1634 – Saving The Planet with Written Progress’ Megan Mayzelle

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0:58with us right now Megan Mazel Megan you are the founder and executive director of written progress you're found on the web at writtenprogress.com Megan thank you so much for joining us thanks Josh it's great to be here with you and share with us the work that you do at written progress? Yeah. So there are probably more than 700 organizations in the world trying to solve the climate crisis. And they rely on documented proof of work to get funding, to attract talent, to shift policy, to speak to their stakeholders. They need grant applications, policy briefs, white papers to do all those things.

1:40But as you can imagine, they're overstretched, They're pulled in a bunch of different directions, and they have a really hard time backing up and looking at their work from the perspective of somebody who isn't as familiar with it as they are. So that's what we do. We take all of those documents off their desk. We write their grant proposals. We write their applications. We write their policy briefs. We write their academic manuscripts, their articles, their white papers, so that they have that documented proof of this is what we're doing. This is our position on the problem. This is how we're moving it forward.

2:14This is why you should trust us. This is why you should support us. And we are so thrilled to see our clients making progress on this big, complicated issue that affects all of us. Yeah, yeah. And how did you find yourself in this work? What were you doing before? Well, I studied climate and community development, and I started freelancing several years ago with the hope of being able to be location independent. And I realized I had more writing skill than most scientists and that I understood what they were trying to say and I could help them say it better. So I positioned myself as a freelance writer in that space and had so much demand that I was flooded and just didn't know what to do with all of it.

3:03Established a business just so I could hire one or two people to help me with my workload. And that has organically evolved over the years. When a client says, do you have someone that can help me do this in French? Or do you have someone who knows something about biodiversity and conservation? I would say, no, but I will find them. And so my mission has been going out into the world and finding people who have a high level of scientific understanding in the space and also are great communicators. and I bring them onto the team and we create a great culture within our organization. And we're so excited about serving this clientele as well.

3:43Yeah. So, I mean, you are helping save the planet, Megan. That's our mission. That's exactly what we're trying to do. You know, and this is kind of interesting because, you know, when we think about, you know, groups or, you know, companies or folks that are doing work out there, you know, there's a lot of ancillary or, you know, for folks that, you know, let's say you provide, you know, web development services or SEO, you can participate. Can you talk maybe just generally about help someone from the outside understand, I don't want to call it an industry, but it's this sector anyway of companies that are quite focused on that.

4:32Who falls into that bucket? And all of these companies that are doing this work and affecting policy and making changes and encouraging cleanup and better standards, you need a lot of support around that. Can you kind of give us a peek into this entire ecosystem? Yeah, you know, the climate sector, as it's called, is in a lot of ways like every other sector in that it needs all the same sorts of skill sets and types of jobs. There are salespeople, there are product dev people, there are coders, there are managers, There are supply chain logisticians. There are writers in the climate space. And many of them don't have expertise in climate because they have colleagues that are climate scientists or engineers.

5:23Much like, let's say you could work for the educational system as a software manager. You don't have to know anything about teaching. You need to know about software. So in the same sense, climate encompasses a wide, wide, wide variety of skill sets. The only thing that they really share is that mission alignment. And so you point out something that I've been seeing in the field. There are more and more businesses like mine that filter who they want to work with and who they want to serve based on their mission. And in fact, I could be writing grant proposals or policy briefs for anyone and any cause.

6:06You know, I'm a writer. And I've chosen to do this for a specific subset of clients who are focused on a climate mission. Yeah. And so what would be some examples of organizations that you've worked with and how did you step in and what did that look like when you were working with them? Yeah, great question. We have a suite of maybe about 10 service areas where we get a lot of demand. I've mentioned a few already, writing policy briefs, white papers, grant proposals, articles and blogs, research reports. Another thing we do a lot of is developing a communication strategy for an organization. We also do quite a bit of project management.

6:54We help scientists publish their novel findings in academic journals. And then the last thing we do is the only in-person thing that we do, and that is write shops. And that is for teams who want to up-level their own writing skills and be able to more quickly produce their own written proof of work, their own drafts that they can move forward without a lot of the anxiety that typically comes with writing for a lot of people. Now, who do we serve with those services? Some of our most committed clients, I'll say, the ones that come back again and again, the World Bank, United Nations, the SIOT International Research Center.

