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177 / Our Favorite Sustainable Business Links of 2024 (+ Why This’ll Be Our Last Newsletter ‘Til Spring ✌️)
Published 5 months ago • 7 min read
Hello friends,
Signing off for the holidays feels extra meaningful this year, as this will be my last newsletter until the spring. I’m logging off and stepping away from the Reconsidered day-to-day to welcome my second child into the world in January! 🐣
I’m beyond grateful to have a rockstar team in place to “keep the Reconsidered garden blooming” (as our senior strategist so beautifully put it) in the months ahead. Here’s what that will look like:
What continues…
👯 Our Change Hub membership community has a full slate of Q1 programming queued up with some pretty exciting guest hosts and featured experts! Through member-only events and practical training modules, we’ll unpack complex topics like impact strategy-setting, double materiality, CSRD, TCFD, Science-Based Target-setting and grievance mechanisms, as well as leadership topics like wellness at work, regenerative cycle awareness and the power of “enough”. HUGE thanks to Amber Stryker, Rebecca Magee, Sarah Holloway, Sam Hartsock, Lilian Liu, Amber Kesselaer, Tehya Kopp and Florence Bacin for stepping up and sharing so generously of your expertise.
🌎 Our impact strategy and communications consulting work will keep on moving.We’ve had the opportunity to support some truly incredible clients over the past year, including J.Crew Group, Target, Maybelline, Autodesk Foundation, Ashoka and the Fashion Conveners, as well as partner with agencies including The CSO Shop, Green-ish and 2x4. Existing client work will continue into the new year, and we’ll have capacity to scope out new work from April 2025 — send us a message if you’d like to set up a conversation then.
🧑🏫 Our New Rules of Sustainability Communications virtual training is available on-demand, and we’re continuing to share updates on our course platform when new developments in the sustainability claims space come up.
💼 Our weekly Impact Jobs Curationswill continue to be posted on our website. Make sure you’re following our LinkedIn page to get notified when new ones go live!
📚 Our Impact Upskilling Hubwill continue to be updated with a curated selection of online sustainability and social impact courses, trainings and leadership programs from featured partners like Terra.do, The UnSchool, Voiz Academy and more. And Change Hub members will continue to get exclusive discounts and bonuses on all of our featured programs.
But before the parental leave plan gets into gear, we’re all taking some time to rest! Our core team is unplugging for an extended holiday break to rest, recover and spend time with family. They will be back online from January 6th.
It’s truly a gift to be able to do work I love, with the flexibility to step away when needed. I’m grateful to each and every one of you for making that possible.
Wishing you a fun and festive season, however you celebrate it. Catch you again in the spring!
Looking to gift some new inspiration and ideas to your colleagues, clients and peers this holiday season? Check out our 2024 Sustainable Business Reading List, featuring top picks recommended by our Change Hub members. You may also want to pick up some holiday reading for yourself!
In 2024, the once-mainstreamed practice of “brands taking stands” became infinitely more complicated. “The desire to balance stakeholder interests and speak up for employees on high-stakes societal questions is colliding with the realities of divided, polarized workforces, political dysfunction and anger about corporate hypocrisy,” wrote Higher Ground author Alison Taylor in this analysis published in February. “What’s needed is a considered and deliberate strategy for speaking up.” (21 min)
For TIME’s Davos ideas series in January, authors Oliver Jeffers and Tom Rivett-Carnac penned this thoughtful essay on the importance of storytelling and mindset for fighting the climate crisis. The hero image itself is worth a thousand words. (4 minutes)
Climate doomerism is so 2010s, argued the crop of authors and documentarians profiled in this April exploration of “apocalyptic optimism” — a term coined by sociologist Dana Fisher to describe the belief that humans can still avoid the worst ravages of climate change. “The whole point of apocalyptic optimism is being optimistic in a way that actually helps get us somewhere,” Fisher says. “It’s not shiny and rosy and like cotton candy. It’s a bitter pill. But here we are and we can still do something.” (8 minutes —gift link to bypass paywall)
At times, 2024 felt like we were in an “ESG is dead” echo chamber. The problem, wrote ex-Unilever CEO Paul Polman, is that this story bears little resemblance to the truth. In this Barron’s article reposted to his LinkedIn newsletter in September, Polman lays out an evidence-driven, point-by-point case for why “responsible investing is not even dented, despite the noise.” (3 minutes)
A (double) take on the age-old question: “Is it better to work for change from within a system, or from outside?” This March profile of two Stanford PhD climate researchers gets at the heart of the tension many sustainable business folks feel and the murky reality of what it means when oil producers fund climate solutions. Pair it with this viral LinkedIn hot take from an ex-ExxonMobil employee who’s strongly Team Yannai. (9 minutes — gift link to bypass paywall)
Pull up a seat for this kitchen-table conversation series between activist Jessica Serrante and eco-spiritual teacher Joanna Macy (known for her writing on Active Hope and the Work That Connects), which occupied our podcast feeds all spring. We loved it so much, we started a Podcast Club in the Change Hub so we could process it with peers!
