Do you feel overwhelmed by the enormity of the climate crisis? Do you feel so stressed and worried about what is happening to the climate that you are frozen in a place of worry and despair? Sisters Kate and Julia, often feel like that too, so they started the So You Want to Make a Difference podcast, and I was lucky enough to be their first interview! I talk about some tips on what we can do to make a difference and how taking action is the antidote to fear and despondency.

I’m really passionate about the intersection between personal awareness, growth and development, leadership, and the climate movement, and in this episode I talk about how I take conscious actions across many areas of life to live into this. One of the ways I make a difference is by helping to develop socially conscious, brave leaders. I believe there are many small, but powerful, actions we can take to make a difference in climate change, including increasing our own self-knowledge and self-care.

Take a listen as we dig into how everyone, everywhere can make a difference.

Transcript

Kate Riordan:
Well, Kylie Lewis, thank you for joining us today on our very first episode of So You Want To Make A Difference? Julia and I are super excited to have you here.

Kylie Lewis:
Well, thanks for having me. I’m really excited to be part of it.

Kate Riordan:
Yeah. Thank you. So what I thought I would start with is maybe if you can talk a little bit about your personal journey and your backstory and who you are and what you do. And then I’d love to jump in and ask you some questions about how you are making a difference.

Kylie Lewis:
Sure. I mean, at the moment, I’m currently working in my own business. So I have a leadership facilitation and coaching business called Of Kin here in Melbourne, Australia. And that’s about eight years old now. And I made the leap into that business after a 20-year digital strategy career. So I was working in the internet space and part of the dot com booms and busts and the startup hustle and did that for quite a while. And kind of one of the last major organisations that I worked for, I led quite a significant e-commerce development project, which pretty much just burned me out. It was a really big year. There was a lot technical issues. There was a lot of change that was required by the organisation, but it also coincided with a really big year of just things happening in my personal life as well.

Kylie Lewis:
And as things go, you kind of can come to this place where everything just sort of comes smashing together and colliding, and it gives you an opportunity when you kind of face down in all of that to say, “Actually, what do I really want? And what really matters to me at this point in my life?” Because what I started out doing 20 years ago doesn’t necessarily serve what I think is important and what I know now and the kind of impact that I want to have going forward. So it was really interesting because I was sitting in that role and I was in the marketing department and I was working on digital strategy and I had originally studied psychology and sociology. So I was sitting here in the marketing department and I realised I would sort of lookup and look over longingly to the HR department who were working on culture and development and staff training.

Kylie Lewis:
I kind of was just going, “I think I actually want to be over there somewhere,” and I couldn’t really find a pathway to do that where I was and decided that now’s probably a good time to take a leap. My husband had done that a few years beforehand and we were sort of in a position where it enabled it to do it. It was really just that kind of experimental mindset of saying, “Well, let’s just see what happens.” What’s the worst that could happen? I fall flat on my face. I go and find another job somewhere else. But if I don’t kind of back myself to have a go at creating something that I want to create and doing kind of work that I think is really important and necessary and missing, if I don’t do that now, when am I going to get round to doing that because we know it’s almost like having kids. There’s never really a perfect time to do it. There’s always something in your mind that could hold you back.

Kylie Lewis:
And on that, I had young kids and I kind of realised I wanted to be a role model for them in how I would hope that they would grow up and live their lives, which is about having clarity of what’s important to them and having the courage to change direction and back themselves to do things that matter.

Kate Riordan:
Amazing. Very courageous, I think, to take the big leap.

Kylie Lewis:
It feels terrifying at the time. I mean, that’s the thing about courage. And I went on to write a book off the back of a blog series that I wrote when I started my own business, which was called The Leap Stories. The first paragraph in the book just describes me waking up every morning for three weeks, sitting bolt upright as soon as I can, I’ve got consciousness going. What the… have I done? And kind of like this disbelief of you’ve just walked away from a job that you once considered a dream job into the great uncertainty and the courage always feels uncomfortable. It doesn’t feel brave. It always just feels like you’re white knuckling it, I think.

Julia:
In those moments, Kylie, you talk about backing yourself, but in those moments of doubt, how did you push on?

