Empowering Diverse Climate Talent

The EDICT (Empowering Diverse Climate Talent) Internship Program creates a diverse pipeline of talent for the climate sector, working with both employers to create inclusive cultures where new talent can succeed, and with youth to develop new skills and unlock powerful networks for rising leaders from traditionally excluded groups.

Despite a talent pool of future scientists, engineers, innovators, storytellers, and more who radiate talent and are eager to shape the growing green economy, the climate sector lacks the workforce pathways to prepare and onboard climate leaders from all backgrounds.

The International Labor Organization (ILO) estimates that by 2030, 24 million jobs worldwide could be created by the green economy alone. However, to solve climate change in an equitable fashion, we need to access a much greater diversity of thought and empower people with a wide variety of lived experiences.

Through EDICT, we’re creating opportunities for groups that have too often been intentionally and unintentionally excluded in our sector.

The EDICT Internship Program is a partnership between Clean Energy Leadership Institute (CELI), Elemental Excelerator, and FutureMap. We place a diverse pipeline of talent in 10-week paid internships at partner employers dedicated to solving climate change. It is designed to match employers from all corners of climate innovation — for-profits, nonprofits, funders, and government organizations — with aspiring climate professionals, college students, and recent graduates from traditionally excluded backgrounds.

Join us as we work towards an equitable, resilient, and decarbonized future and diversify the leadership of the climate and clean energy economy.

Read More About EDICT’s Origin Story

EDICT Pledge

Diversifying our climate workforce isn’t just about finding traditionally excluded talent, it’s also about creating welcoming environments for diverse talent to thrive. All employers participating in the Internship Program take the EDICT Pledge. The pledge is a commitment to create a diverse and inclusive climate workforce that centers equity. EDICT employers and any organization dedicated to diversifying our green economy can take the pledge by committing to the following:

1. Improving hiring & recruiting processes for intern, early, mid, and senior-level positions by ensuring a diverse candidate pipeline, a fair evaluation and interview process, competitive salary offers, and an inclusive onboarding process.
2. Ensuring equitable culture through mentorship, sponsorship, promotion, and retention of diverse talent at all levels, which can be achieved through leadership development, high employee engagement, and pay equity.
3. Engaging intentionally with external partners with diverse leadership and that value diversity, including but not limited to suppliers, leaders and community-based organizations from frontline communities, conference speakers, and customers.
4. Transforming the mindsets, biases, and behaviors of current and future staff by providing training, resources and support regarding inter-team conflict, difficult conversations, implicit bias, anti-racism and other related topics.
5. Using data to hold ourselves accountable and committing to transparency & publishing of that data so we can be the example of progress that we want to see in our sector.