Where Work on Climate is Headed
Hi everyone,
We’re writing to you as the Executive Director, and the Director of Programs at Work on Climate, but also as people who have been sitting with a lot of questions over the past year — alongside many of you.
For a long time, the story felt clear.
If you cared about the climate, you should find a climate job.
That story gave people something powerful: hope. It offered a clear path forward at a time when the problem felt overwhelming. Change your job, point your skills toward climate, and you could be part of the solution.
Work on Climate grew out of that belief. We helped people switch careers, find climate jobs, and start climate companies. Thousands of people found direction, confidence, and community through that work. And for a while, it felt like momentum was on our side.
When the story stopped working
Over the past year, that story began to break down.
The climate landscape shifted. Funding tightened. Hiring slowed. Our politics changed. Many of the pathways people relied on to “enter climate” became narrower or disappeared altogether. At the same time, attention and investment moved elsewhere.
But the deeper signal wasn’t just economic.
We kept hearing the same thing from our community, again and again.
People weren’t only worried about finding a role. They were questioning their work more fundamentally.
Why does my job feel so tiring?
Why does so much effort go into things that don’t seem to make life better?
Why do I want to help, but can’t see where that effort fits?
Even people who had made it into climate roles felt this tension. The promise of the job alone wasn’t enough.
That’s when we realized something important: this wasn’t just a jobs problem.
What we came to understand
Many of the systems we work within today were never built for long-term health.
They were designed to optimize for efficiency, continued exponential financial growth, and short-term gains. Not for keeping people, communities, or ecosystems healthy and thriving over time.
People can feel that mismatch in their own lives. In burnout. In disillusionment. In the sense that the world isn’t built for them — or for the planet — to thrive.
The climate crisis is merely an urgent symptom of an economic system that is structurally incapable of maintaining the health of crucial systems it depends on — whether it is the Earth’s climate, democratic governance, or our collective mental health.
As long as our vision is confined to its limits, we will keep playing whack-a-mole with symptoms of the climate crisis, rather than tackling its root causes.
When we had this realization, we reoriented Work On Climate towards the bold vision of a regenerative economy — where all economic activity strengthens the health of the whole, and the systems it depends on (rather than simply taking advantage of them).
Is such an economy possible? Yes — many human societies have had regenerative economies in the past. If humans could do it even with very limited tools, imagine what a powerful regenerative economy we could build today! Learn more about regenerative economics in our new Starter Pack!
But we cannot build a regenerative economy simply by taking jobs within the current economy. The transition will require something more.
Why leadership matters more than jobs
For years, the climate movement (and us) leaned on a hopeful idea: if enough people moved into climate jobs, change would follow.
But it has a limit: the job market. And we can not allow the impact of the climate movement to be limited by the job market.
Solving climate change is not a separate industry — it is the act of transforming every single system in the economy: energy, food, transportation, finance, education, and so on.
But we cannot change existing systems simply by competing for jobs produced by those very systems. You don’t create that kind of change by doing exactly what you’re paid to do. You create it through leadership, through becoming an agent of change.
As a professional, you have many tools for being an agent of change in your industry. You have certain authority and influence, you know the right people, and you have the skills and practical wisdom to get hard things done.
But most importantly, you have a vision and a desire to make a difference. Without waiting for your executive to see the light, or for the country to elect the right politician.
Like Kyler Farr did when he joined a building inspection company working with $19B of real estate and convinced them to start a line of business focused on energy efficiency opportunities.
Like Zoe Samuel did when she started Google’s 4,000+ strong Anthropocene community, which helped Google incubate many climate-positive products and features.
In the words of Martin Luther King Jr, “Power, properly understood, is the ability to achieve purpose”.
You have a purpose and you have the ability to achieve it: you have power. And when many people act together, they have power to change systems.
Our theory of change
This is the shift at the heart of Work on Climate’s next chapter.
We believe meaningful progress happens when professionals:
- Recognize their own agency
- Take action, even without perfect conditions
- Connect with others who care about the same transformation opportunities
- And work together to shape how their companies, industries, and communities operate
That’s what it means to work on climate, not just in climate.
It’s not about purity. It’s not about waiting for the right role. It’s about starting where you are, taking initiative, and letting your understanding of impact evolve through action.
What comes next
We don’t have all the answers for what comes next. None of us do.
What we do know is that many of our systems aren’t working — not for the planet, and not for the people inside them. And waiting for the perfect role or the perfect solution hasn’t been enough.
This next chapter of Work on Climate is about something more ambitious: helping people grow their agency, build power together, and start shaping systems that can actually thrive.
You’ll see this shift most clearly in how we organize our community.
We are reorganizing the community into chapters — sub-communities bringing professionals together to lead the regenerative transformation of a sector and region. Chapters will help you:
- Understand the solutions and local challenges in the sector
- Build relationships with others in your region passionate about transforming this sector
- Realize the full spectrum of ways you can make a difference for the sector as a professional, and start experimenting with what it looks like to do things differently
Whether it is the built environment in Chicago or climate finance in Mumbai, we believe that people closest to the work — you! — have the most power to make a difference.
Many people ask us: what chapters will we have? The answer depends on you.
- The Work On Climate team will start and run 1-2 chapters, beginning with food systems in Northern California.
- All other chapters will be community-led — and we will support members who want to lead chapters.
If that’s you, please tell us! We will offer support: from promotion and organizer training, to discounted/free partner venues, potential speakers, and more.
Not everyone will want to take this path, and that’s okay. But if you feel the gap between how things are and how they could be — and you’re ready to start building toward something better — you already belong here.
This next chapter of Work on Climate is about growing agency, building power, and creating the conditions for systems that can actually thrive.
We’re really glad you’re here.
Warmly,
Inbal Nachman, Director of Programs & Eugene Kirpichov, Executive Director
