Transcript
The Two-Prong Controversy
Jamie Nolan: Hi, Rosie, welcome to Energy Empire.
Rosie Jewell: Hello. Hi, thank you so much for having me. I've been so excited about this.
Jamie Nolan: Thank you for being my first guest for my first solo episode. I'm really excited — it's just me and you. Okay, so we have to start with this. Our listeners have feelings about our logo. Specifically, the fact that our power plug only has two prongs. We did not know that we were going to offend so many people. We've been getting called out on LinkedIn and some people are telling us it's not safe. This tiny detail got a really outsized reaction, which tells me branding matters more than people in energy sometimes admit. So what was the story there with the two prongs?
Rosie Jewell: I don't know if there have been more comments since I last caught up with the controversy, but the honest answer is just that it looks better. I tried it both ways and — call it artistic license or whatever — especially because this needs to function at such a small size, it's just clearer if it's two prongs. But to go even further into this controversy, what we really should be asking is: what is attached to the end of the power cable? Because the Statue of Liberty is like a lightning rod, right? She's made of copper. She gets hit by lightning something like 600 times a year and it just courses right over her body and then goes straight to the ground, which is what keeps her safe. But if she's standing out there in the rain with a janky appliance attached to this power cable, that's not going to be so good. So I did a little drawing to show you what the outcome of that might be. Let's just say I don't see how that could possibly be controversial.
Jamie Nolan: To me it's the toaster or something, right? Just meant to represent a regular electrical appliance. I think people were making references about electrical safety — the grounding prong, the importance of it, et cetera. I'm sure all of that is very important. But most importantly, should we be worried about the electrical safety of our brand? Are we at risk?
Rosie Jewell: I think we're fine. I also come from the UK where we have — I think they're considered the safest plugs in the world. So I just want to state for the record that I do care very deeply about electrical safety. But we don't need to be quite so literal with the Statue of Liberty holding a plug.
Jamie Nolan: It's all for fun. It's art. It's meant to be fun and light. I love it so much. I'm so excited to dig into how it all came to be. But for people who don't know you, how did you end up designing the logo for an energy podcast? Give us the short version.
Rosie Jewell: You and I know each other because we both worked at the Department of Energy in the Loan Programs Office. I was there from 2023 to early 2025. We both worked almost directly under Jigar in the front office and in the external affairs team. You were the media and PR guru, and I was one of the people who made things look pretty.
How Rosie Got Here
Jamie Nolan: Let's dig into that a little more — your background. You're a designer from Dartmoor, England. And you ended up at the US Department of Energy Loan Programs Office, which I do not think is an obvious career path. How did that happen?
Rosie Jewell: I grew up on Dartmoor, which — if you can picture something like Scotland, or like the landscape in Lord of the Rings — these gorgeous rolling hills, very bleak and barren in a way, and just very dramatic and beautiful. Like a lot of people who end up in the environmental or energy sector, I had a really strong attachment to that landscape as a child. I was in the middle of nowhere, roaming the moors on foot, on horseback. I grew up painting and Dartmoor was an endless inspiration to me.
I studied French and Spanish literature and came out of university thinking I would do something in human rights — I was really interested in women's rights. I met my husband at university and we decided to move to LA together because he was interested in becoming a filmmaker. I'm a pretty risk-averse person, which is going to sound kind of weird, because moving to LA sight unseen and trekking across the country from his parents' place in New York was one of the bigger risks I've taken in my life.
When I got there, the first job I had out of college was with a nonprofit urban design firm called KDI. I was the development and communications person — mostly grant writing and bid writing. They're based in Los Angeles and in Nairobi, and their model is working with underserved communities to co-design public infrastructure that layers environmental, economic, and social benefits. Because of the projects we were doing in Nairobi in particular, flood risk comes up a lot. The poorest communities live in informal settlements alongside rivers and have to deal with the most severe impacts — as we've just seen in the news with Nairobi. KDI builds public spaces with the community that layer flood protections and green infrastructure along with social and economic programming. That was my first exposure to the world of climate change and climate resilience. Coming out of that job I realized: this is the overarching problem and the big challenge of our time.
