Maiya Roelen: What was your spark moment?

 

Finn Does: Yeah, so for me, I've always been very connected to place, and to my surroundings, and the environment, and the plants, and the trees, and the people, and the businesses, and the homes that surround me. That's been something that has been a constant throughout all of my life. But I didn't always have the knowledge or the understanding, or the words to really articulate that; that relationship and connection that I really had to the land.

 

For me, when it was all thrown up into the air and turned around, and I could really see that relationship and all those pieces out there, was 2020. In the middle of a global pandemic, and also waking up one morning on September 9th to flames outside of my bedroom window, and soot, and ash. And a sky that was burning orange like it was a Martian apocalypse. I remember logging on to Zoom school that morning as a freshman in high school at 15 years old and feeling this immense sense of fear, and anger at seeing my future and young people's futures burn literally before my eyes. And feeling in the middle of that extremely isolated, because we were living through a global pandemic, and not having that in-person connection. That was really when everything just sort of synthesized for me. And I was like, this is all wrong. What the hell is going on? Where are our elected officials? Where are our leaders? And after that day, I never could look away and I got involved with organizing mutual aid response to that fire. It was the North Complex Fire and I remember standing in a Target parking lot, handing out N95s, and just feeling completely as if I was living through the climate crisis in real time. I think that was really when I did realize that this is a crisis of the present, not a crisis of the future, unlike how they teach it to us in classrooms.

 

Maiya Roelen: Yes, that's an incredibly hard reality to face. I think that's something I definitely struggle with, too. Thank you for sharing that because those are extremely hard experiences.

 

Finn Does: And I think just to piggyback on that for a second, one thing that I have seen…and recently I was featured in an article by Inside Climate News, which put together and wove together a lot of these different catalyst or origin stories for folks who are doing climate work today. It wove together across the United States all of these different lived experiences that folks today doing climate work have had. And almost all of their origin stories had to do with displacement, or loss from climate disaster. That is a really interesting pattern to notice. And it's something that you see affecting Americans across all political ideologies, right? So when we literally look at how climate disaster can be this shared experience beyond just geography and politics, I think that's where we can find so much common ground.

 

Maiya Roelen: Absolutely. And isn't that an important thing that we need right now - that common ground.

That's really powerful, and that's hard to talk about.

 

To build off on that very important spark moment, what issue are you currently working to address, and what change are you striving to make?

 

Finn Does: You know, this is a difficult question to answer, because the way in which I see the world is through a lens of interconnectedness. So, it's difficult for me sometimes to narrow down my work to one issue, or even a single set of issues. But I will say that I think it's becoming increasingly more clear to me that my work is going in the direction of addressing the overarching issue of economic suffering, abandonment, and an affordability crisis, and the immense wealth gap in this country. I think when you start to understand that the economic struggles are really the number one issue for people in America, you can start to trace and track and break down how the economic divide is, at the same time, also tied up in the climate crisis, and tied up in the mental health crisis, and so on and so forth. For me, I've seen that it's really important to approach climate conversations, whether I'm talking about transitioning to renewable energy or investing in federal climate disaster aid or working towards community climate justice funds or organizations, that we need to approach those conversations through what actually people are feeling right now in the present. And not from some sort of top-down approach from somebody at an Ivy League institution talking about global supply chain and recycling, and your next sustainable swap. Americans and everyday working people want to talk about food. They want to talk about the resources that they need and they're lacking. They want to talk about healthcare, and I think that's something that I'm really seeing as tying into the frames that I'm coming at with my work.

 

Maiya Roelen: That is such a critical perspective, and I'm thinking about this right now, and that I'm an aspiring wildlife biologist and ecologist…and I see that ecosystem. I think of that as an ecosystem. It's that interconnectedness that we all share, but also, how do we prioritize people? And prioritize the environment when they're so interconnected in the way that you're saying.

 

Have you faced challenges, obstacles, or doubts in your journey that you're comfortable sharing, and how did you overcome them?

 

Finn Does: Totally, and thank you for the question, because I think this is something that young people and social impact spaces, and organizers, and folks building from the ground up to do change-making work are not always incentivized to talk about because we don't have links to capital to a hedge fund, to a VC. So, our greatest front sometimes has to be how we show up and present ourselves. And in an economy where emotions are not seen as value, but extraction and corruption are really what profit is driven from, I think young people feel that we can't really show our vulnerabilities because we're gonna scare a funder away, or a potential investor, or somebody who's gonna hire us and pay us some minimum wage. So, for me, one of the really important aspects of my work is that I really started to get involved in, not so much because I saw it as an external crisis, but through my own experience of burnout, is climate mental health. And not just climate, but how our emotions are so inextricably linked to our desire to take action. When I started to see how the models that nonprofits, even my own organization that I was running at the time, were using to interact even with our own team members, I had this lightbulb moment where I realized that this was completely unsustainable. We needed to be treating each other with respect, and with boundaries, and seeing each other not just as worker ants, but as humans living through such unprecedented times. And when I could name that, I realized that people showed up to the space a lot more comfortable, being able to talk about how they were feeling that day, about what was scaring them and what was frightening them, and actually the impact we were creating became stronger through being more open about our own anxieties and insecurities about the future, and our day-to-day struggles.

