(Norah Noelle, our mascot)
An invitation to join us!
We are on a mission to accelerate climate solutions and leverage design around the world to make a significant impact to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. This decade is critical for the future of our planet!
Design solutions addressing climate concerns have potential to scale fast — faster than many solutions from other scientific fields and policy changes.
We are growing a dynamic, engaged team of passionate people to raise awareness, incite creativity, push boundaries and implement design solutions for our global climate crisis. Our goal is to recognize great climate design solutions, and educate people on how to make better purchase decisions, every day, with every decision. Through the GCDA program, we will highlight pragmatic, impacts of climate design solutions.
From plastic, packaging and product design, to building offices, homes and airplanes – it’s time to rethink everything!
Join us to help discover and share climate design innovation around the world — and with the world. Follow our momentum on LinkedIn, and Facebook !
About the Leadership Team
– A climate communicator, product ninja and passionate art director who pulls it all together!
Judy’s background is international, extensive and broad. She holds B.A.s in Economics and French from U.C. Berkeley, and an MBA in Marketing from l’Ecole Superieure de Commerce de Paris. She has twenty years’ experience launching and managing hundreds of products. She worked for L’Oréal in Paris at the start of her career, where she worked on many of its global brands and formed her systems thinking mindset. She pivoted to product marketing – building acute understanding of packaging, formulation and product development. She has art directed 180 videos and short films, and executed massive marketing and ad campaigns. She specializes in branding, public relations, social media, communications.
Founder of the Global Fine Art Awards, and director of the program for eight years (2013-2021), she presided over the research and judging process and the Advisory Board members. The program grew over 100% each year, annually reviewed over 2,000 exhibitions and installations, and was comprised of a team of forty volunteer researchers, judges and advisory board members from twenty countries on four continents.
She served as Vice-Chair for the Miami Beach Chamber’s Arts and Culture Council from 2011 to 2014 and was the founding editor of the bi-weekly column Arts and Culture (PRE)View – (RE)View for the Miami Beach newspaper.
She is accredited through the MIT-Sloan Sustainability Initiative, Climate Interactive, and has over 10,000 hours of experience and study of climate change- from the current and trending atmospheric changes, to the impacts of policy and consumption behavior and patterns around the globe. She is also a UN Environment Program accredited Green Marketing Advisor, and the Miami Chapter Leader of Climate Designers.
Judges
– Highly experienced subject matter experts — academic, professional, institutional
Each of our judges is widely recognized as leaders and pioneers in their respective field.
Chair James Sipes
Founding Principal of Sand County Studios, Mr. Sipes is an award-winning landscape architect, urban designer, environmental planner, and author with more than forty years of experience. His work includes urban design, environmental planning and design, land use planning, watershed management, low impact development, park and recreation design, natural and cultural resource management, and community-based design.
His design solutions focus on taking an integrated approach to water resources and green infrastructure. He has taught site design, environmental planning, and resource management at the university level for twenty-four years.
He currently teaches geo-design at Penn State University, and will deliver online continuing education courses in 2023 and 2024 on Climate Financing and Climate Change Policies.
Chad Frischmann is the Founder and CEO of Regenerative Intelligence (RegenIntel), a global ecosystem superpowered by leading system thinkers and doers creating a regenerative economy and society that places human and planetary well-being at the heart of our collective future. With over 20 years of experience in sustainability, climate change, and development, Chad is a systems strategist who designs and implements solutions that address the root causes of global challenges and generate cascading benefits for all life.
Chad is also the co-creator, lead researcher, and architect of the Drawdown Solutions Framework, the engine behind the New York Times best-seller Drawdown: The Most Comprehensive Plan Ever Proposed to Reverse Global Warming (Penguin, 2017) and the Drawdown Review (2020). As the architect of Drawdown Solutions, Chad led a global team of researchers to assess the world’s most effective climate solutions and determine if, when, and how the world can reach “drawdown,” the point in time when the concentration of atmospheric greenhouse gases begins to decline on a year-to-year basis. Chad is a key spokesperson and coalition-builder dedicated to sharing the message and model of the Drawdown Framework to the world.