Naturally, the U.S. election took up a lot of our headspace this year. Of all the pre-election coverage, this October podcast episode stuck out for its observations on how Americans think about climate when casting their vote. In it, a UK-based journalist took a road trip across Georgia, a swing state with heavy clean energy investment that’s still reeling from recent hurricane impacts, to explore if climate was an issue for anyone in the presidential election. (26 minutes)
And of all the post-election coverage, this one’s worth mentioning. Whether it was the U.S. election, climate-related natural disasters or the “war on woke” — not to mention all the actual wars — in 2024 the news cycle could feel like *a lot*. While it might be tempting to shut it all off, veteran news anchor Dan Rather argues that disengaging for the long-term “plays right into (the MAGA movement’s) hands”. (4 minutes)
One reason to be optimistic in 2024? This suggestion that the worst of our impact on climate might be behind us. Granted, the report from think tank Climate Analytics is one of the more optimistic of the assessments out there (several of which are explored in this article). “Still,” writes the author, “that it’s possible at all to conceive of bending the curve in the near term after more than a century of relentless growth shows that there’s a radical change underway in the relationship between energy, prosperity and pollution.” (10 minutes)
Wrapping up this year’s recap list is this duo of short films published just before COP29 in November. In them, we meet Louise and get a glimpse of her life in two very different versions of 2050. They’re one of the most powerful examples of climate storytelling I’ve seen in recent years — and a strong reminder that the story of so many Louises is being written now. (6 minutes)
Want to make sure you don’t miss any of our Impact Jobs curations now that our newsletter will be on pause? Follow our LinkedIn page here where we’ll be sharing ’em weekly 🙌.
Browse our new database of sustainability and social impact related courses, trainings and leadership programs, including:
🧠 Most clicked from the last issue: You were inspired to look back on 2024 with the help of the AI-powered Reflection.app.
🌎 Concerned about your family's climate future? Build your own climate adaptation plan with Climb! A new kind of climate adaptation community. **
💥 In the Reconsidered LinkedIn group, we’re sharing ESG handbooks, impact fellowships and climate film series. Join 15,000+ of us here.
** Partner Post. Our newsletter won’t be back until Spring, but in the meantime, you can always let us know if you’ve got something in mind to team up for ⚡️.
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Reconsidered is an impact strategy and communications studio dedicated to helping sustainable business leaders drive bigger, bolder, more sustainable change. Here are a few ways we can support your work:
✅ Helping your company articulate a brand-aligned ESG mission and framework that clearly communicates who you are, what you stand for and how you make change happen
✅ Creating internal employee engagement strategies that use behavior change principles to integrate sustainability right into the core of your company’s culture
✅ Delivering non-sucky trainings and talks that leave participants feeling equipped, energized and reconnected with their sense of purpose
Get fresh finds from the world of corporate responsibility, sustainability + social impact delivered straight to your inbox, every other week. Each issue includes 5 thought-provoking links, a curated list of impact job opportunities, interviews with global impact leaders and loads of exclusive tools + resources for sustainable business professionals.
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