Kylie Lewis:
So I started my own business in 2013. In 2012, as I said, was a really difficult year. And I guess during that time, I was sort of reflecting… This sounds really NAF, but I actually had a Pinterest board of quotes and insights and inspiration around, well, what really matters and what do I care about? And looking ahead of me, of people who had already done this, and I should say sort of at the same time, I was sort of side hustling and I was doing some blog production for friends of mine who had started their own trade show business. And one of the things that they had asked me to do was go and do blog series interviews with their exhibitors. And so I just became immersed in this world of people from lifestyle brands and homewares brands and beauty brands who had made the leap into their own business.

Kylie Lewis:
And even though I had grown up in a family retail business, the idea of actually getting into my own business just had never really gelled with me. And all of a sudden, I found myself just surrounded with people who were doing it who had also left corporate careers to take up new opportunities, who had started up things on the side and created products that didn’t exist before. And the closer you get to those kind of people, the more you realise it’s just about being able to sit in that space of discomfort enough to get to the next step.

Kate Riordan:
To take action.

Kylie Lewis:
Yeah. So it was just like you don’t have to have it all completely figured out, but unless you are prepared to say, “Okay, well, what would the next step be if I was to consider this?” Then you just don’t know what’s possible. And so, yeah, it’s always about taking action, but I think what I learned from writing The Leap Stories and the blog series and interviewing all those people is it doesn’t have to always be a big all or nothing, kind of, “I’m going to put all my chips on the table and go for it.” It can just be, “I am going to start up this side thing and see what happens or maybe I will take three months off work and dedicate myself to this project and see where it goes.” I think we put so much pressure on ourselves that we have to have it all figured out before we actually do it. And that’s become so overwhelming and paralysing. And I’ve never seen that really help because you can’t also actually know what’s involved until you actually get in there because it’s different for everyone.

Kate Riordan:
And possibly if you did, it would stop you taking action in the first place.

Kylie Lewis:
100%, yeah.

Kate Riordan:
Yeah. So our podcast is all around talking to people that make a difference. And I’ve known you for some time, Kylie, and I’ve loved sort of watching you evolve and sort of foray into different areas. But one of the things that most impresses me about you is how you seemingly effortlessly live your values and take action to make a difference in areas that are important to you that I think a lot of us share like say Black Lives Matter or the environment that you actually take action in small and big ways. And I’m just sort of interested to kind of understand what sort of inspires you to take action because I think there’s a lot of people that sit in that space and sort of want to take action, but don’t, and sort of sit on the fence and that’s kind of really what we’re exploring in this podcast. And I think you’re such a beautiful example of someone who tends to take action in things that they’re passionate about.

Kylie Lewis:
Yeah, it’s quite an interesting question to ask and I sort of… I don’t know exactly why I’m built this way. I guess one of the things I could really attribute it to is my uncle. So my mom’s brother was born with muscular dystrophy, which is a degenerative muscular disease and it’s a genetic sex-linked disease that affects mostly boys. And when he got his diagnosis, they didn’t predict that he would live much past the age of around 20. And it turned out that he actually had a mutated strain of it and he lived well into his 40s and he got married and had a child. And he was also one of the people that was responsible for setting up the Equal Opportunity Commission in Victoria. And I guess one of my earliest memories growing up around him was seeing him live as much of a kind of normal… what we would say normal life, I guess, for someone with quite a severe physical disability and that he would need to slip what we call an iron lung, a respirator at nighttime.

Kylie Lewis:
But one of my earliest memories is staying… I would’ve been, I don’t know, seven or eight, staying at his share house in Fitzroy that he had with a whole lot of his hippy uni mates from Monash, which I remember the smell of that house as something that I would only recognise later when I was a bit older, what was actually being smoked in that house. He took me to my first rally. He talked about indigenous rights. He had really diverse friends. He was advocating for disability rights. He protested at the front of cinemas that weren’t accessible and he wrote his life story using a tongue depressor and a keyboard in the ’90s. And I think he was probably a huge influence in just showing what’s possible when you have the courage to think a bit differently.

