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Ep 42. Areeba Hamid and Will McCallum co-Executive Directors, Greenpeace UK: Co-leading for Change
71 Plays1 year ago
“We have won the war on climate denial… (but) we cannot underestimate what an enormous fight this is… the climate movement being mainstream doesn’t mean we have the power to make change happen yet.”
In this episode, I have the privilege of speaking with not one, but two impressive non-profit leaders: Areeba Hamid and Will McCallum, co-Executive Directors of Greenpeace UK.
What's unique about Areeba and Will is that together they have shattered several barriers in their leadership roles. Areeba is the first woman and person of colour to lead Greenpeace UK, and, they are the first duo to assume this position.
We dive into the essential role that Greenpeace continues to play in today's world, where the climate movement has become mainstream, and how their work continues to influence policy and drive social change.
We explore the co-leadership model that Areeba and Will have adopted, discovering what makes it work and how they navigate conflicts. They also share valuable advice for other charity leaders and organisations who may be contemplating this approach. Recorded April 2023.
Guest Biographies
Areeba Hamid is co-Executive Director of Greenpeace UK. Areeba has worked at senior levels in Greenpeace offices around the world from 2006-2020, campaigning on issues like marine conservation, coal expansion in India, rainforest destruction in Indonesia, and tar sands in Canada and North America. Areeba re-joined Greenpeace UK from The Sunrise Project, where she led their global finance program. She is also a board member of the Joint Council for the Welfare of Immigrants. Born in India, she will be the first woman and first person of colour to lead Greenpeace in the UK.
Will McCallum is co-Executive Director of Greenpeace UK. Prior to this, he was Head of Oceans at Greenpeace UK from 2015-22. Will led campaigns on sustainable fisheries, including working alongside low impact fishing communities. He founded and led the international 30x30 campaign geared to create ocean sanctuaries in international and national waters. Before that, he oversaw the launch of Greenpeace UK’s first campaigns on plastic, helping reshape the global conversation about plastic waste away from litter to being one about reducing production. He is the author of the book, How to Give Up Plastic, which has been translated into 12 languages.
Links
https://www.greenpeace.org.uk/
In this episode, I have the privilege of speaking with not one, but two impressive non-profit leaders: Areeba Hamid and Will McCallum, co-Executive Directors of Greenpeace UK.
What's unique about Areeba and Will is that together they have shattered several barriers in their leadership roles. Areeba is the first woman and person of colour to lead Greenpeace UK, and, they are the first duo to assume this position.
We dive into the essential role that Greenpeace continues to play in today's world, where the climate movement has become mainstream, and how their work continues to influence policy and drive social change.
We explore the co-leadership model that Areeba and Will have adopted, discovering what makes it work and how they navigate conflicts. They also share valuable advice for other charity leaders and organisations who may be contemplating this approach. Recorded April 2023.
Guest Biographies
Areeba Hamid is co-Executive Director of Greenpeace UK. Areeba has worked at senior levels in Greenpeace offices around the world from 2006-2020, campaigning on issues like marine conservation, coal expansion in India, rainforest destruction in Indonesia, and tar sands in Canada and North America. Areeba re-joined Greenpeace UK from The Sunrise Project, where she led their global finance program. She is also a board member of the Joint Council for the Welfare of Immigrants. Born in India, she will be the first woman and first person of colour to lead Greenpeace in the UK.
Will McCallum is co-Executive Director of Greenpeace UK. Prior to this, he was Head of Oceans at Greenpeace UK from 2015-22. Will led campaigns on sustainable fisheries, including working alongside low impact fishing communities. He founded and led the international 30x30 campaign geared to create ocean sanctuaries in international and national waters. Before that, he oversaw the launch of Greenpeace UK’s first campaigns on plastic, helping reshape the global conversation about plastic waste away from litter to being one about reducing production. He is the author of the book, How to Give Up Plastic, which has been translated into 12 languages.
Links
https://www.greenpeace.org.uk/
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Transcript
Resilience in Leadership
00:00:00
Speaker
Business as usual is safe business as usual would have continued but had that made us win. On climate in the timelines that we have i think not which is why we thought we need to put our heads together we need to put our skills together and we need to do this in a way that actually. Create the change that is needed to meet the moment.
00:00:21
Speaker
And I think on a more personal level, there's a resilience element. The world out there is hard and stuff is changing all the time and staying abreast of changes and constantly thinking about how you're trying to change what's quite a dire situation sometimes. And the world inside can be really challenging because everybody's feeling that. Everybody's feeling more precarious at the moment and managing an organization that this kind of
00:00:45
Speaker
macroeconomic climate is hard and takes a level of resilience and I just definitely know I couldn't have done it without doing it with a reboot.
Charity CEO Podcast Season Introduction
00:01:04
Speaker
Welcome to an exciting new season of the Charity CEO podcast, where we bring you the stories and insights of remarkable charity leaders who are changing the world for the better. We talk to the people who run nonprofits, the movers and shakers, who are driving positive change in this space, inspiring you to take bold action and make a difference.
00:01:23
Speaker
To all our listeners across the globe, I am thrilled to have you with us. We've received amazing feedback from listeners in over 42 countries, including the UK, US, Australia, Canada and India. Your support and engagement is what makes this community so special. To all of you who pour your hearts and souls into making the world a better place through your work in the charity and non-profit sectors, thank you. I'm Divya O'Connor and here's the show.
Introducing Greenpeace UK Co-Leaders
00:01:52
Speaker
Today I have the privilege of speaking with not just one, but two impressive non-profit leaders, Areba Hamid and Will McCallum, co-executive directors of Greenpeace UK. What's unique about Areba and Will is that together they have shattered several barriers in their leadership roles. Areba is the first woman and person of colour to lead Greenpeace UK, and they are the first duo to assume this position.
