Climate Beacon 2024: New England’s Premier Climate Event

For decades we’ve been warned of the perils of a changing climate. Now, what can we do about it? 

This is exactly the question the Climate Beacon conference sets out to answer. 

This fall, the three-day summit dedicated to developing real, actionable climate solutions returned to Boston for its second year, bringing together a host of elected officials, policymakers, corporate leaders, climate experts, innovators, nonprofit organizations, and community leaders to discuss realistic steps towards a greener future. 

Led by Climate Beacon Executive Director Alex Richman, supported by a board and steering committee stacked with local green advocates – including CBT President David Nagahiro (Steering Committee Chair) and Principal Devanshi Purohit (Board Member) – the 2024 conference gathered a global community of leaders and decision makers “who don’t just like the idea of fighting climate change but are ready to take action and get things done.” 

In this spirit, event programming introduced ample opportunity to form meaningful public and private partnerships that could pave the way for local climate action. Several prominent public officials not only attended, but also took on active roles as conference co-hosts, speakers, and panelists in support of this agenda. Among them: U.S. Senator Ed Markey, Congresswoman Ayanna Pressley, Massachusetts Lieutenant Governor Kim Driscoll, Massachusetts Governor Maura Healey, and Boston Mayor Michelle Wu.

CBT has been an early champion of this initiative since its 2023 debut. This year, we expanded our partnership to work alongside the Climate Beacon team in organizing and coordinating event programming including, securing speaking engagements, providing design expertise, moderating panels, leading tours, and even hosting a new exhibit for climate-related art and innovation. 

Principals David Nagahiro, Kishore Varanasi, Devanshi Purohit, Henry Celli, and Nirva Fereshetian emerged as leading voices throughout the conference, engaging diverse perspectives in conversations on urban heat, technological innovation, and sustainable architecture. 

Here’s what they shared: 

CBT President David Nagahiro led a tour through CALA, the mixed-use intergenerational community in Somerville, MA. Designed by Sebastian Mariscal Studio, this adapted building reimagines a large, precast concrete structure from the early 70s as a resilient, dynamic community, filled with art, green landscapes, and publicly accessible spaces. An acronym for the core themes its design represents – community, architecture, landscape, and art – CALA lives up to its name, introducing a tangible example of cohesive, climate-conscious design in our own New England backyard. 

Following the tour, David led a session on maximizing community engagement, featuring Dan Burgess, Director of the Governor’s Energy Office in the State of Maine as part of the conference’s “Building Better” track. The session explored two different but equally impactful models of public process and explained how community engagement can unlock new creative and effective solutions. The takeaway? In the words of Mayor Katjana Ballantyne of Somerville, MA, simply that "great projects start with great community engagement.”

Blending policy, scientific, and design perspectives, CBT Director of Urban Design Kishore Varanasi and Principal Devanshi Purohit joined Isabella Gambill of A Better City and David Sittenfeld of The Museum of Science to discuss resiliency strategies against the impacts of urban heat. Panelists took a critical look at current approaches to heat emergency data collection and analyses as well as the policies and responses deployed in cities vulnerable to warming temperatures. Drawing from the tested and proven solutions of the Abu Dhabi Climate Resilience Initiative, Kishore and Devanshi shared proactive mitigation strategies that could more accurately target human thermal comfort levels in public spaces and provide effective respite.   

In the session, “Emerging Materials and Tech for a Faster Path to Decarbonization,” CBT Chief Information Officer Nirva Fereshetian discussed opportunities to align real estate and sustainability goals to improve life cycle carbon and cost benefits of buildings. Her co-panelists represented several sustainability-focused startups, including Vicinity, Watt Carbon, Adaptis, and Cambio, each focused on developing technological solutions for reducing embodied carbon emissions. 

Perhaps most critical in moving the needle towards a resilient future, is our ability to effectively communicate the urgency of climate change. CBT is proud to have sponsored the “Climate Commons” at the Boston Society for Architecture, the conference’s central gathering place, featuring a curated display of thought-provoking artwork which explored climate-related themes through a variety of media. 

CBT Climate Researcher & Designer Rajji Desai’s bold and wildly creative piece “Climate Arcana: Tarot for a Heating World,” was featured prominently at the “Climate Commons” entrance. Adapted for this exhibit with the help of CBT Model Shop Manager Carla Fowler, the piece explores themes of rising temperatures, ecological harmony, and hope for a sustainable future through a series of custom tarot cards. An apt medium to communicate a message focused on the future, Rajji’s tarot deck employs inclusive language to open up the conversation around climate change. 

“This deck isn’t just for mystics,” she writes, “it invites everyone into an immersive experience. Each card, rich with symbolism and layered narratives, sparks conversations, ignites the imagination, and offers new perspectives. Through its playful yet profound exploration, tarot transcends age, language, and borders, becoming a universal tool for communicating urgent truths about our climate crisis.”

“The world is full of do-gooders,” the Climate Beacon mission states, “then there are can-doers. A can-doer puts theory into practice and plans into action. A can-doer puts their money where their mouth is and takes their idealism with a healthy dose of pragmatism.” This is the place for can-doers. This is the place for problem-solving in real time, for making connections that can make a difference. This is the place that offers hope for a more sustainable future. 

And we are so grateful to be a part of it.  

See you at Climate Beacon 2025.