Kylie Lewis:
But I think even before that, if we take it back even a generation before that, so his mother, my grandmother, she defied a lot of advice that she got when he got his diagnosis. So she was told by the doctors, “Look, he’s not going to amount to much. You should just put him in a home.” And so this was in the ’50s. She was like, “Absolutely no way. He needs physical care. That’s what he needs and we’ll make that happen.” And he went to a regular school and he had friends that as his disability became more severe, would carry him around school. And although he couldn’t play in the footy team, he became the journalist for the footy team. And so if it wasn’t for my grandmother also sort of defying the supposedly expert advice of the day, he would’ve had a very different life.

Kylie Lewis:
So I guess there’s part of it that’s in my family story. Maybe there’s a bit of it in my DNA. I think about in my life story, I remember being in year 10 in an English class with an English teacher at the time, and I’m not quite sure what we were talking about, but I have some sense. It was potentially about nuclear disarmament was sort of in the ’80s, mid to late ’80s. And we were how having a discussion in this English class and a teacher who I think had immigrated from Eastern Europe somewhere and got us talking about protest and the power to make change and influence. And I remember sitting there with my classmates who were actually quite despondent and sort of saying, “Look, we don’t really have much say. We don’t really think that we are very empowered. What difference does voting make or what difference does protesting make?”

Kylie Lewis:
And I didn’t come from a very politically active parents at all, but I remember sitting in that class and I started crying. I was like, “I can’t buy into that hopelessness or that feeling that you don’t matter as an individual or that collectively we can’t make a difference.” I just remember bumping up to that as a teenager just thinking, “That’s just not true.” Yeah. And I think I was only probably reclaiming that in my 40s actually, I kind of started to really connect those dots.

Kate Riordan:
That is amazing. Can we talk a little bit about what you are passionate about? I did sort of mention a few before, but if I was to sort of ask you, what are you passionate about?

Kylie Lewis:
I think right now at this point in time, I’m really passionate about the intersection between personal awareness, growth and development, leadership, and the climate movement. If there was a Venn diagram, I sit in the middle of all of those when I think about the work that I do and I think partly that’s… if I go back to sort of my initial interest in sociology and psychology, it’s the interaction and the interplay between the systems that impact and influence all of our lives, the individual makeup that we have in our own lived experiences, and coming to grips with the biggest existential crisis that humanity has ever had to face and really trying to say, “What do we need to do to have the kind of leadership that is necessary to face the reality of the future and to lead us through it? What kind of leaders do we need to be supporting and developing? What kind of self-awareness and grit and insight and commitment and courage do they need to have to influence the systems that need to change?”

Kylie Lewis:
I went to the Climate Emergency Summit in Melbourne in February 2020, and I just remember just how powerful that summit was. And it was coming off the worst bushfire season that we’ve ever had, the huge carbon emissions footprint that meant, the quality of our air that we were breathing in our major capital cities, the dust storms that came after that, the flooding that came after that. And I look at all of that and I just think what we are going through actually in the pandemic, in a public health crisis, is very much an insight into the kind of mass disruption and change that is going to be demanded of us for climate change but even on a bigger scale, which sounds all a bit kind of doom and gloom. But I sort of feel like there have been very contested times in history.

Kylie Lewis:
So we might be in this period in time where we’re facing this huge challenge. Every generation has had a challenge that they’ve had to face. I do think about my grandparents and growing up through depressions and world wars and the disruption that they went through. And in their times, in their lives, they were the biggest things that they’ve had to face as well. So for me, I think the biggest disappointment over the last few years is having thought that we had progressed kind of a lot more than what we had when I think about things like Black Lives Matter or Me Too. I think about the big social justice movements that have happened.

Kylie Lewis:
I think growing up in the ’80s in the sort of emergence of white feminism was thinking, “Oh, well, a lot of that stuff has been sorted. We can kind of just take a breath and just ride with it now.” And me now in kind of thinking about the last… even in the last 12 months, thinking actually every generation has social justice fights that they need to take up. Nothing is guaranteed. And unless we stay awake at the wheel, things don’t progress, things don’t change. That said, I’m also absolutely in awe of the progresses that we have made. And I think one of the things, when you are working in change, it is very easy to get overwhelmed by all the things that are wrong and to not have perspective on how far things have come. And even though it’s frustrating when things aren’t happening as quickly as you would like, to also remember that change doesn’t happen sequentially or smoothly or linearly.

