Living Change: A Quest For Climate Leadership

Mike Barry / Corporate Sustainability Advisor

Mike Barry (00:00): 

Food is everywhere. Deeply political, deeply contentious to change. But this sector in the next 10 years will have to change radically to live, to adapt and become resilient in the climate disruptive world. 

Andrea Learned (00:21): 

I’m Andrea Learned and welcome to Living Change, a podcast exploring unconventional climate leadership. I talk to people who’ve converted their personal values into business and policy decisions in a load of different sectors. I believe that the more we’re visible about these changes, the more we chart the way for other leaders wanting to create new social norms. 

Today I’m speaking with London-based sustainability advisor, Mike Barry. Mike is driving real change in the corporate world, working with international businesses, charities, think tanks and startups, and helping them achieve a greener model of profitable business practices. I first met Mike in person at Climate Week Paris in 2015, the year leading up to the signing of the Paris Agreement at COP 21. As ever, we’ve kept in touch on social media. Looking back on Season One, I’ve struggled to find leaders to speak with who own their leadership voices, are seen living change in their own lives, and then reflect that truth in their corporate policies and practices. I wanted to conclude this season with Mike because he’s pushing action and results with corporate leaders and having climate impact success. He helped launch and implement Marks and Spencer’s groundbreaking sustainability program Plan A, because as he’d say, there is no plan B for the one world we have. So we had to start there. 

Mike Barry (01:40): 

Oh my goodness. We are going back into the depths of time. <laugh> 2000. I joined Mark and Spencer 20 odd years ago and it’s, it was amazing. I was recruited then by the then chief financial Officer, Alison Reed, cfo. She said, Mike, confession to make, no one in the business really gives too much of a monkeys about environmental issues, but I do personally. I’m the sponsor on the board. Interestingly, one woman on a board of men who all look like me. There we are, but learning there for us all. And she sponsored me ,and she said, took me under her wing and said, look Mike, um, I’ll give you cover, I’ll help you navigate around the business, but you have no line manager and no budget. You sink or swim. Get out there and sort this green stuff out. Wow. And that’s what I did with a good friend Roland Hill, who’d been in M & S 20 or 30 years. 

(02:27):
And we sort of started to build, um, uh, confidence in the business that we could do something better. Uh, brought lots of things together, listened to a lot of people, built a plan, brilliant chief execs, Stuart Rose came into the business to save it from takeover and said, I want to be the world’s best on this. Wow. Go do. Mm-hmm <affirmative>. So we went from one extreme to another. Literally overnight developed and launched something called plan A because there is no plan B for the one planet. We got a hundred commitments in a hundred days, 17 versions written and bought, bought into by the business. And when you look back to 2007, when we launched it, it sort of saw the future. Mm-hmm. <affirmative>. So we didn’t call it scope three, but we said we have to take responsibility for the supply chains that make our products.

(03:05):
Several billion things, clothing, food items M&S Sells every year, and 32 million customers and how they use them. So we didn’t call it Scope three, but we were step forward. We saw business case. This had to make sense for the business in terms of efficiency, motivation for its people, differentiation of his brands resilience in its supply chain. And ultimately bringing new products and service to the marketplace. So we saw that coming. We saw that need for integration. So everybody did it. And even when I was director of the business reporting to the chief exec and never had more than a team of 10 reporting to me in the center out of 83,000 colleagues, cuz it had to be owned by everybody, not by the specialists. We saw the need for partnership that M&S could not change the world. Things like palm oil, but seven stages as liquid commodity away from M&S. How can you possibly change that world on your own? So you how to stand with your big competitors, Tesco, sales, et cetera. So much of what we call best practice now, we saw. Not saying we were perfect, as I’ve got gray hair for a reason, <laugh> and crucially, I decided not just to launch that plan, but to stay. You know, lots of head hunters said, leave Mike your star’s, you know, in our little village in the ascendancy. You’re famous for launching the plan. Leave before it all goes wrong.