Maarten Statius MullerA graduate of the Design Academy Eindhoven, Mr. Statius Muller has worked for over twenty-five years in the world of design and culture. Based in Antwerp, Belgium, he collaborates with many top European contemporary design, architecture, art and fashion companies.
He is the owner of Statius PR and works with his clients to advance their brands and their exposure to new markets and new clients.
His expertise includes Contemporary Design, Applied Arts, Domestic Art, Sculptural Design, Functional Objects.
His current client roster features: Atelier Ief Spincemaille, ark38 by Sterck, Ashtari Carpets, BASTA, Belgian Design Pavilion, Design Art Night, Flora Miranda, Modern Shapes Editions, Museum W, Paardenmarkt 68, Revised, Wool&Wire, …
Some recent clients and projects include: B brand, David Bulckaen, Ben Storms, Beyond Space, Binst Architects, Buro Bélen, Capital Kitchen, Contemporary Design Market, Flanders District of Creativity, Global Fine Art Awards, inCC:, Lensvelt, Lensvelt Loft, Louise Mertens, Masseria Antonio Augusto, Mira Sohlén, Pierre De Valck, Quincalux, Studio Job, Thomas More and Xavier Lust.
A painter as well, Maarten is currently attending advanced courses at the Royal Academy of Fine Arts Antwerp.
Michelle LiMichelle is the founder of clever carbon. She launched her career in Silicon Valley where she worked for some of the biggest names in tech including Salesforce and DocuSign. A proponent for making sustainability the new norm, Michelle founded clever carbon to help teach people about carbon footprint in a hip, fun, and relatable way because what gets measured gets changed. She is a TEDx, SXSW, Bloomberg, and COP27 speaker on the topic of carbon literacy and is a United Nations content contributor. Michelle believes that a carbon literate society will accelerate solutions and actions at the speed and scale required for a thriving planet.
Michelle is also the founder of Women and Climate, a non-profit organization that inspires climate action by creating a joyful and safe space for more women to learn and talk about climate.
Advisors and influencers
– Luminaries and recognized experts in their field — designers, artists, business professionals, community leaders, social media ninjas, climate experts and more.
Co-Chair Nicholas Grambas
Based in Melbourne Australia, Nicholas is a 30-year veteran of international infrastructure and clean energy law and business. He is an internationally recognized lawyer with extensive experience in M&A, projects and finance, and has a deep understanding of commercial and legal structuring of transactions across a range of sectors, including infrastructure, utilities, power and renewables, water and wastewater, district energy, mining and resources.
With clients spanning Asia, Australia, Europe, US and the Middle East, he represents strategic and financial sponsors and lenders on complex equity and debt transactions. Mr. Grambas advises on acquisitions, auctions, divestments, privatizations, joint ventures, and project finance.
Strategic Lead, John Hagel
John’s goal is to help leaders engage around fundamental issues, find more effective ways of integrating personal development, and drive the evolution of their environments to achieve their full potential. He works with companies from all over the world, to widen the field of vision to anticipate opportunities that can be leveraged, build excitement, and cultivate emotions that will help people achieve more impact and more meaning.
A widely published and quoted thought leader, he has been featured in major business publications like The Economist, Fortune, Forbes, Business Week, Financial Times and Wall Street Journal as well as the New York Times, NBC, and BBC. He is a sought after Keynote Speaker at World Economic Forum, Microsoft CEO Summit, World Technology Summit, Wharton, Stanford, Harvard Business School, TED, Singularity University, and more.
He is leading the transformation for individuals and institutions that hunger for impact, are seeking to creating new knowledge together through action, and want to leverage these insights to deliver more value to all stakeholders.
Co-Chair Betsie Bremer Piussan
A native of New York, currently residing in Miami, Betsie received a B.S. Degrees from Stanford University in Social Sciences and French. She also studied at l’Université de Paris and l’Ecole du Louvre. She completed her MBA at NYU. She worked for nine years at Republic National Bank of New York, specializing in international lending.
Ms. Piussan subsequently founded her interior design firm, Bremer Designs, after earning a Design Certificate from New York School of Interior Design. She specializes in renovations in NYC, Westchester, Connecticut and The Hamptons.