Kylie Lewis:
Most change, even just that big year that I had in 2012, that was kind of an accumulation of things over time that then just blew up in this big… I can’t do this anymore, I’m out, and kind of just said, “Something needs to change.” And most change is preceded by small things that happen that kind of get momentum to push something big. I think about in the disruption that we’ve had with COVID, for example, I think about what it’s shown, what actually is possible. Even in Australia, we forget that for a period of time, we actually had fully funded childcare. So it’s not that we can’t do these things. It’s about having the political will to do them. It’s having the right levers pulled and the right social pressures and the right ideas at the right time. When I look at what we could do in terms of upping unemployment benefits and creating social systems that create a solid standard of living for even the most vulnerable people in the community, we can do that and we’ve shown what’s possible.

Kylie Lewis:
And I think there’s kind of this healthy look at all the issues, and it can become really overwhelming and it’s okay to feel overwhelmed and upset and angry and despondent, but it’s no place to stay. It’s okay to visit those spaces because that’s who we are as human beings. That’s a full expression of our emotional selves. It’s also the same reservoir that we will pull out of that energy to speak up to make a different decision, to challenge an idea, to write a letter to your local minister, to show up to a climate rally. I think trying to say, “I just don’t want to feel those feelings because it’s too hard and I don’t know where to start,” also cuts you off from feeling the hope and being part of the energy that’s needed to make positive change.

Kate Riordan:
I think that’s absolutely my experience, is that I get stuck in the overwhelm, and in an effort to avoid it, sort of either run away from it or stick your head in the sand rather than, as you said, pushing through it to the other side.

Kylie Lewis:
I think it’s okay to kind of feel overwhelmed. And the self-compassion piece that I’ve worked on in the last three years and even making the leap talking about people taking leaps, it’s all about, “Okay, well, what’s one thing that I could do today?” Just like what’s one thing could I… I don’t know, it sounds stupid. Could I refuse a plastic straw? Or could I just take my Cip-Kup? Just one thing. We get so caught up in just, “It’s all hopeless, it doesn’t really matter,” that it really eats away at our agency.

Julia:
Well, articulated, Kylie. I mean, I think as Kate said, so many people can relate to this feeling of being disheartened by all these major issues, but exactly as you said, we need to remember that all the little changes do add up and do make a difference. Can you tell us a little bit more about Of Kin and how all these passions and how you address these passions in your business and they’ve become such a big part of your life?

Kylie Lewis:
The name Of Kin really came from, I guess, kind of kindred spirits who cares about the same sort of things that I care about. And so when I lept out into my own business, Of Kin kind of works because it’s about creating community, it’s around connecting with others. So I do a lot of work with Brené Brown’s curriculum. So I’m a certified facilitator of Brené Brown, the social scientist, out of Texas in the U.S. I found that her research and her curriculum just beautifully articulates everything I knew to be true from my psychology and sociology training, but really backed with really sound research and presented in a way that’s really accessible.

Kylie Lewis:
I really want to talk about leadership and I want to talk about leadership not from the perspective of a title or a position or power, which is often what we think of. We can often conflate or use the word leader for someone who’s in a position of power who is absolutely anything but a leader. And so I’m really interested in helping people understand what it means to lead their own lives and to do that with the clarity of values of things that really matter to them and the courage to face issues and problems and hard things. And until we actually do the personal work to think about what gets in the way of me confronting difficult things or saying the things that need to be said, or advocating for the kind of change that we need to happen, until we can actually rumble with our own human discomfort that comes with the vulnerability of doing that, we get really paralysed and we don’t get the leaders that we really need to make the kinds of changes that we absolutely need.

