Empowering Tomorrow's Climate Leaders: The College to Climate Story
Season 4: Episode 15
This is a special three-part series for season four that you suggested to our listeners! We’ve entitled it “Changing the System - Back to School.” All of our guests and organizations in this special series want to impact climate in the classroom or through the school itself (think renewable energy!) We hope you enjoy this bonus series as it came from you – our listeners!
In this first episode of the series, Eric talks with representatives from College to Climate, an organization founded by students and recent graduates that aims to empower young people to pursue careers in climate tech.
Co-founders Jessica Harrington and Larson Burack and designer Kevin Lu discuss their roles in the organization, its mission, and the impact of their inspiring work. They detail the importance of forming a climate community, the value of mentorship in climate fields, and the growing opportunities in climate tech. In addition, they share their favorite success stories from College to Climate and future plans for expanding their reach to create more climate-related job opportunities for the next generation of young leaders.
About our guests
Larsen Burack, Co-Founder
Larsen recently graduated from Elon University having studied Business Analytics and Spanish. He currently works as Product Manager at Ohm Analytics, where he is building a data & research platform for EV Charging market intelligence.
Jessica Harrington, Co-Founder
Jessica studied Media Business and Entreprenurship at Temple University. Today she works as a Senior Account Executive at Redwood Climate Communications, a PR and comms agency focused exclusively on climate tech and environmental sustainability.
Kevin Lu, Design Lead
Kevin is a writer, designer, and filmmaker who studied public relations and social entrepreneurship at USC. He’s a Fulbright Scholar researching Estonia’s climate innovation sector and previously led content design for Salesforce's Net Zero Cloud.
Links mentioned in this episode
Social Media
Music in this episode
Nature sound effect by bbc.co.uk – ©2023 BBC
Climify Theme Song by Casual Motive
The Season 4 Climify Team
Eric Benson (Host)
Cam Burkins (Producer)
Bhavna Bhavanishankar (Experience Researcher and Multisensory Educator)
Adam Dziaba (Designer)
Jacqui Himmel (Multimedia Journalist and Scriptwriter)
Abigail Zhuk (Design Researcher)
Climate Design Assignments
At the end of each episode, we ask our guests what their ideal climate design project would be. They have four weeks with a class full of design students. We translated their response into a project brief that you can use for your class.