Andrea Learned (04:13): 

Right. <laugh> 

Mike Barry (04:15): 

And I… and remember Mike had brown hair then. Yeah. <laugh>. So Mike said, no, Mike’s gonna stay and Mike’s gonna have a pop at sort of down in the trenches of making a mistake. And it was hard. Mm-hmm. Really hard. The business went through lots of commercial challenges, lots of learning. You know, I look back now and think I’ve done so many different things differently, which is what I now can now take to my consulting base and to the companies I sort of advise now. But, we learn from doing and I’m really glad to stay to see that through as well. So that’s where I am now. Three years into just consulting on my own. 

Andrea Learned (04:47): 

That. So the interesting thing, if you look at your website, you’ve got it broken down into why, what, how, the way that you’re kind of walking your clients through. So I guess give me an example of a client who comes to you and, and what that means. 

Mike Barry (05:00): 

The beauty of working on your own is you can pick and choose which clients you work with. So you know, one example: I work with some of the world’s biggest FMCG companies. They don’t come to me for me to tell ’em how to implement today’s plan. Brilliant. They know how to do that. What’s next generation? What’s over the horizon? What’s sustainable business two point nos. You know, if you start having a conversation about these big scary topics like de-growth, what would it mean to sell less physical stuff? Wow. 

Andrea Learned (05:27): 

Wow. That’s

Mike Barry (05:28):

Really hard to get your head round. How do you start to create a truly integrated value chain, which is adult to adult relationships between the buyer and the suppliers, as opposed to parent childhood now. How do you go through radical shifts in terms of how we use data and digital to track and trace these trillions of items that we consume as a society around the world that come from millions of locations that go to billions of consumers. You ain’t doing it with a spreadsheet, but you might with AI, big data, remote sensing, et cetera. So they come to me for these radical shifts forward. Other people will come to me and say, we’re a startup Mike, you know. We, we want you to help us dock into the world of established business for funding, uh, for growth plans, for expansion. Other people will come to me and say, Mike, you know, you’ve got lots of experience about bringing business together. Those partnerships that M&S spoke about. Work with us to bring a set together. UK retailers, UK Hospitality, UK Food and Drink or the climate pledge to get all these multiple, very different businesses at very different stages on the journey to work collaboratively together towards something like net zero. So again, intellectually, even though I’m 55 now, every day I’m learning something new because of this constant stimulation from the marketplace, which shows people do want to change.

Andrea Learned (06:46): 

These clients are coming to you as organizations or corporations. But I’m curious, going back to what you were talking about with Marks and Spencer, how it was one person, right? The CFO who saw it and kind of brought it. I’m curious, are there always, is there always somebody internally who’s kind of pushing the corporation to like, we should talk to this Mike Barry guy. Is there anything like that going on?

Mike Barry (07:05): 

So, so yes and no. So what you’ve got now 15 years on from my M&S launch plan A is there’s much more coherency in much more big businesses that they need to do at least some of this, let’s call it ESG cuz that’s what most businesses are doing. ESG Yep. Yep. Which I’m slightly sniffy about. It’s risk, it’s compliance, it’s the ability basics. It’s not sustainable business as we want it to be. But, there’s a board level sponsor, there’s a head of, there’s a director, there’s a chief sustainability officer. So gone are the days when sort of a loose cannon like I could bumble around the business building a little guerrilla army to change it from within. I don’t think that’s really happening now.

 Andrea Learned (07:42):

Okay. 

Mike Barry (07:43): 

I think the big risk now is complacency that a lot of boardrooms have said, well I’ve appointed the Chief Sustainability officer, I’ve given them a budget, a team of 10 people, 20, they’ve got reports, you know, I’ll turn up once or twice a year at the board and have a chat with ’em about it. Job done, surely Mike. <laugh> And, actually in the world where we’ve seen this trans… a shift from compliance to transformation, that’s dangerous because again, we’ve seen it in the car industry and we, we haven’t got time to discuss Mr. Musk in Twittering Tesla.

