“The air here always tastes like chalk.” I would joke to myself, tightening my N95 mask as I stepped into the narrow, dingy lanes of Chattarpur, where I taught my young, passionate dreamers. The distinct, metallic taste in the air of our classroom was a perpetual reminder of the environmental toll we were paying. Even with the windows sealed tight, a fine layer of dust seemed to settle on everything. Nearly half the class was missing because the heat wave had pushed temperatures past what their homes and their bodies could withstand. Later, I circled a familiar name on the attendance sheet: Aamir. It wasn’t the first time he’d been absent. His absences always spiked during stretches of poor air quality, when Delhi’s pollution became a suffocating, visible smog. When he did attend, his tiny chest strained with each breath, his focus splintered by the wheeze of pollution-exacerbated asthma.
My energy went into building resources, shaping curriculum, and strengthening pedagogical practices to ensure every student in my classroom had a fair shot at success. But our attendance spreadsheet couldn’t capture what was actually happening: learning was competing with a changing climate, fragile infrastructure, and the uneven burdens faced by low-income communities. At the time, I believed I was fighting only for educational equity. I didn’t yet have the language for climate justice. My students, though, were already living its consequences. Aamir’s health crisis was a direct result of failed policy and systemic injustice, showing that educational equity is fundamentally inseparable from climate justice. If this truth lives in our children’s lives, what does it mean for an entire generation of professionals in law, policy, advocacy, and education who will inherit these intersecting crises? How can we equip them to navigate such complex challenges? These urgent, personal questions inspired the vision for the Planet Blue Forum: Climate Justice & Careers event I organized.
To explore these challenges, we gathered students and leaders for a cross-disciplinary panel discussion with Professors dr. shakara tyler, Oday Salim, and Dr. Jalonne L. White-Newsome. The forum brought together students from multiple disciplines to examine justice-centered approaches that can transform policy, environmental leadership, and educational practice. Panelists shared stories from the front lines of policy, organizing, law, and community work, grounding abstract challenges in lived experience. Conversations were candid, hopeful, and deeply relational. What became reaffirmed was that meaningful change requires professionals to dismantle siloed structures and navigate intersections guided by deep relationships, humane values, and a commitment to justice.
From these conversations, three guiding principles that can shape how we approach climate justice and careers moving forward emerged:
Principle 1: People Before Profit
At the heart of justice-centered work is a simple yet radical idea: decisions must prioritize people over profit. In practice, this means that every policy, every program, and every professional action must rigorously ask: “Who does this serve? And, critically, who might be harmed?”
Consider the example of a policymaker designing new environmental regulations. They cannot focus solely on minimizing economic disruption for the industry. They must instead weigh the catastrophic impacts on the communities, often low-income communities of color, that are most vulnerable to pollution, flooding, or heat extremes. Similarly, a corporate leader tasked with sustainability must balance business interests with equitable outcomes for workers, local residents, and the surrounding ecosystems.
Dr. White-Newsome brought this principle to life, drawing on her experience as the nation’s first Federal Chief Environmental Justice Officer. She shared powerful examples of how technical solutions, deployed without a justice lens, have historically led to negative, disproportionate impacts on low-income and Indigenous communities. She emphasized that centering people, especially those historically marginalized, is the only path that produces solutions that are genuinely transformative and truly systemic. When we center people, we design work that not only uplifts communities but sustains impact across generations.
Principle 2: Relationships as Currency
When a crisis hits, our greatest resource is each other. Imagine a lawyer preparing a case against a factory polluting a low-income neighborhood. Their legal strategy alone isn’t enough. They need community organizers who understand the neighborhood’s daily realities, who can surface the impacts on residents and the demands shaped by lived experience. They also need policymakers who can turn those community truths into durable, systemic protections that outlast any single lawsuit for a sustainable, long-term shift.
