Episode 95: Convening for Climate with Aimée Christensen
July 24, 2025 at 11:50:27 PM
Molly Wood Voice-Over: Welcome to Everybody in the Pool, the podcast where we dive deep into the innovative solutions and the brilliant minds who are tackling the climate crisis head-on. I'm Molly Wood.
Earlier this summer a bunch of climate professionals descended on the 10th annual Sun Valley Forum in Sun Valley, Idaho to talk about climate resilience, nature-based solutions, policy and capital, learning from indigenous solutions, and the power of storytelling in climate solutions. I myself was supposed to be there in fact but COVID had other ideas
But I didn’t want to let the moment pass because just as much as I believe that storytelling is a crucial component of the climate solutions toolbox I also think that the act of convening of supporting and learning from each other sharing stories and ideas and mountain bike rides is just as valuable. And it just so happens that the woman who organizes the Sun Valley Forum each year has a long incredible history in the climate space from the Department of Energy to Google to Idaho and who is both championing solutions at the global level and also CREATING change locally in her hometown.
Let’s hear it.
Aimée Christensen
My name is Aimée Christensen and I'm CEO of Christensen Global Strategies. It's my advisory firm that I've had in place since 2005 when I decided that being a lawyer was too narrow a tool set to solve our global environmental challenges. So I founded my firm to have the maximum flexibility to make impact wherever I saw opportunity to do so. So that's what I'm doing.
Molly Wood
So Amy, we're going to spend time on the work that you're doing now, but I would love for people to, I'd love for you to set the scene.
Molly Wood
of your background throughout clean energy and this industry that helped you create the global network to create the forum in the first place.
Aimée Christensen
Well, it's been such a wonderful ride. I've been super fortunate where my passion for nature has allowed me to follow my gut and opportunities that have shown themselves. And I've had incredible mentors and allies along the way to connect me into new projects. So when I graduated from college in Latin American studies and anthropology, my passions around Latin America, I went down to Brazil to be a volunteer at the Earth Summit to help to organize the
NGO global forum on the side of it ended up organizing ourselves into a bunch of US activists. Young Americans went to youth tent, met Danny Kennedy, you might know he was at the international youth tent. became buddies in 1992. We love Danny. And the US, we created US youth at Rio to raise our voices to, we were upset that George H.W. Bush was not signing the Biodiversity Convention, wanted to speak out on that. Ended up
asking Al Gore if we could introduce him, just take three minutes to talk about our concerns in his opportunity where he was speaking at this global forum. And he had said no, but I showed up all ready to go because I'd written most of it. We'd been up all night working on it and they were like, Amy, you do it. We'll be on stage with you. So I showed up and they're like, they said no. And so I talked Al into letting us get on stage and with him. He looked at me and he's like.
It's way more than five minutes. I said, no, I've timed it three, four times and it's three and a half or four and a half. And he said, can you make it three and a half? And I said, yes. And I cut out the most radical paragraph that I was never quite very comfortable with. Anyway, gave the big talk and got a standing ovation. It was amazing. Then he got picked to be the vice presidential candidate. I was already moving to Washington DC to intern for the American Bar Association's international law section. I wanted to be a lawyer.
and found my way to volunteer on the transition team and then into the administration in the White House Office on Environmental Policy and then the Department of Energy. And I was so fortunate because when I got into DOE, I found my way to do Latin American energy policy using my languages, my passion, my understanding of cultures and spent four years there negotiating these bilateral and regional agreements on climate.
Aimée Christensen
creating a hemisphere wide collaboration under the Summit of the Americas around clean energy. How could we open up markets to clean technologies which benefited American businesses and the climate and the sustainable development goals of those countries, many of whom didn't have fossil fuels. So they were importing it to a great cost. So clean energy made sense. Then I decided that I really needed to get an advanced degree. It was time, so I applied to law school.
I spent a brief time in Geneva working on trade and environment because after climate, I knew I really needed to understand the global trading system through a contact I'd worked with at Department of Energy. And it was fascinating to understand the WTO and its system. Went to law school at Stanford, came out and practiced at Baker-Mackenzie. And Baker-Mackenzie had the first climate and clean energy practice group of anyone, and they were the largest firm in the world. And I felt so fortunate because
Molly Wood
Mm-hmm.
