Christiana Figueres: Building a Lasting Legacy in Global Climate Action at the UN and Beyond | E116

Summary

Podcast Summary: Christiana Figueres: Building a Lasting Legacy in Global Climate Action at the UN and Beyond | E116

Podcast Information:

• Title: Leap Academy with Ilana Golan
• Host: Ilana Golan
• Episode: Christiana Figueres: Building a Lasting Legacy in Global Climate Action at the UN and Beyond | E116
• Release Date: July 15, 2025

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Introduction

In Episode 116 of Leap Academy with Ilana Golan, host Ilana Golan engages in a profound conversation with Christiana Figueres, a globally recognized leader in climate change. Figueres, renowned for her pivotal role in steering the Paris Agreement as the Executive Secretary of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), shares her journey, insights, and enduring commitment to fostering a sustainable future.

Early Life and Influences

Growing Up in Public Service Christiana Figueres describes her unique upbringing, being born in the presidential house of Costa Rica, where her father served as president multiple times. This environment instilled in her a deep sense of responsibility and service from an early age.

[02:29] Cristiana Figueres: "We are a privileged family because we all have very, very good education and we have risen to political influence. And therefore it is our responsibility to give back and to serve."

Responsibility and Early Leadership From a young age, Figueres was entrusted with significant responsibilities, such as managing household functions during her father's presidency and mentoring her younger sister's education. This early exposure to leadership and protocol shaped her disciplined and service-oriented mindset.

Academic Pursuits and Early Career

Anthropology and Understanding Change Figueres pursued anthropology, driven by her fascination with indigenous communities in Costa Rica. Her experiences living in remote villages, observing the rapid cultural and environmental changes, ignited her passion for understanding and managing change without compromising cultural identity.

[07:00] Cristiana Figueres: "I was fascinated by the process of change... Is it possible to manage change such that they can attain creature comforts but not lose their identity?"

Field Work and Cultural Connection Spending a year immersed in an indigenous community, Figueres developed a deep appreciation for their resilience and the challenges they faced due to environmental changes. Her commitment led her to create educational materials tailored to their cultural context.

[14:17] Cristiana Figueres: "I wrote a children's book for learning Spanish out of their own concepts, with designs that made sense to them and everything, so that it was culturally based on their lived experience."

Transition to International Development and Climate Advocacy

Entering International Development Figueres transitioned into international development, working on various projects that aimed to effect respectful and meaningful change. Her role at the Costa Rican embassy in Germany involved negotiating with major international investors, enhancing her skills in diplomacy and negotiation.

Personal Catalyst for Climate Action A personal experience profoundly impacted Figueres’ trajectory: the extinction of the golden toad in Costa Rica. Witnessing the loss of this species underscored the urgent need to address climate change, propelling her into dedicated environmental advocacy.

[02:35] Cristiana Figueres: "The very purpose of my life is to turn over a better planet to future generations, not a worse planet."

Challenges and Resilience: The Copenhagen Conference

Copenhagen's Setbacks The 2009 Copenhagen climate conference marked a significant setback in global climate negotiations. Mismanagement and procedural disasters led to widespread disappointment among climate activists and negotiators.

[26:14] Cristiana Figueres: "We had several emergencies there. And in one of those emergencies, they called me as vice president to please chair some of these very, very difficult conversations."

Embracing Failure and Learning Instead of succumbing to defeat, Figueres spearheaded a comprehensive assessment of the conference's failures. This introspection became a foundation for rebuilding and strategizing future negotiations.

[31:34] Cristiana Figueres: "Have compassion on yourself and give yourself the time to be on the floor and to mourn the failure and to embrace the pain."

Leadership and the Paris Agreement

Transformational Leadership Appointed as Executive Secretary of the UNFCCC by Ban Ki Moon, Figueres faced the monumental task of reviving the climate negotiation process. She focused on empowering her team, fostering trust, and cultivating a collaborative environment.

[37:03] Cristiana Figueres: "My first commitment was to my own team and to building them up in all different kinds of ways."

Concentric Circles Approach Figueres employed a strategic "concentric circles" approach, starting with personal transformation, strengthening her team, engaging governments, and involving the private sector and other stakeholders to build a comprehensive and ambitious climate agreement.

[37:27] Cristiana Figueres: "That was the first circle around me... the second concentric circle, of course, is the governments... the third concentric circle... ambition is going to have to come from the private sector and from other stakeholders."

Inclusive Collaboration By integrating diverse stakeholders—CEOs, NGOs, youth, and more—Figueres ensured that the Paris Agreement was both ambitious and inclusive, leveraging collective wisdom to achieve groundbreaking outcomes.

Achievements and Ongoing Efforts

Paris Agreement Success Christiana Figueres is celebrated as one of the architects of the Paris Agreement, a landmark accord that unified nearly 200 nations in a collective effort to combat climate change. Her leadership transformed what was once perceived as a failed process into a globally recognized success.

[46:17] Cristiana Figueres: "So that was a five year process. This is not a Sunday to Monday process."

The Paris Effect Since the adoption of the Paris Agreement, significant advancements have been made:

• Technological Advancements: Clean technologies have become more affordable and efficient.
• Investment Shifts: Global investment into clean technologies has surged, surpassing investments in fossil fuels.
• Market Dynamics: Demand for fossil fuels is declining, and even traditional energy companies are pivoting towards renewable sources.

[50:40] Cristiana Figueres: "There is more investment being made into clean technologies today than into dirty technologies by 200%."

Continued Commitment Despite the successes, Figueres acknowledges that much work remains. She continues to drive initiatives like Global Optimism and Future We Choose, emphasizing that climate action is a long-term marathon requiring sustained effort and collective action.

