Mentor Spotlight: Lucy Piper
We had the privilege of interviewing the Director of WorkforClimate, Lucy Piper!
Lucy is a brand curator with a background in storytelling and communicating for impact. She is committed to climate action and shifting the narrative through her work at WorkforClimate. We are also delighted to have welcomed Lucy as a mentor with us and share her expertise with our cohorts!
WorkforClimate supports corporations to decarbonise effectively and efficiently. It provides tools and resources to make systemic change and transform the way things operate. In doing this, it considers four action areas: energy, emissions, money, and influence to create a more holistic framework. During this segment, we discuss the incredible work at WorkforClimate to support greater climate action in corporations and what still needs to be done to really start to see transformative change.
1.Tell us a bit about your background and what inspired you to take on the role of Director at WorkforClimate.
My background was in the creative industries, I worked for a travel company for almost 10 years - Intrepid Travel. I was then the Global Head of Creative so I got to do a lot of storytelling, photography, video filmmaking, and content production which I have been doing for my whole career. I had an extraordinary time doing that work and I had the opportunity to travel extensively. I had a very privileged experience working in the adventure travel space doing some incredible things.
I am originally from the UK, grew up in London, and moved out to Australia permanently in 2008. I have been here for quite a long time and live down on the Mornington Peninsula, I have a five-year-old son and it was becoming a parent that really galvanised my transition into the climate space. I never had a passion to work in climate change. It’s not like I have a desire to work on impending systems collapse but it is something I feel I don't have a choice around.
I became a parent and I think this experience is similar for a lot of people when you sort of go through this portal where you’re no longer just worrying about your own survival but you have to then worry about risk, survival, and care of another human being. My experience in the early days of parenthood was that I had very heightened anxiety, like really acute in those early weeks and months. I think that correlated with what was happening in Australia at the time, the bushfires were happening in 2019 and so it was the perfect recipe for me to go, i’m going to make it my personal responsibility to try to minimise risk and solve this unsolvable problem and do whatever I can to apply my skills to solving the climate crisis.
Which on reflection sounds really stupid, but I remember thinking that I have these skills and I can get people to take action in particular ways based on the stories that we tell and the content that we create. What if there is a way that I can use that skill and all those capabilities to get people to become more engaged and do more around the climate? And so, I quit my job and started working in the climate movement running WorkforClimate. Now here we are!
2.How does WorkforClimate support corporations to be more climate proactive?
I really want to support corporations to take on more climate action but they just aren’t. Some small businesses, startups that are impact led and social enterprises, they’re doing great work. They’re embedding progressive climate action at the heart of their businesses and the solutions that they’re trying to create and the problem they’re trying to solve.
But corporations are bigger than people now, corporations have taken control of society and so what we’re trying to do is build power on the inside of organisations with professionals and employees who are like us, who care about climate. We’re trying to help them to build pressure inside of their companies and give the leadership of companies the business cases that can help them make difficult decisions.
Because obviously the leaders of organisations can only make the decisions that are in the best interest of the shareholders and so if they are ultimately perceiving climate action as a cost, they’re never going to take action. So what they need to perceive is not a cost but an opportunity. The cost of inaction. We help employees to build those business cases that will apply the pressure on the leadership of organisations and create the space for CEOs and boards to take ambitious action. We try to do it at an employee and professional level and give them the tools and roadmaps to drive these changes within.
3.How have you found the uptake of your programs and resources by corporations? What are the general trends that you are seeing in this space?
We work on a community basis, we try to find people inside companies who really care about the climate and who don't have to identify themselves as climate activists. They’re not out trying to throw paint at the CEO of a fossil fuel company’s house, and they wouldn't necessarily consider themselves brave enough to take nonviolent direct action. But they still care and just haven’t really found a space within the climate movement.
We try to find those people and bring them into this community space which is an online community that anyone can access. We give them access to our tools and resources. Our community is at the top of our funnel, and we have a big community and within that community, we have pockets of really active members who have peer-to-peer partners within that community to work across corporations and share stories of things they’ve done to help achieve changes in the inside of their company.
We have some really extraordinary stories of what we call them - “climate intrepreneurs” - driving change on the inside. We have incredible stories of people who are driving these awesome changes like pushing for their companies to switch to renewable energy, pushing for companies to push for science-based emission targets and so on.
Some of the trends that we are seeing is that companies are not talking enough about the good work they are doing. They’e scared of imperfection and being called out for not being perfect. What we need is the opposite. All those companies that are in the middle of the road, they’re not climate lagers, they’re not the coal or gas companies nor are they the leading edge. They’re not at the forefront of what is possible, they’re just the everyday brands who are doing great work and if they could start taking really public stances on what needs to happen, what we need the government to legislate for, holding the government on account on climate policies that they took to this election but they’re currently aren't delivering on, it could be really powerful.
It would be great to have corporations say look, we’re not perfect but we’re working on it. Here are the things that we are doing and this is our roadmap to achieving even more outcomes and not being afraid to hold that space in the middle. We don't see that enough and we really need that from companies.
4.What would you say the biggest issues are for corporations to meet emission and sustainability goals?
I think, at the heart of the issue is that emissions are a measurement of energy, and money is also a measurement of energy. If a company is in pursuit of quarterly growth in terms of money, it's a pursuit of quarterly energy growth as well, which ultimately means it is in pursuit of emission growth.
And so, the core challenge is that businesses really need to look at their core business model and figure out how they can reduce waste to the bare minimum. I think the core challenge of money equals energy which equals emissions is fundamental to solving the problem.
We can’t account for our way out of carbon emissions rising with offset schemes and so on, and that’s what we’re trying to do at the moment and it’s just not going to cut it.
5. What positive outcomes have you seen from the work at WorkforClimate?
On the macro level, we are seeing individuals driving very big changes inside of large companies that we wouldn't have imagined before. As a WorkforClimate team member, we have expectations of seeing companies commit to renewable energy, cutting emissions to ambitious 2030 science-based emission pathways, or transitioning their super to ethical funds. But then, what we find is that our “climate intrepreneurs” go out and they’ll be chasing one of these particular goals but they’ll identify something that is unique to their company/ industry, that is a whole other scope.
We call it scope X. For instance, we may have one “intrepreneur” working inside an organisation and the industry they’re involved in have events that are sponsored by fossil fuel companies and then this “intrepreneur” is working to see if there’s a way to renegotiate sponsorship deals and see if there’s a way to replace fossil fuel sponsorship with clients that are more congruence to a healthy planet. On that macro planet, that is something that we couldn't have imagined but are really great wins.
On a micro level and probably the most fulfilling part of this work is seeing individuals coming to this space and we’re all sharing the same feeling and same anxiety and sense of hopelessness. But through taking consistent but small actions in this dedicated way, in this community of practice, you can see that people are able to alleviate their anxiety somewhat and see that there are more people coming together to do this work. It brings in hope and makes you feel that this is possible!
