The Resilience Project has, and always will be, youth-led. From its humble beginnings in Bristol, UK, founded by activist Katie Hodgetts at age 24, to the creation of an International Board of Youth in 2023 – young adults have led and overseen our decision-making as we grew our communities across the globe. All of our programmes have been created ‘by youth, for youth,’ in partnership with established psychologists and older experts. For the majority of its existence, everyone in The Resilience Project core working team has been under 35.
Remaining authentic to our ‘youth-led’ philosophy came naturally initially, but as the years passed and the founding team grew up, it has required some significant reflection and intentionality.
In early 2025, The Resilience Project was confronted with unforeseen challenges that meant a major rethink to our strategy. In the wake of Trump’s second-term, like many other climate organisations, we lost a large amount of funding overnight. The increasing tightness in the funding landscape, combined with the seemingly exponential increase in demand for our work on resilience in the polycrises, forced some deep reflection on what it means to sustain ourselves for the long term.
Our Founder and then CEO, Katie, didn’t scale-back her ambition. She decided to recruit an experienced and values-aligned leader to help guide the organisation through the next season, someone that was committed both to youth leadership and to scaling the organisation sustainability. She decided to honour her own needs by courageously stepping away, while at the same time choosing someone that she hoped her 23-year old self would have been proud to see carrying this work forward.
When I joined the organisation as that leader in July 2025, I felt both the weight of that responsibility and the extraordinary potential of this organisation and community. I was 38 years old.
I carried a critical question: how could we remain ‘by youth, for youth’ while at the same time benefiting from a larger body of business experience that would help achieve our ambition of scale?
And how could we be ‘’youth-led’’ with a now 38-year old at the helm?
My aim was to flip the narrative– instead of youth advising then older adults deciding, what if we could give the power to the youth to decide, while surrounding them with advisors and operational experts that could help bring their vision and strategy to life.
Sticky Problems Require Bold Solutions
I began working with Katie, our International Board of Youth, and our Senior Board and advisors to find a solution. The International Board of Youth were already key advisors that strongly influenced our strategy decisions. They were central to the whole thing.
But on paper, their power was very limited. Governance must always be designed for the worst case, because when things go badly, the structures and legal frameworks matter more than good intentions.
We needed to transform our governance model. I poured myself into research, risk analysis, and consultations with anyone that would speak to me, to come up with a solution for a governance re-design…
During our CEO handover week (my fourth week on the job), seated at Katie’s kitchen table at her home in the Scottish Highlights, I was nervous to present her with my ideas. The natural consequence of my proposal meant asking her to distribute her power as Director to a wider group, and structurally creating a path for her to let go of decision making as she moved out of the youth space.
I proposed to bring The Resilience Project toward a Steward Ownership model, a proven approach championed in values-led and post-growth business circles. I pitched that we could create a youth-majority group of Stewards (e.g. 5 out of 9 members under 30) to become our legal governing body. In the back of my mind, I suspected this might be scary for Katie, giving up control of her life’s work to a body of people that she hadn’t even met yet.
Katie’s response? ‘’Youth majority is a good idea, but what if we just made it 100% youth instead?!’’
The Resilience Project’s fate as the first-ever 100% Youth Steward owned organisation was sealed.
Introducing our Stewards
By the second half of 2026, I will be reporting to a group of eight 18-30 year olds, supported by a wider body of intergenerational advisors. By 2027, we’ll lock this into our statutory structures, so no future CEO or leader can alter this commitment. This renewing Steward body will guide The Resilience Project’s long-term direction, protect our mission, and ensure our work stays accountable to the movements and communities we serve.
Within this model, being youth-led is not an intention or a ‘’nice to have’’. It is the default at the centre of all that we do.
Our freshly appointed Stewards are Resilience Project alumni, representing seven different countries. They are young leaders who themselves have battled with difficult climate emotions, who understand the work deeply and have experienced our programmes first-hand. Collectively they bring experience in finance, business development, strategic leadership, climate psychology, organisational culture, movement-building, and inclusive programme design.
These are people who know what it feels like to feel the weight of the world on their shoulders while still choosing to keep showing up – for themselves, for each other, for the movement. They have proven themselves as founders, activists, policy-influencers… and most importantly really good humans who believe deeply in the power of rest, care, and all that The Resilience Project stands for.
Being a Steward is a financial-compensated role, with serious responsibility and end accountability for the organisation. It is not a management role or full time job, because daily operations and routine decision making are delegated to me as the appointed CEO who leads our team.
Stewards (aka Members for our Community Interest Company) will hold responsibilities including:
- Appointing operational leadership (yes- that means selecting or deciding to remove the CEO)
- Approving strategy, partnerships and key budget decisions
- Holding the organisation accountable to its values, climate justice and protecting youth mental health
- Guiding business development strategy and helping protect our values while we scale our revenue generating offers
- Helping us shape a governance model to become the first ever (to our knowledge) youth steward-ownership systems in the world
From community organisers to journalists and psychologists, I am so proud to introduce you to The Resilience Project’s Founding Steward Cohort:
Co-Chair: Emmanuel Marumbu Misiati (he/him)
📍 Nairobi, Kenya
Emmanuel is a Kenyan organisational development practitioner and youth-focused facilitator with governance expertise. He advances civic engagement, mental health and community impact through leadership roles, while championing wellbeing through mindful movement, breathwork, yoga, meditation and holistic resilience.
Co-Chair: Katie Hodgetts (she/her)
📍 Highlands, UK
Katie is an award-winning changemaker, author and speaker with a decade of leadership experience in the climate movement. Founder of The Resilience Project, she champions youth resilience, has advised global leaders and now serves as our Executive Director and a Co-Chair on our first-ever Board of Stewards.
Eli Musarurwa (they/he)
📍 Harare, Zimbabwe
Eli is a socio-environmental justice activist from Zimbabwe advancing youth climate leadership across Africa. Passionate about biodiversity, decolonial thinking, and indigenous knowledge, they empower young activists through advocacy, safety, and movement-building roles with the African Climate Alliance and Project 90.
Georgio Moussa (he/him)
📍 London, UK
Georgio is a social researcher, political economist, archivist, and journalist committed to climate justice and egalitarian futures. Having found vital community through The Resilience Project programmes, he champions spaces that prevent burnout –combining academic insight, storytelling, community and grassroots action.
Leena Joshi (she/her)
📍 New Delhi, India
Leena is an award-winning social entrepreneur, author and climate justice advocate leading Climate Conservancy’s global volunteer network. A UN-published researcher and advisor, she works across academia, policy and art. She has spoken internationally on climate anxiety and uses writing and climate artivism to advance environmental awareness and action.
Lorenz Kaplick (he/him)
📍 Berlin, Germany
Lorenz is a Berlin-based psychologist, mediator and organisational developer. His work is focused on psychological safety, conflict resolution and healthy work cultures. He has been involved with The Resilience Project since 2024 after taking part in The Resilience Fellowship and is passionate about the intersection between change-making and psychology.
Pimpichcha Sullivan-Tailyour (she/her)
📍 London, UK
Pimpichcha is a Thai-British youth climate activist and environmental science student at King’s College London. She focuses on systems change and building bridges across generations and communities, mobilising climate action through her work with organisations like Force of Nature and the UK Youth Climate Coalition.
Tala Sammur (she/they)
📍 London, UK
Tala is a Palestinian yoga and meditation instructor focused on decolonising yoga and strengthening activist wellbeing. A former Resilience Circle attendee turned The Resilience Project’s Youth Programmes Officer, she is now completing their post-graduate studies in psychology and is also an integrative psychotherapist-in-training.