2020 is when I left KDI. I grew up painting and had been an artist on the side my whole life, but it was something I had very much been suppressing professionally — from a young age I decided this was not a sensible pathway. I should pursue more stable vocations. But in 2020 I realized I really needed to scratch that itch.
An opportunity came up where someone I had volunteered for previously suggested I come and work with him as a contractor on communications consulting. That gave me the chance to transition out of KDI and start building a design portfolio on the side.
I should also mention the contracting work I did. It was with an organization that works in domestic violence — specifically with people who are committing domestic abuse and who want to stop. It was run by a man who was arrested twice for this issue and completely turned his life around. I worked with him on developing content and communications for the foundation. I bring that up because even though it's not part of the climate trajectory, it informs how I approach people I disagree with. He was on the other side of me on so many issues — politically, religiously — but we had a great working relationship and I think we did really good work addressing a problem that, as far as I know, nobody else is doing. It's a precursor for the constructive mindset, if you will.
So I did that for a few years and built up a design portfolio from scratch. I taught myself design on LinkedIn and YouTube — with all the arrogance of someone who just doesn't know what they don't know. Most of my clients in design were in the climate advocacy space. Towards the end of 2022, I was talking with a good friend saying I felt like I'd spent so long looking at the problem of climate, and I wanted to find out what we were actually doing to solve it. That friend was Lucy — she was also at the Loan Programs Office — and she said, "We're looking for a designer, why don't I put you in touch?" And that's how it happened.
Designing at the Department of Energy
Jamie Nolan: I think I interviewed you for that job, actually. And you were so clearly a good fit with the really strong culture we had at LPO. Jigar very much believed in external affairs and the importance of communications and marketing, and invested a lot into growing our team. One thing from your story that really resonates with me is the influence of the place someone grows up. I have a very similar story. I grew up on the Eastern Shore of Maryland, on the Chesapeake Bay — my dad was a boat mechanic and electrician, he always worked in a boat yard, and we always owned one to three boats. All my most vivid childhood memories involved the Chesapeake Bay. The influence of natural spaces on the values of a young person is really important, and it's something that led me to pursuing this as a career.
When people think of DOE, scientists or policy specialists come to mind — they may not think about designers and visual artists like yourself. What was it like being a creative there?
Rosie Jewell: It was great, honestly. One of the things I loved — as you said, Jigar was overseeing the office at a time of expansion. The phrase we all kept saying, to the point where I'm almost tired of hearing it, is that we were building the plane as we fly it. There was this amazing startup mentality. I'm a generalist, so I love working in a small team with other smart generalists. I get a real kick out of working with people who are total nerds about their particular area of interest. I got to interface with people explaining how loans are structured, what credit subsidy is, some of the technical aspects of the projects we were working on. It was a really dynamic and inspiring environment. I definitely learned something every day.
Everyone really valued what the design team was doing. I should mention our other designer, Lee Ferrell — big shout out to Lee. I went to a wedding a couple of years ago and mentioned I was a designer at LPO to an energy journalist, and his eyes widened and he said, "Did you do the posters?" People love those posters. I had to tell him that was Lee. He was incredible.
The most fun thing is when someone comes to you with a really important point they're trying to make, but it's complicated — there are layers of context and complexity — and you help them strip it down and figure out: what is the story we're telling here? If it's a chart in a Liftoff Report, can we make the heading of the chart tell you what the chart is explaining so that you don't have to do the work when you look at it?
Jamie Nolan: What were some of your favorite and most impactful design projects at DOE?
Rosie Jewell: It was definitely Deploy. I was a general graphic designer — people would come to me to do a one-pager or a deck — but Deploy was definitely the thing. It started with Kyle, our boss in the external affairs team, saying we were going to be putting on a conference and maybe I wanted to put together a couple of logo options. I sent about ten different ideas and started getting feedback from this mysterious person called Susan Kish. Then it just snowballed from there — developing the entire brand identity for the conference, all of the environmental graphics. I got to start working with Jason Ramos, who is still a colleague and the chief architect at Constructive, which we'll talk about later.
