ISSUE 203 Hi friends, It was very, very hot here in the Netherlands last week. And so was the public discourse about what it all means: for climate change, for adaptation, for whether or not to finally invest in a damn AC. On an interpersonal level, though, the discourse was a bit more tentative. The "C" word hung in the background of all the school closures, the empty standing-fan aisles, the water play. If climate's role in the sweltering temps got mentioned at all, it was with an awkward...
about 1 month ago • 4 min read
ISSUE 202 Hello friends 👋 I'm still sitting with the final essay from today's 5 Links (and may need a significant amount of therapy to fully unpack it 😉). In a recent Substack essay, climate psychologist Renée Lertzman makes the case that a lot of our change work is quietly rooted in a desire to control what increasingly feels uncontrollable. The higher the stakes, the more we reach for whatever promises the clearest KPIs, the most predictable outcome, the cleanest graphs on the slide. "Once...
about 2 months ago • 4 min read
ISSUE 201 Hey there change agents 👋 Last week, our Change Hub membership community came together for our final gathering: a workshop themed “Endings as Openings”. I designed it around a premise that has fascinated me over the past few months: though endings are an increasingly inevitable part of social and environmental change work, our sector has almost no cultural vocabulary for tending to them well. We love launches and new beginnings. But when it comes to shifts and closures, we either...
2 months ago • 5 min read
ISSUE 200 Hello friends 👋 We have a new look! And a new website! And a new way of talking about what we do! I'm so excited to introduce a new chapter for Reconsidered — one built around a sharper focus, a simpler business model and more spaciousness for the creativity and blue-sky thinking this work demands (and deserves). Getting here required a lot of tough but necessary decisions over the past several months, many of which flew in the face of conventional (read: capitalistic) wisdom about...
3 months ago • 6 min read
Hello friends 👋 Lately I've been thinking a lot about energy management. Not the Scope 3 kind; the “how do we manage our capacity to do this work” kind. In two recent (and totally unrelated) Change Hub member gatherings, I got introduced to new approaches to energy that I can’t stop thinking about: 🗽 Energy sovereignty — the idea of knowing where your responsibility ends and everyone else’s begins, so you can lead big, complex projects without losing yourself in the process. Vital for people...
4 months ago • 4 min read
Happy spring, friends! 🌷 March 20th was the spring equinox — and in our house, it's also Nowruz, the Persian New Year. My husband's family is originally from Iran, and it's one of my favorite holidays: a beautiful excuse to gather people around a table, cook up some Persian food (delish) and welcome in something new. This year it felt heavier than usual, for reasons I don't think I need to spell out. But we celebrated anyway. Sometimes that's the most important thing you can do. It got me...
5 months ago • 5 min read
Hey there change agents, I’ve noticed that greenwashing headlines have started to feel a little predictable. Company makes a big environmental claim, someone calls it out, reputation takes a hit. So when a case lands that's a bit more nuanced than that, it’s worth calling out. Last year, Apple was sued over its "carbon neutral" Apple Watch marketing by buyers who believed the carbon credits behind the claim didn't add up. Last month, a U.S. district judge dismissed the case, finding Apple had...
5 months ago • 5 min read
Hey there change agents 👋 A few weeks ago, my social media feeds turned into a 2016 time capsule. Somewhere between the throwback photos and thoughtful reflections, I started thinking about how much has shifted over the past decade — for me personally, but also for the practice of sustainable business. That curiosity turned into one of our most engaged Change Hub dialogues yet. Last week, we took it back to Tensie Whelan and Carly Fink's The Comprehensive Business Case for Sustainability — a...
6 months ago • 5 min read
Hey there change agents 👋 Though I’m not a big football fan, I’m always curious to have a scroll through the latest Super Bowl ads. Because they’re never *just* ads; they’re a cultural snapshot, a barometer of what brands think is resonant and worth amplifying right now. Just a few years ago, the list was full of courageous, thought-provoking spots positioning brands around the social and environmental causes of our time: equality, climate, LGBTQ+ issues. Yeah, they were still ads. But they...
6 months ago • 5 min read