[49:51] Cristiana Figueres: "This is a long term. This is a marathon. It is not a sprint."

Advice for Aspiring Change-Makers

Start with Yourself Figueres advises individuals to initiate change from within, ensuring that their actions align with their core values and passions.

[52:51] Cristiana Figueres: "Start with yourself... make sure that the change that you want is one that really comes from the very, very root of you."

Build a Community She underscores the importance of collaboration, suggesting that collective efforts and supportive networks amplify individual impact.

[54:36] Cristiana Figueres: "We are social beings. We are not little islands unto ourselves."

Embrace Collaboration Over Confrontation Rather than attempting to force change, Figueres emphasizes extending the table to where stakeholders are, fostering mutual understanding and cooperation.

[47:06] Cristiana Figueres: "Not to invite them to your side of the table, but to extend the table over to where they are."

Conclusion

Christiana Figueres’ journey from an anthropologist fascinated by cultural change to a leading figure in global climate policy exemplifies resilience, strategic leadership, and unwavering dedication. Her work with the Paris Agreement and ongoing initiatives continue to inspire and mobilize efforts toward a sustainable and optimistic future.

For more insights and resources, listeners are encouraged to explore Figueres' upcoming digital archive and her other ventures, which aim to educate and empower individuals and communities to contribute meaningfully to climate action.

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Notable Quotes:

• [00:35] Cristiana Figueres: "The very purpose of my life is to turn over a better planet to future generations, not a worse planet."

• [07:00] Cristiana Figueres: "Is it possible to manage change such that they can attain creature comforts but not lose their identity?"

• [21:43] Cristiana Figueres: "Nothing lasts forever. Everything changes constantly. The important thing is embrace the failure and learn from it."

• [34:38] Cristiana Figueres: "The mission hasn't been accomplished. Sadly, this is a long term. This is a marathon. It is not a sprint."

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This comprehensive summary encapsulates the essence of Christiana Figueres' discussion with Ilana Golan, highlighting her personal motivations, professional challenges, strategic approaches, and enduring commitment to global climate action.

Transcript

[Ilana Golan]

Wow. This show is going to be incredible. So buckle up and I'm sure you're going to enjoy it. But before we get started, I want to ask you for a favor. See, it's really, really important for me to help millions of people elevate their career, fast track to leadership land, dream roles, jump to entrepreneurship or create portfolio careers. And this podcast is all about enabling this for millions of people to see a map of what it actually takes for big leaders to reach success. So subscribe and download so you never miss it. Plus, it really, really helps me continue to bring amazing guests. Okay, so let's dive in.

[Cristiana Figueres]

The very purpose of my life is to turn over a better planet to future generations, not a worse planet.

[Ilana Golan]

Cristiana Figueres. She was executive Secretary of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change where she steered the global effort on the Paris Agreement.

[Cristiana Figueres]

I really wanted to bequeath to my children a love of n nature. I wanted to take them to this one national park in Costa Rica where I had fallen in love with this little golden toad. And to my absolute pain, I found out that the species had gone extinct. And I thought, surely there are many other species that are disappearing. And I want to know why? Because I want them to live in a better planet. And this was an indication that I was turning over a worse planet to them. And I said, no way, I can't do that.

[Ilana Golan]

You are credited as one of the architects of the Paris Agreement. What happened behind the scenes?

[Cristiana Figueres]

First of all.

[Ilana Golan]

Cristiana Figueres is in Internet national recognized leader on climate change. She was executive secretary of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change where she steered the global effort on the Paris Agreement. Today she is the co founder of Global Optimism. She is a podcaster, she has a book. She's a co founder of the Future We Choose. Christiana, I'm super excited to speak with you.

[Cristiana Figueres]

Thanks Ilana. Really exciting. I kind of suspect this is going to be a fun conversation. Let's see.

[Ilana Golan]

It will, it will, because I am going to take you back in time to Costa Rica. Your family was committed to public service from the get go. What was it like growing up, Christiana, and how did that shape you?

[Cristiana Figueres]

Well, it was a rather unique childhood, I must say. I was born in the presidential house. My father was president for the second time and then he became three times president later on. So it was a very odd childhood. Not full of play and fun and playground and sleeping over with your friends like everyone else. It was very much a childhood that started even from the early age with being imprinted with service. And at the beginning, it was helping out in the household with all of the formal things that had to happen, and then later on taking service to other realms. But very, very imprinted by both my parents, actually. About. We are a privileged family because we all have very, very good education and we have risen to political influence. And therefore it is our responsibility to give back and to serve.

[Ilana Golan]

I just read a book from Maria Shriver, and she talks about how hard it is and how it comes with so much responsibility to come from a family like this. Was that your impression as well?

[Cristiana Figueres]

Yeah, yeah, yeah, totally. I very much resonate with Maria on that because I remember from being very, very young that I was made responsible for my younger sister's education, who's six years younger than I. That was my first responsibility because I was a pretty good student and she wasn't. And so my mother decided it was my responsibility to make her a good student. She resisted her entire life. Nonetheless, that was my mother's brilliant idea. And then when my father became president again, many of the home functioned very much as an office, a second office for my father. And I was put in charge of a lot of things that needed to happen. The formal dinners, the scheduling of things at home, ensuring that we had the right wine for the right food, et cetera, et cetera. So I learned very, very quickly. I learned protocol. I can set a table for 12 courses perfectly. I know my forks, my knives, my crystalware. I'm actually pretty well trained.

