Episode Summary
Executive Summary: The episode explores how Kristen Winzant and Meryl Feather turned their climate journey into The Regenerates, a climate-focused marketing consultancy. They discuss why storytelling, narrative, and behavior change matter for climate adoption, how their backgrounds in brand strategy transfer to climate tech, and why early-stage companies and mission-driven employees need flexible senior marketing support. They also argue climate action should leverage people’s broader spheres of influence, not just consumer choices.
Main Topics: MCJ community and the origin of The Regenerates (Priority: 5/5): Jason introduces the MCJ membership community and how Kristen and Meryl met there before founding their consultancy. The Regenerates emerged organically from shared climate interest, overlapping job searches, and a gap in climate-sector marketing roles. Why marketers belong in climate (Priority: 5/5): Kristen and Meryl explain how their prior work in brand strategy, product marketing, and creative consulting maps onto climate: simplifying complex ideas, building trust, and activating people. They see climate communication as a major missing lever for solution adoption. Learning climate science without needing to be a scientist (Priority: 4/5): Both guests emphasize the importance of grounding oneself in the science, but argue that one does not need to be a scientific expert to contribute meaningfully. They recommend entering through strengths, interests, and business functions rather than starting with intimidation. Choosing a climate path using skills, joy, and impact (Priority: 5/5): They discuss how people should find the overlap between what brings them joy, what they are good at, what skills they have, and what work needs doing. They also expand this framework beyond jobs to include community, civic, and workplace influence. The Regenerates’ model: fractional, embedded, and flexible (Priority: 5/5): The consultancy works with early-stage climate solutions companies and some larger organizations on internal climate activation. Their model is a senior, embedded, flexible advisory service that can scale up or down depending on client needs. Storytelling, behavior change, and regenerative marketing (Priority: 4/5): A recurring theme is that climate solutions must be communicated at the right altitude: neither too vague nor too technical. The guests argue that climate needs emotional storytelling, community, and movements to drive real behavior change. Long-term vision and broader ecosystem impact (Priority: 3/5): They discuss possibilities beyond their current consultancy, including training more marketers, supporting other functions like finance and sales, and helping normalize climate action across organizations and communities.
Key Arguments: Climate needs marketing expertise because adoption depends on reaching and persuading people, not just having good technical solutions. Many people are held back from climate work because they think they need deep scientific expertise; in reality, strong functional skills can be just as valuable. The best climate path is the intersection of joy, aptitude, existing skills, and the work that actually needs to be done. People have multiple spheres of influence—personal, community, workplace, and civic—and climate action can happen in each of them. Early-stage climate companies often cannot justify a full-time senior marketer, making fractional, embedded advisory support more efficient. Climate communication should avoid both greenwashing vagueness and overly technical detail; it must balance rigor with emotional resonance. Movements and community connections are essential because climate is ultimately a people-caused problem and must be solved through people. Regenerative marketing can spread climate literacy and impact beyond direct clients through network effects and internal education.
Data Points: MCJ membership community size: more than 1,300 members - Jason describes the MyClimate Journey membership Slack community. Regenerates age: about 9 months - Kristen and Meryl say their consultancy has been operating for roughly nine months. MCJ screening criteria: 4 criteria - Membership applicants are screened for determination, ambition, optimism, and collaborative spirit. Techstars sustainability summit attendees: about 3,000 attendees - Meryl cites the public output of their work with Techstars sustainability programming. Techstars sustainability summit countries: 105 countries - The summit’s audience reached a global cross-section of attendees. MCJ episode context: pandemic-era, spring 2020 - Kristen says she and Meryl met through MCJ in the spring immediately after the start of the pandemic. Facebook tenure: about 6 years - Meryl describes her time building consumer product marketing at Facebook. Education startup tenure: 2 years - Meryl says she spent two years as head of marketing at a small education startup. Client engagement model: 3 service modes - They describe CMO-as-a-service, brand/narrative/project work, and advisory support. MCJ community app emphasis: 4 screening criteria plus diversity - Jason highlights that the community values diversity beyond the screening criteria.
Pivotal Quotes: "people do things, people buy products and services, and how can we really make sure that we are telling the stories and reaching the right people" — Kristen Winzant: Defines the core thesis behind The Regenerates and its focus on adoption through communication. "the overlap between what brings you joy, what you're good at, what skills you have, and the work that needs to be done" — Meryl Feather: Meryl references Ayana Elizabeth Johnson’s framework for finding the right climate role. "climate is a people-caused problem. And in a lot of ways, I do think we need to believe in people in order to get out of it" — Kristen Winzant: A closing reflection on why behavior change, community, and optimism matter in climate action.
Implications: Listeners should think beyond traditional climate roles and use their existing skills to help solutions spread. For climate companies, strong narrative and senior fractional marketing can accelerate adoption, movement-building, and organizational change.