Portrait No. 001
Andrea Brimmer
Founder & CEO
Rivida
Rivida uses NASA-licensed filtration technology to turn dairy manure lagoons into a source of clean water and reusable fertilizer. Where other solutions solve one problem, Rivida solves three: nutrient recovery, water reuse, and methane reduction, from a single system installed on existing farm infrastructure. I built it for my family. I grew up in California's Delta, the daughter and granddaughter of farmers who worked land that was drying up, paying prices for fertilizer they could barely afford, in communities that had been carrying this burden for generations. I felt cólera, a Spanish word my family used for a rage that goes deeper than anger. A gnawing injustice you can't shake. The answer came when I was 20, at a startup program in Portugal. A farmer said six words that changed everything: \"You should really look into water.\" I found a NASA patent for filtration technology built for space that no one had brought to the farm. The water crisis, the fertilizer crisis, the methane problem, they were all connected. One system could address all three. My community needed it. I know the land, I know the people, and I have technology. That's why me. That's why now.
In her words
“I’m building a future where farms don’t just feed the world. They restore it. Turning waste into water and rewriting what’s possible for agriculture.”
Chapter I
The toughest challenges you've faced as a founder.
I built this company at the European Innovation Academy in Portugal. I pulled together a team by pitching them the mission I was on and the real problems farmers were facing. I made over 40 cold calls to farmers from a dorm room, got transferred 18 times through the Mexican government, and eventually got the Secretary of Agriculture on the phone, who expressed direct interest in what we were building. When the program ended, the co-founders left one by one, each choosing stability over the dream. I rebuilt with new people I could not pay, running the company from my car during lunch breaks at a bank job where men interrogated me on day one about who my father was, then criticized what I was wearing. I have sat across tables from investors who were not looking at my pitch deck. I have walked into rooms where no one wanted to talk to a woman, let alone a young Latina in agtech, one of the most male, most traditional industries in America. One investor told me point-blank: \"You're not the team for this.\" I went back to NASA. The scientist who invented the technology told me it would cost $5,000 to build, not the millions that investor claimed. Every milestone we have hit has been bootstrapped. No outside capital. No safety net. Just the mission. NASA licensing agreement secured. Non-dilutive funding received. Ammonia confirmed in pilot lagoon tests. Prototype built. I am still here. I was never leaving.
Chapter II
Your vision.
Agriculture accounts for 70% of global freshwater consumption. In California alone there are 1.7 million dairy cows producing waste that is contaminating groundwater and contributing to a water crisis that is already at a breaking point. Farmers who store waste in lagoons watch nitrogen escape into the air, then turn around and buy it back as fertilizer. They pay to pump out lagoons when they are full. They are losing value at every step of a process that should be generating it. I am obsessed with closing that loop entirely. Methane from dairy waste is over 80 times more potent than CO2 in the near term. Nitrogen lost from lagoons is contaminating Central Valley drinking water. And the family-run dairies that feed this country are consolidating and disappearing because margins are impossible and input costs keep climbing. Rivida addresses all three of those problems from a single system, by recovering ammonia before it escapes, producing clean water for reuse, and preventing methane from forming in the lagoon in the first place. Rivida starts in California, where the water crisis is most urgent, but the problem does not stop at the state line. Every dairy state is sitting on the same waste, losing the same water, buying the same fertilizer. We are building the infrastructure that turns that waste into a resource, returns water to farms that are desperate for it, and reduces emissions at the source. This is not just a California solution. This is how American agriculture starts to heal itself. I grew up in those communities. I know exactly what is at stake.
Chapter III
The impact you want to leave behind — for your industry, your community, and the women who come next.
Thirty years from now, I want a young Latina girl from a small farming town to walk into any room, any industry, any boardroom, and feel like she belongs there. Not because someone told her she could, but because she looked up and saw someone who looked like her who already did it. I want to change what is considered possible for women who were never supposed to be in rooms like this. The glass ceiling does not break itself. Every door I open, I intend to leave wide open behind me. That is the legacy. Not the technology. The permission.