7:43We work with the Carbon Business Council. We also work with small startups that maybe you've never heard of, like Green River, who does software for public good. And we are allies, for example, of 1.5, which is a team of consultants working in climate. Yeah. So I would imagine, well, the question, you may have heard this over the past number of months, is can I use tools like AI and ChatGPT to help write policy briefs? Yeah, you know, this has been, I think for a lot of writers, GPT and other AI language models have felt threatening. You know, it's going to take our job. for us it has felt like an opportunity because so uh stay with me here for a second i'm gonna no i'm with you i'm nodding my head yeah it sounds to me it's it feels like like okay now we have calculators and so folks that were getting paid to scratch out you know calculations previously now can turn in their work a lot faster i thought that's my observation sorry i didn't mean to interrupt that rude of me go please no that is a fantastic metaphor um so gpt is trained on everything that was on the internet through September of 2021, a lot of what we're writing, or maybe all of it, has been discovered or created since then, meaning it didn't exist.

9:17It doesn't exist for GPT. And maybe it hasn't even been published on the internet anywhere yet. You know, we're writing something for the first time to share it with the world. For example, a scientist's new findings on climate change. And so until the day that the AI model can go out and observe the world and write about that, it's not taking our jobs, it's helping us do our jobs better. You know, we can employ GPT for a lot of the easier work, and then focus our time and our energy on wordsmithing, on crafting, on up-leveling. So the client is getting even more bang for the same buck. Yeah, well, that's exciting.

10:03So who listening to us, Megan, should be reaching out and connecting with you? So anybody working in the climate space, and particularly anyone who's leading a team working on climate action, I would love to chat with you just in general, hear about your work. That is really important for me to continue to understand the needs in this rapidly evolving space. And if you have needs for creating documented proof of work, I would love to work with you. We also do quite a bit of communication in terms of articles that can help our clients uplevel their own work without necessarily hiring us. So it might be worth checking out our website or our LinkedIn.

10:44Yeah. And I'm curious, you know, your observation or your standpoint, you know, over the next 10 years, what are you most excited about when it comes to climate action? Gosh, that's such a great question. You know, I've been in this space for close to 15 years. And for most of it, I was a pessimist, you know, I felt like I needed to work on this problem. But I also didn't think we were going to make it. It felt like we, it was probably inevitable that we were going to be dealing with really extreme effects of climate change. In the past three to four years, my position has shifted completely. And that is due to one thing.

11:24There has been a huge number of incredible brains pouring into the space. A lot of people are leaving organizations, for example, Silicon Valley, Stripes and Microsofts and Hewlett Packard to work in climate and people are leaving organizations like McKenzie to work in climate. You know, we're getting these extremely successful, extremely developed professionals moving into the climate space and saying, I'm going to solve this problem. And that is the number one factor for success. That makes me think that we are going to solve it. And I'm pretty excited to see where they go with it. Yeah. I mean, you know, as much as we hope, you know, the government is going to take the lead on everything.

12:11I think the thing, again, it's like, I'm heartened by those, like the people, right? And the people that are, you know what, we've come up with some pretty cool stuff over here. I think we could use what we've come up with for good. And so, you know, it's like, you've got, you know, just populations and you've got corporations and just groups of people. They're like, we can, if we put our heads together, I think we can solve this. You know, it's like, I'll never forget, I got to attend a taping of the Oprah show and Bono, it was, was on the episode. It was awesome. But he said, you know, and he was talking about poverty, he was talking about, you know, his organization one and so forth.

12:53And he said, you know, I think that, that we'll get to a point where we'll look at, you know, lack and poverty in our communities. And I think we'll get to a point sometime where we'll look back and say, how did we let that go on so long? These are not really complicated problems to solve. All it requires is everybody just doing a little bit. And that right there will likely solve 80 % of the problem. You know, just this combined effort of everyone, you know, not changing their lives upside down, but being mindful and encouraging change, you know, that sort of thing. So, well, Megan, this is great.

13:32You know, it's not often that someone gets to take, you know, the things that they're so passionate about that they believe in that the, you know, the social good that they want to see in the world, and they are able to turn it into a very profitable company, which again, your website written progress.com on your website, what would you recommend people click on? What, how do they engage with you? What's the next step? Well, anyone who wants to chat can head over to the contact page and book a call with me. I love talking to anyone, especially people who are just moving into the climate space and trying to get their bearings.

14:06It's rapidly evolving. And I know that it was overwhelming for me, or it remains overwhelming because it moves so quickly. And so I love giving people some shortcuts or some insight, you know, to help them get started quickly. Like I said, we need minds here. We need big brains. So the more that can come and connect with us, the better. And if you just want to learn about us, I think the how it works page and our sustainability statement are pretty inspiring. Yeah. All right. Again, your website, writtenprogress.com, Megan Mazel, you're the executive director and founder. Megan, And it's been great having you.

14:48Thank you so much, Josh. It's been great being here with you.

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