Planet Impact – Details, episodes & analysis

Kayalin Akens-Irby is an impact-driven strategist focused on building a sustainable future through her work across tech, investment, and policy. As Head of Growth at Planet FWD, she helps consumer companies measure and reduce their carbon footprint and decarbonize supply chains. Previously, she served as Head of VC and Growth Equity at Malk Partners, where she developed ESG investment strategies for top private equity funds, contributing to over $500B in AUM. A frequent speaker at global climate conferences, Kayalin co-built a 26,000-member climate tech community on Clubhouse. She is a Claremont McKenna College graduate, a Board Member of the Upcycled Food Association, and an advisor to green tech startups.

Mr Tim Dunn is the co-founder and CIO of Terra Alpha Investments, a firm offering sustainable public equity investment strategies to accredited investors, combines decades of investment experience with a science-based understanding of environmental risks and opportunities. Terra Alpha uses two proprietary research frameworks—Enduring Business Models and Environmental Productivity—to identify companies that can deliver strong financial returns while contributing to a sustainable economy. With over 30 years in professional investing, including 19 years at Capital Research as a lead manager of major global equity funds, Mr Dunn draws on experience with environmental organizations, emphasizing the importance of aligning capital markets with sustainable resource use and societal needs.

Caitlyn is the author of You Are Where You Go: A Traveler’s Coming of Age Journey Through 70 Countries and 7 Continents During College. 

She wrote this book to inspire others with her personal stories of how travel has changed her perspectives about the world. Her goal is to prompt readers to see travel as a tool for personal development and to spark readers’ desires to learn and grow outside of their comfort zones because everywhere you go becomes a part of you!

From visiting penguins in Antarctica to riding motorbikes in rural Vietnam, from camping in eastern Africa to solo traveling in Australia, she has done it all. 

Caitlyn Lubas is a graduate of NYU Stern School of Business and a former Product Specialist at Instagram who recently quit her full-time job to pursue her dream of being a travel author, content creator, and entrepreneur full time.

You can BUY a copy of her book at:
https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/you-are-where-you-go-travel-memoir-book#/

Follow Caitlyn on
Personal Instagram: @caitlynlubas
Author/Book Instagram: @you.are.where.you.go

Personal TikTok: @caitlynlubas
Author/Book TikTok: @you.are.where.you.go

Personal Twitter: @caitlynlubas
Book Twitter: @YAWYG_book

Subscribe for email updates at www.youarewhereyougo.com

Mr. Allavaru is a lawyer by profession who has been associated with student politics since his days at the University of Delhi. He deems the youth as the catalyst of societal and political change. He spearheads the Indian National Congress's initiatives on all fronts, be it in taking on the government on any issue or making outreach programs in different parts of the country. 

He has an LLM from Georgetown University and an MBA from INSEAD. Formerly, he worked at KPMG in India, and The Boston Consulting Group in Singapore for many years before joining politics. At Indian National Congress, he shares the responsibility of drawing the roadmaps of the organization.

This conversation was originally recorded for a book interview. In this episode, he talks about how youngsters should be a changemaker. He recommends youngsters to strive for positive, and sustainable change that is achieved through positive means. His key advice to the young listeners is to, "Have the tenacity to see things through. Have persistence and conviction in your goals."

Kiran Bir Sethi is the Founder-Director of the Riverside School in Ahmedabad, India and the Design for Change organization. She has a design background, having received her diploma in visual communication from the National Institute of Design (NID).  She is also the Founder of “aProCh” – which stands for “A Protagonist in Every Child” – an initiative that is attempting to make Ahmedabad more child-friendly, for which she was made an Ashoka Fellow in 2008.

Kiran ma'am developed a Design for Change curriculum for middle school students, which is being piloted in 64 schools in India and 5 schools in Spain, Peru, the USA and Taiwan. The related Design for Change (DFC) School Challenge was initiated in 2009 and has since spread to over 72 countries, challenging children to design and implement solutions to problems they see around them. DFC has a collection of over 50,000 stories of change by children across the globe and involving 2 million young students through their programs.

