About Us
At the core of our global climate crisis lies a crisis of leadership.
Leadership for Climate Action is a small, diverse, and global team of professionals from various spheres of influence. We are dedicated to empowering climate actors to exercise more skillful and effective leadership to meet the urgency of this moment.
Grounded in the Harvard Kennedy School’s adaptive leadership framework and re-thinking the art and practice of leadership in light of climate disruption, we assist individuals in assessing key leverage points within systems to drive more significant change. There is no charge for our consultative services.
Our Approach
We provide pro bono strictly confidential consultative services to enable climate actors (across sectors and in varying roles) to practice more adaptive, creative, and effective leadership. Typically, our process begins with a conversation with a member of the team, followed by a coached case presentation by the consultee, outlining a recent leadership failure-disappointment-frustration. Alternatively, the consultee can present upcoming challenges and decision points. During the remainder of the session, our team helps the consultee 'get on the balcony' - in other words, to survey the landscape of factions, values, pressures, and interests, including themselves.
This time spent reflecting with an expert team of confidantes can be invaluable. Most consultees report 'aha' moments as their blind spots get noticed. Typically, the challenge becomes more appropriately framed, the role of allies better appreciated, and the fit between resources and the work more honestly and strategically assessed. This process opens the door to identifying possible new approaches.
Founded in 2019, our group has provided consultations to diverse individuals around the world, including:
• Environment Minister of a major European country
• Chief Climate Resilience Officer with a major US city
• Director of a leading UK university coordinating the retrofit of an existing town
• Former UN COP negotiator leading an NGO mediating dialogue between government, industry and the press
• Student activists campaigning to divest fossil fuel assets from an American university endowment
• Former Deputy Secretary of Energy devising financing instruments to catalyze green investment in emerging markets
• Key speaker at the Vatican conclave of World Faith Leaders preceding UN COP26
• Conflict resolution specialist helping transfer climate mitigation technology in the Horn of Africa.
In a world in which "everything is hitched to everything else"
our climate crisis is a multi-crises:
a carbon crisis, an equity crisis
…biodiversity…security…economic...human migration…
and at the core of this multi-crisis
is a leadership crisis.
