Installing my sea level rise project- Rising Waters- on remote islands off of Panama was really cool, but that was long after my aha moment. When my team and I led 900 Harvard Business Schools through my sculpture-making workshop for sustainability and innovation, I saw the least likely group to make art become energized and engaged. I thought, this really works and can be effective in bringing new audiences to sustainability issues.

After a long career in my own architectural practices, and experimenting with different ways to deliver services, I read "Hot, Flat & Crowded" by Thomas Friedman in 2008 and decided that working on climate solutions was the only path worth pursuing. I co-founded a green architecture practice, studio2sustain, but soon saw that the impediments lay in awareness and engagement. We needed to get people to make an emotional commitment to climate, and data wasn't doing it. Art can reach people in a fun and novel way to communicate data and touch people emotionally - both making art and public art...and so Climate Creatives was born.