Kylie Lewis:
So I guess kind of the idea of Of Kin now is really honouring that idea that we are actually all connected. So one of the big ideas, I think, that probably came out of growing up out of the ’80s and the ’90s and the idea of rampant individualism and neoliberalism and chasing big money over doing what’s right is really this acknowledgement that we are all part of an interconnected system. And when you pull on one piece of that system, it has a ripple effect through everything else. And so it’s really a nod to you as an individual and as a human and also to our collective humanity and that we are all connected and that it’s in collectives of really self-aware and empowered individuals that we are going to create the future.

Julia:
We often think of leadership as leading others, but you’ve just demonstrated it’s just so important to have that level of self-awareness. And how can you lead other people and be a good leader if you don’t understand how to lead your own life?

Kylie Lewis:
100%. That’s in a nutshell.

Kate Riordan:
Can I pivot the conversation to a more tangible level? I’m really interested for you to share with us, what are some of the actions that you take? The little actions that you take every day or regularly, or the decisions that you’ve made to live up to your values around climate change?

Kylie Lewis:
There’s so many little micro things that you do every day that can add up over time, but it’s really just a commitment, I guess, to thinking what serves the truth of what I know that needs to happen. And so some of the things… I mean, I’ve got Keep-Cups and try and source all my food locally, try to have as less packaging as possible. I try to recycle even though I know that that whole system is fraught and as not as effective as we think it could be. But I guess even in things like every time I run a workshop, for example, in my business, so I was trying to think of how could I role model what it looks like to do even small things in my business? And I was looking for opportunities to integrate that to just sort of show what that looks like.

Kylie Lewis:
So in my business, one of the things that I do whenever I’m running a workshop, I do an acknowledgement of country at the beginning, but I also do an acknowledgement of climate. So I put on the table at the very front of anything that I present or speak in public that we need to absolutely acknowledge the traditional owners of the lands on which we meet and honour them as the kind of custodians that have been able to live in harmony with the climate for tens of thousands of years. I talk about the fact that we’re in the sixth mass extinction and that we are contributing to human-caused climate breakdown, and that we collectively should all be thinking about how we’re contributing to meeting our Paris climate targets and the United Nation’s sustainable development goals.

Kylie Lewis:
So at the beginning of everything that I present, I put that on the table and I put it out in the world to say, “These are things that we actually need to be talking about.” And even just that small action gets people thinking a bit differently. And I’ve had people who ask me at the end of a presentation, could you send me that acknowledgement? Can you send me small information? And so even in my email signature that I have in the emails that go out, it has that as well. Every time I run a workshop, I do a carbon offset for everyone that comes. So I contribute to 15 Trees, which is a biodiversity restoration organisation started by an incredible woman. And I make sure that people are aware that’s happening. So I make it part of my business practice to talk about the fact that we need to be factoring in our carbon footprint every time we do something. So they’re sort of some of the tangible things. Shifting to green power at home in terms of where we source our power from, shifting things like superannuation, investments, and banking where you’re using your financial influence in some of the decisions that you make and those kinds of things actually matter because they also send messages to markets and organisations.

Kylie Lewis:
When I think about at home, one of the great things that happened in our first lockdown in Melbourne was that we installed two underground compost worm farms in our front yard. So doing things like that. I’ve connected with local sustainability groups. I help promote a Love Our Street campaign, which every month we get together and we do a street cleanup and really plugging in with other people who care about the same things that you care about is a tremendous source of hope. And going to a climate rally has been… September 2019, sort of first big global climate rally. There was hundreds of thousands of people in Melbourne and around Australia and millions around the world. And that just reminds me that on those days that I feel despairing, I’m not alone and that there are a lot of people that really care about this as much as we do.

Kylie Lewis:
I also volunteer where I can for organisations that are working in this space. There’s a new group in Melbourne called Regen Melbourne that is looking at how do we apply the Doughnut Economics model to Melbourne and sitting in on those groups and contributing and being around people who are really thinking differently and are kind of a bit ahead of the curve. I want to invest my time there in that space where I can.

Julia:
I was just going to ask you, Kylie, how do you find all the time? But I guess it’s just choosing where to invest your time in the right places.

Kylie Lewis:
Yeah. I mean, that’s one of the great things about having your own business, right? You get to say what’s on your agenda.

