Introducing LAIN’s new Chair of the Climate Leadership Group, Natalie Isaac

To mark London Climate Action Week 2025 taking place this week (21 -29 June), we put Natalie Isaac, Head of Sustainability at University of London and new Chair of LAIN’s Climate Leadership Working Group in the hot seat for this latest Q&A.

Here she explains how an inspiring talk with an environmentalist led her to her choosing a career in sustainability and what her vision is for LAIN’s members to collaborate on and where they can have the most impact.

Can you tell us a bit about your role at the University of London?

The Sustainability Team’s aim is to embed sustainability in every part of our institution – from the heart of Bloomsbury to our global academic partnerships - and I am lucky enough to lead that small, but mighty, team. My role is to ensure the processes, plans, policies and resources are in place to allow UoL to reach that potential through fostering sustainable communities and education; providing responsible operations, services and procurement; supporting biodiversity and our green estate; and taking action on climate mitigation, adaptation and resilience. An absolutely key part of our approach is to ensure stakeholders understand and want to be part of the solution, and as such, a lot of my and the team’s focus is on getting that engagement part right.

How did you end up working in sustainability and what do you love most about your job?

To be honest – I got lucky.  I was in the final few weeks of my Science and Commerce Degree and was working part-time as a research assistant at university (Wellington, NZ), when one of the faculty mentioned an interesting afternoon talk. The guest speaker was Hunter Lovins, an American environmentalist and co-founder of ‘The Rocky Mountain Institute’. Hunter was wearing their trademark cowboy hat and described this “new / emerging area of study” 😊called ‘Sustainability’. I was so relieved because after four years of study, I was none-the-wiser as to what I wanted to ‘do’ for a career.  After hearing Hunter describe opportunities in sustainability, I knew right away that this was the direction for me.

How have you found your first few weeks as chair of LAIN’s Climate Leadership working group?

It is a joy to work with the GLA team who manage the working group, and who have gone out of their way to help me get up-to-speed and settle into the role. A great deal of work goes on behind the scenes to engage with anchor institutions, find out what support we require and how we can work collaboratively to accelerate climate action in London. It is exciting to be a small part of that great work.

What do you hope the Climate Leadership working group will achieve, and why is it important to Anchor Institutions to come together on this topic?

My hope is that we take advantage of the huge positive impact anchor institutions can make towards accelerating efforts to tackle the climate and ecological emergencies facing London. There genuinely is so much potential for the whole to be greater than the sum of its parts when it comes to what member organisations can collectively achieve. Coming together as a group there are opportunities to accelerate uptake and amplification of important work already being carried out in our city.

What’s one climate podcast, article, book or documentary that’s inspired you recently?

As a working mum, I tend to use my limited ‘down time’ to stay away from anything that leans too closely to ‘shop talk’, and have a break from the sustainability world.  Having said that,  for good reads that touch on science themes, I’d highly recommend The Baroque Cycle by Neil Stephenson and Terra Ignota by Ada Palmer.

London Climate Action week, the largest city-wide climate festival in Europe, is fast approaching! Which part of the week are you looking forward to most?

Coming from a cities background, I’m always interested in the intersection of opportunities available between city planning, academic research and practitioners to work together to make a difference at the local and then, ideally the wider international level – so the ‘Climate Innovation Forum’ is something I’m certainly looking forward to.  I’m also interested in how we can better engage those who are interested in finding out more about climate action but aren’t sure how or where to start.  Events like ‘Game on: Playing for the Planet’, where they aim to explore how “gamification is being used to drive engagement, imagination, and participation in climate solutions” are an important way to understand how we can best reach and engage with these people.