This Friday, the world celebrates a staggering milestone as Sir David Attenborough turns 100. For a century, he has served as one of nature’s fiercest advocates and storytellers, moving from showing us the beauty of the wild to imploring us to take a stand for nature’s survival and our own. His career proves that meaningful change is rarely a sprint; it is a relentless, lifelong commitment to shifting how we see the world and our place in it. I, like so many other people, have been profoundly influenced by him and his passion for our natural world. Graduating from University of Cambridge, as he did, after studying Sustainability Leadership set my life and career on a new course.
Doubling Down on the Blueprint
I have been thinking a lot about this long-term perspective lately, especially with the publication of my latest feature in Smithsonian Magazine. I spent months diving into the story of Hammarby Sjöstad, a neighborhood in Stockholm that set out with intensely ambitious sustainability goals in the 1990s.
When the project initially fell short of its targets, the community did not abandon the mission. They doubled down. A group of neighbors got together and created ElectriCITY Innovation. They treated their failures as data points and evolved their strategy, eventually creating a circular-economy blueprint that cities across the globe can adapt and apply. You can read the full story of their decades-long journey toward resilience in my new feature:
Whether we look at Attenborough’s hundred-year legacy or Stockholm’s thirty-year urban experiment, the lesson for our own communities remains clear: sustainability requires the stamina to stay in the game when things get difficult.
Celebrate the storytellers: Take a moment this Friday to watch a piece of Attenborough’s work and reflect on how his perspective shaped your own understanding of nature.
Audit your long game: Look at a sustainability project in your own neighborhood that feels stalled. Instead of viewing a missed goal as a failure, ask how you can double down and pivot the strategy like Stockholm did.
Share the blueprint: When you find a solution that works, document it and share it. Evolution happens when we learn from each other’s experiments, failures, and triumphs. Sustainability is not a one-and-done task. It’s a process of continuous improvement.
Nature and our cities both require us to think in decades, not just days. To honor Dr. David Attenborough and the beings with whom we share this planet, let’s keep building for the next century.
The short of it:
Writer. Health, education, and art advocate. Theater and film producer. Visual artist. Product geek. Proud alumnae of the University of Pennsylvania (BA) and the Darden School of Business at the University of Virginia (MBA). Inspired by ancient wisdom & modern tech. Proliferator of goodness. Opener of doors. Friend to animals. Fan of creative work in all its wondrous forms. I use my business skills to create passion projects that build a better world. I’ve been called the happiest New Yorker, and I try hard to live up to that title every day.
The long of it:
My career has stretched across Capitol Hill, Broadway theatre, education, nonprofit fundraising, health and wellness, and Fortune 500 companies in retail, media, entertainment, technology, and financial services. I’ve been a product developer and product manager, theater manager, strategic consultant, marketer, voice over artist, , teacher, and fundraiser. I use my business and storytelling to support and sustain passion projects that build a better world. In every experience, I’ve used my sense of and respect for elegant design to develop meaningful products, services, programs, and events.
While building a business career, I also built a strong portfolio as a journalist, novelist, freelance writer, interviewer, presenter, and public speaker. My writing has appeared in The Washington Post, The Huffington Post, PBS.org, Boston.com, Royal Media Partners publications, and The Motley Fool on a wide range of topics including business, technology, science, health, education, culture, and lifestyle. I have also been an invited speaker at SXSW, Teach for America, Avon headquarters, Games for Change, NYU, Columbia University, Hunter College, and the Alzheimer’s Foundation of America. The first book in my young adult book series, Emerson Page and Where the Light Enters, was acquired by a publisher and launched in November 2017. I’m currently working on the second book in the series.
A recovering multi-tasker, I’m equally at home in front of my Mac, on my yoga mat, walking my rescue dog, Phineas, traveling with a purpose, or practicing the high-art of people watching. I also cut up small bits of paper and put them back together as a collage artist.
My company:
I’m bringing together all of my business and creative career paths as the Founder of Double or Nothing Media:
• I craft products, programs, and projects that make a difference;
• I build the business plans that make what I craft financially sustainable;
• I tell the stories that matter about the people, places, and products that inspire me.
Follow my adventures on Twitter at https://twitter.com/christanyc and Instagram at https://instagram.com/christarosenyc.
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Christa Avampato 