Kate Riordan:
So what keeps you motivated? I mean, because surely, you must have times where you just go… You are overwhelmed or you’re tired or you’ve over-committed or there’s a flood or something that sort of throws a bit of despondency and despair. First, the question is, do you feel that at times? Is that normal for you to have those periods?

Kylie Lewis:
I don’t think I ever really get despairing to the point of I don’t think anything can be done. I don’t know. Maybe it’s something sort of in my nature. I loved working in startups. I love working in that space where it’s messy and nothing is figured out yet and there’s the potential for creating something out of nothing or disrupting systems that don’t work or making something better, showing people actually what’s possible. And the thing that kind of annoys me the most, I think, I think the irritation of poor leadership is actually just kind of fuels me. I do get angry and I know that anger in itself isn’t necessarily a productive emotion, but it’s a really important emotion to listen to because it tells you what’s important. It tells you something that you really care about is being endangered or not taken care of, or there’s a stupid decision being made that defies every bit of scientific evidence that’s out there.

Kylie Lewis:
How is that okay? And so I kind of dig into then, okay, so I donate monthly to carbon regeneration projects. We ran a fundraiser after the black summer fires and donated that money to the Firesticks Alliance, which is indigenous land keeping practises and also into sort of mental health support for communities. I don’t know. I think it’s about keeping your own reservoir of hope going and I can’t fix this all on my own, but I can stand with a whole lot of people who also care about this and contribute my part of that. And if that means… Last year, one of the things that I did on social media coming out of the climate change emergency summit was even just creating highlights on my account of, “Here are 10 things that you could do that would make a difference. Here is 10…”

Kylie Lewis:
And they’re not big things. It is things like, can you invest your superannuation in a fund that is more eco-ethically friendly? Can you switch to green energy? Can you eat less agriculturally intensive food for a day? It doesn’t have to be we all have to become vegans. Can you start a conversation? Can you go and watch 2040, the film? Can you sit with kids and watch it? I remember seeing this great quote and it was like we don’t need 1,000 people doing zero waste perfectly. We need billions of people making small changes every day.

Julia:
I saw those Instagram commandments the other day and I thought it was… yeah, it’s so great. Just little simple things that everyone can be doing.

Kylie Lewis:
It’s also kind of like the… what do they call it when you have the doorway drag or the… It’s kind of like once you start having a conversation about one thing that is possible, it opens the door to saying, “Okay.”

Kate Riordan:
Yeah. That’s definitely what I’m hearing when I asked the question about what keeps you motivated. It seems to me like when you start taking action and you start sort of immersing yourself or even dipping your toe in this new way of living or being or this new world, that actually generates its own energy and excitement that propels you forward. And so it’s not often a question of maintaining motivation because it naturally happens.

Kylie Lewis:
Yeah. And I sort of think that time is going to pass anyway. It’s that kind of idea that in 12 months’ time, you wish you would’ve started today anyway. So time’s going to pass anyway. So what am I going to spend it doing? There’s no point in sitting here waiting till I have the motivation or I feel better, or that the solution is simple or somebody else is going to come along and fix it. I have moments like that too. I’m not kind of like this Energizer bunny that runs around and does all this stuff. Literally last weekend, I was on the couch under a blanket with my heat bag, just not being able to do very much. But it’s sort of like saying, “That’s okay. It’s not about doing everything perfectly or taking myself down in the process.”

Kylie Lewis:
And I’m really big on this idea around sustainable leadership and the play on words around that is, what kind of leadership do we need to create a sustainable world that lives within our planetary boundaries? But how do I need to also sustain my own leadership in my own life to keep being able to show up in the way that I want to show up. And so yeah, I don’t want to kind of come across as like, “Yeah, you have to be out doing everything all the time.” It’s like take your time out when you need it. I think it was Audre Lorde who was sort of saying that self-care is a radical act. And so it’s about balancing that out as well.

Kate Riordan:
Definitely one I’m learning in my 40s.

Kylie Lewis:
Well, I’ve just finished my 40s and I can tell you that’s when I learned it as well because you just realise, actually, all that stuff that we were led to believe or thought was important, not so much.

Kate Riordan:
For people that are listening that might be interested in learning more about what they can do around your passion of climate change, have you got any advice for them or is there anywhere that you would recommend they go for further information or any further resources?

