Building community and clean air solutions

When Darren Riley moved to Detroit seven years ago, he didn’t expect the city’s air to change his life—literally. Developing asthma as an adult opened his eyes to a much larger problem: the invisible but pervasive impact of air pollution on the health of marginalized communities.

“I was fascinated on why don't we have the data that we need,” Riley recalls, “or why don't we have the infrastructure to really solve these issues, to understand where pollution is coming from, how's it impacting our communities so that we can really solve those problems and make an equitable breathing environment for everybody.

That personal reckoning sparked the idea for JustAir, a Michigan-based clean-tech startup building neighborhood-level air quality monitoring tools. The goal is simple but urgent: provide communities with access to hyper-local data so they can better manage pollution and protect public health. As Riley puts it, “JustAir is solving that problem of how do we better manage local pollution so that we can make sure that our communities, our lifestyle, where we work, where we play, where we learn, are really protected.”

Founded during the height of the pandemic, when the connection between health disparities and air quality became impossible to ignore, JustAir now partners with local governments, health departments and community residents to deploy monitoring networks that offer key data relevant to everything from policy to personal decision-making.

From the start, Michigan Economic Development Corporation (MEDC) offered key support that helped turn JustAir’s bold vision into technical infrastructure. Through MEDC’s early-stage funding partners and a network of mentorship and advisory known as SmartZones, JustAir sharpened its product-market fit and gain critical momentum.

Success for Riley isn’t just about scale, it’s about impact. “It warms my heart, and it shows that we're doing exactly what we said we wanted to do,” Riley says, “which is to make sure that communities have the data that they deserve to create the future, the clean, healthy future that they desperately need.

To other burgeoning entrepreneurs, Riley sees a sense of shared ownership as key to lasting and impactful change. “Do something that you feel that you can really go through those pain points and struggles for, you need some extra kick to get you through, and navigate these challenges. The most important thing that a lot of people take away is community, community, community.”

This episode of Business Lab is produced in association with the Michigan Economic Development Corporation.

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