Strength in Unity - Reece Proudfoot on Regeneration, Language and Making What's Coming Next

Today’s guest is Reece Proudfoot, a co-founder and director at Regen Labs. I’ve known Reece for nearly a decade - and he’s always struck me as someone at the forefront of attempting to organise and reform systems and structures. Across his career in campaigning, not for profit innovation and now at Regen Labs, Reece is someone who believes deeply in the power and potential of collectives of caring, passionate people who are given enough form and structure to identify and grow the opportunities and approaches they want in their lives to allow for them to flourish. It’s challenging work, but at a time when it’s easier to throw stones and detach from others, being the glue that binds is essential.

I wanted to chat with Reece because as someone who’s been in and around sustainability for two decades I’m sick and tired of seeing more of the same. More reports, more frameworks, more ESG data platforms, the seemingly forever need for more data to get on with action. Reece over his career and now at Regen Labs is not interested in talking about what’s needed, but finding and surfacing those who are doing it differently. Who are balancing and delivering organisations and economies that seek to contemplate and pay regard to decent and meaningful work, ecological restoration while contributing to society and being a part of something local. It’s hard enough trying to start and run a business in this country - 20% of small businesses fail in their first year and that number rises to 60% over the life of the first five years. Entrepreneurship and innovation are precarious occupations, far from the domain of where most sustainability rhetoric and expectations emanate - large corporates with established products, capital, customers and brands. Regen Labs is seeking to support and lift up the economies of regional places - doing real work with real people in real places for real outcomes. Definitely not easy, far more challenging then the cycles of ESG disclosures and rhythms of planning and thinking about all the work that could get done.

I loved this conversation. What I wanted was the inspiration for how it can be different, and Reece gave me that. From the necessity of courage in action - beyond the hollowness of hope in words - to the protocols and methods he and the team work with and offer real help to people and places to evolve and contribute in ways that are necessary and valuable to them. We get into the necessity for faith, patience, tolerance, humility and service. How building connections and bridging divide is possible and what rewards lay on the other side of trying to and actually delivering tangible experiences and optimism for those looking to not read about or think about being the change, but doing it themselves.

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