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Our Black Swan Year

March 31, 2021

· 2 min read
The Elemental Team

Has it really been a year since the world turned inside out? After we hosted our final in-person event — our CEO and Leadership Summit with 80+ company builders in Hana, Maui — and plunged into a new reality, we didn’t know what would come next, but we knew our mission couldn’t wait.

That time since March 2020 sometimes feels like a single endless day. Other times it feels like a decade. All of the time it feels like “normal” is both out of reach (how do we account for so many missing hugs, shared meals, and group laughs?) and relentless familiar (did I really wear this same t-shirt every day this week?).

What even is normal? In our work fighting climate change and social inequity, the past year has been a stark reminder that normal isn’t something to regain. Rather, it’s something to redesign. Can we make decarbonization and electrification, uplifting people and planet, and combating social and environmental injustice so normal that our vision of a clean, equitable future becomes real?

While it’s impossible to sum up the entirety of the past year, we’re releasing our annual Impact Report to memorialize some of the stepping stones we placed on our march to redesign the systems at the root of climate change. We hope you’ll read, share, and reflect — and then reach out to engage and get to work with us.

We also used the last year to reflect and strategize, test and iterate. You’ve seen some of that come to light this year (including Elemental Connect and the launch of our Global Track), and you’ll be seeing much more over the next few weeks.