Good Energy is a story consultancy for the age of climate change. Our mission is to inspire, support, and accelerate stories in scripted TV and film that reflect the world we live in now — and help us envision a better future. Over the course of the summer my research and storytelling fellowship spanned two main fields: I acted as the consulting program co-designer and provided operational and project managing support for the company.

Designing the consulting program came from hands-on experience–I was almost immediately placed into a writers room to be a research and storytelling consultant for a narrative podcast set in 2070 — this gave me a really practical way to be able to guide and shape narratives to include themes around social and mental health justice at the intersection of climate change. I was struck by the direct application of my degree. On a daily basis I found myself having to clearly differentiate and articulate the differences of climate fact, climate projection, and climate fiction. This drew upon my climate dynamics, quant, and regional courses pretty directly. I was challenged to find new ways of educating and informing the writers on our team without overwhelming them with information. I think it is challenging for myself, as well as the writers, to balance the narrative with the science — how to inform without being pedantic, and also how to differentiate what is plausible with the suspension of belief for the audience.

In addition to the above, I had the opportunity to conduct interviews with various other social enterprise organizations (gun safety and migrant justice) that offer entertainment partnerships to help (and use) Hollywood narratives for new ways to build narratives and stories to the general public. This was very helpful as I actually did not know the space of “cultural consulting” very well, as it is a nascent space.

I was able to support and provide research for our workshops that are being developed and premiered at the Hollywood Climate Summit. Here, I was able to take an off-air tv show and find ways that the world, the characters, and the time period would best be immersed and seen through a climate lens. I made sure to include a socioeconomic analysis. As an example, we chose Orange is the New Black and dug into the intersections of climate injustices and incarceration.

I became the Airtable lead and operational and project management support for Good Energy. This allowed me to get first-hand experience in how early nonprofits are started, structured, organized and the types of various challenges, i.e., communication, structure, and funding that are critical to get within the first years of forming. Moreover, I was able to see the importance of strong foundations and help build them at the outset of an organization, which was a critical experience for my career.

I am moving forward to accepting a full time position at Good Energy. I found this experience extremely rewarding, having gained mentorship and experience in the nonprofit sector (which I hadn’t considered as a space I wanted to be in previously before). Overall, I was able to strengthen my communication, interviewing, storytelling, research and organizational skills and found a place for the direct application of my Columbia Climate School degree that will be received by a mass audience!