[Ilana Golan]

Oh, my God. I learned it from Pretty Woman, where you put in every. Anyway, there's a movie. But does that come with hate? Because, again, the more you're at the top, or maybe your family is at the top. I assume you hear a lot of things in school. Did that create a little bit of a thicker skin that you're using now or. Not necessarily.

[Cristiana Figueres]

No. I wouldn't say a thicker skin. I also thought that it was pretty odd that other kids just went to the playground. I thought, well, what a waste of time. Why would you go to the playground when there's so many other important things to do? So I definitely drank the Kool Aid very, very young with respect to service. And I didn't resent it, actually. I was in constant training, one thing after the other, and quite taken by the outside world and everything that there was to learn about the outside world. Even to this day, even now, I have a little grandchild. But I remember when my girls were young, I couldn't play with them because I Never played. Oh, this is so funny. I had to rely on their father to play with them. And even now it's really difficult to get me to play a game. Really, really difficult. I have to, like, do it out of discipline, you know.

[Ilana Golan]

Like force myself to play. That's so funny. And then you decide to go study anthropology in the U.S. is that correct?

[Cristiana Figueres]

Yeah. My first profession was an anthropologist. A little bit like you, I feel like I butterflied through many, many different professions.

[Ilana Golan]

I love that term. I'm totally feeling that term. That is a really good one. Okay, so tell me.

[Cristiana Figueres]

Yeah, I decided that I wanted to be an anthropologist when I was 13 because my father took us throughout the country for his political campaigning and then when he was president, for his presence in all different rural areas. And when I went to some of the indigenous areas in Costa Rica, I just totally fell in love. I just thought, wow, these people are the max. They are so admirable what they do with what they have. This is absolutely fascinating. And I was fascinated.

[Ilana Golan]

What was drawing you?

[Cristiana Figueres]

Well, I was fascinated by the process of change, by understanding where they came from, what their ancestry was, what their conditions of life were two or three generations before. And then this massive change, accelerated change that they were going through because they were just barely being reached by electricity. They still didn't have running water, but they were being reached by the cash economy, which they didn't have before. And all of this was producing all of this excitement and tension within the communities. And I was just fascinated by just sitting back and observing the fact that this very, very culturally rich community or communities, I ended up later living in one community for a whole year. But I was just fascinated by that process of change. And I guess the question for me was, is it possible to manage change such that they can attain creature comfort but not lose their identity? How is that possible? Can that be done?

[Ilana Golan]

But seeing this as a kid, if you will, is this also traumatizing? Like in the sense of, here I am living here and they're living in a different place, or. No, it just comes from how can I create a better environment?

[Cristiana Figueres]

Yeah, it wasn't traumatizing at all because my father in that had trained us very well. We were trained to sit down on a dirt floor and drink water out of a dirty cup if that's the situation that we were in because we were traveling throughout the country, or if it meant getting all dressed up and sitting at the table at a formal dinner party with a member of the royal family of somewhere we knew how to do that also, and everything in between. And my father just really imbued us with this deep respect for the human spirit. Each person as in individual, as a vessel of the human spirit. And it really didn't matter how much money that person had, what the house looked like, what the income was completely irrelevant. What was really important was how do you interact with this person as a rich representation of humanity in this moment under these conditions. Fascinating.

[Ilana Golan]

So then you decide to live in a village like that for a year, which is not literal. It's not two days, it's a year. So what was that experience like? I can totally see my daughter calling me after a week, like, get me out of here.

[Cristiana Figueres]

Well, to begin with, there were no phones, so I couldn't call anybody. But, yeah, I made the choice because I was studying anthropology and I could choose for my bachelor's degree to write a thesis or not. And I chose to write a thesis based on real field work, which anthropologists tend to do. And then, of course, I went back to my love, which is the indigenous communities in Costa Rica. So I volunteered as a teacher for the Ministry of Education, and I went to one of the most remote tribes. I had never been there before. To get there, I had to walk through three rivers, meaning literally through the river. I had to really time it very well, not after a big rainfall, and get to this village that had no electricity, no running water, Very, very basic conditions. I slept on a wooden board. That was it for a year. I walked down to the river to wash the plates, to get water for cooking, to brush my teet, wash my hair. I actually chopped my hair off. I had very, very long hair that went under my waist, below my waist, and I just chopped it off because it was just too complicated to take care of my hair in the river. So the children there who had seen very few white people, they just couldn't understand what this person was with short hair and wearing long pants. I wore long pants because I didn't know the plants when I got there, and I didn't know walking through the forest, which plants can I let touch me and which not. So I wore pants, I had short hair. I really looked more like a boy than a woman. And so for a long time, the children who I was teaching thought I was a boy or a man. And the surprise that they got one morning when they went very early to the river and I was washing and they saw in my body that I was a girl. And they were like, what?

[Ilana Golan]

Shocking.

[Cristiana Figueres]

You are a girl. They were just astonished.

[Ilana Golan]

Oh, My God. But a year like that, I'm sure it's like you can write a book only about that. But what are some of the biggest takeaways? Yeah, I know.

[Cristiana Figueres]

I wrote my master's thesis on that. Yeah, takeaways. I think the painful piece for me, that I did my best to mitigate was the fact that these children who had, as I say, no electricity, no running water, they lived under a thatched roof with no walls, no division of rooms, anything like that. They were trying to learn Spanish, which is not their original language, from a book that started by saying, and I will translate from the Spanish, this is my mother. She is making bread. And you could see a woman in front of all of this dough, rolling out the dough on a table, none of which they had ever seen. They don't know what a table like that is. They don't know what rolling dough on a table is. The page number two said, this is my father. He reads the newspaper. And he was sitting in a big armchair with a big lamp behind him, reading the newspaper. And so not only you're trying to understand the language, you're trying to go like, what on earth are these Martians talking about? You know, in a big armchair with a lamp behind him, reading a big old newspaper. And that is my father. No, that's definitely not my father, for sure. Not. Not at all.