By the second year with Deploy24, we went much bigger and much better. We had the Exchange, and I think three times the number of attendees, which was just so exciting. By that point I was co-creative directing it with Jason. We got such great feedback — people told us they got so much work done, that they had sixty meetings, that it really was the front porch of the Department of Energy. This moment where people could see the full continuum of how all these different offices fit together to support projects from R&D stage all the way to deployment. And of course the programming was incredible — I think 130 hours over two days.
The plenary stage in particular — I had such a thrill watching people filter into that dark room. You saw Jennifer Granholm giving the closing speech, not a dry eye in the room. And to see that on a stage I had co-designed with Jason was unbelievable.
Jamie Nolan: It was a very specific moment in time, and anybody who was there for those two years will know it was something special. Real deal-making was happening in those rooms. Projects got built because of the connections that DOE helped to foster, not just with our offices, but among private sector partners. It was such an incredible team to be a part of.
One thing that's evident of how special it was is that we've all continued to try to work together as much as possible.
Rosie Jewell: Literally.
Jamie Nolan: I have clients who are former colleagues. I work with many former colleagues across my accounts as a consultant. We all seek any opportunity to work together because we built such tremendous trust during those years. The culture was so special, the teamwork was so special, and everyone who came into the organization was so talented. I feel really lucky to have been a part of it.
Rosie Jewell: I actually remember you saying at one of our all-hands meetings that there was this really high level of emotional safety among the external affairs team. I thought that was such an important thing — something we don't talk about enough when it comes to teamwork and collaboration. It has to start from a basis of comfort with each other and a sense of safety, where you know you can share honestly. That's one of the reasons why we are, as you say, forever colleagues, and we'll keep working together.
Jamie Nolan: Forever colleagues. We really are.
Building the Energy Empire Brand
Jamie Nolan: So when it came time to build the brand for Energy Empire, of course you were the first person who came to mind. When I first came to you with the idea — the podcast had a different name at that point, it wasn't Energy Empire yet, but it was too common so we switched — what did you think I was trying to make this feel like? With the understanding that you didn't immediately love it.
Rosie Jewell: I knew that you meant Energy Empire in the sense of a business empire — a confident, optimistic narrative, something that works against the doom and gloom. We're going to build an energy empire based on clean energy that's going to change the world and change the course of humanity. I got all that. But you have to understand: I'm British-American. I have two wolves inside of me. There's an American wolf that understood what you meant and was like, let's go. And then there's the British wolf that was like, are we doing that? Empire is kind of a loaded word. And then Venezuela happened, and I felt like I had to say something. But you guys know your brand, and you were right. The American wins for today. It's memorable, the alliteration works, and I think everybody knows the phrase Energy Empire now — so hats off to you.
Jamie Nolan: Thank you. I know you briefly referenced the LPO posters, and of course the visual language of those posters was an early reference point for us. What was it about that work that we wanted to carry into this? And for listeners who aren't familiar with that poster series, can you explain it a little?
Rosie Jewell: There was an original series of posters — I believe around 2009, though Lee will probably correct me on that. The LPO did a series of posters of different technologies the office was funding projects in. They were resuscitated when Jigar arrived and we did a second series — a geothermal poster, an EV one, supply chains, nuclear. They were in the style of the WPA screen-printed national parks posters: flat colors, very epic landscapes, energy workers in the imagery. They thread this needle between being really down to earth and connecting with regular people, while also being incredibly optimistic. They capture that forward-looking, very American mindset from those vintage posters.
One of our original ideas was to do something similar — a scene of energy workers or construction workers building a clean energy project, maybe climbing a transmission pole. But we ended up deciding that because this needs to work at small scales and needs to be iconic and memorable, a scene probably wasn't quite the right direction. We did keep the visual style, though — that screen-printed, solid colors, vintage feel.
