Abby Ruskey

Abby Ruskey possesses deep experience and training in education and learning, sustainability and systems, cultural responsiveness, planning, research and policy. She has worked for over 25 years to develop and integrate capacities, programs and tools for helping individuals and collectives navigate transformative and life-generating change. Abby strives to balance attention to detail, excellence and accountability with a commitment to democracy, equity and ROR (return on relationship) in these extreme times of paradox, disruption and possibility.

In the past three years, Abby has researched, written strategic documents and articles, and pursued policies and projects to prepare and empower people for climate change and related social, health, infrastructure, food-agriculture and other disruptions and change opportunities. For example, she worked to spur and secure Washington State’s new climate literacy program for K-12 students. She also co-created a Thurston County climate speakers bureau, led development of Project Drawdown’s curriculum prototype and advised the education network launch. She also worked with scientists at the Stockholm Resilience Institute, Future Earth and elsewhere to research and model magnitudes of scale where the greatest level of greenhouse gas reduction and carbon sequestration can happen the soonest. Thurston County is referenced in the resulting paper as a prime example of local climate change mitigation.

Before consulting, Abby served as the founding Executive Director of both E3 Washington: Education-Environment-Economy and the National Environmental Education Advancement Project and was President of the North American Association of Environmental Education, the world’s largest environmental education organization. She was the legislative assistant and campaign director for Berkeley City Councilwoman Nancy Skinner and served as National K-12 Coordinator of Earth Day 1990 in Palo Alto. She earned her B.S. degree from UC Berkeley emphasizing City and Regional Planning, an M.S. in Natural Resource Management from the University of Wisconsin Stevens Point, and professional certificates from Saybrook University (Generating Transformative Change), Massachusetts Institute of Technology (ULab: Transforming Business, Society and Self), and the Climate Reality Project. Abby currently sits on Governor Inslee’s STEM Innovation Alliance and is a Research Fellow for the U.S. Partnership for Education for Sustainable Development.