(08:12):
But the, the serious point here is the incumbent car industry even five, six years ago, was laughing at the scaling of electrification. They thought Tesla was niche. They thought, you know, a small number of people buy into it, but the future was basically about leaner diesel cars, more efficient diesel cars. And it’s only when both society and policymakers and the innovation that came after Tesla said it can be and will be different, that everybody scrabbled to keep up. Now, all those incumbent car companies have got advanced plans now to respond. But, they’ve made it harder for themselves by being asleep at the wheel. I’ve seen the same in the food industry,  in the response to the radical shift in how we’ll have to produce, consume feed, the fashion industry – asleep at the wheel thinking it’s still all about fast fashion single use. And that’s my concern, is that we’ve got ESG directors and everybody’s thinking: enough done. And, actually that ESG role, that chief sustainability officer role now, is head of transformation. You’ve got to take this linear unsustainable business model, sudden all the wrong things in the wrong ways within 10 years to a radically different model, which requires different skill sets than just being, understanding all the different e ESG standards. Mm-hmm. <affirmative> how to write to report and another chat with a campaign group. You’ve got to lead internal change and disruption and that’s very different.

Andrea Learned (09:35): 

Yeah, that’s interesting because I’m actually, as I watch, you know, LinkedIn and what’s happening, I’m seeing lots of sustainability directors or VP sustainability being, you know, resigning or you know, kind of shifts in that and thinking, wait, I was watching that person and they were doing a pretty good job. Right. So it’s um, it’s really interesting cuz it seems like some corporations are kind of dropping the person that brought them this far and then hoping for something. And frankly I’m watching people be put into these positions that are like, more a communications or a public, and I’m just like, what? Anyway, I’m kind of, what are, are you seeing that, is there like a seven year stint and then they don’t know what to do or

 Mike Barry (10:13):

I, I I think it’s lots of things I, two or three observations. One is that I think we’ve seen an explosion in the, the size of the ESG, of sustainable business job market. Brilliant. Yes. And I get some of my old generation who, who were there at the beginning, like me getting a bit sniffy about it. You know, what do these kids know? Yeah. You know, you know, its only as wise old dogs that, and I think that’s rubbish and I think we need new blood and new ideas and they’re inevitably in that rapidly expanding cohort. I talked about myself in a village, which is actually a hamlet <laugh>,

 (10:47):
But we are now in a sustainable business town or even small size city. We want it to be a metropolis. We want it ultimately to be a country of sustainable business professionals. Cause everybody’s doing it. And inevitably a that group of people grow that play in this space. There’ll be some duff hires, you know, inevitably be one or two that don’t make it. There’ll be 90%, 95% who like me learn on the job. Yeah, yeah. And get better from doing so. You know, we, we have to reflect on that. The second thing is there is clearly in some businesses a difference between what the board want, which is just some good safe ESG risk management please. And a brave driven person who’s saying, no, we need to be so much further ahead, boss. Mm-hmm. <affirmative> and the boss is saying, nah, <laugh>, I’ve got you on a good salary.

(11:35):
You mind your own business and stay in your little box over here and write a piece. Some people are turning around and saying not for me. I’m off. I’ve tried to change his business for two or three years time. It’s not shifting. I’m off to a better place. I’m seeing that. But I’m also seeing then on the more positive side, more and more people on LinkedIn who’ve got, had a core commercial profession, been in HR of finance and marketing, procurement, you name it. And are now coming not just to people like me, but many other entities and saying, tell me about the sustainability thing. I want to make a difference. I’ve just spent 20 years trying to flog more stuff. There’s more to life than that. Surely they want a job with a purpose and pragmatically the […} of this is the way that the wind is blowing in terms of careers.

(12:18):
So, you know, we are getting expanding cohort coming in from the other direction as well. And my final point is, I think in a lot of businesses, this chief transformation officer role that we’re talking about is best filled from within your org organization. Mm-hmm. <affirmative>. So the person that leads the transformation is somebody who knows it inside out. It’s got the confidence of the C-suite, that’ve led some significant division of it. Then number two is a brilliant skilled technical specialist on the world’s sustainability and climate change and biodiversity, circularity, human rights. But the top person is there because they know how to pull the levers to get change done. Mm-hmm.