Greenpeace's Role and Co-Leadership Model
00:02:15
Speaker
In this episode, we dive into the essential role that Greenpeace continues to play in today's world, where the climate movement has become mainstream, and how their work continues to influence policy and drive social change. We explore the co-leadership model that a rebound will have adopted, discovering what makes it work and how they navigate conflicts.
00:02:34
Speaker
They also share valuable advice for other charity leaders and organisations who may be contemplating this approach. It's a fascinating conversation. Enjoy!
Sponsorship and Diversity in Leadership
00:02:44
Speaker
This episode is sponsored by Society. Society is an executive search firm that partners with responsible businesses and purpose-driven organisations to strengthen diversity and inclusion across senior leadership and board appointments.
00:02:57
Speaker
As a certified B Corp, they believe that all organisations can have a positive social impact and that careers should have purpose and meaning. Society's goal is to change the world for the better, one appointment at a time. Visit their website society-search.com for further details. Now, on with the show.
Areba Hamid's Activism Journey
00:03:20
Speaker
Hi Will, hi Areeba. Welcome to season five of the Charity CEO podcast. Hi. Hello, thank you for having us. My pleasure. And starting off with our icebreaker questions, I have three questions for each of you and Areeba may be coming to you first. Question one, what was your very first engagement in activism and what did you do? My very first engagement in activism was probably
00:03:49
Speaker
being a two-year-old and going to my grandfather's little newspaper printing press in UP with Pradesh back in India, he ran a newspaper in Urdu which was called Khosla which roughly translates to the word courage in English. It was about during the time of
00:04:08
Speaker
India's independence, that became a bit of a hotspot for people to come together and strategize. He wasn't necessarily directly involved in the movement, but indirectly provided the space and the publication carried a lot of opinion pieces. There's a picture of me sat somewhere in the press trying to lift up a telephone receiver from a landline that was just installed in the press. I'd count that as my first brush with activism.
00:04:36
Speaker
I absolutely loved that story. Two years old, brilliant. Will, how about you?
Will McCallum's Activism Beginnings
00:04:42
Speaker
My family, not so political. I mean, they are now, but they certainly weren't when I was growing up. And so my first one probably, I think it was a real classic anti-Iraq War march, which pretty much everyone that I knew at the time was just catching a train or a bus to London from where I lived and just being on that street for the million person march.
00:05:05
Speaker
Brilliant. Question two, what would you say is your professional superpower?
Strengths in Campaign Strategy
00:05:11
Speaker
I think seeing a lot of complicated stuff and trying to make sense of it. In campaigning, it's an art, not a science. And there are so many factors that will make a campaign effective or ineffective, right from scientific research to childlike face and everything in between.
00:05:30
Speaker
And I think I am quite good at finding simple ways of reading that context and then saying, I think we should go ahead with this. I think that would make a compelling campaign. And you will?
00:05:43
Speaker
My safe place, I suppose, I don't know why there's a superpower, but my safe place at work is I spent a long time at Greenpeace organizing really big marine expeditions that would have lots of people come from lots of different countries, equipment. And so really my superpower is not getting stressed by large scale logistics.
00:06:02
Speaker
and maybe if i had to drill down even more and very good booking travel accommodation visas restaurants all of that stuff for like large groups of people coming from entirely different backgrounds and places around the world during a pandemic i really hold those skills during a pandemic.
00:06:21
Speaker
Brilliant being a travel guru. I think Will is being very modest because first of all, we're going to underestimate how important that is. You cannot have a good meeting. Absolutely. Anything can get done if you don't have somebody doing that. And second, I mean, being calm in high stress environments is like, yeah.
00:06:40
Speaker
is really valuable, so definitely. Excellent.
Dream Interviews with Activism Icons
00:06:44
Speaker
Question three, if you had the opportunity to interview anyone in the world dead or alive, who would it be and what one question would you like to ask them?
00:06:53
Speaker
I mean, there are lots and lots of people, but somebody that I often think I would have loved to have met and just asked her how she came up with those ideas and did that work is Rachel Carson, who wrote Silent Spring. But before she wrote Silent Spring, she wrote a trilogy about the oceans. And in a way, she just was the first science writer. I mean, I guess there are plenty before her. The first person who got the campaigning
00:07:20
Speaker
side of science that like actually through by explaining science to a broader audience you might convince them to take action and her work on DDT and then her work on helping people understand the oceans and on helping understand the damage that humans were doing to the planet. Doing that in you know middle of the 20th century where there were very few women in her position writing about science as well I just think she would have been great to meet an interview.
00:07:48
Speaker
I would probably still, I mean, I sort of idolise her quite a bit, Arundhati Roy. I mean, why did she decide to throw away the adulation after winning the Booker Prize and just use that to become the persona non grata now that she is for the Indian government? Like that is admirable, but also what went on in her head, what happened there would be quite interesting. And it's admirable, but it's also interesting to understand that process.
00:08:16
Speaker
fascinating stories indeed and let's come on to your own fascinating stories.
Greenpeace's Origin and Evolution
00:08:21
Speaker
So Will, Eriba, you are the co-executive directors of Greenpeace UK and for the benefit of those listeners who may not be so familiar with your work, tell us the origin story of Greenpeace and also how as an organization you create change.
00:08:38
Speaker
I mean, our origin story is quite a famous one, so it's an easy one to look up as well, and I'll give a very shortened version of it. But really, some draft dodgers from the US, who were avoiding being conscripted into the Vietnam War, found their way to the west coast of Canada.
00:08:57
Speaker
where they heard about nuclear weapons testing going on off the coast of Alaska, some islands called Amritka. And they decided to cobble together a really not seaworthy boat with a really not seaworthy crew and sail out into what was called the death zone, where they would be able to prevent these tests from taking place. So the origin story for all of that drama kind of has lived on ships,
00:09:24
Speaker
direct action, and I suppose this idea that when you produce that image, when you produce that moment that captures people's imagination, you then give yourself a platform to talk about all of the other changes that you might want. And when they came back in, they barely made it off the coast, let alone into the death zone. When they were hauled back in by the Coast Guard, they were asked, you know, what is it you want? And they said, a green and peaceful world.