[Ilana Golan]

Wow, that's crazy.

[Cristiana Figueres]

Doesn't resonate. So, as part of my anthropology thesis, I wrote a children's book for learning Spanish out of their own concepts, with designs that made sense to them and everything, so that it was culturally based on their lived experience, but it was in the Spanish language.

[Ilana Golan]

I can't even wrap my head around being there for a year, but, hey, I have so much respect.

[Cristiana Figueres]

Ilana. One time I had a camera, and I took loads of pictures, black and white. And since I went back to the city once every three months, I had a little dark room, and I developed all my pictures, and I developed just hundreds and hundreds and took them back to the children because they had never seen themselves in a photograph. So every three months, I took a big pack of photographs, and they were just so excited to see themselves on paper. But one day I decided, huh, I wonder where their imagination takes them. So I took a big old photograph of New York by night. And after I had shown them the pictures of themselves, and I always gave them the pictures to take home, and they were so excited, then I showed them the postcard of New York by night, and I said, what is this? And they said, all the little stars in rows. All the little stars in rows because they have never seen light at night. And when you see New York at night.

[Ilana Golan]

Oh, that's so funny. Now I understand what you're saying.

[Cristiana Figueres]

Yeah, in the buildings, right. They're all in rows. So they just thought it was the funniest thing that for that picture, all the little stars had gotten into rows.

[Ilana Golan]

That's incredible. So you begin your public service career, and I think you started as an embassy of Costa Rica and then in Bonn in Germany. So moving between the different countries you've been US And Germany, et cetera, what is that international experience giving you? Because I can totally see how I'm piecing it all together. I can slowly start seeing Christiana. Like that has created these big changes. But it's really fun to see the threads. But take me to that embassy of Costa Rica and Bonn.

[Cristiana Figueres]

I worked as an anthropologist for a while in Fiji and in Samoa, and then I came home and I thought, what is the best way here of being able to affect change in a direction that is respectful? Which seems to be the mantra of my life. And that led me into international development. So I worked in various different ways on international development projects, sometimes in Costa Rica at the Ministry of International Corporation, where I was dealing with countries who finance international development projects in Costa Rica. I then, as you mentioned, went to the Costa Rican embassy in Germany because they were one of the largest investors in international development in Costa Rica. And so I was sent there to negotiate with the government because somehow international development is getting a little bit better. But in those days, which was literally last century, there were just so many white elephants that these international aid agencies had crazy idea of, you know, well, let's finance, I don't know, a big, huge bridge. And people would go, okay, that's a good idea. Where is the river? Oh, well, that's irrelevant. So that kind of mentality, just because we have engineers who build bridges. So let's build a bridge and we'll worry about finding the river later. I mean, I'm exaggerating a little bit, but not very much.

[Ilana Golan]

No, but I understand.

[Cristiana Figueres]

That's the mentality, right?

[Ilana Golan]

We still do some of this, but. Yeah, I don't know how much of that changed, but I'm not going to go there. But when did that passion for climate spark?

[Cristiana Figueres]

Well, the climate spark didn't start until after I was married and had my children. And when my children were very small, I wanted to take them to this one national park in Costa Rica where I, because I had Gone there with my parents on their political campaigning. I had fallen in love with this little golden toad that was very small little toad and literally golden. And especially on a moon lit night if they were in mating season, it was just amazing because you could see almost like these little golden coins just jumping up and down in the forest and they were just so beautiful. And that is one of the things that made me fall in love with nature. And I really wanted to bequeath to my children a love of nature. I just think that it has been so influential in my life and is so important to me now, for sure. And I really wanted them because we were no longer living in Costa Rica, we were out, we were living in Washington D.C. because of their father's job. And that wasn't enough for me. I really wanted them to be tied and intrigued and awed by nature. So I wanted to take them to the very same national park. And to my absolute pain, I found out that the species had gone extinct. And it went extinct exactly the same year that my second daughter was born. So I contacted some of the scientists there and I said, what on earth? What has happened? And they said, well, we don't know yet, we're studying it, but it seems that there has been a temperature rise on the surface of the forest, on the soil, and that temperature rise has caused a fungus on the skin of those toads and it just wiped out the entire species. And Elana, I was just stricken and I thought, oh my God. Okay. In my little life here 30 some years, I have witnessed the disappearance, the extinction of one species. What does that mean for the rest of the planet? Surely there are many other species that are disappearing. And I want to know why. Because the terms of reference that I gave to me as a mother right when the girls were born is I will turn over a better planet than what I found. I want them to live in a better planet. And, and this was an indication that I was turning over a worse planet to them. And I said, no way, I can't do that. That does not fit into my tors as a mother. There's no way. So I started finding out and very soon I landed on climate change, studied myself into the topic, and here I am 40 years later. Wow.

[Ilana Golan]

When you study, you go all in. So you founded this center of sustainable development. And again, at that point, if I'm not mistaken, climate change wasn't on everybody's radar. Far from it. Right. Talk to me a little bit about those early days advocacy. Did everybody think you're crazy?