Aimée Christensen
One of the people who I admired the most in climate, James Cameron, was the chair, the global chair of that practice. And I had been summering at another law firm in London, met with him, and he rolled out this brochure with wind turbines on the front. And I thought, my gosh, I can work for a private law firm helping to advance clean energy. so joined Baker 2001 to 2003, left because George W. Bush was elected, pulled out of Kyoto.
Molly Wood
Wow.
Aimée Christensen
and wanted to get more involved on politics and engaging people and address our voting in the 2004 election cycle. So I ran Environment 2004, environmental political campaign to raise the environment as a political issue in that campaign for people to understand the health and pocketbook issues in the campaign. That was my real four way into communications. How do we connect to swing voters?
Women caring about their kids, hunters and anglers. People care about nature and health and who are seeing the impacts of rolling back mercury protections. So there's lots of great stories about the campaigns we did around fish and mercury in Minnesota and billboards. And it was an incredible experience to engage voters. And then I founded my firm because I, and then I took a final shot at the law.
and I was a carbon lawyer at the World Bank and spent six months doing carbon deals, putting that thumb on the scale for carbon, right? For clean energy and for projects, the carbon funds that the World Bank provide carbon credits to help to fund projects that wouldn't happen otherwise. So was part of the legal team there. And then I decided that I would found my firm.
Christensen Global in the middle of 2005 to provide that more flexible framework to bring my law and policy experience, the working with businesses as a lawyer, business strategy and communications. Bring it all to these strategies. And immediately had the most great fortune to have a mentor, David Sandelow, pull me into the Clinton Global Initiative to help to shape the Clinton Global Initiative climate and energy agenda for the first few years. And then Google said, hey, we're hiring.
somebody to do energy environment for google.org, the new philanthropic arm. And I put my name in the hat and I was very fortunate to be hired. I was the third hire at google.org, think third or fourth by Sheryl Sandberg. And I worked there for my job was to basically figure out how Google could address climate. And I had a great ally on the corporate side, Bill Weil, Robin Beavers.
Molly Wood
Mm-hmm.
Aimée Christensen
Anthony Ravitz, all these great folks we worked with to align the corporate operations with climate impact. But also I was championing philanthropic project, was called Recharge It, was the electrification of transportation. At the time, there was one plug-in hybrid in the world. And Larry and Sergey had a friend, Felix Kramer from CalCars, was like, plug-in hybrids are the bridge to electrification, and that's how we can reduce emissions from.
transportation and we realized that as Google we could help. We could bring visibility, could bring engineers, we could make plug-in hybrids, which is exactly what we did. And so we took the company Carbon Neutral. It was amazing. I was there for a year and a half. I had a blast. We did amazing stuff. I know. And then I went back to my advisory work and started immediately working with Virgin and with Richard Branson's big projects. And it's all since then been working with amazing.
Molly Wood
It's incredible.
Aimée Christensen
entrepreneurs, large corporates, philanthropists, investors, advocacy organizations, building new initiatives together. I just love leveraging my network to help to drive impact no matter who my client projects are at the time. So I know there was a lot of detail.
Molly Wood
And then how does that show up in your day-to-day work? Who do you end up advising along this path? Because certainly, capitalism is still happening all around us.
Aimée Christensen
Yeah. Yeah, yeah. So absolutely, absolutely. But I was in government, so was Department of Energy in the 90s. And there I was doing bilateral and regional agreements on climate change. And in that work, we were helping to create those early carbon trading markets. So how could we pay, for instance, in Costa Rica, pay farmers for keeping forests standing? So Costa Rica, the first carbon price on carbon.
Molly Wood
Yep.
Aimée Christensen
back in 1995. And we were working with them to help to create opportunities to help to finance renewable energy by putting a thumb on the scale, by putting a price on that pollution. And so the goal is to adjust those markets to change those values. And so I've done that as a policymaker and I've done that with business leaders, really making that business case for nature, whether it's the brand value, the employee attraction and retention, strategic bottom line. So when I then was at Google, which also helped to inform my work now was 06-07, very early days, and we decided to put a price on carbon. We decided to go carbon neutral because we were growing rapidly as a company building data centers all over the world.
And yet what happened if a price on carbon came in and we had a long-term contract for electricity that didn't incorporate that price analysis? And so by going carbon neutral, we were paying for that pollution and getting ahead of any regulatory signals that would be coming down the line. So I was informed by my time working in government, working in business. So when I launched my firm, my goal has been to just find where and how to make that business case make the opportunity case to support entrepreneurs who are developing the new technologies that are now much cheaper than the dirty technologies in the case of energy. So when I was there at Department of Energy in the 90s.
