rocks, and water are cool, and people are very dumbfounded

by that sometimes. So just to give us a little bit of a time frame, when did Aqua Membranes start, and when did you join the team?

Aqua Membranes, the idea started twenty plus years ago with our founder. The technology really started to take off probably back in 2018, and I started Aqua Membranes back in 2020. The original conception was in our founder's garage, and when they started trying to build the technology in the reverse osmosis membranes. But in 2017 is whenever we moved into the the facility that we're here in Albuquerque and started doing more larger scale research and kind of the the real work not the real work. I don't wanna say that, but the more recognizable aquamembranes was was developed was put together. And then, yeah, I started in 2020 doing testing very early on, testing different print patterns, testing different membrane sheets, learning about different rates and all that science that goes into our technology.