An epic announcement ...

LET'S FUCKING GO.

Mapping the Book: The Mesa Refuge Residency, East Shed circa 2018

I have a personal update to share. A life-changing experience has happened to me.

But first, some background.

Some of you may know, I trained in academia for over twenty years. Starting with the UC Santa Cruz in 1987, migrating (via field study with University of California’s Sierra Institute) to Sonoma State University for the remarkable Hutchins School (a self-contained liberal arts college incubated in large state university), then to a Master’s in Communication Studies at University of North Carolina, only then to go on to the Environmental Psychology PhD program at the Graduate Center, CUNY, (arriving in NYC on October 11 2001), and then (!) getting recruited for an Associate Researcher post in School of Social Sciences at Cardiff University, where I completed my PhD in Psychosocial Studies in 2010. In 2015, I published my first and only academic monograph, Environmental Melancholia, that outlines the research methodology I innovated (dialogic relational interview method (DRI) for anyone who wants to know!) to explore how people REALLY feel and respond to complex existential threats, such as ecological degradation, with a focus on the Great Lakes. (Which was well received.) I taught this methodology and much more in a graduate program for several years at Royal Roads University in British Columbia - a class I created called “the psychology of environmental education and communications” with practitioners from around North America.

That is A LOT of academia.

Academia was a safe and comfortable space for me, especially as a highly sensitive, deep thinker. I loved the life of ideas, reading, teaching, writing, discussions, libraries, seminars, lectures, and cloistered university lifestyle. I loved the way you could retreat from the bustle of the world “out there” and find refuge in quiet spaces of classrooms, gardens and campuses. I loved having space for reflection. I loved having permission to think and write and sharpen my critical thinking skills, and having a community to do this with. As we know, reflection is integral to thinking and sense-making.

However, I purposefully left academia in 2011, because I knew that the discoveries I had uncovered, needed to go farther and closer.

Farther: to a wider range of people beyond the journals and conferences and classrooms.

And closer: to where impact happens. I left academia to work with organizations—including companies. For-profits are able to effect change swiftly and at scale. For better, or worse, they are the beating heart at the center of both our existential crises, and our capacities for innovation and repair at scale.

Sustainable Brands was the first corporate community to welcome me, and feature my work alongside seasoned brand agencies, thought leaders, market researchers and business leaders.

So I following the ending of a fellowship at Portland State University, I found myself a few months later at a Sustainable Brands conference decked out in my new J Crew suit (no one else was wearing suits). Soon after, I was keynoting at an invite-only symposium, Climate, Mind and Behavior, hosted at Garrison Institute, alongside Daniel Siegel and many luminaries. It was there I met Bruce Lowry at Skoll Foundation, who was to commission a body of work, starting with a landscape report, informing informing their Climate Advocacy Lab.

Along the way, as I transitioned out of academia, I was fortunate to work with some great NGOs and foundations, like WWF (who commissioned a workshop hosted at NatGeo and a report to innovate our approaches tackling ivory), The Nature Conservancy, dozens of groups in the energy, transportation, waste, water and green electronics sectors, and government entities like Transport for London, the Borough of Kensington and Chelsea in London, the City of Portland, and the Social and Behavioral Sciences Team (SBST) at the White House. I was engaged by the Alliance for Climate Education to design “Climate Psych Labs” trainings for their high school fellows, and this led to the popular animated video and research project with Stanford. I started getting engagements in Canada, Europe, and taught a graduate course at Lanzhou University, where I was a visiting lecturer. (Thanks Kuo Ray!!)

The through line of my career for the last twenty years has been working with for-profit organizations like Google, IKEA, Johnson & Johnson, VMware. These engagements have been profound and important, often stretching across several years. Each of them involved profound partnerships with visionary and courageous leaders, who saw the opportunity to challenge the status quo and bring their organization to a new level of impact. In many cases I’ve been trusted as a key advisor and embedded in teams, boards and councils. I’ve designed dozens of off-sites, retreats and board meetings that put relationships and connection at the center. I’ve been right at the center, where climate and environment and capitalism collide, and communities of care are created.

Much of this work entails guiding teams and networks across organizations, often cross-sector, cross-department—to revise our approaches to change, courageously learn new practices grounded in attunement, empathy and listening, to build bridges and foster the conditions for resilience and collaboration.