Fossil fuels were cheaper and of course subsidies put a thumb on the scale for fossil fuels because they're at least 10x what they are for clean energy. And so with putting a price on carbon, trying to change that calculation to help make clean energy, renewable energy at the time, more attractive for investors and more cost competitive. Now of course, solar is the cheapest source of energy in the world and solar plus storage is basically there too.
Aimée Christensen
And so it's a really exciting time because it used to be I brought my green lens and my green perspective and making that case for nature and for the benefits to human health that would come from clean energy over dirty energy, the job creation, the local economic benefits that can come. The fact that in Brazil in the 90s, rural electrification, was cheaper to do solar village power systems than it was to extend the grid that those villages were not going to get that power because it was too expensive to reach them for just a few households. And so at the time solar made sense financially for the most rural places. Now it makes sense for everywhere and I don't I can just rely on the market. Now we're in a little bit of a different time right now. We've got some tariffs that are undermining. Yeah. Yes. Yes. Yes. So things are a little bit more chaotic.
Molly Wood
Right? There are some thumbs, thumbs are moving, let's say. Thumbs are moving to different scales every day, it seems.
Aimée Christensen
and we have to recognize that and work within that, but just knowing that that trajectory continues.
Molly Wood
Yeah. Okay, so let's, I feel like we could talk about your background forever because it's remarkable and fascinating. Let's though talk about the Sun Valley Forum. Yep. So when did you create that and what was its goal?
Aimée Christensen
Sorry.
Okay. Okay. Yep. yes. So I created the Sun Valley Forum in 2015. I had put my consulting firm on hold in 2015 to found the Sun Valley Institute for Resilience, a community resilience organization. I had moved home to Sun Valley, Idaho after the Copenhagen climate talks. within a few years, actually immediately when I landed on the plane, so I moved home.
I land and our power's out from a power outage because we're at the edge of the grid and we had a storm. It took out both of the transmission lines that feed our distribution lines into our community. We're at the very edge of the grid. So the power was out. Then within a few years, we started to see the mega fires really hitting. We had had significant fire, the Beaver Creek fire, 100,000 acres in 2013.
Molly Wood
Hmm.
Aimée Christensen
the whole west side of our valley right in the heart of our tourist season. live in Sun Valley, it's the winter tourism and it's the summer tourism. Now the winter tourism is also being hit by drought. And so from the our economic reliance in our community on a consistent weather being disrupted by climate, I realized I needed to focus locally. So I founded the Sun Valley Institute for Resilience.
I also realized the power of curation and convening and wanted to bring my global network into this local community and uplift the local innovators and opportunities for people to come here and collaborate with us to become a showcase and to leapfrog, go from risk to opportunity. If we could develop more solar here, we could diversify our economy a little bit away from being so reliant on recreation and tourism. We could create good jobs.
and reduce energy costs for homes and businesses. Same with localizing our food system. So I founded the Sun Valley Institute for Resilience, founded the Sun Valley Forum to connect the global to the local to help to accelerate our work on the ground here. But also, I just loved seeing the magic that happens when I bring the global community together. I had been the founding program chair of something called the World Climate Summit, which happens alongside the UN climate talks every year. And I watched people on the sidelines doing the deals.
And it was so powerful to see how much came out of just getting the right people in the room to roll up their sleeves. And that's what we do at the Sun Valley Forum. People come ready to work together, to connect, to collaborate, to make things happen. the theme is resilience. It always has been. And it changes every year. We always have four key themes, transforming food systems, transforming energy systems, mobilizing capital, and engaging people, communications.
So key levers to get us back in alignment with our planetary boundaries, with what nature and what we need.
Molly Wood
I love that the dual track that you created when you moved back is both impactful, right? It's not like you just are throwing a big party in your hometown. You have found an institute that is truly transforming the community that you live in, which is all by itself amazing and fantastic and tremendous work and a model. So you have this like almost a living laboratory when you convene people for the forum.
Aimée Christensen
You
Aimée Christensen
Yes, and I'm so proud as the founder. I handed it off in 2020 to an executive director who stepped in and I get to be the proud founder, Emerita board member, to continue to help with strategy and connecting to funders as much as I can, all of that good work as an Emerita founder, but also be so proud of how it's grown and evolved. And so every year at the forum, I always have the Institute featured on stage.