 

Maiya Roelen: From those conversations you had, how have you seen the community building that results from that? And where does that translate to impactful action?

 

Finn Does: Folks struggling in today's model of organizing, and in such a polarizing time, is due to a lack of trust in each other. And, you know, relationships, as businesses, capitalize on this because they hire consultants to tell them about this stuff, are completely built on trust. You're not gonna get something out of a dynamic with somebody if there's not a sense of shared trust. And I think that's one thing that I've noticed, lacking, oftentimes in the social impact space, and I want to call it out. Honestly, I've been having a lot of conversations with friends of mine who are very high up and well-established, and, you know, are invited to foundations to speak and consult with the Clintons, and the Bidens, and, you know, in Geneva, and one thing that I hear from a lot of these people is that there's honestly a lot of fakeness that floats around, even in our social impact quote-unquote movement-building spaces. There are a lot of people who are just trying to climb a ladder, or advance their own individual career, and are just trying to become the next influencer. The unfortunate thing is that's also, in itself, a symptom of capitalism. And, I have seen, to really answer your question, that when we actually can be emotional with each other, and facilitate that trust, and know that we're actually in the game for each other, we're not only in the game for ourselves, when we can see that other people's wins, other people's invitation to speak at something and reach a broader audience, or to get funding, are actually a win for ourselves, too, because we're all in this as a team. That's, I think, when I can really see the community building and the impact accelerate. Because if we're just a whole bunch of individual, broken-down units floating, we're not ever gonna actually have the strategy to create the change that we say we want to facilitate.

 

Maiya Roelen: And that just takes us back to that economic ecosystem, that community ecosystem, because we need each other. We need people in our lives, we also need the planet, and we need to sustain each other.  That's something I'm also striving to build, that authenticity, that interest in each other and the action of building each other up.

 

Finn Does: And it's something, just to respond to you, is it takes risk, right? Because you don't always know if it's gonna be received well. You can walk into a relationship and come at it from a place of, you know, vulnerability, or sharing your struggles. And unfortunately, there are people who will capitalize off of that. There are people who, even maybe in the same line of work with you, who…they don't want you to succeed. They want to actually make sure that you're pushed down. And the thing with that is just you have to be careful and move on and find the people who want to lift you up.

 

Maiya Roelen: Tell us about your current platform, initiatives, community projects, successes, jobs, and or impact. We want to hear about your current work, and where do you want to go from here?

 

Finn Does: Oh my gosh, I could have an entire call about all of that. Yeah. Well I guess just to focus on for a second what I want to do right now, before I get into some of my current projects, is I've spent the last 4 months taking a step back from a lot of the fight or flight organizing that I was doing in response to the 2024 election into the Trump administration, into the rollback of so many of our hard-fought climate wins and civil rights. Those past three and four months have been really difficult for me, because I have had to confront the fact that, right now, I don't actually necessarily know what my theory of change is because I feel very disillusioned with the nonprofit sector, with the social impact sector, and obviously, for me, with the corporate sector. It feels like we're all just sort of existing, repeating a lot of the same models of stagnancy over and over and over again, and I'm not really seeing an actual pendulum swing in the way that I want to. And I've just had to be really real about that with myself and with others. When I look at, right now, the place that America's in and the direction that I think we need to go in order to win ourselves a future where working people can afford to survive, can have a basic minimum wage that is livable, can have places in their community where they can gather… third spaces that bring people across a political spectrum together, and can also live in a world where they don't have to worry about so much climate collapse constantly. When I think about all that as the number one issue of our time, I see that in order to win ourselves that world, we need to rebuild third spaces in America. We need venues and media, mediums and avenues where young people, seniors, working people with families, conservatives, moderates, leftists, progressives, single cat ladies, gun-owning Americans, even, can come together and be able to see each other as human, and have common ground, and realize that we're in this together. 

 

But, so, my work right now is really around moving away from the culture war that billionaires and ultra-right elite conservatives like Donald Trump and his entire cabinet love to talk about. They love to talk about how trans women in soccer in Maine are the number one issue facing Americans, rather than talking about the cost of living. I think when we can start to address that, I can start to be able to approach all the other things that I care about.

