I’ve spent the last 15 years working in multiple aspects of climate change. Areas of my work have included wildlife conservation, health & sanitation, global corporate sustainability, social impact branding & design, and carbon offsetting & mitigation.
My clients have included Fortune 500 companies, six of the ten most influential brands in the world, world-renowned start-ups, and even a few celebrities. (Hi Sir Richard Branson, I miss you. Please call…)
My career was following a nice arc. I was doing impactful work on projects around the world - when all of a sudden my world got turned inside out.
When I was 28, my mom passed away of pancreatic cancer. She was only 60 years old.
My mom and I were incredibly close. During her four month battle with cancer I was one of her primary caregivers. After her passing, I wasn’t sure what direction my life would now, or could now, take.
This began my own journey with grief and anxiety.
After a really difficult time and the love & support of family and friends, I found myself in a place to use this grief for good. To begin to channel it into extra motivation - to work harder, to fight for others.
In choosing motivation, in 2017 I started my own company, MAG Impact Collective. MAG is my mom’s initials, Michele Ann Garson.
The Collective has run successfully for over 4 years, growing to 25 members, collaborating on nearly $1M in impactful projects, and working with organizations from around the world.
Today, the Collective has evolved into The Impactful, a free community of folks doing impactful work around the world. (Join us!)
As I continued to work in climate change and social impact, while navigating my own grief journey, it become abundantly clear the connection between what we are facing with the loss of our natural world & climate change and the grief journey one goes on when losing a loved one.
The ups and downs. The feelings of hopelessness, helplessness, and restlessness. The anger. The denial. The anxiety. The hope. The drained energy. The newfound motivation. And so the cycle continues.
And now I’m combining what I’ve learned working in climate change for the past 15 years with what I’ve learned (with many others and numerous support networks) in navigating debilitating grief.
Climb is one of our latest projects from The Impactful.
Climb is rooted in a deep-seated desire to have every one of us working day in and day out to solve our world’s most pressing challenges.
But in order to be capable of doing this work, we must address our mental health and our physical wellbeing, especially as it pertains to reacting and adapting to a warming planet.
I fear actually supporting one another in our purposeful work is one of our most overlooked challenges.
When we open up about out grief, give our emotions room to breathe, connect with others, and support each other in collective struggles, we build the capacity needed to solve global problems. Needed now more than ever.
We have a bold vision for the future and I’m excited to begin bringing it to life.
Before creating support for impactful people like you and me, I collaborated with organizations such as:
