TMM120 Leading from Home for Conservation

Welcome back to a little express session on the show with Al Ramadan co-founder of Play Bigger the category design guru and Nik Strong-Cvetich, who’s the executive director of Save The Waves Coalition. 

How Do We Lead in Conservation From Home

As directors, how do we take overwhelm of climate change, plastics, oceans, just everything that we’ve been bombarded with at the moment, which are just horrific messaging and going.

i.e is there one thing I can do on a micro level to make a difference. 

Al:  For me, at least at a personal level, it was overwhelming what choices and where I could make investments for climate change. It’s something I really care about. I care about what’s going to happen for the kids. What I found with Save The Waves was it connected with my passion. Surfing is a passion of mine. 

Ecosystems, the plants, the animals, the waves, the people, they are things that I want to see protected and intact.

That’s how I got involved with Save The Waves and the Benefits of protecting the ecosystem: 

* If we are successful next set some insanely aggressive goals at thousands of ecosystems protected by 2030.* If we do all of that, that is going to have a very positive impact on climate change.

For me it was, get something that you’re passionate about, get on it and go see if you can help that organisation which is just part of the solution to the macro.

Nikki:  It’s already integrated in your daily life. I think that’s the thing. People get overwhelmed by things that they can’t tangibly touch. That tangibility for you of surfing ecosystems and then business provides that trifecta. Also, your wife, she doesn’t surf, but she’s massively into marine conservation. Now suddenly she has a platform too. 

Al:  That’s exactly right. Whilst I do surf, she enjoys the surf ecosystem. Don’t just think of it as being someone who’s a surfer. She will be walking along the top of the cliff looking at the ocean, looking at the artists in our part of Santa Cruz, whales.

Surf ecosystems have this wonderful thing. It’s a place where we go hang out and feel good.  So we can give back to the joy we give.

Nikki:  Nik how about your views – kids these days are coming home from school. They’re having stress anxiety and fear, terror from getting bombarded with the world is melting. These kids that are five and six are actually being nightmares about this overwhelmed.

You’ve got two young children. What would you say to parents that have kids trying to navigate through these massive messages at the moment? 

Nik S-V: Well, I think about it in terms of leadership. Your job as a parent is to be a leader. Then your job as a leader is problem-solving for it.

It doesn’t matter if you’re a business or a nonprofit. You’re solving a problem. How do you do that as a leader is you take a big, huge problem and then you break it down into small pieces.

Then you take those pieces out and assign them to either partners or people underneath you. We actually did a really bad job sometimes in the ...