And one thing I'm most proud of is the Impact Idaho Fund that they launched, which I believe is a model. It's a revolving loan fund that provides zero and low interest loans to help to fund resilience projects. They've really leaned into food and agriculture. better land use, localizing food systems, and so the associated investments that go with that. Hoop houses, greenhouses, processing.
all of these food entrepreneurs have been able to access capital, which even at any price, often they're not able to get money from banks just because of track record, long business performance, et cetera, that banks might require, history of profit, et cetera. And so what we're able to do is really know the farmers and the food entrepreneurs we work with and support them. So the Institute really works arm in arm with the borrowers.
to shape their loans, to make sure they're of the right tenure, that they're not too short, that they have the patience to help to ensure that they'll be successful. And I'll just tell you one quick example. One is we have a lot of alfalfa grown in Idaho. And that's one thing I noticed when I moved home is we have a lot of commodities, alfalfa, cattle, barley, potatoes, of course, which are vulnerable to the vagaries of the global marketplace. So...
There was a 12 acre alfalfa farm that was purchased by a couple and she had actually studied sustainable agriculture and they have been systematically transitioning a couple acres at a time from alfalfa to local market veggies and we provided that first zero interest loan for the hoop houses, greenhouses, the irrigation systems, processing, etc. that they would need in order to make that transition with a very low.
Aimée Christensen
And they've been able to show to other alfalfa farmers that they can save money by fewer inputs that are expensive, pesticides, etc., as well as make much more money from that production of local food into the local marketplace and not have that vulnerability of growing a commodity crop.
Molly Wood Voice-Over: Let’s take a quick break when we come back we’ll talk about the power of convening the deals and the ideas and the initiatives that have come out of the forum.
Molly Wood Voice-Over: Welcome back to Everybody in the Pool we’re talking with Aimee Christensen a longtime power player in the climate space about bringing people together to create big change here’s a little snippet from the Sun Valley Forum this past June where nature delivered quite a start to the event
8:14 to 8:50
Molly Wood
One thing that you and I have talked about is that power of convening. Like talk about how you, clearly you came to that realization and that's why you founded the forum, but let's dig into that a little bit more.
Aimée Christensen
So I'm constantly hearing or getting emails or texts or phone calls about collaborations that came from just getting together at the forum. So I was, it was so funny because, well, let me just give you some stats. I'm very proud of our stats. we, so we, as a forum, we have had, this is our 10th year, we've had 1,700 change makers attending the forum. We've had 15 countries.
20 plus news anchors and journalists, so media folks, the storytellers, with us to amplify the conversation, to help to moderate the conversations. We've had over $12 trillion in the room in the form of investors, philanthropists, asset owners, asset managers. We've had 150 plus young next generation leaders who my favorite thing is to give them the stage.
Al Gore gave me the stage when I was a young activist at the 92 Earth Summit with US Youth at Rio. And so I just had an epiphany one day when I had these young people on the stage and I really teared up remembering how he'd given me the stage back then to raise our voice and had these young, incredible leaders raise their voices. And then we also want to feature indigenous knowledge and leadership and have had a dozen or so of those over the years and increasingly featuring them. this year we have Indigenized Energy with us working with Native American tribes on developing their renewable energy resources. We have the chairman of the Nez Perce tribe as well who's doing incredible leadership on renewable energy as well as salmon. So it's been a powerful kind of just run of nine years and now going into our 10th.
The collaborations that come out of it are things like you have deals, of course, which people are less, are more hesitant to talk about the specifics of deals that come out of things, but we hear about those. But also just, you know, I remember Zipporah Berman who runs the non-proliferation treaty, the fossil fuel non-proliferation treaty that's working to get us off of fossil fuels.
Molly Wood
Mm-hmm.