Jamie Nolan: Yes, as well as the color palette, which was really important. I love how bright and unexpected it feels — anti B2B, anti clean energy startup. I love those posters so much. People still talk about them. And I have to tell my own poster anecdote. I happened to be in Ashland, Virginia one day for an unrelated reason and I popped into Dominion Energy's coworking startup incubator space, just seeking a desk for the day. I walked in, explained who I was, and they very graciously set me up with an office. I walked in and it was just wrapped with the LPO posters. This was a couple of months after we had all left LPO at the end of the Biden administration — so many of us had departed, and there was very much a feeling that we were breaking up the band and we weren't ready to go. It was a really sad moment when we left the Forrestal building. So being completely out of context in the most random place and walking into that office and seeing the posters — I was delighted. I took photos and sent them to multiple people from our team.
That has happened in other places too. I've hopped on a Zoom call with someone I've never met before and one of our posters is framed behind them on the wall. It happens all the time.
Rosie Jewell: That's incredible. I'm going to send this to Lee because I really hope he hears this.
Jamie Nolan: Shout out to Lee Ferrell, who I believe is still doing some work for that office, and we fully support him and the folks who are still there.
As we were designing the logo, one tension we kept coming back to was that I wanted something symbolic and resonant but not too literal or too on the nose. We also spent time trying to make this feel American and powerful without tipping into cheesy, cliché, or weird empire-slash-Rome energy — which is actually a direction we went in at one point. What felt hardest to solve there?
Rosie Jewell: It goes back to your first question about what I thought of the name. The word "empire" was the sticking point — it's both the success of the name and the thing we had to work hardest to get right visually. We did talk about Roman architecture. I think it was Simon, your producer, who said maybe we could do something with Roman architecture because there's all this neoclassical architecture in DC and it speaks to the connection between government and energy. We threw a couple of ideas around — there was a plinth with the sun on top of it, but that didn't have legs and I knew it.
One of my first questions when we talked about the name was how comfortable you were with imagery that is explicitly American. I threw out the idea of a flag with lightning bolts instead of stars — which, again, was a terrible idea. I don't know why I even threw it out there, because I am very anti-lightning bolt. I did the branding for Deploy Action and I had this whole thing with our team — please don't make me put a lightning bolt in it. There are lightning bolts everywhere in clean energy. It's time to put down the lightning bolt.
I had a sleepless night where I was making a list of all these different American symbols — the American Eagle, cowboy hats, flags, stars and stripes. Each one: no, that one's not going to work. Process of elimination. And then the Statue of Liberty just popped into my head and it felt perfect. She's the perfect symbol of America because she hasn't been co-opted by left or right. She still speaks to all of us universally. She speaks to the highest ideals of America — it's enlightenment. She's holding this torch as a beacon of progress and light. She was the first thing people saw when they arrived at Ellis Island.
Not to get too philosophical, but she's holding a torch — that's light and heat, a form of energy. And energy is the story of progress. That's something very intimately wrapped up with the story of America. It felt like the perfect continuation of that.
The first idea was actually to have her holding a lightning bolt — I am nothing if not completely inconsistent. That was just an evolution of the torch, a symbol of energy more generally. But I raised it on our first feedback call and we felt like we hadn't found any threads to pull on and needed to go back to the drawing board. I was like, what about this one with the Statue of Liberty? And you guys said you liked it but it was a bit earnest, a bit too serious. So I said, what if she's holding a power cable? And Simon immediately said, "I like it, it's cheeky." And then we knew.
Jamie Nolan: Even from the first round, I really loved how you had to look at it for a second to realize it was Lady Liberty — you just see the very top of her crown and her hand. But then it was so clearly brilliant once you figured out what you were looking at. I think we inched her up a little so you got a bit more crown, made it slightly more clear. But it's the perfect combination of very Americana, very patriotic. We weren't shy about the "empire" piece of our name — each word in that name is working very hard.
