A path from science to storytelling to carbon removal. Each phase building the tools the next one required.
There was never a question about science. Between physics, biology, and chemistry, I was a happy camper. The chemistry lab is where I found my footing. Then film, exactly the right move at the right time. I worked on projects where story and purpose were inseparable. Every word, image, and second matters. A documentary about the founding of the first co-educational skateboard school in war-torn Kabul, Afghanistan, earned us the Cinema for Peace Award for Best Documentary and made me focus more on purpose. Narrative discipline, audience intelligence, the craft of reaching the unconvinced. They turned out to be desperately needed for science communication.
Working at the intersection of science and the public made the translation problem visible. Researchers who had spent careers building airtight cases routinely fail to move the people with power to act. The science is not the problem. The frame may be. In 2017, film and science converged. Climate change was my defining issue and carbon removal, specifically direct air capture, was the answer that most people with the power to act or be convinced had never heard explained in a way that was realistic. That became the work. Making the science legible without flattening it. Reaching people who weren't already convinced. Funders, policymakers, the public, with the full weight of what is at stake.
Carbon removal requires alignment across scientific, policy, philanthropic, and the different industrial communities that rarely speak the same language. Through the Elk Coast Institute and the Equitable Climate Innovations Institute, I worked to build those bridges. Convening across sectors, connecting researchers, industries, and affected communities. Placing the science in contexts where it could actually land. The work is as much relational and strategic as it is technical.