00:09:47
Speaker
And just that kind of moment of capturing the public's imagination led to a fundraising concert, led to another trip out there, and the sort of whole thing snowballed in that way. And whilst we're a long way from being a kind of group of exclusively North American, predominantly men, all white, I think, group of activists, and we've kind of evolved and become a lot more fit for purpose for the modern world,
00:10:11
Speaker
there are some elements of that story that still really ring true. That creating drama and being at the center of the action, bearing witness to environmental destruction, I think still is part of Greenpeace's DNA.
Strategies for Change at Greenpeace
00:10:25
Speaker
How we create change. I think the first thing to say is that those group of people had a good idea to take action, to not stand silently where something was happening, and we never had a better idea. At the core of it, I think we've stuck to it, which is that,
00:10:40
Speaker
We look at situations and the more theoretical answer would be, read power. Who are the ones who are making decisions? Who are the ones that are creating an equity by those decisions, disproportionate prices being paid for those decisions? And how might we shift them? And then the central question is, who will they listen to? Why will they shift? And this is why, if you look at our campaigns,
00:11:05
Speaker
compelling storytelling campaigns. There are campaigns that are, yes, underpinned by research and evidence-based, and we work with scientists and researchers all the time, but at the heart of it is compelling storytelling for a particular bunch of people who would deliver that message in the most powerful way which will lead to change.
00:11:25
Speaker
And that is how we create change. And we've done that over and over again. And we use different variety of tactics. We have an investigations unit, for example, that can take long-form stories, undercover investigations that take years to finish, which will change the conversation to something which is mass, like people counting the plastic that comes into their shopping and telling the supermarket to reduce that and everything in between. And we're quite lucky.
00:11:53
Speaker
that we have all kinds of those expertise in the building. But essentially, we want to shift those in power making decisions to make better decisions. And talking about shifting power, what do you see as the role of Greenpeace in today's context where the climate movement has become more mainstream?
Greenpeace's Climate Movement Role
00:12:10
Speaker
And in that context, also tell us a little bit about your current strategic priorities.
00:12:16
Speaker
With the climate movement becoming more mainstream, we are still so in need of more people. And I never want us to be complacent that even though there are all these groups and that is an amazing thing and we will only benefit from more people and more groups getting involved in climate.
00:12:31
Speaker
whether they're doing direct action on the one hand, whether they are producing research and reports on the other, whether they're working inside companies or shouting outside the building. Everybody is welcome in this fight and we have to make sure everybody has an easy route to find the role that they can play. And I think that's something that Greenpeace can certainly do is provide a multiple, like Areva was just talking about, the different ways we try and make change happen. We have the opportunity to find lots of different ways for people to get stuck in and get involved.
00:12:58
Speaker
But we're also really trying to help other groups to broaden their offer to people, to get them more publicity, to get them more air time. But even with, I don't know, 90,000 people on the street for the big one last weekend, and we were there with Greenpeace, we had about 1,500 of our volunteers and activists there with us.
00:13:16
Speaker
Even with all of that, these companies have so much money and they have so much access to power and access to decision makers and we cannot underestimate what an enormous fight this is. So everybody is welcome. The climate movement being mainstream doesn't mean we have the power we need to make change happen yet. So it's an open door to everybody to get involved.
00:13:37
Speaker
Yeah, which is a good jumping off point to talk about strategic priorities. I think what has happened in the last 15, 20 years since we have been working on climate biodiversity, will and me specifically, has been that the science is clearer than ever before. We have won the war on climate denial. I mean, those were wasted years, don't get me wrong. It still fills me with fury that we have to convince a bunch of people that, no, no, it's really happening and it is really going to get bad.
00:14:05
Speaker
I think those battles are thankfully a thing of the past, not entirely, but we can concentrate on the real business of halving emissions in the next seven years and halting biodiversity loss. We have to do both, and we have to do that in the next seven years.
00:14:22
Speaker
With that sort of framing in mind, our strategic priorities are making sure that globally, the UK is an equal partner when it comes to achieving, having emissions with the frame of climate justice, which means that climate impacts are happening. They're happening right now, but some people are
00:14:41
Speaker
experiencing them disproportionately than the others. And those people did the least to cause climate crisis. So our job really is, as a global organization, we are in a unique position to partner with organizations with Greenpeace presence in South Asia, in Middle East and North Africa, and work with those offices to demand climate justice. And this is a campaign we are calling Stop Drilling Start Pain, which means that yes, we want to end drilling for fossil fuels and oil and gas,
00:15:10
Speaker
But we also need compensation. We also need damage and loss to be paid for those who are experiencing it far, far worse, which is the global south. So that's a global climate piece, and that's going to be a focus for us for the next couple of years or so.
00:15:26
Speaker
And then there is a UK climate base which is focused on making sure that whoever is running this government is delivering on the promise of net zero. We have heard a lot from this government, you know, taking the charge in Glasgow, everybody who's down there saying we are the best thing on climate, we look at us, we're so progressive. I mean, three months later, this government was approving New Orleans Gas. A few months later, it has approved its first coal mine in 30 years.
00:15:54
Speaker
That needs to stop. That is not going to help us either anything in the UK or globally, indeed, because when the Kumbria coal mine was approved, I remember looking at its coverage in India, people were like, what is the UK doing right now? How can they tell us to not have coal when they're approving coal mines? And that's really important. We need to make sure that we have 18 months from now till the next elections.
