Shared Ground
Shared Ground is a podcast that explores resilience & grit, generosity & kindness. We start with true stories of kindness and support during and after the 2025 LA wildfires.
Shared Ground
Episode 16: Quick Hits - Stop Defending the Past and Start Imagining the Future with Nuin-Tara Key
What if resilience is not a finish line, but a way of moving through the world?
In this episode, Nuin-Tara Key, Executive Director of Programs at California Forward, shares a sharp reframe on resilience and adaptation. She unpacks why these terms are often confused - and why that confusion holds us back.
Adaptation is about responding to specific climate impacts. Resilience, she explains, is something deeper: an ongoing process of learning, connection, and evolution. It is not a box to check or a one-time investment. It is about building communities that can adapt, thrive, and imagine new futures in the face of change.
Nuin-Tara also speaks candidly about her own sources of hope. From the creativity and compassion of people doing this work every day, to the freeing realization that we do not need to exhaust ourselves defending outdated systems - we can invest in building what comes next.
California Forward’s work reflects this mindset: advancing regional resilience while centering equity and sustainable local economies.
This conversation will change how you think about climate work, resilience, and what it means to show up for your community.
🎧 Listen in. If it sparks something, share it with someone who would benefit from this perspective.
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Shared Ground is produced by Sean Knierim and Allan Marks. Thanks to Cory Grabow, Kara Poltor, Corey Walles (from The Recording Studio) for your support in launching this effort.
For more stories of resilience & rebuilding, kindness & generosity: visit shared-ground.com and subscribe to Sean's substack. We invite you to share your own stories of resilience at the Shared Ground website - whether in response to the January fires in LA or other situations.
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Thank you so much for joining me here. Could you introduce yourself and tell me what you do for a living?
Nuin-Tara Key:Absolutely. I'm Nuin- Tara Key. I'm Executive Director of Programs at an organization called California Forward, and we're a statewide nonprofit that really is working to build a new California economy, which is one that's sustainable, inclusive and resilient, and what that means for us is we work to enable and build capacity across all regions of the state to really advance policy, but also action on the ground that helps communities whether changing climate help them transition to a new economy that is inclusive and abundant and one that really helps meet the needs of our future.
Sean Knierim:Great. We're here at this event today talking about a resilient rebuild in Altadena and the Palisades and then wider geographies, and we've talked a lot about the word resilience, but I'm not sure if we've come up with a definition yet collectively. So for you, how would you define resilience or resiliency?
Nuin-Tara Key:Yeah, I love that question and it's one I actually love to start with because I have worked in climate resilience and adaptation here in California for just about a decade, and I think it's really important to understand what is it that we are building towards.
Nuin-Tara Key:What is it that we are actually talking about and for me, I like to start with the distinction, but also relationship, between adaptation and resilience. They often get used interchangeably, but in my mind, they're not the same to adapt to a changing climate, one we are all living in and living with every day, and resilience, to me, is not a static outcome. It's a process. It is a process of learning how to live in a very different world, but one in which communities can thrive. People can live in a community, and really, I think one of the important things around how we define resilience is, again, not thinking of it as a static outcome where, if we invest one set of money or a certain dollar amount, we will get there and it will be done. It is a collective and community process, and one that we're living in, hopefully to get to.
Sean Knierim:I love that answer and the dynamism in situations where there's not enough information yet to even decide on, and then as we're learning how to move with others that are experiencing their own worlds. So, in adaptation, in your work, in resilience, where are you finding hope? Where do you find the hope to keep chugging along on this journey?
Nuin-Tara Key:Yeah, I find hope in a few ways. One is I just inspired every day by the compassion and care that people bring to the work in resilience and adaptation, and I just count myself so lucky every day that I get to work with some of the most brilliant, creative and compassionate people who are trying to find solutions to a problem that we've never dealt with before. So that brings me hope and also fuels me to get up in the morning and keep doing this. The other thing and it may not sound like I'm starting with hope or where I start with, but I will come around to your question is in this moment in time where I think we're feeling so many different forces and pressures and you know whether it's kind of in a political or economic and in a climate environment, I think one of the things that brings me hope is.
Nuin-Tara Key:A few months ago, I was talking to a very good colleague and we were kind of trying to figure out how do we step out of this existential moment we're in. It was post-LA wildfires. It's in the midst of all of what is happening in our country and the divides, and we both recognized that to find hope means we can't just defend what was we actually need to think and reimagine of what could be, and so that really was both a helpful frame, but it also was freeing for me because I didn't have to find a strategy to try to defend the way things were. There are things we need to preserve and sustain, but actually that freedom to think about what is a vision for the future that we want and what is the world we want to live in and I think a lot of people are kind of coming up to that same place where actually what we need to do is chart a vision for the world we want to live in, and that brings me hope.
Sean Knierim:That's wonderful. Thank you so much for spending a few minutes talking today.
Nuin-Tara Key:Thank you so much.