Kylie Lewis:
So there’s a couple of resources that I like to go in to sort of just keep on top of being informed about issues. So there’s a podcast that’s called How To Save A Planet, which is fantastic. And one of the hosts of that podcasts is Ayana Elizabeth Johnson. And she has a book with Katharine Wilkinson called All We Can Save, which is Truth, Courage and Solutions for the Climate Crisis. And the book is a really beautiful anthology of art and poems and essays from particularly women working in climate around the world. There’s a couple of other. So How To Save A Planet is one. The other one I should mention is called Outrage and Optimism. And it’s just occurred to me that one of the most fundamental life-changing experiences that I had and it really committed me to the climate movement was actually going to Antarctica the end of 2019, at the beginning of 2020.

Kylie Lewis:
So I was on a ship in Antarctica with Homeward Bound, which is a global leadership initiative for women in STEM. And I was part of the faculty that was delivering content around visibility. And there was 80 women from 26 different countries on the ship at that time. And what was incredible that one of the people that was part of the faculty who was on as a wise elder was Christiana Figueres who was the lead negotiator for the Paris Climate Change Agreement in 2015. So she was the lead. She was the UN secretary at the time who led that. So she’s an incredible, incredible South American woman who speaks German as well, but was also a trained anthropologist. And here she was actually leading this large international negotiation, which on the surface seems really strange. But when you actually understand that anthropology is all about the study of culture and cultural difference and really learning and appreciating that, you kind of understand that she was the most perfect person.

Kylie Lewis:
But yay to social sciences. In WA, that with all the university cuts recently, they were cutting off anthropology. And I was like, “No, that’s been one of the most important skills of one of the most important leaders of our time.” And she was just an incredible woman. We had the opportunity to hear her speak on the ship and talk about when they tried to actually get the agreement up and running in 2009 in Copenhagen and how it fell flat on its face at that time, it failed and what were the reasons for that and what she did differently and how she turned around a really despondent team of 500 people who’d been working really hard on this.

Kylie Lewis:
And I don’t think people actually realised this. When a UN agreement goes through, it has to be unanimous. So every single country has to sign up to it in order for it to happen. So she led a negotiation that meant that 195 nation states agreed to the Paris Climate Change Agreement. And so actually spending time with her, hearing how she did that, and understanding why that was so incredibly powerful and important, that to me has been… I think there was no coming back from that being going back to life and work and the human being that I was before having that experience. She’s got an incredible book called The Future We Choose, which she co-wrote with another guy called Tom Rivett-Carnac and they together have the Outrage and Optimism podcast. And they interview people from all around the world. They talk about current events and changes. And I think it sums up so beautifully working in this space, working in any change space, is you need a healthy degree of outrage and you need a healthy degree of optimism. Being able to face the gritty facts of a situation and have gritty faith, that change’s possible.

Kate Riordan:
I love it.

Julia:
Definitely going to jump on and listen to these podcasts this weekend.

Kate Riordan:
Likewise. I’ve been so inspired, Kylie, by all your ideas and your energy and enthusiasm. I did just want to end with one final question, if you could give us an answer to how you would define making a difference.

Kylie Lewis:
When I think about making a difference, I think it starts with making a difference in my own life and using what I have where I am right now to do something differently to how it’s happening at the moment, or how it’s happened in the past. So even starting all my presentations with that acknowledgement, the ripple effect that has had, I think, makes a difference. It starts a conversation. People sit up and take notice. It gets them curious, and it puts something in front of them that needs to be acknowledged and talked about. So to me, making a difference is working with what you have where you are to create a ripple on something that matters.

Kate Riordan:
Thank you so much, Kylie.

Julia:
I’m feeling so inspired, Kylie, what a great conversation. Thank you so much.

Kylie Lewis:
My pleasure.

Kate Riordan:
I can already see the problem with our podcast, Julia, where you and I are going to end up with a list of things to do and books to read and podcasts to listen to.