00:16:18
Speaker
We need to make sure that this government is called out for its hypocrisy, and whoever gets into the next government is delivering on that promise. And that also speaks to what Will was talking about, speaking to a wide variety of people to make that happen. More and more people now understand that climate change is happening, but at the same time, we also need those people to join in. We also need those people to join the dots between climate impacts, the cost of living crisis,
Global Ocean Protection Milestone
00:16:44
Speaker
the Ukraine war and the fact that fossil fuels are false solutions, they're not going to deliver on energy security. And that is going to be a big focus for us. Well, do you want to talk about some of the biodiversity work?
00:16:57
Speaker
On biodiversity, we have two big campaigns at the moment. One is an ongoing campaign that we've been running for years, which is around ocean protection, trying to put at least a third of the world's oceans off limits to human activities by 2030. We had a major milestone win in March this year with the adoption of a global ocean treaty at the United Nations.
00:17:18
Speaker
that was a campaign I worked on for about eight years but Greenpeace worked on for more than 20 years and we're now in the next phase which is actually where are these places, where are the sites of the ocean that if they were protected would bring benefits for coastal communities because the amazing thing, the reason why Greenpeace works on the ocean isn't just because it's part of our history, it's also because the ocean sustains three billion livelihoods around the world.
00:17:41
Speaker
whether that's through food security, tourism, and where they are often also the places where climate impacts are felt most strongly. So a healthy ocean is part of climate resilience. So marine reserves are sometimes called marine protected areas is another name, ocean sanctuaries, whatever you want to call them. It's basically saying, as scientists have showed us time and time again in the scientific literature, if you put at least a third of the world's oceans off limits by 2030, the ocean is able to feed the world.
00:18:07
Speaker
And it is also able to withstand a lot of the worst impacts of climate change, as well as potentially help us in mitigating those worst effects as well. And then we're really focused as well on a global plastics treaty.
Campaign Against Plastic Pollution
00:18:20
Speaker
And this is again, maybe speaks to what you were asking earlier about how Greenpeace, specifically Greenpeace thinks that change happens. We're a global organization and we like to get involved in these big global
00:18:30
Speaker
processes be they multinational corporations because we can reach them in lots of different markets or united nations now sometimes that can be the most mind-numbingly boring frustrating dull annoying anger inducing process because it takes so long and a hundred ninety three countries agreeing on anything inevitably involves the kind of trade-offs to give me heartburn and keep me up at night because you just watching the world burn around you while she's
00:18:56
Speaker
people sit in a room till 4am negotiating over a full stop or a semicolon. But we feel like we have such a global reach. We have presence in so many countries. We have such a long history actually in those specific corridors that we want to make sure these processes are as good as they can be. And with the Global Plastics Treaty, what we're campaigning for is a cap on plastic production.
00:19:18
Speaker
we will not turn the tide on plastic pollution unless we actually reduce the amount being produced in the first place recycling just cannot get us out of this mess alternatives like bioplastics cannot get out of this mess we have to reduce and we think that global rules are the only way we're actually gonna do that and we're hearing warm sounds it's funny
00:19:38
Speaker
like you'd think some of the biggest opponents to it like the fast-moving consumer goods companies groups like Danone, Nestle, Coca-Cola, Pepsi you'd think they'd be dead against this kind of thing but actually if you make something pre-competitive through global rules like a global treaty everyone has to do it and suddenly it stops being so scary and so that's going to be a big focus for a little while and
00:19:58
Speaker
We have lots of other smaller campaigns. We continue to support our colleagues in Brazil in all of the amazing work they're doing around Indigenous rights and land rights in Brazil. We continue to support colleagues in Indonesia in their campaign on palm oil by trying to get stories into the UK press, for example, is a very common way that we help support or often financial institutions that are funding that damage are based in the UK. So we might write letters or go to meetings on our colleagues behalf. But those two are the kind of big focus for the next couple of years.
00:20:27
Speaker
I want to come back to your roles in engaging with policy makers and particularly with respect to your message to the UK government in the run-up to the elections coming up in the next 18 months or so. But before we do that, Will, you mentioned the Big One event, which is a four-day action event that took place just this weekend, gone by Extinction Rebellion.
00:20:50
Speaker
And I wonder if you could tell us a bit more about what that event was really looking to achieve and why it was important for Greenpeace to be a part of it. Also from the frame of being an international organization and how you can therefore harness and support more grassroots activism where you see that really coming to
Supporting Grassroots Activism Post-Pandemic
00:21:10
Speaker
play.
00:21:10
Speaker
Yeah, I can talk a bit about the big one. And if we want to talk more about supporting grassroots more broadly, the big one, Extinction Rebellion burst onto the scene with this energy a few years ago that just inspired a lot of people who never considered going on a protest to come out on the streets and take action.
00:21:29
Speaker
and it wasn't just extinction rebellion, there were also the school strikes. All of those kids leaving school on a Friday saying we're not going to study because grown-ups aren't taking us seriously basically, they're not taking our future seriously and that was such an inspiring moment, such an inspiring year really of activism and then the pandemic came along.
00:21:48
Speaker
and people couldn't gather in numbers and the kind of core tools of some of these organizations and movements were taken away from them and some dedicated people managed to stick with it but a lot of people you know it was a hard few years and they turned their focus back to their lives and getting by really and maybe helping out more locally in their communities so
00:22:08
Speaker
The big one in a way was a moment to re-kickstart that movement, to kind of say, okay, remember this, remember what it was like when we all got on the street and demanded change, remember what it's like when you march in the street with tens of thousands of people who, yeah, you don't agree with everything that everyone is saying there, but we all agree that we need urgent climate action now. And for me, that's what the big one was about. And in that context, if that's what it's about, Greenpeace had to be there.
00:22:34
Speaker
we cannot stand by, sit in our office whilst activists from not just activists, pensioners, school children, everyone was there, trade unions, development charities, local kind of litter picking groups. Like you could really see the breadth of so many different interest groups there and we had to be there. So we shut our office and actually all staff went down there and we just threw ourselves into it because now's the time. Now's the time we need more people on the streets.