Links: 

1. Follow Kiran ma'am on Twitter, Instagram and LinkedIn
2. Kiran ma'am TED Talk

Felix Finkbeiner is a German environmentalist and the founder of the international tree-planting and environmental advocacy organization Plant-for-the-Planet. 

Starting in fourth grade, he attended Munich International School from which he graduated in 2015. After living in London for three years, he graduated with a BA in International Relations from SOAS, the University of London in 2018. Since September 2018 he is a PhD student of environmental sciences at the Crowther Lab of ETH Zürich, where he studies the most effective approaches to forest restoration under Prof. Tom Crowther.

In January 2007, when Felix was nine years old and in fourth grade, he gave a class presentation on global warming in which he suggested to classmates that children should plant one million trees in each country of the world. Together with many of his classmates, Felix planted a tree on 28 March 2007 and launched Plant-for-the-Planet. After three years, the initiative planted its millionth tree. At age 10 he spoke in the European Parliament and at age 13 at the UN General Assembly.

The organisation currently restores 22,500 hectares of forest on the Yucatán Peninsula in Mexico by planting on average one tree every 15 seconds. Furthermore, Plant-for-the-Planet leads the UN Billion Tree Campaign, as part of which 14 billion trees have been planted so far by contributing companies, organisations and governments.

Links:

• Felix's Twitter 
• Plant for the Planet Website 
• Felix's A Trillion Tree Campaign Speech

Riddhima works with Goldman Sachs’ Sustainable Finance Group in New York, which partners with the firm’s global businesses to drive sustainable solutions related to climate transition and inclusive growth. She is also a Non-Residential Fellow at Aspen Institute for the Energy and Environment Program. Riddhima has experience working on climate policy at the United Nations, World Bank and the Global Commission on Economy and Climate. She graduated from Yale University in 2018 with a B.A. in Ethics, Politics and Economics. She is also a member of the Board of Directors of the We Are Family Foundation.

Links: 

• Reach out to Riddhima through her LinkedIn. 

[https://www.linkedin.com/in/riddhima-yadav-35a44290/]

Dr Girish Kulkarni is the founder of Snehalaya, an NGO based in Ahmednagar, India. Snehalaya means 'Home of Love', and was founded in 1989 to provide support for women, children and LGBT communities, who have been affected by HIV and AIDS, trafficking, sexual violence, and poverty. In India, 93 women are raped every day. It is estimated that 135,000 children are trafficked every year. Over 120,000 women a year will suffer domestic violence. There are 2.1 million people living with HIV, and an estimated 130,000 people die of AIDS each year.  At Snehalaya they believe that grassroots outreach and education is the key to drastically reducing these figures. Their mission is to provide rescue, rights and rehabilitative services to the communities in most need and to offer a safe exit point to women and their children trapped in the crippling cycle of poverty and abuse.  Thus they aspire to develop the awareness and capabilities of individuals who have been deprived of their fundamental rights as a result of the inequalities that exist in our society. They provide services to over 45,000 beneficiaries and are a strong and passionate family, united in the belief that no one should stand alone.

About Dr Girish Kulkarni: He grew up in Ahmednagar enjoying life in a middle class, loving and supportive family. A former journalist with several graduate and postgraduate degrees to his name, he now combines working as a political science lecturer with driving Snehalaya, which he founded in 1989. For the past 32 years, he has been connecting with other NGOs, social workers, politicians, celebrities and anyone else who can help raise awareness of the plight and make positive changes for those who society would like to ignore.

Quote: “I was motivated by my own burden of guilt. I found that working to satisfy that, was much more sustainable than being moved by compassion. To me, that creates unrealistic expectations and places the burden on others. Ultimately their responses to your actions remain out of your control which can lead to frustrations and dissatisfaction, it’s much more rewarding to be clear and focused on your own purpose.”