Award program committee
– Contributing diverse skills to the climate design community, committee members are creative, accomplished and passionate!
Partnership liaison Chair, Ana Luiza Magalhães
Ana Luiza is a Social Communicator with a Master’s in Media Industries from the University of Leeds (UK). She is a certified trend researcher by TrendWatching, has completed Ellen MacArthur Foundation’s professional program “From Linear to Circular,” and is currently part of Terra.do Fellowship program “Climate Action: Learning for Action.” She has worked in advertising and design agencies in Brazil and England, and 2018, she co-founded SOMA_studiomilano.
At Soma, she has been working to raise awareness and provide valuable information and strategies about the circular economy and circular design, empowering professionals and companies to act and migrate to this new economic model and build a better future while fighting climate change.
Ana Luiza is Brazilian, currently living in Milan, where she is also the Chapter Leader for Climate Designers.
SOMA_studiomilano co-founder
Research Committee Chair Joanne Benz
With a BS in Marketing from the Fashion Institute of Technology in New York (FIT), Joanne has over 20 years of experience in marketing, with an emphasis on research.
For fifteen years, she ran research and customer insights for all Estee Lauder brands globally. Currently leading research for a private industrial innovation company based in Nevada, Joanne is an experienced international marketing executive and market research professional in a broad range of manufacturing and retail industries including: industrial, hydration and water systems, emergency equipment, prestige beauty, consumer, and retail.
Marketing and Social Media Nicole Durham
Nicole, a Miami resident originally from Texas, is a digital marketing strategist who optimizes the intersection where businesses, consumers, and technology meet.
She has a deep passion for sustainability and helps businesses lessen their impact on our planet and enable their customers to do the same. She is particularly interested in agriculture, ocean conservation, and plant-based alternatives to plastic and carbon products.
She has been working with business-to-business (B2B) clients throughout her career. This has immersed her in the industries that make our modern existence possible, yet most people live life unaware of. The industries she works with have further drive her interest in sustainability—these industries include energy, manufacturing, transportation and logistics, and automotive.
Marketing and Social Media Martina Potlach
Martina, a native Miami resident with roots in Latin America and Israel, is a landscape architect who orients her work in intersecting climate x design x storytelling through the lens of coastal resilience and urban adaptation. She has experience in project management, nature-based solutions research, landscape architecture, green infrastructure design/implementation, capacity-building, and visual storytelling. She is interested in the relationship between nature, people, and adaptation between land and water.
She is a member if Florida International University’s Institute of Environment program, Sea Level Solutions Center addressing the need for useful and sustained sea level, coastal, and other climate change-related responses for both the human and natural environments. The team coordinates and engages in local to global solutions-oriented research, education, strategic thinking, communications and outreach by organizing scientists, educators, students, municipal leaders and policymakers to produce an accurate understanding of impacts of sea level rise and climate change.
She is proficient in GIS, Adobe software, CAD, research/analysis, digital storytelling, literature review, excel, capacity building, facilitating and coordinating educational workshops, and other data visualization, presentation, and project management tools.
Belmondo Studios is a California-based creative agency and content studio, operating as an independent agency since 2012. Their primary areas of expertise are product design, brand strategy, and video storytelling. Their projects focus on sustainability and social impact.
CEO Joanna Ellis
Joanna’s career has spanned agency work for Wieden + Kennedy, entertainment sites for Cottonblend, product design for Ticketmaster and Yahoo!, where she led the design of the award-winning Elections and News categories. Her work has enjoyed wide recognition, including an Addy® Award, an American Inhouse Design Award, and publication in David E. Carter’s book Logo 2.0.
Co-Founder Peter Brambl
Peter’s multidisciplinary approach to product marketing and design is a reflection of his diverse experience as a copywriter, filmmaker, and creative director for major brands. His client projects range from Fortune 500 companies (Adobe, Chase, AOL, Cendant) to nimble technology startups (Topspin, Fluence) to high-profile entertainment (Paul McCartney, David Byrne, Eminem).
Who are Climate Designers?
Climate Designers is the global hub for designers and creative professionals from all industries, committed to using our creative skills for climate action –
4,100+ members in 17 chapters around the world and growing!
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