Clare Feeney

Provocative, informative and humorous, Clare is just who you need for your event. She’s a published author and an award-winning professional speaker, and has won two awards for her environmental work.

Clare has worked with people from factory floor to board room and at all levels of government, including farmers, iwi, conservationists, investors, accountants, manufacturers and drinking water, stormwater and wastewater utilities. A wealth of anecdotes from the horrifying to the hilarious, the informative to the inspirational, make her an engaging and motivational speaker.

Clare draws together business, economics, workforce training and the environment to show how a focus on environmental matters can transform any business into a learning – and more profitable – organisation.

Wake up to what the world’s lenders, investors, insurers and customers – and the most talented job-seekers – know: good environmental management is good for business. The results are measurable and monetizable across many forms of capital now recognised by over 70 stock exchanges around the world.

The space and scale of change in the environmental space makes it vital for every sector to step up. Whether you run a server farm or a dairy farm or anything in between, Clare’s purpose is to transform every job into a green job that regenerates people and places – and to have fun along the way.

The second edition of her book, How to Change the World: a practical guide to successful environmental training, was published in the UK in late 2019.

Presentations:

Clare’s keynotes can be tailored for your unique needs and event outcomes.

Here are her popular keynotes:

50 Great Excuses for not doing sustainability: how to unlock the profit trapped in your protests

“The bus was late.” “The car broke down.” Excuses – in 30 years of working with business and the environment, I’ve heard them all – and I’ve made some pretty good ones myself! Here you can learn to delve down to the precious information buried deep within our excuses for not doing sustainability. Find out how this unlocks much stymied productivity.

This keynote comes with a pre-conference online survey of your audience’s own sustainability excuses. I’ll report the results to your audience and reveal the best and worst of the 50 Great Sustainability Excuses I’ve collected over many years.

Also known as “Fifty Shades of Nay”, this topic is ideal for human resources and learning & development professionals, who will laugh and cry at this one, while your accounting and operations managers will have to upgrade their calculators to add up the financial benefits.

Your audience will learn how the excuses we all make to swerve around sustainability are a key to unlocking your productivity potential. They’ll take away some tips about how to:

detect and decode excuses
work with them with grace and humour
track the creativity and productivity benefits that will follow.

From “Ow!” to “Wow!” How to leverage environmental risks to build a better business

Most companies focus on the risk their operations pose to the environment. But in reality, the environment poses a risk to your business. Think climate change, tighter regulation, skills shortages, a risk-averse financial sector … and more.

This keynote overviews the business risks posed by some major environmental trends that every smart business should have on its radar. Every risk provides business opportunities with very real bottom line benefits. This four-step journey sets out the business case for excellent environmental management – and it comes with a free e-book with simple, practical tips and tools to get you started without speed wobbles.

This highly interactive topic speaks directly to the bottom line and is ideal for firms operating in a high-compliance environment and for organizations lending to or insuring them and investing in them.

Your audience will learn:

why environmental performance is such a good diagnostic of a company's overall performance
how legal compliance is not a prison door but a gateway to becoming an agile and competitive firm
what you can do to transform environmental risks and threats into opportunities to grow a more innovative, sustainable and profitable business.

Clare’s specialist presentations include:

Bridging the skills gap: the four vital missing ingredients for growing our workforce environmental capability and capacity, and how they will deliver astounding results for business and the economy!

Learning for life on Earth: how environmental training really can save the world. Based on her book How to Save the World – a practical guide to successful environmental training, this presentation targets firms and government bodies needing to lift their compliance and grow their Sustain-Ability.

Vital signs: how environmental red flags swiftly diagnose business performance and warn lenders, investors and insurers to take a closer look at a company’s other vital signs.

ROI: how to measure and monetise the financial Return on Investment in environment & sustainability, health & safety and quality training, so you can justify your training budget, reduce your risk profile and track the broader sustainability outcomes of your projects.

Testimonials:

Keynotes

Thank you so much for delivering such a great presentation. We have already had really good feedback about the session, and people have been asking for copies of the presentation slides which is great. There are obviously a lot of people interested in exploring these concepts further. Institutional Investment Group

Clare’s presentation on environmental training was edgy, informative and refreshingly un-PC. Anonymous

What a great presentation! A very different take on innovation for the contractors in the audience, and it really worked - a lot of people said how much they got out of it. Fiona Mountfort, New Zealand

I attended your ROI presentation at the IECA conference, which was fantastic! The content was really interesting and original, and makes perfect sense!! All the best! Sarah Blagrove, Sustainability Lead at Bouygues Construction, Australia

You bring a fresh perspective to the most critical issues of our time and people commented on much they appreciated these insightful and inspiring presentations on concerns often portrayed as intractable and depressing. You turn complex ideas into subject matter they can relate to and provide them with concrete suggestions on the roles and actions they might take as professionals and individuals to make their communities more sustainable, flourishing places. All this you achieve with such wit and vitality!
Elizabeth Aitken-Rose, Auckland University Planning Department

Clare is a star, without question. I have heard her speak to a variety of audiences. She has a great range of words and expressions and uses them to both engage the audience in a wonderful manner and also to get her message across. A delightful and entertaining speaker. Brian Handyside, Erosion Management Ltd

The Book

I love the layout, principles, and your conversational style. This book is a gem and I'll spread the word. Professor Mark Hostetler, Department of Wildlife Ecology & Conservation, IFAS, University of Florida

Your book arrived on Thursday so I grabbed it and a wine and started reading after dinner. Big mistake. I only read a chapter or so and my brain was buzzing all night and over the weekend with ideas. I have downloaded the Action Planner. I am excited to read the rest of it and develop a program in my locality. Janine Koppel, Lake Macquarie City Council, New South Wales, Australia