Let’s Talk Leadership: Designing Gender Inclusive & Climate Positive Future

(Free Event Registration)

Designing climate action initiatives and programs should not follow a one-size-fits-all approach, recognizing that the impacts of climate change affect individuals differently. This rings true, particularly for women, girls, trans- and non-binary people, where widening gender gaps affect their safety, livelihoods and health. By incorporating a gender perspective into our climate action efforts, we ensure that policies and projects are not oblivious to gender differences. Designing with an intersectional gender intention acknowledges the vulnerabilities, capacities, and contributions of different genders, avoiding a gender-blind approach and promoting inclusive and equitable climate solutions.

We’ll cover topics related to questions like:

• What does it mean to include a gender-lens in climate strategies, financing, and other projects?
• How might design play a role in understanding and executing on gender-holistic climate strategies?
• In what ways can a gender-blind approach to climate action initiatives lead to unintended consequences or exacerbate gender gaps?

*Please note this event will not be recorded.

Speaker Bios:

Sana Kapadia (she/her) | Director of Strategy, 2X Global

Sana Kapadia’s career has spanned impact investing, gender finance and social entrepreneurship, equity research, advisory and development finance. She has been focused on supporting the mobilization of capital and tailoring equitable solutions that serve the needs of communities, supporting systemic shifts, and facilitating the deployment of more gender-smart and impact-aligned capital. Specific areas of interest for her include gender and climate finance, enhancing intersectional analysis in finance and unlocking gender-smart capital at scale.

Learn more about Sana on LinkedIn!

Sabrina Meherally (she/her) | CEO and Relational Design Strategist, Pause and Effect

Sabrina is a creative disruptor and liberatory futurist, fueled by imagination, experimentation and wonder. She founded Pause and Effect to change and decolonize the institution of design, by cultivating responsibility for our impact on people, land, and systems, and relying on technologies of relationality and care. She views change as an inevitable process, that can be shaped through ritual, collective action, and thoughtful decision-making. The name, Pause and Effect, stems from an understanding that to go far, we must slow down. Sabrina is the descendant of ancestors, who moved through repeated cycles of loss and survival – and brings their lessons of kinship and emergence into her vision for flourishing futures. Living on stolen Musqueam, Squamish and Tsleil-Waututh land, as the daughter of refugee and immigrant parents, she uses her work and her voice to engage in reparative practices with local and global Indigenous communities.

Learn more about Sabrina & Pause and Effect on LinkedIn!

Theo Gibbs (she/her) | Senior Climate Strategy Advisor, YLabs

Theo Gibbs works at the intersection of human wellbeing and planetary health, bringing over 10 years of experience in the design, systems innovation, and technology fields. In her current role as Senior Climate Advisor at YLabs, she provides strategic guidance to YLabs’ global portfolio of programs and technologies. Most recently, she co-authored the Climate-Sexual Reproductive Health Framework, a resource that examines the impacts of climate change on sexual and reproductive health outcomes and provides pathways for synergistic investments. Joining YLabs in 2017, she led the vision and creation of YLabs’ climate-health-gender portfolio, supporting the organization to integrate an understanding of the extraordinary risks climate change poses to young people’s health and economic futures.

Previous to YLabs, she served as a systems innovation strategist at Stanford ChangeLabs, working with philanthropic and private sector clients including Google, WWF, Ericksson, and the Gates Foundation. She is also a Fulbright Scholar and an Aspen Ideas Scholar. She holds an M.S. and B.A. from Stanford University.

Mansi Gupta (she/her) | Founder, Unconform (Moderator)

As the founder of Unconform, Mansi partners with organisations to help them incorporate a women-centric design lens across products, programs and processes. She is the creator of Women-Centric Design – a methodology focused on intentionally and actively designing for women; the author of Unconforming, a newsletter advancing dialogue at the intersection of women and design; and the curator of Design for Women Conversations, a monthly event series bringing together gender and design practitioners.

Mansi has 10+ years of experience applying behavioural research & design strategy in social impact. Previously, she led projects at Women’s World Banking to increase financial inclusion among lower-income women in developing nations. Prior to that, she designed games to research reproductive healthcare in rural India as a designer for Final Mile Consulting.

Mansi holds a BA in Computer Science & Economics from Bryn Mawr College, and an MFA in Products of Design from the School of Visual Arts. She grew up in India, and is now based in Amsterdam.