(12:57):
And again, I sense that a number of businesses have been out brought a technical specialist in, good, and then they’ve said to the technical specialist, what do you know about my business? And the person said, nothing. Nothing. Yeah. I know a lot about climate change. I know nothing about how your business operates. So I think we need to be fishing in a slightly different pool for talent to drive things forward in business as well.

Andrea Learned (13:18): 

Okay, that’s a great point. One of the things that kind of going back to the ESG versus sustainable business, you’re talking, it’s a lot about risk management, right? And is that the reason that people within the corporations, or even the corporations in PR or whatever aren’t getting louder about what they’re doing because they’re kind of like, Ooh, I can’t say this because I can’t. So the risk management side is that, you know, kind of hampering what could be bolder.

 Mike Barry (13:43):

Yes. And, and and and I I think it’s again because most C-suites look like me: old white, gray head fellas, don’t we? So we know what we know and we’ve been around for 30, 40 years and you know, it’s exactly the same as happened with digital transformation. These are the people that are running Blockbuster when Netflix was, you know, rushing past them. These were the people that were running physical retailers when Amazon, Google were coming from nowhere to disrupt them. There’s no reason to think they’re not just as complacent when it comes to systemic disruption. That’s just the way the, the way that a lot of the current leaders, incumbents, are. So I do think there’s a significant risk management compliance mentality in the C-suite. Okay. Now the amount of stuff you have to comply with is much larger than even three years. Got new regulations in Europe, in the UK, SEC in the states. You’ve just got to fill more forms in more booklets mm-hmm. 

(14:37):
<affirmative>. But that in itself is dangerous, because again, if you dissect the world of Tesla to draw an example against most ESG metrics and we’re onto sort of a, a Musk preoccupation here, it scores poorly. Mm-hmm. <affirmative>. And that’s partly cuz it ain’t great on some things like labor rights and human rights and water in the way that it probably is through climate because it’s pushing electric electrification. But there is a risk, we become so obsessed with meeting all these standards and this alphabet soup of, of, of, of compliance and we get ever bigger reports. And that breeds complacency in the boardroom. Said, well, I’m not at risk mm-hmm <affirmative> and you’re a meat business. And some of, there’s these not just plant-based alternatives, but the emergence of cellular laboratory grown cultivated meat. It’s probably 500 years away from being a real skill disruptor of the marketplace. Mm-hmm. <affirmative>. But it’ll come.

Andrea Learned (15:28): 

It will come. 

Mike Barry (15:29):

And I think, uh, uh, you know, we’ve got a meat industry globally that generally is still in the foothills of doing a little bit of scope three measurement. Mm-hmm. <affirmative> not reporting it publicly, not setting goals to reduce it, not experimenting in these radically different ways we’ll be consuming protein in the future. Mm-hmm. <affirmative>. So that’s the next wave of disruption in that, in a complacent marketplace. 

Andrea Learned (15:56):

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So you bring up food systems and that is an area that I see you popping up. So I believe you were part of an event both at Climate Week and at COP 27 with a kind of future of food, whatever that you can tell me about that future food movement

Mike Barry (16:59):

About that future food

Andrea Learned (17:00):

 Movement. Yeah. And so I’m curious about how you got into that. It seems like that’s a sector that you’re really looking at, I believe that might come out of Marks and Spencer. But tell me a little bit about how food has become a focus for you and then what you’re seeing in terms of are people interested in collaborating? Are some of these old white guys getting on board?

Mike Barry (17:18): 

So, so food is in fascinating, because it’s an existential sector. You know, within reason we could live without a car, we could live without fashion. Couldn’t we, we could live even live without this, if we had to, 

Andrea Learned (17:30): 

We could, we could,

Mike Barry (17:31): 

We could, we forced ourselves, but food we all depend upon. But then you’d take a step back and say it’s the most polluting sector on the planet. More greenhouse gas emissions, a third of all greenhouse gas emissions. 40% of all calories produced on the planet never reach a human mouth. Mm-hmm. <affirmative> yet, 800 million people go to bed starving every night. It’s insanity. Biodiversity loss, soil loss, human rights abuse, 600 million small holders living in poverty. It literally, through any lens is not, it’s a system that’s not fit for purpose. But then you’ve got double whammy because it’s uniquely vulnerable to the problem it causes. Extremes of weather, rain, flood, heat at destroying livelihoods, crops, yields, quality, at a time when the global population is going up. And yet we sat there as well with war in Ukraine reminding us that the energy system could be weaponized. 

