As friends, family, and faithful readers know, I believe that braver and bolder leaders are needed now more than ever. With the accelerating climate crisis, the violent conflicts with enormous loss of lives in so many places, widening inequality, rising authoritarianism, and the ongoing degradation of nature, the question before us is how will each of us, individually and collectively, lead forward?
The truth is that our old models of leadership — hierarchical, extractive, and detached from lived reality — have contributed to the crises we face. We need a new kind of leadership, one that is regenerative, relational, and radically inclusive. Leadership that is focused on reshaping power — not to dominate, but to co-create.
Each of us is already leading somewhere in our lives — in our families, communities, churches, schools, and work. So, I’m hoping you will join me on my continuing learning journey to better understand the new kind of leadership that is necessary to meet this moment. We must all step up, not only to lead ourselves, but to strengthen those already leading, and inspire the millions of others who must come off the sidelines and do what's necessary to protect what we love and value and to restore the progress that has been lost.
Project Dandelion events from over the past year.
The good news is that this new kind of leadership is already taking root. And women are leading the way. Elevating the special ways that women, when connected to feminine and feminist values, are leading as solutionists on the frontlines of the many intersectional crises we are facing is the touchstone of my work and theory of change. Strategy and compassion can and must coexist. I believe their stories show us what is possible. When we move forward in greater solidarity with the essential support and allyship of the men in our lives and work, I believe we will have the power to create a world that is safer and healthier for all of us.
These past two weeks have provided an abundance of learning and stories of leadership to share with you — from a landmark Gates Foundation gathering in London to an Ocean conference in Nice to TEDCountdown in Nairobi. Here are some observations from those important events. This week, I’ll be at London Climate Week, which promises more learning and inspiration that I’ll share in future newsletters.
Stories, Strategy, and the Power of Presence
At the Gates Foundation’s Agricultural Development and Women’s Empowerment Forum in London, I was privileged to speak alongside Mary Robinson, the former president of Ireland and Project Dandelion partner, Reema Nanavaty, leader of India's Self Employed Women’s Association; and Oulimata Sarr, president of Senegal's Legacy Foundation. We were invited by Vicki Wilde, the Gates Foundation’s much admired woman leader, to share our own personal journeys as leaders.
Mary spoke with her signature clarity and conviction, reflecting on how her time as UN High Commissioner for Human Rights opened her eyes to the climate emergency — not as theory, but through the lived experience of women farmers in Africa, Indigenous leaders in the Arctic, and youth rising up around the world.
Reema inspired us all with the innovations that SEWA has initiated to face the challenges of rising temperatures, droughts, and floods. SEWA’s capacity as a self-organized, self-sustaining coalition of 2.9 million rural women to effectuate their own solutions is a model of solutionists (a new word first used by marketing guru, Solitaire Townsend in her book by same name) and the power of collective action.
Project Dandelion Co-Founders Mary Robinson and Ronda Carnegie recently visited SEWA in Ahmedabad, where millions of women are leading the charge against climate shocks.
SEWA is a much valued partner in the Project Dandelion global advocacy campaign that Mary, Hafsat Abiola, Ronda Carnegie, and myself, founded in 2020. We were part of this Gates Foundation gathering because of a program we are initiating to elevate the work and amplify the solutions being innovated by smallholder farmers in Ethiopia and India, and by doing so, unlock much needed additional capital investment, and philanthropic funding. More about this important work to come in our weekly Dandelion Digest, as we will be profiling some of the amazing women leaders/solutionists we met in this important gathering. (Sign up here.)
The Gates convening also honored the legacy and leadership of the extraordinary Vicki Wilde, an unapologetic feminist whose work reminds us that strategy and compassion can and must coexist. Vicki understood and put into practice with her theory of change — one I share — that true gender equity can’t be achieved within an outdated paradigm of power.
We must not only ask how many women are in the room, we must change the room itself, and we can’t just fund smallholder farmers (although much more funding is needed), but shift the narrative about who they are…true innovators, entrepreneurs, leaders…and in doing so, recognize and support their impact and importance in the ecosystems for global food security.
I promise to share more on these stories in future posts about the Gates grantees in regenerative agriculture as they are truly solutionists trailblazing a healthier, more just future for all.