[Cristiana Figueres]

Yeah, well, because Costa Rica is a country that protects its nature so much. As a whole, we had become aware that climate was a huge threat. And so Costa Rica threw out many different governments, not just my father's particular political party, but through many different administrations. We had been very consistent about learning what was going on and beginning to take national policy to protect our nature. So I was very privileged in having been a part of that process of national policies that are enacted for that purpose. So then when I went to live in Washington because of my husband's job, I thought, okay, if I can't work in Costa Rica now, this is the perfect opportunity to take the lessons learned from Costa Rica to the other Latin American countries. So I founded that NGO with the purpose of taking the lessons learned on climate policy to other Latin American countries and getting them ready to participate very actively in the negotiations of the climate convention, where I was already participating as a Costa Rican negotiator. And I could see you as I looked around the room, I'm like, well, where are the other Latin Americans? They're not here. And so I just decided to take it upon myself to help countries and governments and private sector in Latin America get up to speed and set up their national programs, their policies, and be better negotiators at the table.

[Ilana Golan]

And at that point, I'm sure you're hearing a lot of mixed remarks about you going after that, or is that people are just not taking it too seriously, or are they? They are taking it seriously or no?

[Cristiana Figueres]

Well, in Costa Rica, we always took it seriously. And that was a huge privilege for me, that it was national policy because it goes hand in hand with the protection of our nature.

[Ilana Golan]

But in the us, was it already pretty common?

[Cristiana Figueres]

Totally irrelevant for me, frankly. Okay, totally irrelevant. Because I was working within the Latin American context.

[Ilana Golan]

Got it.

[Cristiana Figueres]

And what I really, really wanted was my colleagues, the other Latin Americans, to join me in this mission. But also, we actually had pretty good administrations in the beginning in the United States that were eager to learn. For example, the carbon market was basically invented by Costa Rica and Norway in exchange for carbon credits. And then the United States learned about it and wanted to participate and entered into very interesting, original pioneering projects with us. So the US has not always been obstreperous about climate. Actually, it's just the flavor of right now. But right now it's not a permanent disease.

[Ilana Golan]

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[Cristiana Figueres]

By that time, I was a pretty seasoned negotiator that I wasn't before. When I started bringing my colleagues along, all of us had been working toward a global agreement in Copenhagen. That was the whole point of it. And I was already so seasoned and so senior in the negotiations that I was representing the region of Latin America in something called the Bureau, which is sort of the board of directors of the convention, if you will. And that board of directors, called the Bureau, has representatives from each of the five UN regions. So I was the Latin American representative on the Bureau. And everybody on the Bureau holds the title of Vice President of the convention. And when something happens to the president of the cop, should there be an emergency or whatever, the procedure calls for one of the vice presidents to step in. And in Copenhagen, the end of 2009, there was several disasters. But one was that the Danish government had not done its homework in finding out what were the UN rules of procedure. And they decided to take the COP president out, which they can't do without the Bureau, and put in the president of the country who had no idea about anything, never heard the world climate change. So that was just a total disaster. So we had several emergencies there. And in one of those emergencies, they called me as vice president to please chair some of these very, very difficult conversations. Yeah, these sessions that were like tripping over landmines. And I had never done it, but I was a pretty seasoned negotiator. So I stepped in. I said, okay, I've been trained for service. This is the service that is needed.

[Ilana Golan]

Go for it.

[Cristiana Figueres]

And it's so interesting because I remember when I got off the podium after chairing one of these very difficult sessions, the Minister of the Environment of Costa Rica, of my own country came up to me, he was in the plenary, and he said, you know, you ought to be the next executive secretary. And I said, you are out of your mind. You. You are completely out of your mind. And he said, no, I don't think so. Goodbye. And he left. And then after that very painful and disastrous conference, the then executive secretary resigned prematurely and the UN started a search for.

[Ilana Golan]

So before. Before the search. One of the reasons why I wanna wait there for a second, Christiana, is because I think a lot of our audience are in a pivotal moment in their life, and maybe they've been. Some of them been laid off or they had some kind of a failure in the project, or the project has been eliminated or been replaced with AI or whatever it is, right? And they're right now trying to almost like get their act together. Despite feeling that this was a failure or despite feeling like they're down. Talk me for a second. When you go through something like this, which you're essentially, you were put there, but it was kind of bound to fail to some extent. All the wins were against an agreement at that point. How do you get out of this situation? Stronger, if you will.

[Cristiana Figueres]

I wouldn't say any of us left Copenhagen stronger. I think we all left on the floor. We were all traumatized by what we had seen, what we had witnessed, what we participated in. Honestly, it was a traumatizing. But you don't quit well, no, exactly. So six months later, looking back at it and already in charge of the process, I went, wow. I wonder what we could learn from that if we make an effort to learn. So we contracted a third party that had nothing to do with us to do an assessment of it, tell us everything that went wrong, do a really in depth assessment. And they came back with 300 pages. And we went like, oh, my God. Okay, let's start here. So with that in my hand, I remember thinking, huh, okay, with 300 pages of assessment done by someone else. So completely objective. If we're able to address at least part, if not the majority or all of these issues, the fact is that that disaster will have been the most successful UN failure ever, because you're learning from it. And that's the trick. When you have a failure like that and you feel you're at rock bottom and you can't even pick up your head. My sense now, at the ripe old age of 68, is number one, have compassion on yourself and give yourself the time to be on the floor and to mourn the failure and to embrace the pain. Because otherwise, if we stick it under the carpet, it's just not going to.

[Ilana Golan]

Be coming back at three in the morning.

[Cristiana Figueres]

Exactly. So today. I know. Make space for it. And we all make mistakes. One person makes mistakes, but especially when there are 5,000 people. That's one mistake times 5,000. And it's fine. Nothing lasts forever. Everything changes constantly. The important thing is embrace the failure and learn from it.