Aimée Christensen
on the way to the airport in the shuttle, getting to know Hank Rogers, who is, of course, the game developer and inventor, and he's the one who brought Tetris out of the Soviet Union to the world. And Hank founded Blue Planet Alliance, which is this incredible coalition of small island states and also states and provinces around the world, so sub-national governments and island nations.
getting together to get off of fossil fuels, they had never had a conversation before, talking together, working on how we can build support because a lot of those small island states are working to get off of fossil fuels, had joined the Non-Proliferation Treaty. Hank is working with them to align their policies and regulations to help to accelerate the uptake of renewable energy and the removal of fossil fuels. just to see people who are working in very parallel worlds had never connected.
to be able to collaborate and go forward. And so for me, it's uplifting the specific solutions on the stage. So what is working? Who have I gotten to know? Who from my network has gotten to know? Who are we uplifting? What are those strategies that people who are philanthropists, who are investors, who are businesses, who are individuals, who are looking to make impact can come and trust, who are gonna be on the stage. They can trust that who we have up there
These are solutions that we can lean into, invest in and replicate and build upon. And then in the room have workshops where we can really roll up our sleeves together around specific solutions. So storytelling is one where in 2023, we worked with the Arshrock Resilience Center at the time it was run by Kathy Boffman-McLeod and they had a whole gaming initiative. And how do we engage gamers? Three billion people game. So how do we leverage gaming by integrating
Molly Wood
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.
Aimée Christensen
climate and heat and other of the impacts into games. So it's not the core. It's not a climate game per se, generally, although there are some of those that are great, but it's more how do we just make it a part of that? If you're a really popular game happens to have a heat aspect to it. And so one of the developers of Call of Duty was with us and they were helping to develop a new game. I believe it was around Jiu Jitsu in Brazil and they were adding heat into that game. So we were strategizing on how can we replicate this, scale this up, how can we improve their approach with the other experts who we brought together at the forum.
How do we engage people, no matter where you sit in the world, to be part of these solutions? What are the stories, the narratives, the vehicles to reach everyone, to empower everyone to be part of it?
Molly Wood
Let's go back to curation. Curation and content. How are you thinking about putting together program with maximum impact, especially in, as we said earlier, a tricky time?
Aimée Christensen
Substance. Yep.
Aimée Christensen
Yes, for me it's about all coming together. We're in such a divisive time. Where can we come together? We can come together around nature. We've enjoyed playing with roly poly bugs when we were little kids. Even if you're in an urban setting, there can be nature. And we've had those experiences of coming across an incredible creature, whether it's out in nature or in a classroom.
And so this year we said all in for nature. We want to roll up our sleeves together, come together, be stronger together around what we do agree upon and what we agree are the best strategies to move forward. No matter what your perspective is, your job is, where are those just no-brainer solutions that we need to uplift and take forward? ~~And so~~
Molly Wood
Incredible. And then before I let you go, talk about measuring the impact of the forum. I know there must have been collaborations or checks written, you know, deals that you feel responsible for. These are your babies.
Aimée Christensen
I do, do. However, I have to tell you, it hadn't been something that we had been tracking. So we have now agreed that we are going out to everyone to capture those key data points and those key stories, because although I hear about them all throughout the year, every year, we haven't systematically tracked both the specific stories and examples, as well as the overall data from the impact. And so that is going to be announced in our 11th. We're also looking at creating a new platform to enable more of that year-round collaboration between forums. And so we're working with the Open Future Coalition to leverage their platform and see that's something that we're working on for the workshop on food and ag investing. And now we're looking at bringing it forward for the forum community to see how we can more effectively leverage technology.
to continue to support the ongoing impact of the forum. So TBD to be announced 2026, we have our dates, June 15 to 18. And we're gonna be moving to the Sun Valley Resort, which is really exciting because they've really been shifting their own practices to deal with food waste, got a composter, shifting practices and other efforts to address their environmental impact, which we're really excited to work on with them.
Molly Wood
Amazing. Amy Christensen is founder and CEO at Christensen Global, founder of the Sun Valley Institute for Resilience, founder of the Sun Valley Forum, a true change maker. I really appreciate the time today and I'm excited about the forum.
Aimée Christensen
You
Aimée Christensen
Thank you so much, Molly. And thank you for this time, this opportunity to share about the forum, which is a labor of love.
Molly Wood Voice-Over:
That's it for this episode of Everybody in the Pool. Thank you so much for listening. Mark your calendars now for next year’s Sun Valley Forum and don’t be afraid or ashamed to take strength and inspiration from your peers right now we are in fact in this together and together we can get this done.
Email me your thoughts and suggestions to in at everybody in the pool dot com and find all the latest episodes and more at everybody in the pool dot com, the website. And if you want to become a subscriber and get an ad free version of the show, hit the link in the description in your podcast app of choice.
See you next week.