Without that foundation of mutual trust, any professional intervention, no matter how brilliant, will likely fail because it excludes the people it is meant to serve.
dr. tyler, whose roots are deep in education, environmental justice, and community organizing, emphasized this point with piercing clarity: “Relationships within the justice-oriented framework are the currency.”
This currency is hard-won. dr. tyler noted that coalition building often requires the uncomfortable work of engaging people and institutions that seem opposed to our aims, as shifting mindsets is essential for collective liberation. Yet, our foundation remains humane and steadfast: Love is the basis of change-making. This principle is about more than networking; it means investing in humility, listening, and mutual strengthening across partnerships. This principle allows us to move from generating abstract, isolated solutions to developing sustainable, collective impact.
Principle 3: Imagination as Strategy
Addressing the intersecting crises of climate and equity demands more than reacting to damage; it requires the creative capacity to envision, design, and build entirely new systems, solutions, and partnerships. Consider a city facing chronic heat waves in its low-income neighborhoods, where infrastructure is fragile. This strategy calls for bringing together diverse stakeholders— perhaps, city planners, public health experts, energy utilities, and most crucially, community organizers— to reimagine a new reality. This model relies on harnessing the expertise of each diverse stakeholder in fulfilling a sustainable and holistic vision.
This principle highlights that sustainable change in our careers is driven by the courage to freedom-dream a new reality and the commitment to interdisciplinary problem-solving. We cannot be bogged down by the current state of policy or infrastructure. We must use our imagination to chart new pathways toward justice.
Professor Salim, a leading voice in environmental law, articulated this strategic vision during the panel. He often finds that his students, unburdened by years of working within existing legal structures, provide the fresh perspectives he needs to break through jaded assumptions and methods. He reminded the audience that a crisis is inherently generative. As Dr. White-Newsome reiterated, “Change and crisis give us an opportunity to do better.” This sentiment echoes Audre Lorde’s that the master’s tools will never dismantle the master’s house. To build a just future, we must commit to using new tools, new perspectives, new legal frameworks, and new educational approaches. Moments of disruption can be leveraged to reimagine the very structures that have historically failed communities.
By thinking beyond traditional silos, interventions can be both effective in the short term and resilient in the long term. Imagination is not a luxury; it is a strategy for impact. This principle gives us the agency to see ourselves not as inheritors of a broken system, but as builders of a just and sustainable one, turning creative vision into actionable strategy.
Invitation Forward
These principles were not abstract ideas for the students in the room; they came alive in the questions they asked, the discussions they led at their tables, and the connections they made with panelists. Students were compelled to think through how to collaborate across disciplines, center justice in decision-making, and envision creative approaches to real-world challenges. There was so much curiosity, zeal, and determination in the room. This is the generation poised to lead. But this work is not just for students; it belongs to everyone.
We encourage you to use these three principles as a framework for your own action:
- Reflect: How can we apply Relationships as Currency in our current work or study, seeking out partners from outside our traditional silo?
- Re-evaluate: When making decisions in our community or professional sphere, are we prioritizing People Before Profit?
- Reimagine: What are the structures we need to let go of, leveraging Imagination as Strategy to build resilient solutions instead?
The conversation around climate justice and careers must continue to grow and deepen. We invite you to join the movement:
- Continue the Dialogue: In your classrooms and circles. Share your thoughts and questions in the comments below or reach out to us directly.
- Get Involved: Explore resources, join discussion groups, and sign up for updates on Planet Blue initiatives. You can also seek out local opportunities to influence policy and sustainability, such as the City of Ann Arbor Sustainability Commission and other local commissions.
- Attend Future Forums: Look for announcements about upcoming events that connect leaders and students on the front lines of justice-centered work.
The future of environmental and educational equity is something we build together. We look forward to building it with you.
Chesta Bisht was a PBA intern and the organizer of the Planet Blue Forum: Climate Justice and Careers. She graduated from UM with an MA in Educational Studies (Educational Equity, Justice, and Social Transformation).