- What Others Say
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- What Others Say
- What Others Say
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- What Others Say
15+ years of Experience Across Asia, Europe, the Americas, Africa & MENA Focused on Innovation in Sustainable Development, Climate Tech and Systems Transitions
All things #Inclusive Climate Innovation | #Climate Tech | #Sustainable & Regenerative Development | #Ecosystem Collaborations | #Systemic Design | Climate Insider 20 Women leading Climate Tech & Innovation 2024
WORKING WITH THE WORLD
welcome to a snapshot career portfolio where
you can see what I have been up to -
spanning all continents, multiple sectors and leadership roles across the past 15+ yearsABOUT COURTNEY SAVIE LAWRENCE
Connect and reach out here
In the past 15+ years Courtney Savie Lawrence has lived, worked and traveled across more than 70 countries with a focus on sustainable development and systems transitions. Since 2018 she has worked with the United Nations at the intersection of innovation, tech and climate with UNDP and UNICEF's regional and global innovation, climate and digital teams. She often speaks on the topic of inclusive climate innovation and systems change and has been named by Climate Insider as '20 Women Leading Climate Tech and Innovation in 2024'.
While working among the UN System she has held many volunteer and cross sectoral roles across the ecosystem: coleading the Oxford Climate Tech Initiative, researching systems change and the future of just transitions around climate tech, cofounding the The Circular Design Lab based in Bangkok, Thailand, using systemic design as a process to table the first national clean air policy act to Parliament, and to her role as the chair to the Governance Committee for the School of International Futures Next Gen Foresight Practitioners Network.
In 2024 Courtney earned her MBA from Oxford University's Saïd Business School and graduated with academic distinction as a recipient of the Executive MBA Director's Award with exchanges to the Yale School of Management, FDC São Paulo Business School and HEC Paris Business School.
Other scholarship and honors include selection as a Vital Voices Global Fellow, Cordes Opportunity Collaboration Fellow, The Coaching Fellowship for Women Leaders, Social Entrepreneur Fellow of the Amsterdam based THNK School of Creative Leadership, and Rotary Cultural Ambassadorial Scholar. Since 2016 she has also worked with the MIT International Development Design Summits, by co-leading in the Colombia, Thailand and Australia programs. For nearly a decade Courtney also taught human centered design for systems innovation at the university and executive education levels as faculty in Japan and Thailand. From 2006-2014 she served on the Executive Committee, the policy and governance oversight arm, to the of the Swiss-based INGO, World YMCA, as a global representative of the North America region.
As an entreprenuer she has co-founded and led two companies (DSIL Global and Green Loop), has worked in and among large scale impact organizations like Ashoka in Washington D.C., as well as academic centers such as MIT's D-lab and Stanford's Hasso Plattner Institute of Design.
She holds a Masters in Responsible Management and Sustainable Economic Development from the United Nations University for Peace, in Costa Rica, and a Bachelors in Political Science, International Relations from the College of Charleston; with one year spent in South Africa, at the University of Stellenbosch.
Courtney has also undergone a 200 hour Yoga Teacher Training in Thailand, ran across the country of Costa Rica in a 27 hour relay race and spent a month in Wyoming with the National Outdoor Leadership School. 'Ubuntu' is a life guiding philosophy that connects her passion with her purpose. She is now based in Paris, France with her family.
SELECTED ARTICLES, ESSAYS, SPEAKING
More on medium here
OXCT
The Climate Tech Opportunity, a publication from the Oxford Climate Tech Initiative in partnership with the Skoll Centre for Social Entrepreneurship at Oxford Said Business School, provides an overview of key trends, challenges and opportunities facing the climate tech field.
It is based on a survey of over 140 climate tech practitioners (including investors, entrepreneurs, scientists and policy-makers) and interviews with over 60 experts from over twenty countries, and provides insights into building better programs, strategies, platforms and policies to support climate innovation. November 2023.
Innovation offers potential: to cure diseases, to better connect people, and to make the way we live and work more efficient and enjoyable. At the same time, innovation can fuel inequality, decimate livelihoods, and harm mental health. This book contends that inclusive innovation - innovation motivated by environmental and social aims - is able to uplift the benefits of innovation while reducing its harms. You can see more about the backend of our research here inclusiveinnovation.io. November 2022.
Note, this has been a volunteer endeavor as an academic book published by Routledge Press. We would like to thank our advisory review group of nearly 30 incredible practitioners and thought leaders whom are noted in the opening acknowledgements section as well.
In this session, I shared the insights from the climate metrics case study research I held with international development banks, ESOs, Impact Investors and Scale-ups in Southeast Asia in early 2023. The session was designed to build upon the 2022 Climate Metrics guide, but ground the takeaways by exploring what putting it all into play looks like. You can see the recording here and read the takeaways here. May 2023.