00:23:01
Speaker
Yeah. And I think this links to the point of grassroots as well. Like it is clear that we are not going to win organization by organization. The challenge is huge. Climate touches every aspect of our life and we'll be foolish to think only one organization is going to do this on their own. We're not.
00:23:19
Speaker
which is why it's really important for us to work with other organizations, with other issues, and with grassroots as well. Because working with grassroots has always been a part of Greenpeace campaigns. Local movements are where there is a lot of energy. We have volunteers who run local campaigns, write to the local MPs, and very often, like any good campaign, it reaches the national relevance once you've built it up in a way locally, because it has the relevance and authenticity.
00:23:47
Speaker
which it wouldn't have if it were only top down so we've always worked with grassroots group but i also think that with climate becoming mainstream green pieces role is sort of sometimes i think of it as being the elder in the movement we've had so many years of experience of doing this we have.
00:24:03
Speaker
resources that actually a lot of small organizations or grassroots groups in particular don't have. I think we have a responsibility to share those resources. We have a responsibility to make sure that the grassroots organizations are successful because our success is combined. We don't win if they don't win. I think that's quite important, which is why we have started to formalize that support to grassroots movements a little bit more. We have started offering
00:24:30
Speaker
some of our resources, some of our space to invite grassroots groups to come and work here in terms of using our resources and our space when we are not using it. And also, I think sometimes things like writing a press release, a punchy one, it's so easy for us. That's a resource we can very quickly share. So that's the kind of thing that we're looking to do more and more of. And I think we're just operating from the frame of we win as a movement and we lose as single organizations.
00:24:59
Speaker
I think it's really interesting the way you describe Greenpeace as the elder in the movement there, Reba, and I think that really fits in as well with the evolving role that you both have talked about. Climate change is a very complex issue.
UK Government's Climate Action Priorities
00:25:12
Speaker
And of course, with your activist hats on, you have a big role to play in terms of engaging government and influencing policymakers. So in that context, what is your key message to the UK government at this point of time?
00:25:28
Speaker
Stop wasting time, like literally. Get on with it. Get on with it. What frustrates me, I mean, it is also, don't get me wrong, this is probably that two sides at the same point. It is also incredibly exciting that what we need to do, the solutions are here.
00:25:46
Speaker
We know that they are here. We know that this country has been running on renewables for longer and longer periods of time. We know that they're going to get cheaper and cheaper once there is more investment in it. We know that insulating our homes will solve the problems with heating. We know that by doing that, we will stop being dependent on gas from Russia, which is then enabling the war. So we know all of this. And yet,
00:26:12
Speaker
We seem to be what experiencing from this government is false solutions. In the name of energy security, actually greenlighting bust investments. It's a really bad investment decision as well. I don't know what the investors are thinking when they were going there, private equity, putting their money into a coal mine.
00:26:28
Speaker
which is not going to be producing anytime soon or an oil and gas mine, which is not going to meet energy needs anytime soon. So yeah, get on with it. Stop wasting time. Stop looking for false solutions that real solutions exist. Some of them are already working and producing returns. We have examples of companies that have turned around and made pure renewables. They're making profit. It makes business sense. It makes energy security sense and it makes climate sense. So just get on with it.
00:26:55
Speaker
And given your experience in this area, what advice might you have for other nonprofit leaders who are seeking to influence policy and drive social change? What have you found works in terms of pulling levers when trying to influence government?
Advice for Nonprofit Leaders
00:27:09
Speaker
I still feel very new as in anything approaching leaders to be giving advice to anybody else. But I think it's so important not to confuse access for influence. And probably if I had one message, that's a trap I think everybody can fall into when you become
00:27:28
Speaker
close to someone in power, when you become close to where decisions are being made, you start to get confused about where that blurry line is. And I've definitely been like those negotiations for a global ocean treaty. You go to the same room
00:27:41
Speaker
several times a year, you meet the same people several times a year, just because they're telling you everything doesn't mean that you're necessarily influencing what they are then saying and what they're doing behind closed doors. So for a leadership angle, that's the number one advice. It's let's not confuse access for influence and remember that time is running out. So we have to opt on whatever is going to have the most impact. And sometimes that puts us really in the uncomfortable position of calling out people we know quite well.
00:28:09
Speaker
But that is the job. That's the job that supporters, particularly for Greenpeace, we're a mass membership organization. Our supporters give us monthly donations and they expect us to be holding decision makers accountable.
00:28:21
Speaker
think that's such an important message Will, don't confuse access for influence. And talking about leadership, I'd really like to delve much more into the model of co-leadership that you both have established at Greenpeace UK.
Insights into Co-Leadership at Greenpeace UK
00:28:36
Speaker
You're both co-executive directors and unlike perhaps more traditional jobs shares where
00:28:42
Speaker
both individuals work part-time, you both are actually full-time. And I'd really love to understand how did this come about? Did you apply for the role together? And how did you convince the board to essentially hire not just one, but two CEOs? Oh, magic. We applied together.
00:28:58
Speaker
And we put a lot of thought into whether we really wanted to do this together. Why would we? How would it work? How would it work in particular if and when we disagreed? So we spent quite a, there was a lot of time just sort of thinking through all of those junky questions, which I think made then therefore the process easier. Once we were convinced of it, obviously then it was easier to sort of say, these are reasoning and then laying it down clearly to fathers.
00:29:28
Speaker
But I think the reason why we decided was because we both have grown up in Greenpeace in some ways. I mean, those in my experience are quite different, but also quite complimentary. We know this organization quite well. We love this organization a lot as well. And having spent quite a lot of time and between us, we have 25 years experience of working in Greenpeace.