[Ilana Golan]

Before we go, how you became this executive secretary in the U.N. i mean, it just became amazing. And then Paris, et cetera. But right before that, because you didn't know that all of these good things are coming. How do you get up in the morning and decide to continue doing this again? Again? Do you feel like you needed other people around you to help you, motivate you? Or did you numb the pain by doing different things? What's your coping mechanism?

[Cristiana Figueres]

No, I definitely didn't numb the pain. I don't recommend that. As a completely newly minted executive secretary, I went to my first press conference, and I had done a lot of study to figure out what is the secretariat and what is the responsibility, and what do we do and what we don't do, and da, da, da, da. So I thought, okay, maybe. Maybe I'm ready for my first press conference. And so I went in and answered questions as best as I could. But then toward the end, this male journalist, and I remember that he was a man, and I really wish I could remember who he was, because today I would thank him profusely. But he said to me at the end of it, he said, Mrs. Figueres, do you actually think that a global agreement will ever be possible? And without stopping to think, which I don't recommend, I do recommend stopping to think, especially in a press conference, but without stopping to think, what I heard my mouth say was, not in my lifetime. Wow. And after I heard myself say that, I went like, where did that come from? And I was so appalled, Ilana, because as I walked out of that press conference room, I realized that if what I had said came to be true, I was betraying the very purpose of my life, which is to turn over a better planet to future generations, not a worse planet. And so I went like, well, I am not a traitor. I am not a traitor. I am a warrior. I am going back into the ditches here. Back in. So by the time I got to my office, I said, okay, I have no idea how long I'm going to be here in this office, but what I'm going to do while I'm here is I'm Going to prove that statement wrong. That's what I'm going to do.

[Ilana Golan]

Wow.

[Cristiana Figueres]

So it was very fast. It all happened within, like, 30 minutes.

[Ilana Golan]

So essentially, that mission became the fuel that you needed to basically shift everything totally. Is it scary to say yes to something like this? Is there imposter syndrome?

[Cristiana Figueres]

Yeah, it was scary because to begin with, nobody knew what to do. The Secretary General, Ban Ki Moon himself, when he appointed me, and it was a difficult appointment, but when he appointed me, he basically said, not in these terms because he's Korean and he's very formal and diplomatic. But the message was, the political process is in the trash can. Go and see what you can do with it. And I thought, okay, that was an.

[Ilana Golan]

Interesting thing that's set up for success.

[Cristiana Figueres]

You know, not much aspiration there from my boss, but it was scary. And honestly, I had no idea. I had no idea what to do. But what I did know is that perhaps there's no guarantee, but perhaps if we could bring many people around the table, collective wisdom would tell us what to do. So I knew that I personally had no idea. And if I really thought about it, I could come up maybe with three or four ideas, which by definition would be bad ideas, because they're only coming from my feeble little brain. But if you get people around the table, experienced people, you know, have been doing this, and then you open a process. So that was my first commitment to work with the secretariat, which are 500 people who have devoted their lives to this process. Definitely much more time and experience than I had, and work with them first to take them out of the trash can, because they were all in the trash can, and begin to motivate them and begin to consult with them and have them consult with each other and design a process, a listening and learning process among all of these 500 people, so that we would a begin to crawl out of the dark hole that we were all in, hold hands, crawl out, and then begin to put ideas on the table. And in the beginning, the ideas weren't terribly brilliant, but they improved over time.

[Ilana Golan]

Like they always do. So small experiments. But you are credited as one of the architects of the Paris Agreement, which was a really big deal. What happened behind the scenes with disagreement, because again, clearly, you got yourself out of the hole together with everybody else, and you were driving that mission vision, et cetera. What happened there.

[Cristiana Figueres]

As I say, my first concern was to work with the Secretariat, because I knew that they collectively hold the process. They hold the political process, they hold the legal process, they hold the operational process. They're responsible for putting water on the tables and emptying the trash cans during negotiations. They're responsible for the legal procedures. They're responsible for everything. And without them, nothing happens. So my first commitment was to my own team and to building them up in all different kinds of ways. And I must say, I'm so proud of that team. By the time I left, we had crawled out of the box and they were the highest performing team in. In the un Without a doubt. Without a doubt. Otherwise, we would not have been able to reach the Paris agreement. So a very beautiful transformation process, collective transformation of a team of people dedicated to this very, very difficult mission. So that was one. And I sort of think about it, Ilana, in concentric circles. That was the first circle around me. Inside that circle was me, myself. I had to change my attitude toward a can do instead of never in my lifetime attitude and then work with my team. Then the second concentric circle, of course, is the governments, because they're the ones that hold the pen. They're the ones that sit at the negotiation table. So I did put a lot of time, energy, thought, and especially listening capacity into talking to governments who didn't want to talk to each other at all because they were hating each other because of Copenhagen. So first to listen to their pain and their anger, give that space, and then over several years, begin the process of. Yes, we understand that that was terrible. What would make it different? What one or two or three components can you think of that would make a different context here and just invite that kind of thinking from almost 200 governments in the world and move them then toward a space of creative thinking and innovative collaboration that was not there before. And then the third concentric circle, I realized that governments would be conservative in what they would agree to or even draft, because that is sort of who they are. Yeah, who they are. That's their terms of reference. And we certainly couldn't afford conservative agreement, because we wanted an agreement that would accompany the decarbonization of society over decades. Not just three or four or five years, but rather over decades. So it had to be ambitious. So I decided, well, the ambition is going to have to come from the private sector and from other stakeholders, from NGOs, from youth, from grandparents circles, from spiritual leaders, from technology providers, from investors, everyone who stands to benefit from a more stable climate. So I did go out and very intentionally reach several hundred people, 500, I think, also in what we call the stakeholder realm, to bring them close to the process, because they weren't before, because it's a governmental process. Bring them in, give them a sense of confidence, a listening ear. We really need your help. We really need you to encourage governments. We don't need you to hit them over the head. That's not going to take us very far. We need you to support and encourage. And so we built that process over years, right? That was a five year process. This is not a Sunday to Monday process.