We felt comfortable leaning into it because one of the things that led Jigar and me through our journey in developing this podcast is that the clean energy industry continues to act like it is a small sector without a lot of power. We want to see clean energy step into its power. When we think about what we're building, it truly is an empire. We really are transitioning globally in a way that is changing the planet for the better — combating the biggest challenge facing our generation, and also building tremendous wealth while doing something good and protecting the future of this planet. We wanted to lead with a powerful visual symbol.
So for people who aren't designers, give us a brief overview of what your process looks like.
Rosie Jewell: You mentioned I had come to you originally with a different name earlier last year, so I'd already had an opportunity to take on the background and context of your thinking and let it bake. Then I think we had our first call about Energy Empire right before the Christmas holiday. The more I work as a designer, the more I realize it's very much about having a process where you're digging a flower bed, adding things to the soil, getting it ready — and then you have to walk away. When you come back, a seed will have magically appeared and it will start growing. If you try to force it and push it forward, you go around in circles and get frustrated. I came back to it very fresh in January.
As a first step with this kind of illustrative work, I like to come to clients with just pencil drawings — keep it really sketchy — because I don't want you to start thinking about all the details at once. Instead of showing you something in full color that I've spent a ton of time on that might not have legs, it's something quick and dirty that encourages you to bring your imagination to it. I want you to focus just on the idea and maybe the composition — not color, not fonts. Which is the idea we want to develop?
Then it's iterations from there. I started to introduce a bit of color, show some low-res versions of what it could look like. We played around with different compositions, tried showing more of Lady Liberty. There's one version where you see almost all of her body, which was getting way too serious and detracting from the humor of the option we finally went with.
A lot of the time I know in the back of my head which is the best idea and which is the best direction. You're showing other options almost to convince the client that the right way is the right way — and also to do the due diligence and make sure you've turned all the stones over. Half of being a designer is the actual skills, and half is the process — refining your own process, making the right judgment on when to put out another option versus when to deliver your professional opinion that this is the way to go. Always learning.
Jamie Nolan: So now it's out there and I'm really enjoying it — my favorite color is yellow, so I'm very happy with my yellow font and yellow name. What's it like seeing people engage with the brand and having opinions about it, including about the number of prongs on the plug?
Rosie Jewell: Calm down, guys. It's always scary sharing finished work. But it's really exciting to see how much it does resonate. I think it has achieved the brief you laid out — putting out this positive story, helping clean energy step into its power, but also being a very human symbol that we can all relate to as Americans in our own way. It's great.
What Clean Energy Gets Wrong
Jamie Nolan: Well, one reason I wanted to have you on is that making this brand made me think a lot about how stale a lot of the visual and editorial language of energy can be. A lot of brands feel visually interchangeable. I was adamant from the start that ours should clearly stand out, which I think we achieved. What do you think clean energy still gets wrong about communications and branding?
Rosie Jewell: This is a really great question, and I think the entire industry is doing a lot of soul-searching around it. We're aware there's a problem. I also think we're beating ourselves up a little more than we need to, because to some extent there's a question of timing — the history of science is full of examples of ideas that didn't take flight because it just wasn't the right time. Communications has a role to play in making it the right time. But there's also just the reality that we're now, as we speak and record this, in an absolutely wild geopolitical situation where — as James said in your most recent episode — clean energy has never looked so good. The costs are down, the security benefits are obvious, and this is the moment we've been waiting for.
I see two buckets of issues with how clean energy communicates. On one hand, it's an incredibly complicated sector. I've been in it for about three years and I still feel like I'm entering the "learning what I don't know" phase of how energy actually works. Add to that mix all of these acronyms — SMRs, VPPs, PPAs — and it just washes over most people. We can work harder to bring it back down to earth. I want to shout out What's the Tea, this new series on LinkedIn by our former colleague Zenib Mirza, who was also at LPO. They'll talk about lofty, complicated energy policy but then tie it to what it actually means for everyday people, using pop culture references to make that translation. It's a really good example of how to do this.