00:29:48
Speaker
We also knew that we wanted to change it because the context has changed, because climate is mainstream, because things are sort of becoming, our solutions are ready, but we're seeing all these false solutions coming to us from the government and from the corporations. And then we have a new generation of people who are interested in climate whose values might be more aligned with Greenpeace's, but they don't necessarily think of Greenpeace when they first think of
00:30:12
Speaker
environmental campaigning organizations so it was quite an interesting challenge to take on and we thought that because we wanted to change it it was a two-person job really because had you wanted to do business as usual had you wanted just you know a steady pair of hands and the tail I think one person would have sufficed I think Greenpeace we're a mass membership organization like Will said we've
00:30:36
Speaker
actually done well when we compare ourselves to others in the sector over the pandemic and the cost of learning crisis. Business as usual is safe, business as usual would have continued. But had that made us win on climate in the timelines that we have? I think not, which is why we thought we need to put our heads together, we need to put our skills together, and we need to do this in a way that actually creates the change that is needed to meet the moment.
00:31:03
Speaker
And I think on a more personal level, there's a resilience element. The world out there is hard and stuff is changing all the time and staying abreast of changes and constantly thinking about how you're trying to change what's quite a dire situation sometimes. And the world inside can be really challenging because everybody's feeling that. Everybody's feeling more precarious at the moment and managing an organization that this kind of
00:31:27
Speaker
macroeconomic climate is hard and takes a level of resilience and I just definitely know I couldn't have done it without doing it with the Reaver. It's like it wasn't an option to play as an individual or together it was applied together or just not the job for me.
00:31:45
Speaker
I'd like to take a step back and understand a bit more about how you chose each other or how you found each other and then perhaps a step forward and look into how you make it work practically on a day-to-day basis.
00:31:59
Speaker
Yeah, I guess step back is Ariba and I worked on a campaign together. That was how we first met each other. We worked on a campaign when Ariba first moved to the UK. And then we actually ended up in various permutations and Ariba's last job at Greenpeace was managing me.
00:32:17
Speaker
So we kind of knew that we could work as peers. We knew we can work in a managerial relationship. And we also knew each other outside of work as well and knew that our kind of values and the broad idea of where Greenpeace should be going was aligned. So in that sense, it was easy. I actually don't think too much about how that happened. It's like a dating question. How did you get together?
00:32:41
Speaker
Well, I'll tell you what happened. If you drive two hours each way for a 15-minute meeting with an MP, which comes to nothing, and you're still made, I think that's a good time. Yeah, that's it. That was the one. So it's because of that MP who brought you together. Yeah, I remember who it was. I think he was a Lib Dem.
00:32:59
Speaker
like a waste of an entire day. We had a good time because we were just hanging out together talking about the world and campaigns. That was definitely it. But on a more practical level, we both do the full-time role. We have sort of split our responsibilities or the responsibilities of the job right down the middle. And the areas that Will is responsible for overseas, he takes all the decisions on them. Same for me.
00:33:24
Speaker
It's our responsibility to keep each other in the loop. Our responsibility to the organization is that they will never get mixed signals, and there'll never be space to go and lobby one or the other to change the decision. They can't be like, I don't like Will's decision, let me go talk to you, but that's not going to happen. And we have done quite okay on that so far. And again, I think this goes back to the conversations we had about how will we do this role. We thought about it for a very long time, in a very detailed way, how will this ins and outs will work.
00:33:54
Speaker
And I think the largest bit of it really goes down to what we were saying earlier, which is values. I mean, the reason why I feel completely at ease with taking decisions on things that I don't know the ins and outs of is because I know we are aligned on where we are going with this.
00:34:10
Speaker
I know we are aligned on what is the change we want to create. And therefore, I don't think that there'll be decisions where I'll be like, oh my god, I would have totally taken a different decision in this context. So I think that is where a lot of this ease is coming from. And I would say that I have seen key core leadership positions in other organizations as well. And to my mind, the ones that seem to work really well are the ones where people have chosen to apply together and have done the thinking.
00:34:37
Speaker
instead of when the board might have put two people together or two people just decided without necessarily having done the thinking or just met and thought let's. So that to my mind sticks out as a bit of a common theme in co-leadership being done successfully. Yeah and then even at a more granular level I think once you're aligned on values you
00:34:57
Speaker
can only operate with quite a radical level of transparency. So we share an email inbox. We don't have time to read everything that's coming in. But in theory, we could entirely read what was going on in a project that we had nothing to do with. And we have to record our decisions, which is just quite a good accountability mechanism anyway. But you have to really kind of actually note down when you've decided something and put it down on paper. Because otherwise, that potential for miscommunication is there.
00:35:25
Speaker
one of our colleagues the other day source having i guess a relatively heated conversation about something like if i didn't know you i'd say that you are having an enormous fight we weren't that was just how we talk when like we're talking about a big problem is quite.
00:35:41
Speaker
energetic and you can only do that if you know that fundamentally you agree on the direction and the values like actually you'll be more creative more generative in conversations if you know that the only purpose to it is coming out with a better decision a better outcome it makes it quite freeing
00:35:57
Speaker
It's such an interesting concept co-leadership and will to your point earlier, I think resilience is absolutely critical in leadership as well. And it just gives you more of a platform and a sounding board to talk through decisions with and hats off as well to the Greenpeace UK board for being progressive and often they're thinking and being willing to put this structure in place.
00:36:19
Speaker
And I want to ask you, can you share perhaps some learnings or tips? You've alluded to a few practical things already there, but in terms of if there are other leaders or other organizations who are looking or are interested in a co-leadership model and implementing that in their organizations, what would your top tips be? And also, what are the kind of pitfalls or dangers to look out for?
00:36:43
Speaker
Well, one of our values is relationships first, like you have to have utmost trust and a very strong foundation to be able to then have really robust arguments without thinking, I'm never going to speak to this person again.