[Ilana Golan]

Right. It's not the overnight success that everybody thinks. But what I love about it, and I was taking notes a little bit, is first of all, I love how you're looking at it as circles. Like I needed to change myself to understand that it can be done right and my team and then the government and then the private sector to create that ambition. But I also love that you're talking about the mindset, the listening, the motivation, the team, and then slowly getting traction. Because I think one of the things that I'm trying to piece together is you're trying to reach out to these CEOs, head of states, young activists, et cetera. They're very busy. There's probably trazillion other competing things that are coming their way. And you need to create that traction for them to say, you know what, out of all the noise, I actually want to back up climate. This is where I want to put myself, my energy, my money, whatever it is, my name, right? Talk to me about getting that traction. And how do you reach out to these big Personas with a lot of ego?

[Cristiana Figueres]

First of all, to reach out to governments wasn't terribly difficult because I knew them all because I had been a negotiator. So they were all my colleagues, they're all friends. So to reach out to them, not as a colleague anymore, but as the executive secretary was pretty easy because I had established friendships and trusting relationships. Trust is the number one factor here. And they knew that they could trust me. I knew that I could trust the conversation. So that wasn't terribly difficult. And the fact is that not immediately after Copenhagen, but after one or two years, everybody was thirsty for changing it for a success. Everybody said, how on earth did we let that happen? Is it not possible? I'm like, yeah, it's possible, but let's figure out how. So reaching out to governments wasn't terribly difficult, including governments, who you might argue were obstreperous, you know, like the Saudi and Arabian government or any of the other oil and gas exporters, because I never judged them, I never blamed them, I never shamed them. I really understood that they were exporting that resource because that's what they had to export.

[Ilana Golan]

Where the money was.

[Cristiana Figueres]

Yeah, that's where the money is. So from a non judgmental perspective, in a deep listening perspective, it was relatively easy to contact them and ask for meetings with them. Plus I was very willing to travel to where they were. And I always thought that an in person meeting or several in person meetings were always better. So that wasn't difficult with the stakeholders. It was a little bit different for several reasons. A, because governments feel that the negotiating space is their private property and that nobody should step, nobody should trespass. And so to bring other stakeholders into that same space was threatening to governments. Why are they here? What do they really want? So I had to be very, very careful about bringing them into the space. I also had to be careful about not using the budget of the Secretariat for that, because the Secretariat does not have a mandate or didn't at that time. It's changed since, but didn't at that time have a mandate to reach out to stakeholders. So I had to go out and fundraise with foundations for this very weird idea that I had. They're like, what we thought you were working for governments and for the UN. Why do you want to go and talk to CEOs? Well, because it's necessary. So I did find the funding and I hired a team completely separate from the UN team, completely separate team, and put them in a completely separate office that wasn't really known to most people. So they were our covert operation and they developed. This was all under the direction of Tom Ribbett Carnack, who's still my business partner, co author of the book, co host of the podcast. We became very, very good friends. I hired him to lead this stealth operation and to help put together a group of individuals who stood ready to help when there was a problem on the floor in the plenary. And he did a brilliant job. And we were able, therefore, to get a lot of support for the aspirational aspects of that agreement.

[Ilana Golan]

I love that because I remember the traction and I love what you said. And I want to translate it a little bit to every listener here. Whether you're going to an interview or you're trying to open some kind of doors for investment or for other things, getting that trust that you talked about, Christiana, but also understanding their why, understanding what's behind. Right. Because like you said, some of these ideas or some of these Personas, their why is different. So you need to understand what they're looking at. And how do you create a Win, win situation, because that's everything. That's how you basically invite them to your side of the table versus trying to force you away, because that's never going to work.

[Cristiana Figueres]

Well, the other way of thinking about it is not to invite them to your side of the table, but to extend the table over to where they are.

[Ilana Golan]

I love that. Yeah.

[Cristiana Figueres]

Especially with governments. It was very few times that I made statements. I was always asking questions because I really wanted to understand what is their interest, what do they need, what are the challenges that they're facing? And so to ask enough questions so that they themselves come to the conclusion that it is in their self interest to have a stable planet, but have it come out of their enlightened self interest rather than trying to convince them of anything. Governments are sovereign and they will always be. There's no way that I'm going to tell any government what to do. Not me, not the un, not no one. So it was very much about expanding their mental overtone window. From their perspective, how do you see yourselves in five or 10 years? What is your plan if the planet gets so much hotter? What are you going to do? So just extend that so that they could then come to the conclusion, hmm, maybe we should collaborate on this.

[Ilana Golan]

Maybe we should listen here. This is true for most conversations. You can get a lot more in many, many cases by really strong questions. Because if somebody can sell themselves into you or into your product or into co partnering with you, that's always stronger than you coming and trying to pitch them. Right. So the questions are really strong.

[Cristiana Figueres]

That's definitely been my experience. I guess my daughters taught me when they were very young not to give advice. Not a good idea.

[Ilana Golan]

So governments and daughters are the same.

[Cristiana Figueres]

Don't give advice, ask questions, seek to understand.