Links:

• Dr Kulkarni's Ted Talk
  
• Snehalaya Website
  
• Radio Nagar Website
  

Contact:

Volunteer for Snehalaya link

Email: info@snehalaya.org

Dr Girish Kulkarni is the founder of Snehalaya, an NGO based in Ahmednagar, India. Snehalaya means 'Home of Love', and was founded in 1989 to provide support for women, children and LGBT communities, who have been affected by HIV and AIDS, trafficking, sexual violence, and poverty. In India, 93 women are raped every day. It is estimated that 135,000 children are trafficked every year. Over 120,000 women a year will suffer domestic violence. There are 2.1 million people living with HIV, and an estimated 130,000 people die of AIDS each year.

At Snehalaya they believe that grassroots outreach and education is the key to drastically reducing these figures. Their mission is to provide rescue, rights and rehabilitative services to the communities in most need and to offer a safe exit point to women and their children trapped in the crippling cycle of poverty and abuse.

Thus they aspire to develop the awareness and capabilities of individuals who have been deprived of their fundamental rights as a result of the inequalities that exist in our society. They provide services to over 45,000 beneficiaries and are a strong and passionate family, united in the belief that no one should stand alone.

About Dr Girish Kulkarni: He grew up in Ahmednagar enjoying life in a middle class, loving and supportive family. A former journalist with several graduate and postgraduate degrees to his name, he now combines working as a political science lecturer with driving Snehalaya, which he founded in 1989. For the past 32 years, he has been connecting with other NGOs, social workers, politicians, celebrities and anyone else who can help raise awareness of the plight and make positive changes for those who society would like to ignore.

Quote: “I was motivated by my own burden of guilt. I found that working to satisfy that, was much more sustainable than being moved by compassion. To me, that creates unrealistic expectations and places the burden on others. Ultimately their responses to your actions remain out of your control which can lead to frustrations and dissatisfaction, it’s much more rewarding to be clear and focused on your own purpose.”

Links: 

• Dr Kulkarni's Ted Talk 
• Snehalaya Website 
• Radio Nagar Website 

Contact: 

Volunteer for Snehalaya link

Email: info@snehalaya.org

Gavin Thurston is the award-winning Blue Planet II and Planet Earth II cameraman who worked with Sir David Attenborough for over 20 projects. In this podcast, he shares with us the extraordinary and adventurous true stories of becoming a legendary cameraman. 

I met Gavin in Dubai on his book tour at Emirates Literature Festival, and instantly I was moved by his stories and his kind personality.

Gavin has been a wildlife photographer for over thirty years. Against a backdrop of modern world history, he's lurked in the shadows of some of the world's remotest places in order to capture footage of the animal kingdom's finest: prides of lions, silverback gorillas, capuchin monkeys, brown bears, grey whales, penguins, mosquitoes - you name it he's filmed it.

From journeys to the deepest depths of the Antarctic Ocean and the wide expanse of the Saharan deserts, to the peaks of the Himalayas and the wild forests of the Congo, Gavin's experiences describe much more than just the incredible array of animals he's filmed. He invites you to come inside the cameraman's hidden world and discover the hours spent patiently waiting for the protagonists to appear; the inevitable dangers in the wings and the challenges faced and overcome; and the heart-warming, life-affirming moments the cameras miss as well as capture.

Buy Gavin's book on:
Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07D6LD2NJ/ref=dp-kindle-redirect?_encoding=UTF8&btkr=1
Waterstones: https://www.waterstones.com/book/journeys-in-the-wild/gavin-thurston/9781841883106
Foyles:https://www.foyles.co.uk/witem/art-fashion-photography/journeys-in-the-wild-the-secret-life-of,gavin-thurston-9781841883106
Audible: https://www.audible.in/?ref=Adbl_ip_rdr_from_UK&source_code=AUDTM0020803180034&ipRedirectFrom=GB&ipRedirectOriginalURL=pd%2FJourneys-in-the-Wild-Audiobook%2F1409184463%3Fqid%3D1559653498

Personal Website: http://www.gavinthurston.com/

Follow Gavin on:
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/thegavinthurston/
Twitter: https://twitter.com/gavinthurston