Core team
Rupert Read
Co-Director
Rupert Read is an Associate Professor of Philosophy at the University of East Anglia in Norwich, UK, former spokesperson for Extinction Rebellion and co-director of the new Climate Majority Project. He authored several books, including This Civilisation is Finished, Parents for a Future and Why Climate Breakdown Matters and has been many times on the Today programme, QuestionTime, Newsnight, Politics Live, Al Jazeera, and more.
Liam Kavanagh
Co-Director
Liam Kavanagh is a Cognitive & Social Scientist devoted to using his understanding of human motivation, ideology, and economics to aid more effective responses to the climate crisis. He has worked on three continents over 20 years doing applied social research, co-founded Life Itself, a community for responding to the poly-crisis, and written a book on how Western ideology contributes to climate change inaction.
Jadzia Tedeschi
Operations Manager
Jadzia Tedeschi is a psychology student who is deeply convinced of the symbiosis between mind, society, and environment. While she was born and grew up in central Italy, where she currently lives and studies, she attended boarding school and the beginning of university in the United States. Within the Climate Majority Project, she takes care of outreach and administrative tasks.
Helena Farstad
Catalyser
Helena is a Chartered Management Accountant and a Business Consultant having worked in the Environmental Sustainability space for over a decade. Helena co-founded Catalysers in 2019 and has been primarily focused on raising awareness of and agency to address the environmental crisis through connecting with the crisis on an emotional basis. Helena is also the co-founder and director of This is Agency, director of Youths & Environmental Advocacy Centre UK, and have co-founded two local London based activist groups focusing on Air Quality and Net Zero. She is Norwegian, married, mum of two girls and two dogs.
Rosie Bell
Copy and narrative development
Rosie Bell is a writer and communications specialist, dedicated to making better sense amid the meta-crisis. Her work is currently focused upon climate movement narratives, and the role of inner capacities in societal change. Alongside training as a mindfulness teacher, Rosie brings a graduate background in philosophy and performance to her creative work with global charities and policy initiatives. She has co-authored a number of influential reports in the areas of climate action and inner development.
Ameet Mehta
Innovator in Residence
Ameet is an entrepreneur and systems thinker. He has researched and deployed social technologies for internal innovation in large organisations, disruptive systemwide sharing of “knowhow” in healthcare, and most recently, researching and trialling skills-oriented, inquiry-based, social-learning experiences between high school students from around the world. He’s enjoying using his skills to innovate and optimise projects with the CMP, its incubatees and its broader ecosystem.
Advisors
Marc Lopatin
Consultant on Narrative
Marc is a narrative framing specialist and communications professional with over 20-years’ experience, following a career in journalism. He has experience of corporate and political sectors having spent five years working for Royal Dutch Shell and being hired as a strategic communications advisor for the UK Labour Party leadership for the 2017 General Election. In more recent years, Marc has volunteered for Extinction Rebellion and Scientist Rebellion, and convened a cohort of climate scientists that went on to found Faculty For A Future in 2021. His contribution to the Climate Majority Project thus far has been to import the need for a narrative shift into CMP’s theory of change, craft messaging and project manage pending audience insight research.
Julian Thompson
Community Climate Action Lead
Joolz has spent the majority of his career in the Private Sector. As a Marketing professional he’s spent 25 years crafting data driven, cross media campaigns, convincing audiences to respond to calls to action… Successfully telling the wrong stories, for the wrong people, for the wrong reasons. Having decided to take another path, the skills acquired in that time have helped him to dedicate the last 7 years to working towards social and environmental justice (including protesting and direct action). In 2019 Joolz was on the campaign team for Jamie Driscoll Mayor of North of Tyne Combined authority, helping create an ambitious manifesto and an election victory. Joolz is the founder of iFarm, a Community Benefit Society in East Anglia and CEO of Community Climate Action.
Naresh Giangrande
Senior Advisor
As a Co-founder of Transition Town Totnes, the first Transition Town, I was engaged for 15 years in building Transition Network a world wide social and environmental change movement. I am currently facilitating the economic dimension of Gai Education’s Eco village design training, am facilitating the Climate Majority Project, wrote a ground breaking paper on transformative education, was managing director of a landscape company, worked with Jem Bendell on Deep Adaptation, was a gaffer in the film industry, and taught meditation. I am currently a freelance educational consultant working with Schumacher College developing the ecologically regenerative potential of large language models (LLMs) creating applied solutions to our climate and ecological crisis.
Jen Newall
Outreach and Campaigns
Jen is a young, but wise force of nature who holds a strong, well informed vision of the future we need to build and isn’t afraid to speak truth to power. A former climate scientist, she spent almost a decade working at the forefront of climate research. In 2021 Jen left her position at Stockholm University upon realising the science alone was not going to deliver the behavioural and mindset change required to save our species. Since then she has devoted herself to empowering radical climate action at all levels and embracing her creative side to communicate the truth with compassion. She is co-founder of Trees For Birthdays, and earlier this year founded SAÍN (Soulful Adventures In Nature) delivering active mindfulness, resilience building and collective healing through a range of outdoor activities that connect individuals with themselves, each other, nature, and culture.
A proud Scot, at one with nature, there is nothing Jen loves more than being in the wilds of Scotland – especially when that involves mountain biking &/or great company!
Jamie Bristow
Inner-work Advisor
Jamie is a leading expert on the role of contemplative practice in public life, co-author of the influential report Reconnection: Meeting the Climate Crisis Inside Out, and Policy & Advocacy Lead for the Inner Development Goals. From 2015 to 2023 he clerked the UK’s All-Party Parliamentary Group on Mindfulness and served as Director of an associated policy institute, The Mindfulness Initiative, where he worked with decision-makers around the world to integrate the cultivation of inner capacities into politics and public policy thinking.
Jessica Townsend
Community and Media
Jessica Townsend was a career writer until she became aware of the climate crisis and starting working for Extinction Rebellion. Initially the content coordinator, she started the XR podcast interviewing luminaries like Margaret Atwood, Kate Raworth and Joanna Macy. She then co-founded Writers Rebel to encourage high profile writers to use their platforms to spread the message about climate and nature crises. The denial work led her to cofound Steve Baker Watch which grew into the network www.MPWatch.org.
