Educating the Next Generation to Lead on Sustainability and Climate Solutions
Q&A with David Jaffe and Margaret Wang-Aghania
David Jaffe is the Co-founder and Chair of SubjectToClimate (StC). A former Chair and CEO of Ascena Retail Group, he was a Harvard Advanced Leadership Initiative Fellow (2020) focused on climate literacy. David chairs FARE and serves on the boards of The Nature Conservancy’s Latin America Region, Jazz at Lincoln Center, and other nonprofits and private companies.
Margaret Wang-Aghania is the Co-founder and Executive Director of SubjectToClimate. A former teacher with a Masters in Education from the Harvard Graduate School of Education, she has led climate education initiatives and co-authored books on education reform. Previously, she was an EdTech product manager and co-founder of Novustack, supporting workforce development in Africa.
In a world facing the realities of sustainability and climate change, education remains one of society’s most powerful levers for action. David Jaffe and Margaret Wang-Aghania, co-founders of SubjectToClimate (StC), are leading this charge with a nonprofit that equips teachers to bring climate and sustainability literacy into every classroom. Through an innovative platform built with educators, sustainability-focused organizations, and states — and a vision to harness generative AI to further personalize and scale climate education — StC is transforming how students learn about sustainability and our shared responsibility for the planet.
Emily Chien: David, thanks for joining us today. SubjectToClimate emerged in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic. What inspired you and your co-founder, Margaret Wang, to pursue this innovative platform, StC, and what is it?
David Jaffe: Thank you, Emily, for shining the spotlight on our work with SubjectToClimate. Our mission is to empower all educators to easily and effectively teach about climate change, justice, and action. We envision a future where every child learns about climate change and sustainability and becomes a steward of our planet. Our digital platform, which we’ll describe, is designed to empower educators to deliver this.
What inspired me? I’ve always been interested in the environment, and my college degrees were in business and environmental studies. Over the years, I’ve remained involved in organizations like The Nature Conservancy, as I thought then and still do, that sustainability is one of the major issues of our generation. I believe that education is an important pathway; if you can educate the next generation so they grow up aware, I hope that many can become active in companies, become organizers, scientists, or researchers focused on this issue.
Before I got married, my now-wife, Helen, and I traveled to the Great Barrier Reef in Australia, which was just stunning. However, when we returned 20 years later, all the color was bleached and gone, and most of the fish had disappeared. Seeing the environment change so quickly and dramatically — that’s what really propelled me.
Chien: I’m delighted that Margaret can join us. What motivated you to dedicate the last five years to StC, and how did your training influence your work?
Margaret Wang: I am a teacher and a practitioner in education; it has always been important for me that my students learn in the context of what matters today. I saw in my classrooms how that made a difference in what my students chose to do in their community, in their choice of study, and later in their choice of careers.
So what really motivated me was that I want to see this type of education for all grade levels and all subjects. I have EdTech expertise, so I knew that technology would be key to scaling our work. While I was at the Harvard Graduate School of Education, David and I crossed paths, and we discovered we shared a deep conviction that education would be one of the key pillars to help address our sustainability challenges.
Chien: You have a big addressable market. In 2022, some 50 million children in the United States (U.S.) were enrolled in kindergarten through 12th grade. Driving this impact requires scale. What were the key milestones to build and scale StC?
Jaffe: In January 2021, I had just completed the Harvard Advanced Leadership Initiative Fellowship Program (ALI) where I focused on social impact in the environment and education. Margaret and I had been researching the StC concept, and we kicked off an effort to get a website up for the “back to school” 2021 fall season, right in the middle of the COVID-19 pandemic. We managed to cobble together the minimally viable product (MVP). But at that time, nobody would work for us full-time. Nobody believed we were going to be around in a week or a month or whatever. So we had friends and friends of friends help us out in different areas, and we got the website up and teachers liked it. We received good feedback, and viewership kept inching up.