 

On that topic, I just was gonna share a little bit about what I'm currently working on. I mentioned to you that I'm in a liminal space right now, where I've kind of stepped back from a lot of the organizing I was doing with on-campus groups at UC Berkeley, with the Sunrise Movement, and I've kind of lately just been a bit of a floating, independent organizer, which I don't recommend to anybody who is gonna be reading this conversation. Find yourself a community to organize with. But I'm realizing that I really need to… it's not sustainable for me anymore to only do my grassroots work, sadly. I'd love to do that, but I really do need to merge some of the business and the finance and the economic and the sectors with my work in order to actually be able to sustain myself. I also think, too, to create that impact, because the folks who hold the strings of power right now, who are maybe more movable, are not actually necessarily the Trump administration. Because they're not gonna listen to us. I think it's big businesses and corporations, as much as it's frustrating for me to think about how I need to work with those factors, at the same time, I realized that if we're actually gonna do anything, we have to be real about what's happening. It is a hard pill to swallow when you also understand the roots of climate chaos, of forced migration, of a wealth gap in this world. With that being said, I've realized that it's time for me to really found something. You know, I ran a non-profit that mobilized over 10,000 California high schoolers, we ran over 100 different workshops with incubators and organizations and it was all focused around climate education, and that work was so wonderful in bringing me into this world. I realize that I don't want to work at a broke, underfunded nonprofit. Or found one, for that matter, and be stuck with that baby. I think I've realized that being at Berkeley and seeing these two pools of people: all these politically engaged, broke people. And all of these investing and consulting and VC firm hedge fund-oriented people at Berkeley who are hoping to make their $35,000 as a 19-year-old over the summer. These need to be merged - these two pools of people need to be in a third space, working together, because a lot of these people care about the same issues.

 

So, that brings me to what I'm working on right now, and forgive me for taking so long to get to it but I'm working on actually building up a startup of some sort that would merge tech and policy, and democratically governed tech infrastructure that is for frontline communities, and not just something to serve the wealthy elite, that actually could be a tool to connect climate organizations and streamline our organizing, because we're operating like it's 1980 in terms of the tech that we're using. And we spend 70% of our time doing admin work, rather than actually facilitating the impact that we need. So I've been asking myself, what if there was actually an agent or some sort of AI-powered tool that could immediately put climate organizations in connection with one another. And right now I'm building out and envisioning and ideating and talking to technical people about the possibilities of this. So it's very much right now at an idea phase, but I think that's sort of more the direction of my work. Granted, you know, I have a lot of thoughts on AI. That's a whole other conversation, but I think you have to adapt to where the world is moving.
 

Maiya Roelen: Where do you draw inspiration or energy for the work that you do?

 

Finn Does: Definitely from my friends, and from people who refuse to let those around them tell them that their vision is too radical or too bold or too naive or overly optimistic. I love proving people wrong. That is probably my favorite thing to do. Because time and time again, I have seen the establishment. We just saw it in New York's mayoral race, where we had a candidate who was backed by billionaires and corporations and greedy CEOs, and had over $26 million funneled into his campaign be defeated by a candidate who stands for the working class. Who supports a living minimum wage. Who wants to invest in free buses and transportation, and rent-controlled apartments and climate investments. We saw that he beat the establishment. And just being a part of that people-powered campaign where there were 50,000 volunteers showing up to canvas and knock doors, versus $26 million thrown in by a handful of billionaires, is really empowering, because when we live in a world where elections are bought, and people's voices are silenced by those who can just throw dollars at anything they want, it's really, really important to soak up the wins. When we can say hell no, am I gonna let some individual with a whole bunch of money and a bank account with a lot of zeros in it tell me that my voice doesn't matter? So, I get the momentum to continue this work from the individuals and the people in the communities who wake up every day and say, hell no, and do it anyway. It's more symbolic, too, of a possible future of where politics in this country are gonna go. So, hopefully the West Coast will feel some of that soon.

 

Maiya Roelen: How does your work influence the progress of environmental and/or climate justice, and does it advance the goals of the Just Transition?

 

Finn Does: I believe that climate work that doesn't take a just transition into account is not actually

“solving any of our problems”. It's simply replicating them. I know that's very unsettling for some people to hear who are working in very climate tech, you know, carbon capture-oriented spaces. But work that doesn't actually take into account existing injustices is not actually addressing any of the problems or understanding why we're here in the first place. So, all of my work, I'd like to say, is built on that belief and that understanding. I would say that it looks like making the conscious decision to not work with corporations who are investing heavily in the fossil fuel industry and in extraction of oil and gas in the Global South, who are then going to put their refineries in our low-income, working-class communities of color in the U.S. I think, for me, it has also looked like being a part of always, always knowing that at the heart, I am an organizer. Rather, I'm doing consulting, or public speaking, or now hopefully building this startup vision. I'm always gonna be an organizer. My loyalty is always towards the people. It's never gonna be towards, you know, a CEO or some corporations' profit margin. It's always going to be to the people. And I think, for me, that's so much of what climate justice is about. Is about that complete framework shift within our minds.

