Climate Café® People
Jess
Founder, Climate Café®; Director, Climate Cafe® CIC; Climate Cafe® Network Hub
Jess has worked on climate communications and legislation, including at WWF Scotland and with the Stop Climate Chaos Coalition Scotland, over 20 years. She was trained as a Climate Reality Leader by Al Gore in 2013, has mentored at trainings, and co-ordinated the Climate Reality collaboration with Climate Café® at COP26 in Glasgow. Since founding Climate Cafe® in 2015, she coordinates the global Climate Café® Network, supporting new and existing Climate Cafe® spaces to connect and collaborate. Jess is an Honorary Fellow of The Royal Scottish Geographical Society, Fellow of The RSA and was featured on BBC World 100 inspiring and influential women list 2023, as one of 28 Climate Pioneers.
Ruby
Director, Climate Cafe® CIC / Climate Cafe Dunkeld & Birnam
Ruby is a Director of Climate Café® CIC, a climate change activist and attendee of Climate Café® for the last 9 years. She has done a lot of youth work surrounding climate change such as running her own climate youth group, speaking to primary children, and working with Children’s Parliament. As well as this she is a Climate Reality Leader and was trained by Al Gore in 2018 in Berlin. She feels very passionate about educating people about climate change as well as learning more myself.
Fiona
Chair & Director, Climate Cafe® CIC
Fiona is a broadcaster, producer and writer. She creates programmes for National Public Radio (NPR) in the United States, curates web-based music content, and has worked for BBC Radio. The growth of the Climate Café® movement gives Fiona hope. She strongly believes that individuals play an important role in the well-being of their communities, and that meaningful action on a local level has a powerful collective impact on the health of the planet. In addition to Climate Café® in Dunkeld and Birnam, Fiona is involved in a number of cultural and heritage charities and trusts, and has had a lifelong passion for the natural world. In 2014 she was awarded an MBE.
Alasdair
Director, Climate Cafe® CIC
Alasdair is from Perth, lives in Birnam since 1991, owns a prominent retail business in Dunkeld and has been involved in Climate Café® since 2015.
After schooling in Scotland, Canada and England and studies in engineering and social sciences he had a career in international public health with a variety of voluntary, United Nations and bilateral agencies, doing administrative and logistics/technical management and consultancy specializing in vaccine logistics. This included work with World Health Organisation on the successful eradication of smallpox in Bangladesh in the 1970s and further related vaccine preventable disease work in over 30 other countries.
Joel
Director, Climate Cafe® CIC
Joel has been involved in Climate Café® since 2015, and particularly with the Live Earth Birnam collaborations since 2016. With a background in Conservation Sciences, he has an interest in wildlife and ecosystem conservation with a particular with invertebrates. He has travelled overseas to central America and in Africa where he led surveys, taught wildlife identification and behaviour. Surveys were based on spiders and insects and the effect habitat destruction and climate change had on their populations.
With a degree in Environmental Science from Perth UHI, he is completing a master’s in wildlife, Biodiversity and ecosystem protection at the University of Edinburgh.
Climate Café®Co-ordinators
Liz
Co-ordinator, Climate Cafe® Dunkeld & Birnam
I’m Liz Duguid and have been caring about our world since I bought my first “Save the Whale” T shirt 50 years ago. Right now I think about my grand children’s future and want to do all I can for them. Finding our local Climate Cafe® has been a real boost for me. It’s so good to be able to talk about the climate and exchange ideas about local action – really inspiring and a source of energy to keep going.
Kay & Len
Co-ordinators of Climate Café Blairgowrie, Rattray and District
Kay’s background is in Occupational Therapy, Len’s is in Social Work. Kay heard about a Climate Café forming in Birnam and started to attend. Len thought it sounded very worthwhile and started to go along too. Birnam is about 15 miles from Blairgowrie and it didn’t take long to come to the conclusion that it would make much more sense to see if there was interest in forming something similar in Blairgowrie. So, in May 2016, the second Climate Café started up. A Climate Café is a community phenomenon and belongs to no-one. Kay and Len are temporary custodians of the BRDCC.
