Matthew Siegfried is a local historian in Michigan and has lived in Ypsilanti since 2001. He is a graduate of Eastern Michigan University with degrees in History and Historic Preservation. Much of his work has been on Ypsilanti’s local history and its connections to broad historical moments. He has focused on Ypsilanti’s rich Indigenous and Black history, and has produced a website (South Adams Street @ 1900) which details the development of Ypsi’s Black community.

In this episode, we discuss his journey that led him down the path of history, place-based education, relational perspectives, landscapes as the interfaces of society and nature, and the role of the collective in understanding our history. 

To read more about Matthew's work, check out the links below:

Visit Matthew's Facebook page and Website for South Adams Street @ 1900 Project

Hey everyone! Back again with Episode 9 for SustainaBold, this time with my guest Dharna Noor. She currently a staff writer for Earther at Gizmodo, covering all aspects of the climate crisis, like energy, biodiversity loss, and capitalism's inability to solve the crisis on its own. She also has an essay in "The World We Need: Stories and Lessons from America’s Unsung Environmental Movement," edited by Audrea Lim and published earlier this year in May. 

We talk about how she started her sustainability journey, in addition to the emotions related to reading and writing about the existential crises of our time. We talk about the climate crisis' connections to housing, labor, and the potential solutions that are just waiting for us to make those connections. Hope you enjoy the show, and check out her writings here! 

In Episode 8 of SustainaBold, I invited Alexis M. Wilson on the show to talk about her journey into Earth/Environmental Science, her experiences as a Black woman in STEM, and her current research interests and motivations!

After completing her undergraduate degree at Cornell, she’s now a second-year PhD student at Stanford University studying soil biogeochemistry, climate change, and environmental justice especially since the negative impacts of climate change and environmental degradation disproportionately impact communities of color and low-income communities. She’s begun investigating a variety of questions surrounding soil contamination in urban gardens, specifically in marginalized communities. Her mission is to create a more just, sustainable, and equitable world through scientific research and activism. As we discuss, her passion lies in combating environmental racism and climate injustices on local and global scales. She also hopes to increase the representation of Black women in STEM, particularly in the Earth and Environmental Sciences,

For more information on her work and engagement, check out these links below:

To kick off 2021, I spoke to Dr. Tiara Moore, an environmental ecologist, about how she became interested in ecology, her experiences as a Black woman in STEM, and how she’s helping to create a safe and inclusive workplace as founder of A WOC Space.

She completed her B.S at Winthrop University, received an M.S. in Biology at Hampton University, and earned her Ph.D. in Ecology and Evolutionary Biology at UCLA. She’s currently a postdoctoral scholar at the University of Washington and The Nature Conservancy of Seattle where she is using soil environmental DNA to develop a biodiversity census of Ellsworth Forest to compare species diversity across management treatments over the past 10 years.  Check out her amazing research and engagement both inside and outside the lab, including her work as founder of #BlackinMarineScience!

Welcome Dr. Britt Wray, the 6th guest on SustainaBold! We had an engaging conversation around different mechanisms to enable internal activism or emotional intelligence especially around the climate and greater ecological crisis. We also discussed how her interdisciplinary background informs her approach and writing. One of my favorite insights from the conversation is that finding others that you can connect with over these emotions is a strengthening and empowering mechanism for dealing with uncertainty. Get ready for a deep dive!

Britt Wray, PhD is a broadcaster and author researching the social and ethical entanglements of science and technology, with a focus on the planetary health crisis and synthetic biology. Britt has a PhD in science communication from the University of Copenhagen and is the author of Rise of the Necrofauna: The Science, Ethics and Risks of De-Extinction (Greystone Books 2017). She has hosted several podcasts, radio & TV programs with the BBC and CBC, and is a TED Resident. Currently, Britt is writing a book about the mental health impacts of the climate and wider eco-crisis, which will be published by Knopf-Random House. Check out her newsletter on this (Gen Dread)! It’s a wonderful resource for us all.

Links:

Articles we discussed from her newsletter:

Welcome to the fifth episode of SustainaBold, a podcast on sustainability from an interdisciplinary perspective. On this show, I interview guests who work professionally or personally in sustainability, and I ask them why they're motivated and what they're doing in their lives to create a more sustainable future.

This time, my guest is Meg Ruttan Walker, who's a writer, teacher, mom, climate activist, and organizer in the Waterloo region.

We talk about why she cares about sustainability, how she became involved in organizing, and how she's navigating the climate crisis. We discuss a variety of topics, including trauma as related to climate grief, justice and redistribution of power, and the terrifying elements of eco-fascism plus how to counter them.