In Nairobi: TED Countdown and the Afrika House Gathering
Now, as I write this here in Nairobi, TED Countdown is convening a remarkable constellation of climate leaders, activists, and change makers — many of them women—who are meeting this moment with clarity, courage, and collaboration.
Afrika House gathering in Nairobi last week.
What’s unfolding in the sessions is powerful — but what’s happening around the edges is just as meaningful. One such moment came during a dinner hosted by Delta40, Project Dandelion, and Liz Sheehan at Afrika House: a space of community and connection, where women leaders from across the continent and around the world came together. We didn’t gather to make declarations or headline panels — we came to share, to listen, and to nourish the kinds of relationships that sustain long-term movements. In that space, under the Nairobi stars, we felt the truth: leadership begins with care and the solidarity of a global sisterhood. (There was a companion dinner for the male allies who came to show support for all the work represented around our two long tables of bold and inspiring women leaders.)
Another group gathered at the River Café in the heart of Kenya's Karuru Forest, a public park protected and restored by the people. It was established after Wangarĩ Maathai and her Green Belt movement stopped plans to develop the land. Facing arrests and violent opposition, Wangarĩ persisted in her dream to restore and sustain a place for people to be in nature.
River Café TED Countdown community dinner in Nairobi last week.
TED Countdown Nairobi invited Project Dandelion to host the community dinner which was themed “Women & Climate: The Nature of Power.” The beautiful park, where I have been privileged to plant trees with Wangarĩ’s daughter, Wanjira, remains a vibrant source of forest restoration in Kenya and around the world. It was the perfect backdrop for celebrating Wangarĩ’s work and leadership. We came together to reflect, remember, and share visions for the future.
During the evening we heard provocations from Colette Pinchon Battle, founder of Taproot Earth, on listening and learning from indigenous communities; Su Kahumbu, CEO of Green Dreams TECH Ltd. and TED fellow, who reminds us that real power begins beneath our feet, in the soil, in the unseen; and our cohost for the evrnt, Janet Mbugua, broadcast journalist, founder of The Inua Dada Foundation and project lead for #Better4Kenya, a campaign that seeks to amplify public discourse and put pressure on the government to prioritize gender equality.
Dandelions in Action at the UN Oceans Conference
This same spirit guided Dandelions, including Xiye Bastida, Hindou Oumarou Ibrahim, and Laura Cook, the week prior at the UN Ocean Conference in Nice, France, where the legendary Dr. Sylvia Earle called on nations to finally ratify the High Seas Treaty, an agreement signed two years ago to put 30% of the ocean into protected areas. As she reminded us, “The ocean is Earth’s blue heart.” It sustains life, regulates our climate, and produces half the oxygen we breathe — yet it remains deeply vulnerable. And like all ecosystems, the ocean’s fate is bound up in how we choose to lead.
Fifty countries ratified the treaty at the conference, with dozens more promising to ratify it by the end of the year. "UNOC has given us a glimmer of hope that the challenges facing our ocean are being seen and will be tackled," Tony Long, chief executive officer of Global Fishing Watch, told the BBC.
Project Dandelion: Rooted in Justice, Grown in Connection
In all of the many rooms I've had the privilege to be in these past few weeks, what stood out was not just innovation — but intention. We were asked the hard questions: What’s working? What’s missing? What must we do differently? And one answer echoed clearly: we must double down on solutions that are grounded in evidence, lived experience, and love.
This is the vision behind Project Dandelion — an ecosystem of movements led by women and rooted in climate justice, connection, and care. It’s leadership that aligns with Sustainable Development Goal 5 — gender equality not just as a fundamental right, but as a driving force for systemic change. And part of that change must be a change in how we lead.
We don’t have to imagine this story — it’s already being written. By women leading solar collectives in India. By Indigenous mothers and grandmothers protecting forests. By girls being trained today to become the green architects of tomorrow.
The climate crisis is not just a technical challenge — it is a crisis of relationship. And while we need policy, finance, and innovation, we also need a new story: one where leadership looks less like performance and more like presence. Less about the loudest voices and more about those rooted in community and care.
So let us lead like everything is connected — because it is.
Let us lead with courage, clarity, and compassion.
And let us do so together.
Onward!
- Pat