 

Maiya Roelen: How do you manage climate anxiety or eco-grief?

 

Finn Does: Mmm, mm-hmm. This question is just, I feel, getting more and more and more important for so many of us. I mean, I'm sure we wouldn't even be here having this call right now if we both didn't experience some level of fear and dread for the state of the world that we've been born into.

 

Maiya Roelen: Absolutely.

 

Finn Does: Yeah. I want to preface that. It's really disheartening, because getting involved in this work so young and pulled into climate organizing at 15 years old…nobody taught me, or there was no sense of direction, or resources around. How the hell is a 15-year-old going to manage the weight of getting involved in such emotionally intense work, because it's literally connected to my friends and my future and our ability to survive and live. And there's so much up against us. So, along the way, I've had to learn from burnout. I've had to learn from feeling like I can't get out of bed, or I can't get up in the morning because it's too exhausting to keep on pushing forward without the funding or the resources or the support to continue to do this work. And when I've been in those really dark places of burnout and those regions between feeling like change is possible, and feeling like, what's the point of doing any of this because I don't feel any sense of support, I've had to lean on community and friends, and that's what all of this returns to, I think.

 

When we talk about technical solutions to the climate crisis and climate adaptation, one thing that will get left out from a lot of those conversations is community. Community is our greatest form of climate adaptation. We are already living through a summer where there were major 100-degree heat waves across the majority of U.S. Cities, where we have hurricanes, like Hurricane Milton and Hurricane Helene this past year that wiped out entire towns in Appalachia and North Carolina and Florida. And what's the solution to that? It's not necessarily gonna be carbon capture, it's gonna be people climbing together, and holding hands despite their political differences. And taking care of each other, neighbors, and forming mutual aid associations, and for me, that really is the greatest form of remedy to a lot of the grief and the anxiety I feel, is knowing that I can hold hands with my friends and say we got each other no matter what. Does that resonate with you, too?

 

Maiya Roelen: It 100% does. The number of days that I feel that weight is a lot. Sometimes it can be hard to wake up and feel hopeful, and I know that hope in this situation has a lot of connotations. I was curious because I just had a thought just while you were saying that. Are you familiar with the work of Sarah Jaquette Ray?

 

Finn Does: Yes, I love Sarah, and Sarah and I have spoken on multiple panels together.  Yeah, no, Sarah has been wonderful, and Sarah has also been an amazing support system for me, too.

 

Maiya Roelen: Yeah, that's amazing. One of her principles that stood out to me from A Field Guide to Climate Anxiety was the idea that, on days when we need rest, there will always be other people organizing and making change, so it is important to give ourselves the chance to rest because we have a community that we can lean on. 

 

Finn Does: I think that that's something, too, that, you know, we don't appreciate enough as a culture is that rest is really important, and that is such a big part of being able to actually create impact and have the most effective work facilitated. You know, we have to be able to restore our bodies. I often talk about how our bodies are climate-affected landscapes, too and in order to actually facilitate the change that we want to see, we have to be treating ourselves not as a resource that is being exploited and extracted, but also as something that is worthy and deserving of respect, just like the earth and the land.

 

Maiya Roelen: And that culture of lacking rest has gotten us here as well, where we've just continued to push ourselves to this point where it isn’t sustainable. 

 

Finn Does: Totally. I mean, it's very extractive. Like, I know people who go to bed every night at 4am. And because they're trying to, you know, build the next big thing, and I'm just like, you know, eventually you're gonna fall apart and be a wreck.

 

Maiya Roelen: Mm-hmm. And we can all relate to that, I'm sure. Everyone knows that feeling, and we have to come together in realizing that that's not good for anybody, and we're not going to make progress in exhaustion.

 

Maiya Roelen: Are there any last thoughts you have? Anything you want to conclude with?

 

Finn Does: I guess if I were to leave it on any note, I think I want other people who are trying to enter the climate space, or enter the social impact space, who want to be a part of doing work that aligns with their values, because they understand the problems that exist, and they understand that, you know, working at a certain company is just gonna perpetuate that. I want them to understand that there is a place for you, even if you feel that it is very competitive, or that this is “every man for themselves” kind of game. A lot of it has to do with asking people for support, because, you know, this sector lacks a lot of the funding that the corporate world has access to. So we have to ask each other and lean on relationships, and know that people will want to help you, just have to ask again and again and again. So that's my biggest piece of advice.

 

Maiya Roelen: Thank you. Yes, and the goal for me here, for people who don't know how to get into this space, or who are in this space and just looking for inspiration, and need that boost, that they can learn from you, Finn, and other young people. I want to support people in their individual journeys in this movement. Your story is empowering for me to hear, and other people are hearing your message as well.