The second bucket is the moralism and the doom and gloom. For decades, climate in general has been framed as: if you don't see this the way I see it, you're a bad person. If you've got a solar panel on your roof, it means you're a better person. It gets all wrapped up in identity and a very negative mindset. Any psychologist will tell you that operating from a place of fear and negativity is not a good spot for making decisions. Moving away from that baggage, especially now that the economic and energy security arguments are so salient, is what we really need to focus on.
Jamie Nolan: If you were advising the biggest clean energy companies, what would you tell them to do — or to stop doing — immediately?
Rosie Jewell: Two things. First, we don't need to see any more bland pictures of green woods, solar panels, wind farms, and beautiful pristine landscapes that don't actually mean anything to the people looking at them. If you are a utility or a project developer, if you're a place-based company, use imagery of that place. I've been thinking about this for a while and have talked with Zenib about it too. I read a book a few years ago called How to Be a Conservative by Roger Scruton because I wanted to engage with a really good argument for conservatism. He has a whole chapter on environmentalism and this concept of oikophilia — from oikos, the Greek root of ecology and economy, and philia meaning love of. It means love of the home. His point is that conservatives are oikophilists, and he can't understand why environmentalism isn't owned by conservatives — there's a whole nexus of wanting to protect the landscape that's specific to you and your identity that clean energy could really be tapping into. Placemaking, placekeeping, drawing on the narratives local people have about their communities and why their landscapes are worth protecting. Moving away from generic imagery would be a good start.
The second thing — this might be a hot take — but "net zero" is not the most inspiring phrase and we all know it. I would love to see clean energy move away from it. This is my American wolf beating my British wolf. Net infinite. Clean energy is like the printing press, like the steam engine — it's a step change in how humans produce and power everything in our lives, putting us on a trajectory where, as one book puts it, clean energy is one of the technologies that could get us to the next level, where we become an interstellar civilization. That's such an exciting narrative, and we could really lean into it. Take a leaf out of Elon's book — he made electric cars look really sexy. We should be doing that.
Jamie Nolan: I'm with you. Moving away from centering everything around climate change and instead focusing on the fact that these are superior technologies in every way — we do not need climate as our backstop in order to compete.
My answer is more of a consultant's answer: companies dramatically under-invest in communications and marketing. Dramatically. I can't tell you how many companies I have engaged with that have one mid-level communicator with eight years of experience doing twelve jobs, with no budget for visual identity. So when you're talking about having photography or any type of visual assets associated with the places where their projects are actually built — it doesn't exist. They have one person doing all their social media, their website, their branding, their media relations, all of their marketing functions, all of their events, and then wondering why no one has ever heard of them.
I believe communications should be an executive-level function, with a communications expert sitting in every boardroom and reporting directly to the CEO — to help mitigate risk as well as help companies embrace every opportunity in front of them. When we are relegated to a supportive function and dramatically under-invested in, we are not going to build power as a sector.
You know who's doing a great job with this? Oil and gas. The oil and gas industry spends — I wish I had the numbers at the tip of my fingers, this is when I need Jigar Shah, whose brain is an encyclopedia — something like fifty times more than the clean energy industry on communications. I'll look it up and share it in the show notes. It's a chronic problem.
To give a couple of examples — I've been lucky to be involved with some really powerful storytelling, particularly at LPO. For the biggest moments we had as a brand — Jigar appeared on the Ezra Klein Show with Rob Meyer, we did one of Scott Galloway's podcasts — I pitched the Ezra Klein Show for three years. I was turned down multiple times. Meanwhile, I had fostered a really strong relationship with Rob Meyer, so when he had the opportunity to guest host that podcast, he reached out to us. Scott Galloway took more than a year, repeated follow-ups. The producer didn't acknowledge any of my outreach. It took multiple, very well-considered and deeply researched angles. I believe it was actually my colleague Molly Morrissey who finally got the first response from someone there, after I said, "I've already tried three times, we need to try something new."