Ruth
Co-ordinator, Climate Cafe® North Berwick / Sustaining North Berwick
Ruth and her family have enjoyed living in North Berwick for over ten years. Working as a Zumba Instructor across East Lothian Ruth has made lots of friendships and connections in her own and other local communities. Ruth’s work with Sustaining North Berwick allows her to work closely with people in her home town towards a more sustainable future which she feels passionate about. In her spare time Ruth enjoys sea swimming, spending time with her family and walking their wee dog Freddie on East Lothian’s lovely beaches.
Alison
Co-ordinator, Climate Cafe® Aberdeen / Director, Aberdeen Climate Action
Alison is a qualified Scots Law Solicitor and Lecturer in International Human Rights Law. She is passionate about creating a better, fairer sustainable world. She and Erik Dalhuijsen set up ACA in late 2014, seeing a need, in the North East of Scotland, for an organisation to educate and empower individuals and communities to take action on climate change and create a network for local organisations working in this area. Alison has run ACA since 2016, building up this volunteer led organisation alongside developing Climate Week North East and the North East Scotland Climate Action Network.
Adam
Co-Cordinator, Climate Cafe® Aberdeen
Adam is a Professor of Rice Genetics at the University of Aberdeen where he conducts research aiming to make rice more nutritious, more resistant to some pests and more efficient in the use of water in an overall thrust to improve the sustainability of production and the resilience of farmers. He joined Aberdeen Climate Action in 2017 as he wanted to help in local efforts to raise awareness of the seriousness of, and solutions to climate change.
Bob
Co-Cordinator, Climate Cafe® Aberdeen
Bob is a retired chartered agricultural engineer, who consulted, lectured at Scottish Rural University College, and researched on crop storage, sustainable energy, household waste recycling and food waste composting. He continuing these interests with Aberdeen Climate Action, organising Aberdeen Climate Action’s Climate Cafe® with Prof Adam Price, University of Aberdeen. He has his own reference website https://www.sustainability-in-practice.org.uk , which provides solutions for low carbon living.
Anna
Co-ordinator, Climate Café Aberfeldy
Anna has been passionate about the environment for as long as she can remember (which she reckons she inherited from her father who always trod lightly on the earth). For many years she coached outdoor education – always a good opportunity to encourage folk to care for the environment through which they travel. Now she runs a home energy advice project in Aberfeldy with her husband Tom, and is very involved in the community, including the Community Larder, co-ordinating the Repair Café (which she set up in 2020, just before lockdown!) and the food project part of the Healthiest Town Initiative. Anna strongly believes that encouraging behaviour change makes a huge difference to our carbon footprints.
Emma
Co-ordinator, Climate Café Aberfeldy
Emma is a long-term resident of Aberfeldy, and passionate about helping our town and its community to a healthy future for the planet and people. Emma is the project manager of the Healthiest Town, a project to encourage and enable people to be as healthy as they can be. They are working on various food projects to encourage people to eat real food and reduce food waste. She is also a yoga teacher and chair of Highland Perthshire Plus, an organisation that supports families with people with additional support needs, and runs a disability charity in Tanzania. Anna and Emma work alongside a group of brilliant, committed people helping run our Climate Cafe here in Aberfeldy.
Carol
Co-ordinator, Climate Cafe® Pitlochry
From a young age nature has always been an important influence in my life. It has provided a solid foundation from where most of my beliefs, interests and aspirations as an adult have grown. I studied Interior and Environmental design to help me find different ways to reconnect people of all ages to nature especially through art and design. So far I have tutored students in Environmental design, provided classes focussed on how we can create healthy healing interiors, organised upcycling workshops and from October 2018 helped set up and run our Climate Cafe® in Pitlochry. I am looking forward to what will come next?
Ian
Co-ordinator, Climate Cafe® Media
Ian has 15 years experience working in journalism and charity communications. Born in Zambia, he has reported from across Africa and is currently the communications lead on the Climate Challenge Programme Malawi, the largest international development programme ever undertaken by the Scottish Government. He is passionate about helping people to break down barriers to protect our common home
Gosia
Co-ordinator, Climate Cafe® Kinross-shire
From a young age I had a strong connection with the natural environment, discovering my love for nature in the mountains of Poland. This inspired me to study Environmental Sciences followed by eight years of research at the University of Aberdeen modelling greenhouse gas emissions. Since 2012 I worked as a volunteer at RSPB Loch Leven, and later managed a biodiversity project in a community woodland. My interests are to actively promote sustainable lifestyles using social media platforms (EcoCHAT Facebook group) and support community transition to net zero economy. I am also an organic gardener and wine maker.
