Heidi Adams sees what most people walk past. She spent 25 years as a production designer in film and TV — building worlds from scratch and solving the unsolvable, all in an industry where failure simply isn't an option. But that's the backstory. What she is, at her core, is a design thinker who tears problems down to first principles and builds them back up for what's needed in this time.

The streetlight she has reimagined as CEO of BaseStudio — climate-resilient, wifi-enabled, EV-charging, grid-independent, self-financing in two to three years — came from that mind. And so did her approach to the communities the LA fires hit hardest. Heidi doesn't just show up with a product. She pulls people together around solutions — hers, and everyone else's, doing the work of hardening landscapes, neighborhoods and cities for what comes next. Andrea dials in on Heidi's community-centering as leadership, and why it's the part of the innovation story that usually goes untold.

This is a conversation about what happens when you trust your instincts, follow the doors that open, and refuse to let the scope of the problem talk you out of showing up.

https://basestud.io/

@baseStudio_io

linkedin.com/in/heidi-adams-base-studio

https://basestud.io/pilot.html (Archive of ReGrow Altadena program)

linkedin.com/in/estelle-reyes-laci

laincubator.org (Los Angeles CleanTech Incubator)

https://climateresolve.org/resilience-hubs/

Follow Andrea between episodes:

https://www.linkedin.com/in/andrealearned/

https://bsky.app/profile/andrealearned.bsky.social

https://andrea-learned-climate-influence.ghost.io/

Name & Fame was created, and is hosted and produced, by Andrea Learned. Edited by Syd Gladu and Kristie Taiwo-Makanjoula. Theme music by Adam Captured. Art by Nancy Bolan.

Jack Hanson co-founded Run on Climate, an organization that gets climate champions elected to local office — and then supports them once they're there. At 24, he ran for the Burlington, Vermont City Council because the person he was managing dropped out and no one else would do it. He won. He got reelected without opposition. He helped flip four seats in two years. Then he built an organization so others could do the same.

But the thing that stopped me in this conversation: Jack plays piano in a funk band in Chicago on weekends. He said music is pure bliss. Climate work, he said, is more of an obligation — something he feels compelled to do because the stakes are existential. I think that honesty is the whole key. The people who stay in hard work for the long haul without burning out almost always have something that refills them that has nothing to do with outcomes. For Jack, it's music.

This episode is about local power, joy as a movement-building strategy, the ripple effect of bold policy in small cities, and what music has to do with any of it. Recorded fall 2025, and releasing now because none of it has an expiration date.

Jack's "Name & Fame It Forward" pick: Sue Anderbois, Providence City Council — a full-time Nature Conservancy staffer by day, climate champion on city council by night.

If this episode moved you, share it with one person who's doing the quiet, joyful work. That's how they'll know you see them, and that's the whole point of Name & Fame!

runonclimate.org

linkedin.com/in/jack-hanson-b6106622b

https://www.linkedin.com/in/sue-anderbois/

Follow Andrea between episodes:

https://www.linkedin.com/in/andrealearned/

https://bsky.app/profile/andrealearned.bsky.social

https://andrea-learned-climate-influence.ghost.io/

Name & Fame was created, and is hosted and produced, by Andrea Learned. Edited by Syd Gladu and Kristie Taiwo-Makanjoula. Theme music by Adam Captured. Art by Nancy Bolan.

Janelle Kellman has been training for this moment her whole life — she just didn't know it.

She's an environmental lawyer, ultra marathoner, former mayor of Sausalito, and candidate for Lieutenant Governor of California — AND she's one of the most genuinely joyful people I've talked to in years. In this conversation, she traces the through-line from flooding streets in Sausalito to the state commissions that could shape California's coastline for generations. She talks about ikigai — finding the intersection of passion, purpose, and what the world needs — not as a concept she read about, but as something she lived her way into, on trails and in city council meetings, long before she knew she was running for anything.

If you're in California, I want you to know her name. If you're not, watch what she does — the leaders who win in that state tend to inspire the ones who come after them everywhere else.

Think of one person in your world who is doing the hard work quietly, with joy and with values. Tell them you see it. Send them this episode. That's how the norm shifts.

Links to Janelle's campaign and her nonprofit, the Center for Sea Rise Solutions, are below. Find her, follow her, support her.

Name & Fame is created, hosted, and produced by Andrea Learned. Edited by Syd Gladu and Kristie Taiwo-Makanjoula. Theme music by Adam Captured. Art by Nancy Bolan.

Follow Andrea, between episodes:

Bluesky

Climate Influence Newsletter

Links:

• janellekellman.com

• searisesolutions.org

• ballotpedia.org/Janelle_Kellman

• linkedin.com/in/janelle-kellman-esq-she-her-86021a4

Behind the Scenes: From Living Change to Name & Fame with Maria Paleologos | ~17 minutes

Before the interviews start, a little origin story.

In this pre-season conversation, I sit down with Maria Paleologos — producer of my 2023 podcast Living Change: A Quest for Climate Leadership — to talk about what's changed, what's carried over, and why I'm back with a new show built around a single stubborn belief: that joy is a strategy, not a reward.

We get into what Name & Fame is really for, why I think amplifying the good is more powerful than cataloguing the bad, and what it looks like when leaders stop waiting for permission to be visible about what they care about.

If you're new here, this is a good place to start. If you've been following since Living Change, welcome back — and yes, we're going further this time.

Enjoy this one? Send it to someone who needs a little joy right now — and start naming and faming the leaders in your world who deserve more credit.

Created, hosted, and executive produced by Andrea Learned. Edited by Syd Gladu. Produced with Maria Paleologos.