[Ilana Golan]

I'm learning that from my teen right now, let me tell you. But after the un, you could have taken basically a backseat. I did my mark on the world, time to sit on the beach. And instead you decided to launch the Global Optimism. You wrote the Future We Choose. You started a podcast that outraged an optimism. Where is the hunger? Where do you get that from? And where are you using this voice?

[Cristiana Figueres]

Well, I guess I stay on the mission because the mission hasn't been accomplished. Sadly, this is a long term. This is a marathon. It is not a sprint. And the Paris Agreement with all its flaws, and it's full of flaws for sure. It is, however, a long term play of governments and of all kinds of actors. But the weakness of that play is it has to be played. It can't just sit on the shelf.

[Ilana Golan]

It's not just gonna get better on its own.

[Cristiana Figueres]

No. You have to engage with it. It has to be implemented. It has to be executed in many different ways and everybody will implement it differently. But we do have to get our sh together here, and otherwise we're just not going to make it. I remember the day that the Paris Agreement was finally adopted. I don't know. Went to bed at 3 or 4 o' clock in the morning and we were all exhausted because nobody had slept in the past three days. And I slept until about 10, and then I woke up at 10 and reached for the phone and called poor Tom Karnak. And I said, tom, I know exactly what we have to do now. And he says, I so do I. Go back to sleep.

[Ilana Golan]

Oh, my God.

[Cristiana Figueres]

So I did go back to sleep for a few hours. But there's just still so much to be done now. So much has been accomplished. That's the other really, really fascinating part. Right. There's a lot of literature on something called the Paris Effect, through which you can prove that since the adoption of the Paris Agreement, of course, we've had crazy political elections in the United States, for example. But despite that, the amazing thing is that all of the technologies that address climate change have come down in price by 80, 90%. They have increased in efficiency by 40 to 50%. They are totally competitive against the fossil fuels, against oil, against gas, certainly against coal. There is more investment being made into clean technologies today than into dirty technologies by 200%. We're investing two times as much globally, right, into clean technologies than we are into dirty technologies of power. There is much more demand for those technologies than there used to be. The demand for fossil fuels is going down the drain. Even the fossil fuel companies are not investing in renewing their oil fields. It really is quite impressive what has happened in the past 10 years, because we're at the 10th anniversary now. So it's quite impressive what has happened. And it is not enough. So because so much has happened, because so much is possible, but also because it's not enough yet. That's why I keep at this.

[Ilana Golan]

That's amazing. One of the things, Christiana, before that is a lot of people are listening to this episode and saying, but I don't know if I can change something big. Maybe I missed the mark, maybe I'm too late. Maybe some of these things are so big, bigger than one of us, like you said, right? It needs a collective, it's a movement, but somebody can actually start the movement. What would you say to some of these people? They want more from their life. They want to create bigger things, but they're maybe afraid to start or they don't know where to start.

[Cristiana Figueres]

Start with yourself. That is a really important, important step. Because honestly, it's just so disingenuous to go out there and want to have a kind of a change that is inconsistent with who you are as a person. It just doesn't cut it. And people can tell the difference. They can tell, you know, if somebody's just out there as an actor, as an actress, as performing, or whether there's something genuine there. So my first point is make sure that the change that you want is one that really comes from the very, very root of you and that you're living consistent consistently with that. Because otherwise it's just two faced and you lose all integrity. So start with yourself and then find kindred souls. Because there are some things that we can do on our own, but mostly we can't. I mean, Ilana, even losing weight, which you think, okay, that is completely under your control. No, you need people to help you, to keep you accountable. I just use it as a stupid example. But the point is, we are social beings. We are not little islands onto ourself. And we tend to think that, you know, me, you know, strong, smart, outgoing, whatever I can do. No, whenever you think I can do, ask yourself, are you sure? Are you sure that you can do it alone? Or would it actually be more effective, more efficient, longer term, and above all, more fun if you do it with others?

[Ilana Golan]

And again, we see it also in Leap Academy. We see it for myself. I need my own community of CEOs, building some big things so that I can talk to them and create my own community. The people that are in Leap Academy, they need the people around them. So I can totally relate because I can always go faster and higher when I have a full network by my side to help me out. If you go alone, otherwise.

[Cristiana Figueres]

Absolutely.

[Ilana Golan]

So Christiana, where do they find more information? Obviously they can listen to the podcast, they can read the book, they can look you up. What else?

[Cristiana Figueres]

Well, what is exciting is that soon, and I don't know how soon soon is, but certainly over the next month or two, I will be launching a digital archive. And the digital archive will bring together all of my thinking, all of my work in hopefully a very digestible way and an a powered way. So you can go in there and you can play with AI inside the archive and find a whole bunch of information that maybe even I did not put in there. It's just one of my projects right now to put it all together so it actually look, it's not multicolored. It looks like you're walking into an archive. But it's going to be very, very easy to use and I hope fun. And it is just spread with all kinds of magical little tricks in there and music and different colors that you can put in yourself that you can choose. And so it's a fun project soon to come out.

[Ilana Golan]

Amazing. Oh my God, you're so unstoppable.

[Cristiana Figueres]

Thank you so much. Really fun conversation. Ilana. Thank you and congratulations for Leap Academy. You are supporting so many people. Really wonderful.

[Ilana Golan]

Thank you. I hope you enjoyed this as much as I did. If you did, please share it with friends now. Also, if you're feeling stuck or simply want more from your own career, watch this 30 minute free [e-mail] training. That's leapacademy.com training. See you in the next episode of the Leap Academy with Ilana Golan show.