As context, in June 2020, the State of New Jersey updated its teaching standards to incorporate climate change across all grades and all subject areas. It was the first U.S. state to do so — and this went into effect starting in the 2022–2023 school year. In fact, climate was not just a science topic but was to be integrated across all subjects. Well, we met the folks in New Jersey and demo’d our program, and they were impressed. So they asked us to build a private-label version for them, and we created the New Jersey Climate Education Hub, which was aligned to the state’s teaching standards. We included resources, training, materials, etc., all New Jersey-based.
Following this breakthrough with the State of New Jersey, the next summer a few more states came on board, then the next summer a few more states followed. Today, we work with nine states where we’ve created and support their educational hubs for climate and sustainability. These states are New Jersey, New York, California, Michigan, Connecticut, Oregon, Wisconsin, Maine, and Illinois.
Chien: What problem is StC trying to solve for in education and society at large, and can you describe your design principles for the platform?
Wang: Teachers face several key barriers: (1) time — finding the time and space in their curriculum and having time to prepare themselves; (2) overcoming how daunting it may be to teach something outside the curriculum and how to integrate it into the lessons; and (3) some teachers may not be an expert or confident in teaching sustainability and climate change subjects, even if they are passionate about them.
We designed StC to help teachers integrate climate education in a way that doesn’t add more to their plate. We’re taking advantage of the power of education, integrating sustainability and climate into students’ learning experiences to really make a difference in their studies, lives, communities, and, ultimately, our world. StC has its own professional development and teacher training to do this as well.
Jaffe: We continued to enrich and expand the StC program, starting with 500 content resources and now reaching over 3,000. Teachers can easily find materials to integrate into what they already teach. But some teachers still struggled to do so, so we heard their feedback and began developing exemplar lesson plans with standout teachers. All our resources and lesson plans are vetted by scientists for credible science and teacher-reviewed for student engagement.
Chien: What else is under the hood in the SubjectToClimate platform?
Wang: Our core StC platform is a free platform providing a teaching resource library (curated materials aligned to state teaching standards, enriched with tips, synopses, and science notes), teacher-designed materials showcasing how to easily integrate climate and sustainability into what they already teach, daily articles for students, professional learning opportunities, Climate Explainers developed in partnership with the MIT Environmental Solutions Initiative, and more.
Chien: What’s the best way to measure the success and impact of SubjectToClimate?
Wang: Great question. First, platform quality. We continually expand and enrich the StC platform and its capabilities, which now include 3,000+ resources, 110+ content partners, 330+ exemplar teaching lesson plans, 130+ professional learning opportunities, and 1,000+ news articles. We’ve worked hard and are very proud of the breadth, depth, and world-class quality of our platform that we have thoughtfully and carefully curated.
Second, are we reaching educators? Yes! We’ve had nearly one million unique visitors to our website since launch.
And third, what impact has their experience had? We do case studies to assess teacher confidence and how StC increases sustainability and climate education in the classroom. Results demonstrate improvements in knowledge, attitude, and agency among students when teachers use StC resources. Our approach is to elevate exemplary solutions, not reinvent them. Engaging, sharing, and amplifying what teachers are doing well is part of our DNA at StC. In addition, other studies show that if kids learn about sustainability and climate and their impact on it, they change their behavior and influence their households and families as well.
Chien: What barriers have you encountered in your journey to scale SubjectToClimate?
Jaffe: The single biggest issue we have in scaling is creating awareness. We have this wonderful website free for anyone — but you have to know about it. Without advertising, it’s challenging.
Wang: Yes, just because you build it doesn’t mean they will come! So we have a great “engine” — the state climate education hubs. Each state hub has a dedicated state lead, engaging schools and teachers, doing professional development, conferences, training, and other engagements. However, the current funding landscape is challenging. Federal education grants in this area are limited, and that’s trickled down to the state level. The demand for StC exists today, but financial support isn’t matching the interest level and need.
Jaffe: We’re budget-constrained, as we’d really want to do a lot more. We have a very small team that runs StC well. They are focused on state hubs, keeping the lights on, systems, content, and marketing, but we’re looking for that big donor hit to say, “Here’s a million dollars to build out further!” For example, we want to elevate StC’s impact to the next level and leverage artificial intelligence (AI) to make it happen.
Chien: How and where could StC exploit AI and generative AI (GenAI) to further StC’s mission?
