Meet the Funga Team: Ann Marie Diener

Get to know the Funga crew with this newest installment of our "Meet the Team" series. Come back monthly to meet more team members, hear about their journey to Funga, and understand their vital role in our community.

Ann Marie with her morning coffee on a camping trip in Colorado.

We’re big fans of the “Today I get to….” mentality. So, what do you get to do every day at Funga?

At Funga, I get to think holistically about the challenges our landowners and carbon buyers face, uncover the unique value Funga can offer, and design end-to-end experiences that solve real problems from that value-driven space. Tactically, this means spending a lot of time talking to customers, researching the market, and testing ideas before we scale them.

I lead our Product team, which includes Product Management, Marketing, and Product Design. I spend a lot of time thinking about how to build a team that’s both creative and execution-minded. I love wrestling with questions like: “What mission and focus areas should we have? How do we prioritize an ever-growing backlog? And what kind of systems and culture will set us up to build exceptional products over time?”

Ann Marie hiking the Tour du Mont Blanc with her brother, Joseph.

If you had to explain what Funga does to a third grader, what would you say?

Fungi and forests are like two best friends who used to live in the same neighborhood, but over time, they lost touch. At Funga, we help them find each other again. When fungi and trees reconnect, they help each other grow, share resources, and build healthier, stronger forests. It’s like getting the dream team back together; they’re creating an awesome ecosystem just below your feet!

Tell us a little bit about your life. How did it lead you to Funga?

My path to Funga has been nonlinear, but deeply rooted in curiosity. I studied Psychology and Neuroscience in college and originally planned to become a Clinical Psychologist. I thought I’d take a short detour into the business world before going back to grad school—but that “detour” turned into a decade-long career in tech.

After graduating, I joined the Venture for America fellowship and moved to Detroit to work at an early-stage SaaS startup. The CEO was incredibly product-minded, and I realized quickly that I loved building things. It was the first time I saw myself as a builder, and I was hooked. I was the 10th employee, and six of us were engineers, so I learned a ton just by sitting shoulder to shoulder with my engineers every day. We also had a Chief Design Officer (a rarity for a seed-stage company), which helped me develop an appreciation for strong collaboration across product, design and engineering from the beginning.

That first job laid the foundation for my product thinking, and I’ve been in product ever since. After a few years, I landed at Even, a fintech startup that was ultimately acquired by Walmart. I took some time off after the acquisition to farm and reconnect with nature. I’d always been passionate about food systems, and that time deepened my interest in regenerative agriculture and systems-based solutions to climate change. When I discovered Funga, I was instantly drawn in by the regenerative philosophy. It was the first climate tech company I’d seen that connected those worlds so powerfully. I reached out to a current Funga-employee on LinkedIn asking to get coffee, and I was so impressed by the company ethos. A few interviews later, I found myself at Funga!

Live long and prosper! Ann Marie at Denver Comic-Con with her cousin, Gisela.

What is your favorite part of the job?

My inner startup nerd loves thinking through the organizational design of the Product team. I get excited about questions like: How big should our team be to hit our goals? How do we integrate AI prototyping tools into our daily work? What does it mean to build a product culture that’s both thoughtful and fast-moving at Funga?

I also love the interdisciplinary nature of our work, bridging field science, software, ecology, and business. And of course, the mission. I’m grateful to be working on forestry’s transition into regenerative-based practices alongside a curious, grounded, and motivated team.

What is one workflow/productivity tool or trick that you can’t live without?

I’ve found that taking walks throughout the day really clears my mind. I leave my phone at home so I can take a complete break from my calendar, slack, podcasts, etc. Even a 5-10 minute walk gets my creativity flowing and adds clarity to a problem I’ve been stuck on, or generates new ideas.

In other words, I do my best noodling on the move!

What trivia round would you know every answer to?

Name that tune! If I’ve heard the melody once, it’s stuck in my brain forever.

Ann Marie at a Funga-inoculation day in Louisiana.

Can you share a favorite memory of/with the Funga team?

My first offsite with the team was when it really set in for me: “We aren’t in FinTech anymore!” Our team activity for the day was inoculating logs with mushroom spores, after we took a long walk through the woods to identify trees, shrubs, and of course, mushrooms. It was a cool moment of reflection for me, coming from nearly a decade of building pure software startups to Funga, where walks through the woods and ‘mushroom talk’ is my new norm.