(18:21):
So can the food system mm-hmm. <affirmative>, and again, I think we are hugely complacent on a geopolitical base about the control of not just old-fashioned fossil fuel assets mm-hmm. <affirmative>, but who makes the solar panels, who makes winds? Who’s got the critical metals out there that we need and who’s got food, who’s got the wheat and who’s got the water to produce it. Mm-hmm. <affirmative>. So I think in terms of geopolitics, and I think part of Biden’s response with the inflation reduction act in the states, is partly because he believes it’s the right thing to do. But it’s partly the next great jostling of power between Europe and China and the states about green jobs, who controls what, uh, in a world that’s gonna be falling out with itself more than it was in the, in, in the not too distant past. So all around us, this great game is, is emerging around food. And then the third part of the food thing is we started to touch on a little earlier, we didn’t traditionally have the solutions we need to do something different about it. Mm

Andrea Learned (19:18):

Mm-hmm. 

Mike Barry (19:19): 

<affirmative> and by solutions I don’t just mean cellular meat though, that’s part of the, the thing. How do you get extension support to 600 million small holders to run the hector of land differently. Yeah. Now some of that’s through smartphones and some of it is about human interaction support. Some of it’s about subsidies. So the, there is a whole plethora of systems change that we need in the food system, which is different when it than the car industry, Within reason, the car industry’s quite simple. Yeah. You had a diesel car, electric, how you refuel it is quite a bit different in terms of behavior change, but it’s one thing that needs to change. Yep. Food is everywhere. Yep. Deeply political mm-hmm. <affirmative> deeply contentious to change, but this sector of next 10 years will have to change radically to live, to adapt and become resilient in a climate disruptive world.

Andrea Learned (20:12): 

Yeah. And it kind of, going back to talking about scope three and just corporations sort of now going, oh, scope three or whatever stage they’re at, the food, that’s the thing for me in terms of climate influence. Right. That’s my umbrella. And the, and then also in terms of living change, like what if more corporate leaders were kind of public about eating less meat. Anyway, the scope three aspects of this and then the climate influence. I’m just kind of curious if you’re seeing levers, like if, you know, if if more corporations came out and said we’re gonna move to a plant-based, I mean, how could we get this rolling so that the corporations have some impact on government and vice versa to move this forward more quickly?

Mike Barry (20:53):

And, and, and this is where the food system struggled in the past, is to get that coherent voice across the industry to say we’re all participating in the failing system. None of us can change out on our own, even the world’s biggest food companies. We all need to work together on this. We need then a collective conversation with politicians who I think generally are very complacent about the food system. Yes. I don’t think many political leaders spend much time thinking about food. Agree. Um, certainly in western marketplaces. And I think we need a step back. People like David Nabarro have been doing a brilliant job within the un um, umbrella of trying to create dialogues. So wrong trying to impose western orientated technology solutions on everybody to the future of food. Food’s a deeply emotional issue. What you consume, how you, producing the heritage, the terroir, you know, what, what makes land unique. And yet, no one is, is is sort of gathering people together for that big conversation. They’re having conversations about individual issues. Mm-hmm. <affirmative>, palm oil, soy, plastics, important, all of them. Mm-hmm. <affirmative>, but they’re all less than the sum of the parts. 

Andrea Learned (22:02): 

So what would it take to break out of that complacency to really, what would it take, what would you in a dream see in all of your observations and your collaborations, what would it take to get people on board and like, oh my gosh. And acting really quickly. 

