Episode 84: Ariane Laxo
Ariane Laxo is the Sustainability Director at HGA, an architecture and engineering firm of 1,000 people in 12 offices. We talked to Ariane about her work, what she draws on to lead, and how she finds strength in the purpose of sustainability. She advises others to listen to the curiosity that pulls them and cultivate an introspective mindset.
In addition to stewarding projects at HGA that demonstrate a holistic approach to design and deeply integrated sustainability, Ariane is also working on change management at the firm, which includes cultivating an inclusive culture and a distributed network of intelligence around sustainability, equity, and community action. The company has prioritized transparency and and is engaged in research internally and with outside partners.
Ariane appreciates the progress she is seeing in transdisciplinary thinking and would like to see greater advances toward a circular economy. “I hope that 200 years from now, historians will look at this moment as the fulcrum, the moment everything changed,” she says. “We are shaping a regenerative future.”
show notes
Ayana Elizabeth Johnson and Katharine Wilkinson’s All We Can Save (https://www.allwecansave.earth/anthology)
Robin Wall Kimmerer’s Braiding Sweetgrass (https://milkweed.org/book/braiding-sweetgrass)
Ayana reading the Ayisha Siddiqa poem “On Another Panel About Climate, They Ask Me to Sell the Future and All I’ve Got is a Love Poem” (via Krista Tipett’s On Being, https://onbeing.org/poetry/on-another-panel-about-climate-they-ask-me-to-sell-the-future-and-all-ive-got-is-a-love-poem/)
Maggie Smith’s
“Good Bones” (https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/89897/good-bones)
Heidi Roop’s Climate Action Handbook (https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/700464/the-climate-action-handbook-by-heidi-roop/)