In 2018, the brilliant Kate Power, then at the KR Foundation, saw the opportunity to scale this work, and enabled a grant to put much of this into tools and resources accessible to anyone working on change. Hence Project InsideOut was born, named to reflect the truth that there is no viable “outer work” on our planet without also attending to our “inner work” as changemakers and change leaders. Starting with our approaches to change. (NOTE: PIO is currently not funded, and only available on commission: reach out directly if you want to become a funding partner or supporter.)

Project InsideOut asks us to evolve and update our approach to change, grounded in neuroscience, trauma-informed research and evidence-based motivational interviewing methods.

While on this journey, I was invited to give a Ted Talk in 2019—and that cracked open something else for me. A chance to once again go wider with my audience and get closer to the point of action. My Ted Talk on the role of attunement in how we shift from anxiety to action, and confront our most profound existential threats has been seen over 2 million times. I realized that my work could impact the world beyond organizations, and could reach individuals directly, creating powerful change and delivering much needed tools.

The TED stage… a turning point.

---

This is where today’s story began—in the dream and the knowing, that I have within me a book to be written, that can reach many, many people who are yearning to heal, repair, mend and take care of our planet.

People around the world, across ages and cultures, who care deeply about life, and want to be part of ushering in a new world— and who want practical tools and resources.

A book that changes our relationship with change.

A “user’s guide” brings to bear all that we know about the human mind and how it protects itself—and what unlocks our capacities for care and repair.

At my first residency at Mesa Refuge in 2018, I geeked out at the previous residents!!!

I have already spent many days, weeks, months, and years on this project. I’ve sat in solitary sheds at writing retreats and on friend’s land, crafting and creating this.

Interviewing people. Retaining book shamans. Working with gifted editors. Honing and refining my thinking and my knowing. And yet, this is still just the beginning.

But after pitching my book idea over the years, I was told ‘no’ repeatedly. I didn’t give up, not because I’m a sucker for hearing rejections, not because I’m fulfilling some dream of rugged, heroic individualism sold to me by American culture; but because I had no other choice. After tending to and nurturing this book idea since 2010, it has woven itself into the cells of my body, it is a knowing in my bones, a fire in my brain, a pulse through my veins. I have a book to create, it is within me, it is a powerful and positive force, that longs to exist. It is my next ‘project’ that needs to travel from the ‘inside’ to the ‘out’.

And today, after some very unexpected plots twists and much hard work, I’m delighted to announce that my book is confirmed—and with a tier-one publisher no less!

I’m delighted that the brilliant Emily Wunderlich and Viking Penguin Random House have seen the contribution this work can make to our world—and are going to support this work happening. Bringing my ideas and work to a mainstream audience, so that any person who cares about the world, regardless of background, affiliations and context can see themselves as a “Guide” for change, equipped with the support and tools necessary.

ANNOUNCING: THE CHANGEMAKER CODE: UNLOCKING THE SECRET TO BIG CHANGE FOR A BETTER WORLD, DUE OUT IN SPRING 2026. PRE-ORDERS AND NEWS TO COME.

As the blurb states, the book is “a guiding model for emotionally intelligent changemaking—rooted in decades of work with organizations from Google to IKEA, and the author’s viral TED talk—weaving neuroscience, psychology, and systems-thinking into a framework that helps readers move beyond urgency, burnout, and division on large scale problems; tap the collective care hiding behind apathy; and turn anxiety into effective, sustained action.”

BOOM.

Thank you to each and everyone of you, who has supported me on my journey thus far.

I have much work to do, I better get typing.

LFG!

With love,

x Renée

---

Upcoming Events !

Society for Environmental Journalism, Phoenix - April

RISE Climate & Wine Symposium, Napa - May

Sun Valley Forum, Idaho - June

Support this epic project! Bring THE CHANGEMAKER CODE into the world!

I am seeking support so I can take the time required to write this book. Please contact me with referrals for fellowships, grants, angels and personal contributions. I’d love to find an arrangement where I can exchange expertise for retainers, that can enable this book to get written quickly.

Contribute to my ‘mom caregiving’ fund

You all know I am supporting my mom living with dementia in our country, with dignity and limited resources. It is an ongoing effort financially, emotionally and logistically. Please consider contributing to the fund, that goes towards my high monthly expenses for her care. Thank you.