00:36:58
Speaker
or in our situation in particular unique to Greenpeace is taking risks together we take legal risks we do direct actions we are in stressful situations quite often and i think all of that is made better by the fact that there is deep trust there is accountability and we've done the work
00:37:18
Speaker
to make that relationship as strong as possible. And that's not a value just that Will and I practice. That is what we've also regularly speak to staff about when the new staff joins us. That is the framing we give them because yes, we want people to get on, but we also want people to really have the hard conversations to make anything more effective. And very often that's where people sort of dither. It's easy not to have the hard conversation. It's easy to say,
00:37:45
Speaker
Yeah, actually, that plan was great. I'm happy with it. I don't have no big feedback. It's harder to say, I think that bit is weak, that works. This is a common theme. We've looked at some of the groups as diverse as, say, Netflix or people making interesting products. One common theme is people's ability to have hard conversations with each other. That only happens
00:38:11
Speaker
if we have a strong relationship. So that's definitely one of the biggest sort of job tip and learning for me as well. I don't have much more to say to that really. Just if you're thinking about it, I suppose don't force it with someone just because you think the skills are complementary. That's probably not the right way to go because actually it's more than a jigsaw puzzle. The relationship should be adding something to the organization as much as your individual skills.
00:38:38
Speaker
I want to touch upon fundraising briefly now because I understand that at Greenpeace UK you have a rather unique fundraising model because the majority of your funding comes from individual donors. I know you don't take any money from government or from corporates and yet you have actually managed to double your income over the past year or so to about 25 million. Is that right?
Greenpeace UK's Fundraising Model
00:39:00
Speaker
It's a bit more, although it wasn't doubled over the last year. It's definitely doubled over a slightly longer period.
00:39:06
Speaker
Yeah, I really want to understand what has been the secret to Greenpeace's fundraising success. I think it's multifold and a lot of this comes down to having an incredible fundraising department filled with amazing individuals who are all campaigners. Our fundraising is not separate to our campaigns and I think the way we conceive of it inside the organisation is
00:39:28
Speaker
You try as hard as obviously there are differences of specialisms and skills and sometimes things can feel a bit siloed. But when I look at lots of organizations and when I speak to staff in Greenpeace UK, our fundraisers care about winning campaigns. First and foremost, they care about winning. And that comes through in their communications and there's no better fundraising strategy.
00:39:49
Speaker
then kind of being honest and really speaking to what the organization is actually doing and speaking to the kind of impact that we actually want to have. So that I think is very much at the heart of it and then more nuts and bolts. The income went up a lot over COVID because I think a lot of environment was mainstream and people were sitting at home and they were thinking about the planet and they were thinking about nature and I think we really benefited from that for sure.
00:40:13
Speaker
we have a very diverse mix as well we do everything from glastonbury to major donor events to telemarketing to online marketing and
00:40:25
Speaker
We have our regular monthly givers without whom we would not have financial independence. And we try in all of our communications with those 150,000-ish regular donors to say, your monthly gift gives us the power to hold companies and governments to account.
00:40:44
Speaker
If we didn't have individuals supporting us, if we had to take money from companies and government, then our campaigns would be limited. And that's quite a powerful sell, I think, really. That's quite a powerful reason to give to Greenpeace, is because it allows us to continue to do the kinds of campaigning, which I really obviously wouldn't be doing this job. But I passionately believe the climate movement needs our style of campaigning, along with many others. And our style can only come with financial independence of the kind that regular giving gives us.
00:41:12
Speaker
Are there any campaigns that are currently in the pipeline that you want to highlight or talk about? Stop drilling, start paying. That is a shift, I think. And that is going to take a mental shift in how we think about climate, where for decades, to be honest, the climate conversation has been exclusively about mitigation. It's been about cutting fossil fuel emission. And that and that alone. I started out in Greenpeace as a coal campaigner. That was what we did. Cut emissions, cut emissions, cut emissions. That is the only campaign to be had.
00:41:40
Speaker
and very sadly with climate impacts now throughout the world and being felt really really strongly in some places. I mean the temperatures right now in some bits of the northern hemisphere and everywhere from India to Spain are dangerous and they're putting people's lives at risk.
00:41:59
Speaker
And so we cannot continue to campaign on mitigation alone. We have to evolve our campaign to incorporate social justice and actually paying for the damage being caused. And that is a shift and it's not a small shift because these are big sums of money and they're going to require changes to business plans and they're going to require government stepping in and having the backbone to say, if you're making windfall profits, you got to invest them back into communities.
00:42:23
Speaker
I am always fascinated to really dig in and understand more about people's journey. So tell us a bit more about your individual story arcs and what has really brought you to where you are today. Ariba, I know that when we were chatting earlier, you mentioned that you started your career working in Greenpeace India's headquarters in Bangalore. And of course, your grandfather's press outfit when you were just two years old. But tell us a bit more about your journey.
00:42:49
Speaker
I often think I'm very lucky because I sort of fell into campaigning it wasn't like I had a plan I grew up in Delhi and I studied political science and then policy and development and got involved in student activism just talking about what's what's happening globally and in India politically and just
00:43:08
Speaker
kind of ended up with very aware involved people which definitely shaped my worldview and then my first job actually was at this magazine called Economic and Political Weekly as an editorial assistant. I was the youngest on the staff and I sort of used to just edit stories that somebody else had written but I did get a bit sort of like itchy feet even though that experience was really valuable because I'd been an activist, I'd been on the streets as a student
00:43:34
Speaker
And when I studied policy, one thing that stuck with me was that very few people are making very big decisions and they're sitting in very privileged rooms and they don't necessarily have a sense of what's happening outside in the world. And those policies that they make, the decisions that they make have really big impacts. So I spent quite a lot of time in sort of like small villages looking at how policies were functioning in India.