Check out her amazing WordPress site called A Variety of Meltdowns, where she details her own emotions and responses of the climate crisis that many of us also experience. For instance, she has written about radical vulnerability, no absolution and necessary conditions for hope. Hope you enjoy the show!

Keep updated with her on Twitter!

In this episode, I invited Jacqueline Lim, who is an advisor, facilitator and coach working with individuals and organisations to think and operate more at the systems level, and is passionate about unleashing potential for creating positive change in the world. She specializes in designing strategies and programs for deeper awareness, connection and impact, and is adept on topics ranging from sensemaking in complexity, business models for systems change, and systems leadership. Follow her on Twitter here. 

She leads on the Collective Impact program at She Leads Change - a community and movement of wholehearted leaders co-creating a better future for all. She is also actively part of the project team at Liminal - a collective intelligence community - working with organisations including the Newton Fund (UK) and the Technology Innovation Agency (South Africa).

As an independent advisor, Jacqueline has collaborated and worked with organisations including SustainAzores, the Finance Innovation Lab, B Lab Europe and Apolitical. She is also part of the Expert Group on SDG Investments in Cities convened by the UN Global Compact and the OECD.

Her experience includes 7 years in the Singapore Government where Jacqueline was a Government Scholar and worked on social policy, and a further 8 years at Volans, an acclaimed London-based think tank and advisory firm operating at the forefront of sustainable development led by John Elkington. There, she worked directly with Fortune 500 companies to pioneer sustainable approaches to innovation and value creation, and led numerous multi-sector initiatives involving business, innovative start-ups and city officials - including with the UN Global Compact and Innovate UK.

Jacqueline has written for Fast Company and other publications and speaks regularly at global conferences. She is trained in methodologies including the Three Horizons model by the International Futures Forum, and is a trained “Organisational and Relationship Systems” coach. She holds an MBA from the Judge Business School at the University of Cambridge.

Welcome to the third episode of the Sustainabold podcast! Today, I invited Dr. Weslynne Ashton to the show. She's an associate professor at the Illinois Institute of Technology with joint appointments at the Stuart School of Business and the Institute of Design.

Professor Ashton is a sustainable systems scientist whose research teaching and practice are oriented around transitioning our socioecological systems towards sustainability and equity.  Her research has grounded in industrial ecology and circular economy. Her current work focuses on increasing sustainability and equity in urban food systems and developing regenerative economies and post-industrial regions, emerging economies and small island states.

She has a bachelor's degree in environmental engineering, from MIT and masters and doctoral degrees in environmental science from Yale university. We talked about her approach to research and community focus, sustainability as care and solutions to address growing weaknesses of our current economic system, both professionally and personally. Hope you enjoy the show!

Welcome to the second episode of the SustainaBold podcast!

I invited Dr. Cle-Anne Gabriel to the show, a lecturer/assistant professor at the University of Queensland in Australia, who studies sustainability and business with emphases on renewable energy and degrowth.

Cle-Anne is a Lecturer within the Strategy Discipline, and UQ Business School's Director for the United Nations Principles for Responsible Management Education (UN PRME). She is a Senior Fellow of the Higher Education Academy (SFHEA), an award-winning educator, a Paul R. Lawrence Fellow and a Director of the North American Case Research Association (NACRA).

Cle-Anne researches in the areas of sustainable development and post-growth futures, renewable energy enterprise and business models for sustainability. She is a sustainable development specialist who has worked on projects and assignments funded by organisations such as Australian Aid (AusAID), the European Union (EU) and New Zealand's Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment (MBIE). She designed and delivered an Energy Baseline Study for the city of Dunedin in New Zealand and provided policy advice on the city's Energy Plan and the lead-up to its accession to the Global Covenant of Mayors for Climate and Energy.

Please visit her website and Twitter here!

Welcome to the first episode of SustainaBold! Our first guest is Imari Walker, who's an analytical chemist, environmental engineer, and oceanographer. She graduated in May 2016 from UC Berkeley with a Bachelors in Marine Science. She is currently a environmental engineering doctoral student at Duke University in the Ferguson Lab Group studying the fate, occurrence and transformation of plastic additives within aqueous environments. Her travels have influenced her concerns for the future of clean accessible water, due to increased anthropogenic influences of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. She's also passionate about science outreach and communication, and she even has a YouTube channel to engage a wider audience about microplastics, water quality, and chemical exposure in everyday consumer products. 

Find out more about her on her website, Twitter, and YouTube channel!