Drawdown Insights

I’ll admit it: I like beef. Like many Americans, I was brought up to believe that beef was a central part of a traditional family meal. My mom made it. My kids ate it. Marketing campaigns told me it was healthy. Everywhere I went, I saw Americans eating lots of it. And for many years, I didn’t question these choices.

Sharing your personal climate story is a powerful way to shift narratives, rally support, and bring climate change solutions to life.

I joined Teach For America right out of undergraduate and taught 8th-12th grade science at North Central High School in South Louisiana. 

When I graduated from college less than a decade ago, there seemed to be only two paths for people interested in fighting climate change full-time: science or policy. 

On a sunny fall afternoon, an intergenerational group of dozens of Latine community members descended upon Bregamos Community Theater for Mic at the Mill, a bilingual storytelling event organized by Drawdown’s Neighborhood interviewee and community leader Xóchitl Garcia as part of Save the Sound’s Urban Waters Initiative, in partnership with Women Without Borders, Semilla Collective, and Project Drawdown’s storytelling program. 

Shortly after I left academia to take a scientist position with a nonprofit environmental organization, a colleague from the Environmental Protection Agency – a key audience for my science-based advocacy – gave me some advice. “You need to understand,” he said, “that the government decision-makers you talk to don’t care about what you know. They care about how what you know can help them do their jobs.”

As founder of the Climate Leadership Collective and former Microsoft employee, Drew Wilkinson knows the ins and outs of getting employees engaged on climate. 

Laura Lara Rodriguez is a seasoned 3M employee. She’s been with the company for about a decade, starting initially in product and technology development and now coordinating teams as Research and Development Program Manager. 

Animal agriculture has a climate problem.

Lisa Feldman is the senior director of culinary for Sodexo, a multinational food service company that works with institutions like hospitals, college campuses, senior living centers, and company offices.