00:43:59
Speaker
And when Greenpeace India was hiring, honestly, I applied because I wanted to be on the ship. I didn't know what was campaigning then. I was still in my early twenties. I only knew Greenpeace had ships. I was like, that'll be nice. And I did get to go on a ship, but I think it was such a happy accident. I just sort of found my calling. So my first job actually was as an oceans campaigner and I was working on the marine conservation in India. And I was at Greenpeace India for around
00:44:29
Speaker
Eight years and then I moved to Greenpeace International and I worked in Indonesia on palm oil and other commodities. And then I started working on air pollution in the UK. I moved to the UK shortly after because most of the palm oil comes to Europe and this office was playing a big role.
00:44:46
Speaker
And then I set up our air pollution campaign in London ahead of the mayoral elections. I did leave Greenpeace for two years in the middle to work on getting finance out of fossil fuel with this lovely organization called the Sunrise Project and then joined back in this role six months ago.
00:45:03
Speaker
So that's sort of been my journey. But yeah, basically a Greenpeace lifer. I feel like I haven't really worked anywhere else. I feel like you're about to say, if we cut you, your blood's going to be green on the inside.
00:45:18
Speaker
And Will, how about you? In some ways, literally just fell into it. There's an element of just luck and chance. Like I said, I didn't grow up in a particularly political environment. I did grow up in quite an international environment, I suppose. But mainly, I think what kind of brought me into connection with this is probably the troublemaking element more, and probably growing up as a queer kid.
00:45:42
Speaker
not able to be out you find other ways of acting out and that I suppose personal self-expression personal protest whatever we want to call it sort of evolved but maybe a turning point more than anything else was I studied Farsi at university and ended up living in Tehran for a while and
00:45:59
Speaker
I met just some incredibly inspiring activists there, people who political expression and protest and fighting for what they believe in wasn't a choice but an obligation because just to be themselves they had to fight and I came back from that experience
00:46:17
Speaker
just a lot more keen to get stuck into something more meaningful away from maybe more hedonistic troublemaking and into more political troublemaking and just found people who were into that and I just started out by driving vans I could drive and not many people in the environmental movement could drive at that time
00:46:33
Speaker
And so I was driving equipment from a protest camp in one place back to a community center somewhere else and met some really inspiring people who've been doing this for decades and have always, always been very kind of inspired by people who've stuck with social change and activism throughout their lives, despite the kind of pitfalls, obstacles, all the stuff that life throws at you, people who've kept that fire going. And I met a few really amazing
00:47:00
Speaker
people like that when I was in my early 20s and a couple of them worked for Greenpeace. So after doing a couple of different jobs, including completely and utterly failing and dropping out on my PhD, which was in protest art, I had a couple of jobs and a job came up at Greenpeace and I'd spent some time sitting in the warehouse in Greenpeace planning actions and planning kind of activist campaigning stuff and so really wanted to apply. So I started out here as a volunteer coordinator and kind of took it from there.
00:47:29
Speaker
I got into oceans. I stuck with oceans for a really long time, like eight years, nine years.
Challenges and Resilience in Leadership
00:47:35
Speaker
Still, that is probably the issue that kind of makes me sort of light up, I don't know, for one bit of a word. The thing that I care about, like instinctively, it's the thing I'm drawn to. And the reason for that is because I was lucky enough, I got a job after being a volunteer coordinator, I got a job as a political advisor, policy advisor.
00:47:50
Speaker
I was working on fisheries and we were touring around the coast in the southwest speaking to fishermen about the problems that they were facing and just that dawning realization over a lot of conversations with a lot of different fishermen that the win for the environment was going to be a win for their livelihoods as well and that win-win that I'd not experienced in the kind of coal campaigning or the fossil fuel campaigning that I'd been doing up until that point. That win-win because
00:48:15
Speaker
A healthier ocean is more fish, is more of a sustainable livelihood for these people. It was so appealing and it kind of really drew me in and kept me for a long time. So this is the first CEO or Executive Director role for both of you and you've been in post since September last year. Is there any advice that you would give to yourselves on day one of starting this journey together? Every day is going to be a surprise.
00:48:42
Speaker
In some ways, actually it cuts both ways because it's incredible that we get to do a job where no two days are similar because it could be anything from attending a meeting with external stakeholders to making an important decisions about the work-life balance in Greenpeace.
00:48:58
Speaker
So it's incredible, but at the same time it's full of surprises. It's like, oh wow, I did not know I was in charge of how much heating, what temperature offices should be at because that affects our heating bills. So obviously in hindsight, yes, but people need to be comfortable. But at the same time, there's an energy crisis. And that's a conversation that ultimately we are responsible for. And I was like, did not expect that, but here we are.
00:49:23
Speaker
Yeah and I think the best bit of advice I've received so I'm definitely not claiming it as my own but like keep the tank half full at all times. Let your life outside of Greenpeace, let some of your interests within Greenpeace as well just accept that you can't sustain them and you just need to make sure you're sleeping well, eating well and doing exercise because you might have a day that lasts until midnight and you might have another day, the next day you might start at 5am because you're not quite sure what's going to come through the door
00:49:52
Speaker
That is such important advice, and I think it applies to everyone, no matter what role you are doing in the organisation. Will, Areva, it has been so inspiring speaking with you both today. Your passion is so palpable and infectious. Give us one final thought or reflection. What is one thing you would like listeners to really take away from this conversation? The door's open, and if you want radical climate action, come and talk to us. Like, we have to be working together.
00:50:19
Speaker
Yeah. And you have more power than you think. Use that power. Think about what is it that you can do. You definitely can. Think about that power. If you need ideas, come to us. Come to the climate movement. We need you. And there it is. Thank you so much for being guests on the show. Thank you. Thank you.
00:50:42
Speaker
And that's a wrap on another inspiring episode of the Charity CEO podcast. I hope you found the conversation thought-provoking and uplifting. I certainly did. If you enjoyed the episode, we'd be thrilled if you could share the joy by leaving us a five-star review on your favourite podcast platform. Tag us on Twitter, LinkedIn or Instagram. We'd love hearing from our listeners.
00:51:03
Speaker
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