In this session, as one of the speakers, we elaborated on the book's core thesis: how can we uplift the benefits of innovation while reducing its potential harms? The talk also featured 3 incredible changemakers around the globe making inclusive innovation the centre of their practice and whom we featured in the stories on our book and site inclusiveinnovation.io . Livestreamed January 2023.
How does an #ecosystem overcome information asymmetries, enable new collaborations, and facilitate capacity building for academics, researchers, and other practitioners in the #climate #tech space? That's what we are digging into with a prototype development launch June 2022. More here.
Honored to join the 'Vision Panel' for the *Inclusive Work and the Platform Economy* virtual symposium hosted by Payal Arora and the FemLab.Co. Here I spoke on the topic of inclusive Innovation including grassroots to government approaches to systems change. April 2022.
The future of #ClimateTech collaboration and systems change
Honored to host and moderate the opening lightning panel before our team facilitated the live systems mapping workshop. This session was held at the Skoll World Forum, and led by the Oxford Climate Tech Initiative , in partnership with On Deck’s Build for Climate. With nearly 400 people joining live learned from leading voices, including speakers from the Nigeria Climate Innovation Center, SDG x Near Future Lab, Acumen, LowerCarbon and more. April 2022.
UNICEF Office of Innovation
In this post you'll find an overview of our shared data and open-data collaboration quest through the lens and work of the UNICEF Office of Innovation's Climate Innovation Landscape Assessment, an initiative I was able to develop as a senior consultant. November 2021.
How do we transition from the dominant status quo, an extractive political economy, towards a #regenerative, #circular system? Here are some ideas. November 2020.
In this session, we share the latest trajectories and insights gleaned from three years of experimenting towards systems change at a grassroots level- from work on waste management, to plastics, to air pollution and more. February 2021.
What we have been discovering as we experiment with our innovation learning communities and practitioner spaces focused on systems change. December 2020.
In this post we share (pandemic induced) observations and spaces to watch, a nod to that which is mainstreaming, plus a few provocations that could carry interesting implications. June 2020.
In this session, I share more about the Circular Design Lab journey and how our collective has taken concepts from systems theory and put them into practice on the ground in Thailand. October 2020.
In this session, we share more about the mechanics behind our theory of systemic change, and the 2020 clean air futures campaign that was born from our systemic design field based workshops. October 2020.
In this session, as a panelist, I was invited to share more about the social and environmental justice work I have been coleading from grassroots to government in Thailand since 2019. Livestreamed April 2021.
WORKING WITH THE WORLD
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VOLUNTEER LEADERSHIP ROLES
Colead
We are developing a new platform initiative housed at Oxford Saïd Business School - OxCT exists to help close the knowledge, partnership, and resource gaps to accelerate the green and just transition towards net zero and build resilience while promoting relevant climate-tech solutions where they are needed the most. I am coleading this initiative as a volunteer and we have just launched at the Skoll World Forum recently.
Cofounder
The Circular Design Lab is a self-organized, citizen-driven project focused on prototyping and delivering solutions to humanity's big challenges - using systemic design, circular economy and design principles. We are a 100% volunteer and community driven social innovation platform focused on building systems responses to complex challenges including Air Pollution, Plastics Pollution, Sustainable Food and Waste Systems, and Unsustainable Fast Fashion. Although we run on social and idea capital we are grateful for support from MIT, RSA and partnerships with TCDC, The Incubation Network.
Cofounder
Last year we crowdsourced and captured the latest emerging trends and examples and personal stories related to inclusive innovation. Some of our labs ran primarily through network collaborations and gleaned points of view from across the spectrum and diverse ecosystems. In this sense- we learned from individuals working on the ground, in academia, intermediary organizations and among government. If you weren't able to join the lab series, either way you can learn more and get involved - you can join our LinkedIn Community of Practice here.
Clean Air National Policy and Education Activist, Campaign Cofounder
From August-December 2020 we hosted a "digital roadshow" - a series of online sessions with the authors of the Blue Paper, yet also those working in the space from a creative angle. We heard from entrepreneurs, artists, musicians and others from international organizations. More below. All recordings and summaries are below. The goal was to raise awareness and gain more citizen signatures to support establishment of the first Clean Air Act of it's kind in Thailand. The legislation is now under review with Parliament after receiving over 25,000 citizen signatures.
Governance Steering Committee
Member
Across 2022 I have the fortune to serve on the steering committee of the SOIF NGFP network which operates world wide with a focus on futures and foresight. Our group of representatives are building process and prototypes of decentralized decision making structures with inclusivity and equity at the heart of our focus areas.
In 2017 we hosted, thanks to USAID funding, IDDS Sisaket which brought together six communities within the Raitong Organics Farm network in Sisaket Province. The summit was supported by the creation of an additional 50 staff jobs. Together, participants, organizers, and communities listened, learned, shared, discovered, co-created, and prototyped solutions to six critical challenge areas of sustainable development in Sisaket, Thailand.