The climate crisis isn’t just about rising temperatures—it’s about who suffers most, and who gets left behind. The reality? Women and children bear the brunt. From job losses to food shortages and forced migration, they face the toughest challenges. Yet, despite the climate crisis disproportionately affecting women and children, less than 1% of global climate funding is intentionally addressing gender equality.

Yasmina Zaidman, Chief Development & Partnerships Officer at Acumen; Claire Rhodes, CEO of Producers Direct; Farhana Yamin, an internationally recognized environmental lawyer and climate policy expert; and Joycelyn Longdon, an environmental justice researcher and educator, explore how investing in women-led climate solutions can drive real impact. Join us at The Conduit to learn how smart investments can create a fairer, greener future for everyone.

Event Schedule

6:00pm: Pre-event socialising and networking

A cash bar will be available for refreshments.

6:15pm: Event begins

7:30pm: Event ends

Speakers:

Yasmina Zaidman is the Chief Development and Partnerships Officer at Acumen, which works to change the way the world tackles poverty. She leads its work with funding partners that share Acumen’s commitment to entrepreneurial approaches to tackling poverty. She spearheaded Acumen’s gender integration work, co-authoring the report Women and Social Enterprises: How Gender Integration can Boost Entrepreneurial Solutions to Poverty with ICRW. Ms. Zaidman has worked in the arenas of international development, corporate sustainability, and social entrepreneurship for over twenty-five years. She serves on the boards of Fundacion Cacao de Colombia and Criterion Institute.

Ms. Zaidman has worked in the arenas of international development, corporate sustainability and social entrepreneurship for over twenty-five years. She served on the board of the White Ribbon Alliance for almost seven years, an organization which supports advocacy for safe and respectful birth for women around the world. Yasmina currently serves on the board of the Criterion Institute, the leading advocate for investment models that disrupt power and gender inequality, and the Cacao de Colombia Foundation which empowers smallholder cocoa farmers across Colombia. She also served on the KadAfrica’s board, a social enterprise in Uganda supporting women and girls through agriculture. Yasmina received a BA from Vassar College and her MBA from Stanford’s GSB with a certificate in Public Management.

Claire Rhodes is the CEO and Founder of Producers Direct, an international non-profit championing smallholder farmers’ leadership. Producers Direct leverages farmer-centred design with digital innovation to reach 1 million smallholders, supporting farmers to share knowledge, take data-driven decisions and have more power in food value chains. Graduating with a Biological Sciences Masters from Oxford University, Claire’s early career involved counting Costa Rican caterpillars before realising that smallholders manage much of the earth’s natural resources and there is a lot to learn from them. This inspired Claire’s focus on promoting smallholders’ expertise and farmer-centred design to transform smallholder livelihoods and resilience at scale.

Farhana Yamin is an internationally recognised environmental lawyer and climate policy expert. She has advised leaders and ministers on UN climate negotiations for 30 years, representing small islands and developing nations at nearly every major climate summit since 1991. She is a Director at Impatience Ltd and leads the Climate Justice and Just Transition Donor Collaborative, connecting major philanthropies with frontline communities to drive equitable climate solutions. She is an Honorary Fellow at Somerville College, Oxford, a Senior Advisor to SYSTEMIQ, and a Visiting Professor at University of the Arts London. Farhana founded Track 0, which played a key role in securing the net-zero emissions goal in the Paris Agreement. She was Political Coordinator of Extinction Rebellion in 2019 and remains active in social justice movements. Named #2 on the BBC’s 2020 Power List, she continues to champion community-led climate action and radical inclusion initiatives.

Moderated by Joycelyn Longdon, an award-winning environmental justice researcher and educator. Her PhD research at the University of Cambridge centres on the design of justice-led conservation technologies for monitoring biodiversity with local forest communities in Ghana. Her work makes more accessible topics of climate justice, climate colonialism, activism, creativity and systems change across a variety of forums on and offline and for platforms including Meta, The United Nations Geneva Dialogues, Channel 4, Cheltenham Science Festival, Oxford University, The National Lottery, The Design Council and The Wellcome Collection. Joycelyn was 2022’s winner of the Emerging Designer London Design Medal, was featured in British Vogue’s December 2023 ‘Forces for Change’ Issue and is a and is a TEDx Alumni. Most recently, she has been listed as one of Pique Action and Harvard Chan C-CHANGE’s 2024 Climate Creators to Watch and as one of Country and Town House’s Future Icons Power People 2024.