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.
Team
Sagal Abhshir
Nairobi
Lawyer, writer, researcher, with twenty years experience across public and private sectors across US and Africa. Current focus on a growth-stage clean energy innovation accelerator targeting access and adoption gap issues; previously worked on geopolitical issues related to climate change and conflict.
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Usmaan Ahmad
Saint Louis
Usmaan is the co-Founder of Renoorable, an impact venture studio building Climate Tech startups, and Founder of Expeditionary, which provides negotiation consulting, stakeholder diplomacy, and global strategic advisory services. He holds degrees from Washington University in St. Louis and Tufts University's Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy, bringing 20 years of adaptive leadership practice and collaborative problem-solving experience in innovation, social entrepreneurship, international development, conflict stabilization, and peacebuilding.
Bart Alexander
Denver
Bart has worked to effective positive change from executive positions within government, Fortune 500 corporations and NGOs. His current focus is supporting the next generation of change makers to mobilize climate action and address related challenges. He is a graduate of Harvard, the London School of Economics and served as a senior executive fellow at the Harvard Kennedy School.
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Steve Boyd
Seattle
Steve has led organization development consulting engagements with over 400 public and private sector, educational, and NGO enterprises. Over two decades he founded and led two U.S. NGOs focused on youth citizen leadership development and reality-based peace strategies. Additionally, he was the initiating executive producer for the 2013 PBS American Masters documentary, “John Muir in the New World.” He is a past Fellow at Center for International Affairs in Harvard University.
Rony Brodsky
Washington, D.C.
Rony serves as Director of Indigenous- and Local Community-Led Finance at The Nature Conservancy. Past work in the U.S., Asia, Latin America, and the Middle East includes humanitarian aid, commercial banking, support of federal agencies on financial regulation and loan guarantee programming, and environmental economic research. She holds an MPA/ID from the Harvard Kennedy School and an MBA from the Harvard Business School.
Jeffrey Lamb
Austin
Jeffrey is a Strategic Advisor with Pegasus Capital Advisors - a leading global private markets impact investment manager focusing on sustainability. As the first U.S. private equity fund manager accredited by the Green Climate Fund, Pegasus fosters sustainable growth while providing attractive returns through its two funds, the Global Fund for Coral Reefs and the Subnational Climate Fund. He is a graduate of Harvard Kennedy School.
Cara Myers
Seattle
Cara currently works in Gender Equality at the Gates Foundation and also directs a community program in Mozambique to improve child nutrition and stimulate agricultural development. Cara has worked extensively in international development for a variety of NGOs and international organisations. She is a graduate of Harvard Kennedy School and a former Fulbright Research Fellow.
Zdenka Myslikova
Cambridge
Zdenka works in international relations and affairs at the Climate Policy Lab at the Fletcher School. She works on the intersection of climate, energy technology and leadership, with a focus on energy innovation systems. She previously served at Mexico's Energy Regulatory Commission designing prices of various petrochemicals. She holds a doctorate in International Relations and Affairs.
Sharon Daloz Parks
New Hampshire
Sharon’s publications include Leadership Can Be Taught: A Bold Approach for a Complex World; and Common Fire: Leading Lives of Commitment in a Complex World. She has served in faculty and senior research positions at Harvard’s Divinity, Business, and Kennedy Schools and the Albers School of Business & Economics at Seattle University.
Tushar Prabhu
London & Mumbai
Tushar is a social entrepreneur whose experience spans the public, non-profit and private sectors in the UK, United States, Europe and India. He presently chairs a children's charity and leads the development of an edtech platform in the UK; past experience includes infrastructure project development, corporate strategy and M&A. He is graduate of Harvard Kennedy School and Cambridge University.
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Dale Stanway
Alberta
Dale’s work is centered on leadership issues related to the environment and climate. He is an investor in climate action solutions for businesses and individuals. Currently he is a Director of the Alberta Liabilities Disclosure Project bringing attention to the climate impacts of abandoned oil and gas wells. Dale has worked for many local governments and private sector organizations. As a CEO, Operations Manager and Management Consultant he has helped lead organizations in the UK, US, and Canada resolve complex business and public policy issues. He is a graduate of Harvard’s Kennedy School and the Environmental Studies faculty at the University of Waterloo.
Natalie Unterstell
Rio de Janeiro
President of the Talanoa Institute and member of the Green Climate Fund Accreditation Panel. She has worked for civil society organizations in the Amazon rainforest, and then for both federal and state governments, raising climate change ambition. She holds a Master in Public Administration from Harvard Kennedy School.
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