It takes a long time. And you have to have the team with the expertise to invest that time. That was after hundreds of media hits in the trade media, growing a media profile with four people working full time on media relations for years, with a four-hundred-billion-dollar budget. You would think that would make it easy to get in those rooms. It wasn't. That's what it takes. A lot of times when I talk to prospective clients, their expectations are very unrealistic. I cannot come in for twenty hours a month and land you something like that. It takes so much thoughtful narrative building over such a long time. The same is true with visual identity — it takes a lot of shoulder and a lot of commitment. I would really like to see companies take it more seriously, invest deeply, and see what comes from that.
Rosie Jewell: Yes. And please stop using AI to generate images of janky wind turbines with two and a half blades. Because every time you do that, an angel dies.
Jamie Nolan: Oh my god. If that is real, please —
Rosie Jewell: You haven't seen these? They're all over my LinkedIn.
Constructive
Jamie Nolan: Now you're doing this work at Constructive, which is specifically about building alignment across the energy and climate space through strategic convenings and network building. Does that experience inform how you see this gap in comms and branding in our sector?
Rosie Jewell: I see it all on a continuum, to the same end. Constructive's mission is to build alignment and create infrastructure for collaboration between the public and private sector — between government, industry, and finance — and all the other enabling actors. We were just talking about psychological safety and the mindset you need to work with somebody, especially across the aisle, whether that's politically or because you're a buyer and a seller with opposing mindsets.
To get there, you need people to be in a space of comfort and curiosity. I see my job as getting people onto that shared wavelength. It's almost like there's a tunnel between where you are and where you want people to be. You're not just building the shortest, widest tunnel where they can see straight through to the end. You want to build a tunnel that is appealing. If you're out walking on a trail and there's a fork, what makes you choose one path over the other? It's not the one that's the most straightforward. It's the trail that goes around a corner, where there's dappled light, and it looks like an adventure — you want to follow it and see where it goes. I really see my role at Constructive as creating that pathway to get people to the spot where they can then collaborate constructively towards deploying clean energy.
Susan Kish, Jonah Wagner, Jason Ramos, and I talked about spinning Constructive off and making it an independent nonprofit after the change in administration. Jason and I really worked together on creating shared experiences. When we say "architects of collaboration," we don't mean puppet masters pulling strings — it's about getting people in a space and taking them on a journey. Telling them a story. It's all blended together.
Jamie Nolan: It's beautiful that the legacy of the Deploy conferences lives on, and you all have really carried that DNA forward into Constructive and the events you're helping to design now. Before we let you go, what does Constructive have coming up?
Rosie Jewell: We have Dervos dates locked in. We're collaborating with the DER Task Force again to co-produce Dervos this year — that's September 17th to the 19th in New York City, right before Climate Week. Make sure you sign up for updates on that.
We also have a couple of things coming up in London that we haven't announced yet. We're doing a summit in May with the WRI Polsky Energy Center on meeting energy demand with clean energy generation. And we're partnering with EMBA in June to do a summit on electrotech, which is super exciting. EMBA is such a leading light in climate communications — they have an amazing narrative around electrotech as this third way.
And it's not just large-scale convenings — we're also developing dialogue series that continue the legacy of the Deploy dialogues and the Liftoff reports, doing deeper dives into specific technology areas like clean firm power and how to scale up deployment.
Jamie Nolan: I know you're also a very prolific visual artist and I love seeing your art on my LinkedIn feed. Where can people find you and follow your work?
Rosie Jewell: I have a website — you can check out rosyjewel.com. I'm off Instagram because I can't deal with the prospect of AI stealing my artwork — there's no way to opt out in this country, though in the UK I'd be able to. And you can find Constructive at constructive.org — sign up for our newsletter to hear about upcoming events and convenings.
Jamie Nolan: Thank you so much, Rosie. It was so great to have you, and thank you for being here for my first solo episode. It was nice to have a friend on the other side.
Rosie Jewell: Such a pleasure. The pleasure is all mine, Jamie. Thank you for having me.