Nora LaTorre

Watch the greatest hits of Sightline FOAK series. The May 7th webinar, "Line of Sight: To FOAK and beyond." is on YouTube.

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Amplifying this effort from the folks at Engine | Advocacy & Foundation: Startup founders of color continue to face profound obstacles to securing the capital they need across all funding streams. Congress can act by passing legislation to ensure that founders of color are better able to access loans and equity capital. We’re asking founders and ecosystem partners of color to sign on to our letter asking policymakers to pass two pieces of legislation that will encourage investment in Community Development Financial Institutions (CDFIs), and raise the permitted size of, and the number of permitted accredited investors in, 3(c)(1) investment funds so that more diverse founders are funded.  https://lnkd.in/g_kAqHcb

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Friends nudge me for titles from my current stack of books, knowing my passion for sustainable development. My new favorite authors, all original global thought leaders, drive home the pain points of climate change and articulate genuinely differentiated insights that will hasten our transition to a regenerative future. Here’s my current treasure trove, where learning and critical thinking help inform mission-driven collaborations at Brand Intelligence. Love to know what everybody else is reading. 1. Risk and Resilience in the Era of Climate Change, by Vinod Thomas, Palgrave-MacMillan 2. I Want a Better Catastrophe: Navigating the Climate Crisis with Grief, Hope, and Gallows Humor, by Andrew Boyd, New Society Publishers 3. Branding India: An Incredible Story, Amitabh Kant, Harper Collins 4. The Flag, The Cross, and the Station Wagon, Bill McKibben, Holt 5. Slow Down: The Degrowth Manifesto, Kohei Saito, Translated by Brian Bergstrom, Astra House 6. Climate Capitalism: Winning the Race to Zero Emissions and Solving the Crisis of Our Age, Akshat Rathi, Greystone Books 7. From Ideas to Impact: A Playbook for Influencing and Implementing Change in a Divided World,  Michael Sheldrick, Wiley 8. Our Fragile Moment: How Lessons from Earth’s Past Can Help Us Survive the Climate Crisis, Michael Mann, Public Affairs, NY 9. Originals: How Non-Conformists Move the World, Adam Grant, Viking Press 10. Fire Weather, A True Story from a Hotter World, John Vaillant, Knopf 11. Power vs Force, David Hawkins, M.D., Ph.D. Hay  House 12. The Climate Book, Greta Thunberg, Penguin Press 13. Five Times Faster: Rethinking the Science, Economics and Diplomacy of Climate Change, Simon Sharpe, Cambridge University Press Don’t hesitate to find these titles in your favorite bookstore. Visit our website at https://lnkd.in/gcW6m96 #Study #Sustainability #ThoughtLeaders #PainPoints #ClimateChange #ClimateAction #Regeneration #CriticalThinking #BrandIntelligence #Humanity #Nature #Finance #MissionDriven

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I've been waiting for "The Food as Health Revolution Podcast" with Carter Williams, Ellen Brown, and Katie Stebbins to launch, and for this particular episode with Eric Smith to see how Edacious, PBC is building a new food system! A few things I learned... 1. What if consumers could differentiate between produce based on nutrient density? *Affordable* nutrient density measurement is currently in the works at Edacious, PBC. 2. What does this mean for the broader food market in terms of price and availability? A compelling theory is that if farmers practicing sustainable agriculture - i.e., optimizing for nutrition and taste, rather than yield - can truly differentiate their produce, consumers will be willing to pay a higher price which will in turn, support farmers in their *nutrient-dense* efforts leading to a stronger market (i.e., growth) and potentially lower prices in the long term. To the extent that health plans capture the value of *nutrient dense* foods... 3. What does this mean for #FoodasMedicine / #FoodasHealth? One model is where health plans subsidize (e.g., consumers get a 20% discount) based on the understanding that these foods lower the risk and associated costs of diet-related chronic disease. "Health" Care vs. "Sick" Care -->@Ellen Brown 4. What does this mean for the consumer? TRANSPARENCY, and later down the line, ACCESS! Imagine a world where farmers market quality meats, legumes, fruits, and vegetables were available at your neighborhood Whole Foods or Walmart. It's not just nutrient density, it's the satiation that these nutrients provide and the pure joy that comes from the flavors these foods produce. One more point that I learned intuitively (growing up on the two extremes --- The Standard American Diet of mostly UPF vs. anything and everything raised and grown by neighbors down the road) but that I never *truly* understood: Not only are foods brought to you by the Industrial Food System Complex devoid of their inherent nutrients, they can also have toxins that inhibit your body's ability to absorb the very nutrients they offer. One last point (I promise!) I love the levels of #FoodasHealth discussed. Whole foods are better than Ultra-Processed, period. Whole, *nutrient-dense* foods are better than the produce brought to you by Big Ag optimizing for quality rather than quantity, and we'll now have the option thanks to Edacious, PBC (Eric Smith), and Carter Williams. Health plans and consumers (soon to be former patients!) will have the option thanks to Ellen Brown. https://lnkd.in/g9nZMDvB

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Our community-centred Developmental Evaluation (DE) of the Synergia Transition and Resilience Climate Action Program serves both as a summary of learnings and as a framework for employing a reciprocal, iterative and transparent approach to evaluating complex and emergent community programs. Uniquely, our evaluation utilized rapid ethnography, speculative fiction, art-making and somatic practices and aimed to surface the precursors for community engagement in climate action across diverse communities in Canada. Findings describe challenges across communities with differing levels of diversity and resources, the impact of privilege, trauma and perceived self-agency, and the opportunity to centre health, social connection and transcendence to imagine new futures and establish a foundation on which to build community resilience.

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In my first year of grad school at the Energy and Resources Group | University of California, Berkeley we had a required course that could loosely be titled "What is interdisciplinarity?" Yes, 15 weeks of mulling this single question. We ended up in some obscure corners of philosophy, sociology, cognitive sciences, education theory, etc. We came to see that we could not solve complex problems like climate change through single-discipline approaches. Yet most education (K-12 and college) is structured not to advance interdisciplinary education, but rather to undermine it. This is a giant failing and one of the reasons we're facing multiple environmental crises. Tech approaches for solving climate change are very important—I'm a solar evangelist and even wrote a whole LI post about that! But they are insufficient on their own. We are experiencing the warmest year ever, and concentrations of key greenhouse gases of concern—carbon dioxide, methane, and nitrous oxide—*are still increasing.* Even with all our great tech, we're not exactly succeeding in mitigating climate change at the pace we need. If anything we are on a terrifying path. Taking an integrated view of the climate problem and solutions will give you a real edge and make you a far more effective agent of change, no matter what job you do or what education you've had. I've seen first-hand in the real world how giant clean energy projects go completely off the rails because project designers have not considered justice, politics, and other environmental concerns (e.g. biodiversity). A systems lens is not just a nice-to-have—it will save you money, time, and many headaches in the real world! It is a skill and a muscle. We all benefit when more people think and act with a systems lens. In Climate Change: Learning for Action, we make sure you build this critical skill—taking a systems lens—on the climate problem and solutions. We hear over and over how valuable this is for our learners—how they come out of the course with a completely transformed understanding of the world and their own place in it. If you or anyone you know can benefit from this, sign up for the course! We offer scholarships, staggered payment plans, and an easy way to claim reimbursement from your employer. We will refund all your money back for the first three weeks if you're not happy for any reason. Applications for the next cohort are open now! Please share in your communities. https://lnkd.in/dvdabsjq

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