About Andrea

White woman with sunglasses in white rainjacket, jeans and white tennis shoes astride a Citibike e-bike on a NYC sidewalk next to a graffiti-covered wall.
Andrea using her favorite mode of urban transportation to get to a ClimateWeek 2024 event. Photo: Cameron Kit

I'm Andrea Learned — climate influence strategist, podcast host, and Seattle-based provocateur of the possible.

For over a decade, my gut has told me that joy is a resistance strategy. Making joy-fueled, values-aligned leaders more visible — naming and faming them — shifts social norms faster than naming and shaming ever will.

And right now, we have some opportunity. :-)

My early career was in marketing to women — I co-authored Don't Think Pink (AMACOM, 2004), one of the first books to take that seriously. How women really make decisions (as consumers, but more importantly as leaders) has never left me.

For the past 20+ years I've built my own platform and helped others build theirs — advising corporate sustainability teams, NGOs, and city leaders on influence they didn't know they had. Bloomberg named me a 2024 Green Champion. I consulted with New York City on food policy shift strategy. I've been a sought-after guest across politics, food systems, urban planning, and active transportation media — from David Miller's Cities 1.5 (C40/University of Toronto Press) to the NewDEAL's An Honorable Profession to Active Towns. GreenBiz named me among the top women cultivating sustainable food systems.

The next big opening for climate influence and storytelling: cities. The leaders moving quickly and counter-culturally — less car, more life — are the new black. Smart U.S. mayors should be taking a master class from former Paris mayor Anne Hidalgo.

Bold moves. Jumpstart big change. Endure the critics. Get massive positive media coverage. Repeat.

My Vega award-winning podcast Living Change: A Quest for Climate Leadership zeroed in on the unusual suspects — the CFO, the DJ, the mayor biking to city hall — whose climate commitments were quietly reshaping industries. My new podcast Name & Fame, with Andrea Learned is built on the premise that making good people more visible is one of the most underrated norm-shifting tools we have.

This newsletter is where I think out loud. About influence. About what's actually working. About the leaders worth watching — and worth becoming.