Richenda
Co-ordinator, Climate Cafe® Multifaith
Rev. Richenda Fairhurst (she/her) stepped into the world of climate organizing in 2015 when she began to walk alongside grassroots organizers from Columbia Riverkeeper, Sierra Club, and Earth Ministries in the effort to keep massive fossil fuel infrastructure out of Washington State. She currently serves on the Board of Ecumenical Ministries of Oregon, serving as Chair of the Creation Justice Committee and Oregon Interfaith Power and Light. Richenda founded Faiths4Future in 2020, and serves as a co-organizer for Faiths4Future and the Climate Café Multifaith. Find her on substack at JustCreation.org – it’s free!
Jaci
Co-ordinator, Climate Cafe® Dundee
“Hi, I am Jaci Stewart, Joint Head of Operations at Dundee Rep and Scottish Dance Theatre Limited. One of my roles at the theatre is to chair our green team, active since 2015. The theatre is an avid campaigner for climate change. We see what is happening and want to play a part in mitigating change. Having the Climate Café has allowed us to interact with other like-minded people and organisations doing similar work and coming together with the same aim of making a difference.
Nathan and Jamie
Co-co-ordinators, Climate Café Blairgowrie & Rattray
Nathan and Jamie have taken on the co-coordinator roles from Kay and Len who set up the Café in 2016 after visiting the one in Birnam and decided it made sense to see if there was interest in forming something similar in Blairgowrie.
Nathan and Jamie both studied Environmental Science and find that helping to make a positive impact locally gives them hope when the vastness of the climate crisis often feels overwhelming.
They both work delivering energy advice, Nathan to individual households and businesses, and Jamie to large social housing associations with data analysis of their housing stock. They volunteer alongside Kay and Len who are still involved and hope to continue building upon all the amazing projects that started as conversations at the Café.
Marie-Claire
Co-ordinator, Climate Cafe® Crieff
Marie-Claire is a Community Engagement Coordinator at Remake Scotland in Crieff. Part of her role is to run Climate Café Crieff. The purpose of this group is to bring together people to discuss climate issues and work that can be done to make our community more sustainable. Through the Climate Cafés, Remake has been able to interact with like minded people and engage subject matter experts in presenting and discussing a range of topics.
Climate Change and Sustainable Development Team
Co-ordinators, Climate Cafe® Perth & Kinross Council
Officers from the Climate Change and Sustainable Development Team collectively decided to start a staff Climate Café® to support fellow colleagues. After engaging with other Climate Cafés® across Perth and Kinross, Council staff were inspired to form their own network to encourage positive actions at work and at home to benefit the environment. With PKC being one of the biggest employers in the area, the formation of a Climate Café® is an ideal opportunity to get many people involved in climate and nature action. Together, members are committed to making a difference to help create a more resilient, stronger, greener Perth and Kinross.
Lin
Climate Cafe® Asheville, NC
Lin Orndorf is a sustainability educator and champion with degrees in environmental studies, sustainability technologies, and sustainability studies. Lin’s interest in environmental issues began early when her/their first chores were to “feed the worms” by taking compost out to the bin and helping with recycling before it was fashionable. After a series of other careers, including research assistant, environmental technician, and nature center educator, Lin is now an adjunct instructor teaching sustainability, energy, and academic success courses at Asheville-Buncombe Technical Community College in Asheville, North Carolina where she/they lives with her/their spouse Porscha and their two dogs and two cats.
Tom
Graphics and Illustration
Tom is our creative lead, his fun, bright and positive illustrations inspire and engage people in the Climate Cafe® chat and action. He has produced materials that support community led Climate Cafe® spaces to get together and promote their spaces easily, while connecting them to a global family across the Climate Cafe® Network.