Yesterday, we kicked off kyu House by focusing on coalitions, gender equality, the leadership needed to bring about true climate action, and more!
🤝 SYPartners and The Aspen Institute taught us how true collaboration can make all the difference in the climate fight. However, working across organizations requires intention and know-how.
“Coalitions have to find the productive space to navigate conflict,” said María Ortiz Pérez (The Aspen Institute).
⚖️ The kyu House Cafe was a full house for IDEO.org’s session. Margaret E. Greene, PhD introduced a gender x climate framework, that IDEO.org co-created with The Chroma Collective, which evaluates projects along an axis of exploitative to transformative and harmful to regenerative.
IDEO.org’s Victoria Yan chatted with an expert panel (Teju N. Adisa-Farrar, Phoebe Lane, and Soraya Hassanali) about the opportunities and challenges that arise when considering gender and climate action together.
“We need an ecosystem of solutions,” said Adisa-Farrar, of the Black Fiber & Textile Network.
🥂 Opening Night was all about connecting the climate community around some friendly debate.
🗣️ Kite Insights and BSR brought the drama (in the best possible way) with the question: “𝘋𝘰𝘦𝘴 𝘤𝘭𝘪𝘮𝘢𝘵𝘦 𝘢𝘤𝘵𝘪𝘰𝘯 𝘯𝘦𝘦𝘥 𝘈𝘮𝘦𝘳𝘪𝘤𝘢𝘯 𝘱𝘰𝘭𝘪𝘵𝘪𝘤𝘢𝘭 𝘭𝘦𝘢𝘥𝘦𝘳𝘴𝘩𝘪𝘱?” Debaters Sandrine Dixson-Declève, Genevieve Guenther, PhD, Kirsten Dunlop, Clover Hogan, Gerald Butts, and Aron Cramer battled it out with persuasive arguments before jury members Tim Brown, Azeem Azhar, and Kathy Baughman McLeod. The night’s biggest surprise was when the “against” debaters managed to pull the rapt audience over to their side.
🧠 👬 IDEO brought back a kyu House classic, the “Creative Tensions" exercise. Brown and Bryan Walker led the room in a series of literal floor debates, asking questions like, “Where is greater creative leadership needed? In the realm of policy or desirability? In iconic or systemic innovation? Fear versus hope?”
It was a joy to see friends old and new mix, mingle, and swap solutions around climate action in our 395 Hudson Street space. Bring on Day 2 of kyu House!
📸: David Dini
#kyuhouse #ClimateWeekNYC #ClimateAction