Julia:
It’s a great problem to have. I thought you were going to say just like cutting the conversation’s the problem because I could just… I have so many questions and I wanted to chat to Kylie about. It’s just so interesting and I think you just articulate everything so well, Kylie. So really, really appreciate it.

Kylie Lewis:
Oh, thank you for giving me the opportunity to talk about something that I really care about. I think the challenge is going to be, as you said, it’s to not get caught up in all of those things, but to remember even just making your podcast is making a difference.

Kate Riordan:
Yeah. Thank you. Thank you. I have a million things I could continue to talk, but we’re going to leave it there.

Kylie Lewis:
Thank you so much, and congratulations. Big round of applause to both of you. You made it happen. Yay.

Julia:
It was so great having a conversation with Kylie. I’m so inspired by what she had to say.

Kate Riordan:
Amazing. I could not agree more. What a great best interview to have. So what were your key takeaways? What was the big thing for you that you took away?

Julia:
Yeah. I think it would be sort of good to summarise a few key things that we can take out of it. I definitely, for me, found the relevance of self-awareness is really interesting. So just knowing what your values are and how you want to live your own life. I think that Kylie just does such a good job at doing that and manifesting that. And it’s so important to know that if you want to be able to make a difference and also if you want to be able to lead others to doing so. I also thought that she makes a difference in so many areas in her life. And at first I found it sounded quite overwhelming because she does so much. But then it seems like she’s just really good at prioritising the things that matter. Again, self-awareness in knowing what those things are, and then surrounding herself with inspiring and like-minded people. And when you break it down to that, it doesn’t really seem like it’s so hard.

Kate Riordan:
No, that was actually similar to one of the ones that I wanted to talk about, which is around just taking the small steps. I think I might have asked her the question, what would you recommend? Because we can get overwhelmed, I think, by the enormity of climate change. And I think for her to just break it down and have small things like taking a Keep-Cup or following people online, reducing single-use plastic, looking at green energy and all those things, I found, was way less overwhelming if you can bring it back to just one or two actions that you can just take today. It doesn’t have to be big.

Julia:
Yeah. For sure. All those little things do make a difference and just making sure you’re doing something every day even if it’s just one thing.

Kate Riordan:
Yeah. Agreed. So one of the things or the last thing I just wanted to share with you was I read an article in the newspaper the other day written by Jonica Newby who has written a book actually called Beyond Climate Grief. And this is kind of a little excerpt of this article, but it just really hit home to me because I think if we’re exploring so you want to make a difference and how do people get off the fence? I know for myself personally that one of the things that I found really challenging about the whole climate is the fear and the anxiety around even thinking about it, let alone… So you sort of want to stick your head in the sand and not kind of think about it. And if you don’t think about it, then you actually don’t do anything about it.

Julia:
For sure I could relate to that so much. It’s I think one of the biggest barriers and I think Kylie said that it’s okay to feel overwhelmed by all the issues and despair, but it’s no place to stay. I really liked that.

Kate Riordan:
I loved that too. And when I read this article, I was like, “Oh, that’s the same.” And she talks about how she spent the last two years on her personal quest, which ended up being the book, asking wise people how we live a good and happy life under the weight of this piece and knowledge. And what she writes is, “I’m learning that climate grief is to be welcomed. It honours what you love, shows that you care and can be used as a balance point to go forward with courage, motivation, and hope. I’m learning that to avoid feeling overwhelmed, to foster a healthy information diet, which balances out the bad news with positive stories. Above all, I’m learning to act because that’s the advice from everyone I’ve met. The only way to process the emotional realities of climate change is to do what you can to save what you love.”

Julia:
That’s great, Kate. That’s so relevant to the conversation with Kylie as well.

Kate Riordan:
Yeah, absolutely. Well, thanks, Julia, for joining me and well done us on our first interview and I look forward to our next one.

Julia:
I think that’s a great note to finish on. And let’s definitely put a link to the book in the podcast notes so that people can look into that.

Kate Riordan:
Plus all the resources that Kylie spoke about.

Julia:
Yeah. I was going to say we’ll put out key takeaways and a summary of Kylie’s tips in the episode description. Thanks everyone for listening. Thank you, Kate.

Kate Riordan:
Thank you, and we’ll see you next time.