Mike Barry (22:16): 

Well, let, let me start with a nightmare rather than a dream <laugh>. I I I think the current cadre of leaders, political, financial and corporate need bad things to happen first before they get off the complacent backsides to drive things forward. So it, it will be, and we start to see the first inklings of it this summer with impacts on wheat yields in China, in India, in Pakistan, in France, in Canada, right across the globe, wherever you looked, it was starting to get harder to produce it. Now, there’s resilience in the system, the rains come back, people snap, production comes back a bit. But I think there’s, it will take another three to five years for something to go badly wrong with the availability of food. And again, as, as the UK security system, something called MI5 says, we are never more than four square meals away from insurrection, certainly western marketplaces. And people need to understand that again, how fragile the food system is. Again, we’ve seen it in the UK in the last 20 years with mad cow disease, foot and mouth mm-hmm. <affirmative>, where the lorry drivers strike, where the lorries block the roads cause of the price of fuel at the time – laughably small compared to today. Right.

(23:33):
But the food couldn’t get through. Yep. And there’s only enough food in the country for the next three or four days mm-hmm. <affirmative>. So, suddenly you begin to understand the vulnerability of food. Now all this was okay in the neoliberal settlement that we had from, you know, 1990 through to 20 mid the mid 2010s when everything, everybody’s harmoniously selling everything to everybody else. There was re there was redundancy and resilience in the system. You know, if I can’t get it from here, I’ll go to there. Now you’ve got geopolitical falling out and people sort of holding onto what they’ve got. Yeah. You’ve got climate crisis nipping away yields and production. You’ve got the vulnerabilities we’ve seen with the Suez Canal mm-hmm. <affirmative>. How easy it is to bring the global supply system to a, to a halt.

Andrea Learned (24:17): 

So how that’s, I mean that thread has been amazing and it’s so interesting to hear, but how do you get corporations? Like what is the dream? Like in a dream? What would happen? So that wasn’t three to five years <laugh>. 

Mike Barry (24:27): 

Yeah. So, so, so realistically the leaders of the world’s food industry, the, the top 30 brands, retailers and the top 30 manufacturers or producers of, of, of raw materials have got to sit down and said there is nothing to be one individually in a burned earth. Yep. Not in any system, but […] the food system. Mm-hmm. <affirmative>. We need to get in a room. Now there’s been partly that sort of happened to ca Cop 27, it started to happen very tentatively. Yep. It start, it happened tentatively at Davos with work in reform. Its happened at the Consumer Goods Forum. But I did a lot of work with, with M&S mm-hmm. <affirmative>, But, it’s still single issue. Yep. It’s not this systems. Now, the scary thing about systems is that we’ve grown up in this atomized neoliberal system where you stick to your knitting your specialist Yes. That I do this, you do that. Yep. And the ability of today’s leaders to conceptualize that they are dependent on so many different moving parts, political, societal, technology wise, is really hard. Mm-hmm. <affirmative> to

 Andrea Learned (25:31):

Do mm-hmm. <affirmative>.

Mike Barry (25:32):

And so my dream is those 30, and that’s sad to say predominantly men 

Andrea Learned (25:37): 

Oh. 

Mike Barry (25:37): 

Need to get together. 

Andrea Learned (25:38):

We could talk a lot longer about that whole different topic. Whole different topic. <laugh>. 

Mike Barry (25:42):

Well no, it’s not a different topic. It’s very, it’s it’s very relevant to why we’ve got problem

Andrea Learned (25:46): 

We’ve got, it’d be too much time than we have. Yes. Yes.

Mike Barry (25:49): 

But we need to get in a room. And I wouldn’t bring political leaders in straight away, because I think just the industry needs to accept it needs to change. And a lot of the change that we need is voluntary. Yes. And some of it is political. Yes. Make sure there’s a common level playing field and subsidies aligned as well. 

Andrea Learned (26:05): 

So we’ve gotta get going. But are, do you feel that the conversations that you’re having on LinkedIn, are you starting to, is your influence starting to get people talking and are you somebody that people are sort of circling to help potentially break this logjam on this topic? Is there hope? 

