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191 / Dogs, Design + 20 Reasons I’m Grateful For Our Beautifully Complicated Space
Published 18 days ago • 5 min read
Hey there change agents 👋
If there were ever a week for appreciation posts, it’s this one — so here’s mine for sustainable business, a field that never stops surprising, stretching and inspiring me.
Here are a few things I’m especially grateful for this year 👇
The slow but steady progress hiding behind every “ESG is dead” headline.
The people who still believe business can be a force for good — and are acting toward it.
The courage it takes to say, “We don’t know yet, but we’re working on it.”
Clients who ask hard questions and actually want the honest answer.
Regulators who make us groan… and then make us better.
Colleagues and peers who remind me that this work is serious, but we don’t always have to be.
The thrill of helping a client get a strategy or ambitious target past stakeholders.
The sense of relief that comes after "birthing" an impact report (because the labor metaphors in sustainability reporting aren't so far off!).
Collaboration over competition — and all the communities and the pre-competitive spaces that prove we don’t have to do this work alone. 🥰
Strategy meetings that turn into therapy sessions.
Conferences that feel like family reunions.
The evergreen comedy of explaining your job to relatives who think sustainability = recycling.
Christiana Figueres, who fully deserves her own bullet. #fangirl
Cathartic sustainability memes.
The genuine warmth, humor and humanity that runs through this field.
The optimism and resilience needed to work in this space for the long term.
The many ways working in sustainability forces us to turn our focus inward (those fractals! IYKYK 🪩).
The sparks of creativity that come from working on problems no one has solved yet.
Every win — big or small — that reminds us systems can change.
The simple fact that we get to wake up every day and spend our working hours trying to make the world a better place.
Wherever you are, and however full your inbox or your belly might be, I hope you’re finding your own moments of gratitude and grounding today.
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An unexpected crossover: what Ozempic’s mass adoption can teach sustainability. Parsons professor Raz Godelnik argues that millions of people changing their habits overnight — eating differently, consuming differently, living differently — holds lessons for a field that’s long struggled to inspire lifestyle shifts at scale. From bypassing willpower and making benefits instantly tangible to quieting “consumption noise” and reframing sustainable choices as liberating rather than limiting, this piece offers a surprisingly fresh playbook for behavior change. (7 min)
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We’ve been talking a lot in the Change Hub about “Non-Icky Networking,” and this piece captures the spirit perfectly. There’s plenty of generic advice out there, but this guide — written by sustainability leaders at Tesla and Salesforce — digs into what informational interviews look like in our field. Smart, human and refreshingly specific. (7 min)
Drew Taylor Cohen is a social impact strategist and alignment coach at Chosen Directions, as well as a Reconsidered collaborator and Change Hub member. In this profile, she shares the career pivot that merged her passions, how she designed her past company’s signature impact program and the importance of genuine, reciprocal relationships.
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Change Hub members will wrap up the year with this cozy, communal workshop led by alignment coach and Chosen Directions founder Drew Taylor Cohen.
📆 January 15 — The Sustainability Communications Reset: Cohort 02 | 💻 Virtual | Hosted by Reconsidered. The next cohort of our three-part live virtual masterclass series on navigating the sustainability communications landscape runs January 15, 22 and 29.
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📣 ** Partner Post. Finish the year off strong by sharing whatever you’re building/launching/scaling to thousands of our readers with a Sponsored Post.
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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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