Water Wise: Alumnus Doing His Part to Save Earth's Most Precious Resource

A.J. van de Ven imagines that he practically sprang from the womb as a coder.

Born in Cupertino, the very heart of Silicon Valley, to a father who worked for a global electronics giant, he was a software wizard by his teenage years, to the extent that he taught teachers in high school how to use technology. By his freshman year at Cal State San Marcos, his programming skills were so strong that he was serving as a teaching assistant for computer science courses that he hadn’t even taken yet.

When van de Ven secured a job fresh out of college with Calsense, a Carlsbad company that produces smart irrigation products, he was motivated more by software than sustainability. He derived significant satisfaction from seeing customers use devices that he had helped design and build.

Not until he had worked at Calsense for several years did van de Ven experience his eureka moment. He knew computer science and computer engineering like the back of his hand. What he didn’t know as much about was water.

“I had an epiphany that we save billions of gallons of water every year, and it completely changed my whole mindset in terms of what we do and why we do it,” van de Ven said. “All of the sudden, I don’t just get pride from people using the product. Now I get pride that we are helping to conserve this incredibly precious resource.”

That epiphany played a sizable role in transforming a career into something more like a calling. After more than a decade as an engineer for Calsense, van de Ven was elevated to president in 2016 and CEO in 2020. After another decade leading the company during a period of substantial growth, this past spring he chose to make the transition to becoming chair of its board of directors and chief technology officer. While he now ensures that Calsense remains on the cutting edge of innovation, two external hires he brought on last year will guide the day-to-day operations of the business.

Calsense, which was founded amid a drought 40 years ago and remains in its original office space in a Carlsbad business park, sells irrigation equipment, with its niche in the municipal and industrial space. Its customers include cities like San Diego, Carlsbad, Encinitas, Irvine, Long Beach and San Ramon; universities such as CSUSM, San Diego State and the University of Texas at Austin; and theme parks like SeaWorld San Diego, Universal Studios Hollywood and Six Flags Magic Mountain. Farther afield, it even manages landscaping for the National Mall in Washington, Yellowstone National Park and the Smithsonian’s National Zoo.

“It’s really exciting to see the breadth of customers that we have,” van de Ven said.

Though Calsense measures its clients in the hundreds, the company’s environmental impact is nonetheless massive, with annual savings of billions of gallons of water. Calsense has worked with CSUSM since 2006, two years after van de Ven graduated from the university, and it helps the university save between 30 and 50 million gallons of water per year.

How does Calsense accomplish this? It has a few dozen controllers spread across CSUSM’s campus, and each day they send alerts regarding any issues to be addressed, such as leaks or power outages. The system also is weather-based, meaning that the controllers receive information from online forecasts and their own sensors, and adjust the watering schedule accordingly.

“I’m psyched about not just what we’ve done, but also where we’re going,” van de Ven said. “We have a lot of new, exciting things we’re working on, including re-envisioning the user experience for how people engage with the products.”

As befits his background and skills, van de Ven set out as a computer science student at CSUSM, but he switched his major to business soon after taking a class taught by David Bennett, a highly successful corporate executive who turned to teaching later in life. Bennett educated van de Ven on the tenets of leadership – how to be someone who people want to follow – and also inspired him to think about how, as his career unfolded, to seek to give back to others.

Van de Ven heeded that guidance in a major way. He has forged extensive ties to CSUSM’s College of Business Administration, from serving as a guest speaker in the In the Executive’s Chair and MBA Meet the Leaders program to assisting with CoBA outreach and supporting the Center for Leadership Innovation and Mentorship Building (CLIMB).

“A.J. is passionate about his alma mater, especially CoBA,” said Raj Pillai, the executive director of CLIMB. “It is particularly gratifying to see it come back full circle: When he was a student, he took the In the Executive’s Chair class, and now he is inspiring the next generation of students. He is a wonderful role model for our future alumni.”

Van de Ven’s mentorship of students extends beyond the classroom. Almost a decade ago, he launched an internship program to bolster Calsense’s marketing efforts, and since then he has hired several CSUSM interns who went on to become full-time employees.

The most notable of them is Julia Teske, who started as an intern in August 2018, graduated from CSUSM with a degree in environmental studies that December, then remained with the company on a full-time basis as a marketing associate. Eight years later, Teske has been promoted four times, and her current title (as of February) is product manager. She’s also pursuing an executive MBA degree from a university in Minnesota.

“Really, where I’m at is because of A.J. taking a chance on me when I was still in school, and then as I stayed with the company, giving me more and more opportunities that pushed me out of my comfort zone without throwing me to the wolves,” Teske said. “It has been this beautiful balance of believing in me and pushing me just enough. He’s been such a foundation for my career arc so far.”

A novel way that van de Ven establishes connections with Calsense’s 33 employees is through his personal passion for Legos. He dabbled in the bricks as a child, but it became an obsession soon after he bought his first home, in San Marcos, about 20 years ago. His collection started with a series of Christmas-themed sets and grew exponentially from there.

It now stands at an astonishing 1.2 million bricks. The Legos occupy an entire room in his house – he lives in Olivenhain these days – featuring hundreds of tackle boxes for organization, life-sized bricks as décor and a sprawling stand-up desk for assembly. He has passed the love down to his two children – Lauren, 13, and Landon, 9 – and he believes that the shared hobby has deepened their bond considerably.

Collecting Legos also helps van de Ven manage his ADHD effectively without relying on medication.

“Growing up, I realized that the thing that grounded me the best when I got overly symptomatic was organizing,” he said. “And I discovered that not just the act of building Legos but taking them apart and sorting them by color and piece completely calmed me within minutes.”

To that end, van de Ven stores Lego sets under the desk of his office to bring out when the stress of his job feels overwhelming. Those are in addition to the four large, brightly colored luxury Lego cars on display in his office, the Lego painting on his wall and the Calsense logo (made of Legos, of course) on a bookshelf that was a gift from a CSUSM Senior Experience team that worked with the company following a logo redesign.

So when Calsense hires a new worker, what better way to welcome them than with a Lego set customized to their interests?

“We want to get to know our new hires on a personal level because we feel that that will help them be more effective,” van de Ven said. “It can be hard to break the ice with team members, and Legos are a really cool way to get the conversation started.”

If you’re wondering, yes, it is a personal pain point for van de Ven that Legoland California in Carlsbad – Calsense’s backyard – is not a client of the company. But that also helps explain why Calsense is so successful. Legoland values its longtime irrigation system in the same way that Calsense’s loyal customers value theirs.

In the end, van de Ven and his clients are all striving for the same objective – to borrow a Calsense marketing slogan, they want smart solutions for a thirsty world.

“Our industry isn’t sexy,” he said. “It’s not AI, it’s not robotics, it’s not solar-powered vehicles. But those industries consume. We save.”

Media Contact

Brian Hiro, communications specialist

bhiro@csusm.edu | Office: 760-750-7306