Mike Barry (26:22): 

I, I see lots of conversations now on LinkedIn again. Great. Uh, it’s, I I see it’s so much better than it was. And I think for most business professionals now you can get a very good, coherent discussion going on there. Great. But it’s a discussion. Mm-hmm. <affirmative>, it is not the place where decisions are ultimately made. Yep. And I’ve mentioned places like Davos and the Consumer Goods Forum and COP 27, COP 28 to come. That’s where we need the official convening and the official commitment to change.

 Andrea Learned (26:50):

So I would like to continue this conversation, because I would like to understand what needs to happen and see if we can get more people to work together to make that happen at COP 28.

Mike Barry (26:59): 

And, and it does. And I, I think, you know, there was the, the food systems tent in COP 27, the people that were part of it did a brilliant job. Yeah. But there were too few of them that lacked the influence, the need. We need real weights of numbers and turnover and capability in that room as well to try things forward. Yeah. Cop 28’s a possibility. 

Andrea Learned (27:19): 

Yeah. Well, oh, thank you so much for your time. This has been a fantastic conversation and I’m, I, I love any chance to talk to you. So it’s wonderful to be able to record this and, and spread this with the world and you’ve got a lot of climate influence and I’m really appreciative that you’re out there on LinkedIn and just keeping these conversations going. So thank you so much for your time, Mike, 

Mike Barry (27:38): 

And thank you. And I would say to anybody listening to this, I don’t care whether you’re on the first year of your career or the 35th year or whatever it is for, for me, we’re all putting our shoulders to the wheel of the change that we need, and we’ve all got to work together to get it. And again, there’s, there’s a occasionally a few little egos out there of individuals who want to be bigger and more prominent than others. Crap. Yeah. You know, we all need to be part of this. We’ve all got solutions to bring a weight to bring to the change we need. Yeah. So thank you for wonderful completing this call. 

Andrea Learned (28:06): 

Yeah, thank you so much, Mike, and take care and we’ll be in touch. I really appreciate your time. 

Mike Barry (28:11):

Thank you. Keep well 

Andrea Learned (28:16): 

Thanks to Mike Barry for a fascinating conversation. And thanks to everyone who took time to talk with me for season one, each guest represented one of my strongest calls to action for developing climate influence. Own your leadership voice, be seen living your values and get louder in amplifying them. The amazing humans I talked with this season operate from this truth. The point is not to make themselves famous. The point is to forward change and perhaps inspire a few of their influential peers to consider doing the same. That’s how we change the social norms that will make a huge climate difference. And memo to potential leadership-focused podcast guests. Get on at least one social platform. Join discussions on your sector’s climate potential. Follow folks you’d like to help get better known. Amplify the articles of the journalists doing good work and cheer on what your peers, even competitors, are up to. It all helps collective climate leadership gain momentum. Identifying, building and leveraging your leadership is something few may feel prepared to do, but climate influence can’t wait. If your organization is ready to make the shift, reach out to me. I’d love to help. Find me@www.andrealearned.com. I’m also easy to find on Twitter until it is no more. And LinkedIn. Living Change is produced by LARJ  media. That’s L A R J Media. 

(29:48):
Thank you to everyone sending positive feedback and giving us ratings and reviews. They’ve been amazing. You have no idea how much that helps get this podcast on the radar of leaders who want to practice living change so your ratings and reviews actually have their own climate influence. That’s a wrap on season one. I hope you’ve enjoyed it. Did you have a favorite guest or topic? Let me know! Until next season. Pedal safely.

(30:27):
One last thing. As we prep for season two, I wanted to share that Jeremy Goldberg, Microsoft’s worldwide Director of Critical Infrastructure, and I will be talking this summer. And, his podcast, the Future of Infrastructure, explores the humanity behind today’s infrastructure projects through conversations with dynamic leaders getting stuff done.  Jeremy talks with public servants, philanthropists, artists, and placemakers who are dedicated to the public interest. Sounds like a show that lines up nicely with what Living Change is amplifying on climate action leadership, doesn’t it? Listen to the future of infrastructure to learn about building things and planning for the future, while putting people first. Jeremy and I will share our conversation via our social channels.