Jaffe: Many school districts are purchasing some sort of AI tool for educators with functionality like lesson plan creation. At the same time, StC could personalize and/or prioritize teacher outputs leveraging relevant sustainability and climate concepts. Another idea is integrating with broader emerging educator platforms such as Magic School for Educators. For example, if I want to teach fractions, what if you could just say, “I’m a 4th grade math teacher. I want to teach a section on fractions, New Jersey standard 2.2, and I’d really like to talk about EVs. Can you build a lesson plan for that? And, by the way, build in that it’s in New Jersey, and also turn it into a video and create an assessment so I can test the students afterward?” I think that would be magic.
Wang: Our vision is to use AI to integrate sustainability context into universal tools, so whenever a district adopts an AI for lesson planning, sustainability is prioritized in content recommendations. Yes, we want democratization and scale.
Jaffe: StC has a unique asset — a vetted and curated database of high-quality resources and content. These materials come from 110+ content partners, and it’s everyone from MIT to NASA to environmental art. It’s “ring-fenced.” Why is this valuable? An educator has the confidence that their lesson plans are being created with the best and most current materials.
So we know how to do this. In fact, we’re testing the AI idea, but we’re not yet ready to go public. And it does take time and effort.
Chien: Congratulations on StC’s momentum and impressive state educational hubs — some of the largest U.S. states like New York, California, Michigan, and Illinois, to name a few. Can you describe the role of StC’s other marquee partnerships alongside these statewide programs? How are they impacting the reach and impact of StC?
Jaffe: We have a dedicated partnerships leader who crafts our agreements, using a common license so everything is free; we’re not going to resell it. We build ways to support each other. A perfect example is the American Red Cross, where we created lesson plans with their materials. They are thrilled because now they have a new audience of the three and a half million public school teachers. We also ran a campaign during Disaster Preparedness Month to showcase these resources. Another example is the National Education Association (NEA), which is the largest union of U.S. educators, spanning approximately three million members. We built a professional development program that leads to a NEA micro-credential, which they are promoting.
During New York Climate Week, StC partnered to host an event with the American Museum of Natural History, keynoted by the esteemed scientist Dr. Katharine Hayhoe of The Nature Conservancy. Over 600 teachers registered for the event, showcasing and celebrating what teachers are doing in their classrooms. We’ve been invited to train a sustainability group of New York public school teachers. These are just a few examples of getting the word out. We do so much more than simply integrating partner materials into our StC resource database.
Chien: Very exciting. And building on the momentum of StC, what is your vision for the future?
Wang: Our primary near-term goal is to leverage AI to make our platform even more personalized, enabling teachers to instantly find, adapt, and create materials for their specific classroom needs. Our next goal is to continue to reach more educators.
Jaffe: So far, we’ve been focused on U.S. educators; our vision is to take this to a global scale. Today, about 15% of our users are international. The same approach we use to tailor our platform to different states can guide how we adapt it for different countries. And with new technology, translating materials and localizing content is much simpler.
Chien: What’s important that you’d like to add that we have not yet covered today?
Jaffe: Thank you, Emily, for this great conversation.
So, in closing, our point is: when students learn about sustainability, they inspire change far beyond the classroom. They influence their households, which then influences their communities. As communities change, so do towns, states, and countries. That’s why our theory of change centers on empowering teachers to engage students in meaningful learning, activating students to lead in their schools and communities so more people take action on climate, whether it’s research, advocacy, or envisioning careers that make a difference. That’s why Margaret and I have focused on education as the pathway we can build through SubjectToClimate to fulfill the vision I put forth in my Harvard ALI Fellowship in 2020.
About the Author:
Emily A. Chien is an Executive Fellow at the Harvard Business School and a former Harvard ALI Senior Fellow. She serves on the IFRS Advisory Council and previously was a leader in IBM’s Sustainability and AI practices, following senior strategic and line operating roles at JPMorgan, American Express, Prudential, and Fidelity. Emily earned MAS and BS degrees in Accountancy and AI at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, is a member of the Economic Club of New York, and has served as an AI Fellow with the World Economic Forum.
This Q&A has been edited for length and clarity.