Ullis Petersson – Climate Coaches Sweden
Ullis Petersson, was a typical middle-income mother working in HR, with a life like many others until 2018. That summer, Sweden faced an unprecedented heatwave, marked by wildfires across the country. Pregnant with her second child, Ullis was deeply shaken by a news report warning about climate tipping points. It was at that point when Ullis realised the urgent reality of global warming.
“I must have heard this information several times before,” says Ullis. “But it was then and there that it really hit home.”
She fell into a prolonged period of deep fear for her children’s safety. She felt alienated from her previous life. Motivated by a desperate need not to be alone with these feelings, Ullis founded a local climate group within her community.
For the next four years, driven by climate anxiety, Ullis dedicated herself to activism up to the point of the 2022 Swedish elections. The results of that vote proved dire. Sweden was to witness a significant rollback of its climate policies, as attested by several non-partisan observers.
Following the election, it felt as if numerous climate activists in Sweden were in mourning. All their hard work seemed to have yielded no result. The need for rest and reflection was paramount. And for Ullis, it signaled the need for a new approach.
This was the moment when she came across the book ‘Climate Change Coaching: The Power of Connection to Create Climate Action’ written by Charly Cox and Sarah Flynn. Ullis enrolled in the Climate Change Coaching Mastery programme, where she found in-depth knowledge and expertise addressing many of the challenges she had encountered in her non-profit climate work.
Having earlier turned to a psychiatrist to help with her existential fears, only to be met with blunt insensitivity, the discovery of a supportive environment where feelings were normalised proved invaluable.
Through the climate movement in Sweden, Ullis met Jens Malmström and Charlotte Conrad who were offering climate coaching on a non-profit basis. In 2023, Jens, who had taken the Climate Change Coaching programme the previous year, invited a group of coaches to an inspirational weekend to explore the tools and approaches of climate change coaching in Järna, Stockholm. The embryo of Climate Coaches Sweden / www.klimatcoacherna.se was born.
“The single most valuable thing for me with the approach of Climate Change Coaching is the emphasis on relationships,” says Ullis. “Not only with others, but also with oneself, and with the crisis itself. So many people today seem to have lost the connection to their inner self. And without that in place, we will never connect to the world around us the way we need and feel motivated to fight for it.”
Today, this group forms a team of curious coaches from different backgrounds who share the belief that climate change coaching is a pivotal tool in the green transition. The team wants to bring climate change coaching to a broader spectrum of individuals, teams and organisations searching for the best way to contribute. They have launched a joint website and have already participated in a joint non-profit venture for people working on ‘The Global Goals and the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development’.
The Climate Change Coaching Mastery programme has offered them transformational tools and a deep understanding of how to help people navigate through the inevitable change that will affect our whole society.
The climate coaches / klimatcoacherna.se also wants to offer a network for other climate-conscious coaches in Sweden and has launched a growing community via the Climate Coaching Alliance (CCA), under the lead of Eva-Marie Rödström. As coaches who are themselves deeply aware of the climate crisis, CCA Sweden wants to offer a supportive context in which coaches can learn and gain strength.
The team is convinced that the approach of climate change coaching will be crucial and much needed as the climate crisis unfolds and more people, organisations and communities are affected.
“We are at a breaking point in which humanity rapidly needs to solve a gigantic and existential problem to which we ourselves have contributed,” concludes Liselotte Bergenzaun Abel, one of the coaches on the team. “Understanding the causes and consequences of the climate crisis in depth affects our way of thinking and being, a process that may cause strong emotions. Climate coaching provides the opportunity to meet this challenge with awareness, responsibility and vulnerability.”
Zoe Greenwood
Zoe co-founded the Climate Change Coaches in 2018 after years of observing how facts and knowledge do not influence change at scale. She spent more than 22 years working in the environment sector, starting her career with the international environmental NGO, Earthwatch working across learning and development, fundraising, field management and communications. Here, she built and delivered award winning climate leadership programmes for multinational companies and collaborated with climate scientists in some of the most biodiverse regions of the world. Following this, Zoe led the growth of the environment practice area at the leadership consultancy, Oxford HR. Zoe is a trained coach, facilitator, NLP and MBTI practitioner with a postgraduate degree in Sustainable Leadership.