Episode
How Overstory Cuts Outages and Wildfire Risk for Utilities
- Podcast
- Inevitable
- Published
- Aug 11, 2026
- Duration seconds
- 2759
- Processing state
not_requested- Canonical source
- https://www.mcj.vc/media/podcast
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Summary
Fiona Spruill is CEO of Overstory, a company helping electric utilities reduce power outages and wildfire risk using satellite imagery, aerial data, and AI-powered vegetation intelligence. Since joining as employee number 10 and later stepping into the CEO role, Spruill has helped Overstory evolve from a vegetation mapping startup into a resilience platform serving many of North America's largest utilities. In this episode of Inevitable, Spruill explains why vegetation management is one of the largest operating expenses for utilities and how improving grid resilience starts with better risk prioritization—not simply collecting more data. The conversation explores how Overstory combines satellite imagery, computer vision, and customer data to help utilities identify vegetation threats, wildfire fuels, and infrastructure risks before disasters occur. Spruill also discusses selling into the utility industry, the growing importance of resilience as climate risks expand beyond the western U.S., and how the company navigated an extraordinary leadership transition following the loss of co-founder and CEO Indra den Bakker. Note: Overstory is an MCJ portfolio company