Artwork by Atmos
words by miranda green
Tori Dunlap is better known as the Financial Feminist.
She’s written a New York Times bestselling book of the same name, and on Instagram she’s focused on teaching financial literacy to more than 2 million followers through her account @herfirst100. Topics she routinely covers include how to invest in a 401k, what high-yield savings account to use, and how sexism in the workplace impacts your lifetime earnings.
Recently, she’s tackled an issue that doesn’t always come up while discussing finances: climate change.
“We help 6 million women think about money, but more broadly think about the ways that patriarchy or culture has impacted their day-to-day lives and the way that they think about moving through their world and their careers and their relationships,” Dunlap said. “And there was something so cool to be able to talk about the way that climate fits into all of that, as well.”
Dunlap’s recent pivot to addressing climate change directly got a little boost from an initiative driven by TED, the organization known for its on-stage talks.
To get more climate content online, TED’s climate solutions arm, called TED Countdown, has spent the last year working with 238 content creators with a combined audience of more than 700 million followers across TikTok, Instagram, and YouTube.
“A lot of our work is about showing creators [that] in the same way that you can sneak a bronzer into a Get Ready With Me, you can probably sneak climate change into your content,” said Louis Levin, a founder of a creative impact agency called Conspirators that partners with TED on its climate creator work. “Time and time again, we’re seeing creators want to do this; the biggest barriers are not a lack of knowledge, but the first barrier is just them not being asked, and the fact that they don’t think there’s room for them in this conversation.”
The effort, called Ground Crew, is a partnership between Conspirators, the Environmental Defense Fund, and TED Countdown.
Ground Crew has worked with creators including chef Molly Baz and TikTokers Kendahl Landreth, Talia Lichtstein, and Mamadou. TED would not divulge how much it spends on the program, but the organization’s most recent public tax filings from 2024 show it spent $7.6 million on Countdown.
So far, Ground Crew has hosted five in-person workshops for influencers, usually around 40 at each event, in various U.S. cities; and three “quests” for small groups of about 10 creators in Costa Rica, Kenya, and Ecuador. TED’s reps said they’re currently working on another custom-built training focused on energy abundance and independence amid rising energy usage and costs.
“I think we really saw firsthand that before you can ask creators to have an impact, they first need to believe that they can have an impact, and so helping these incredible individuals realize their own ability to affect change, and realize that they are leaders, is a lot of how we’re thinking about our work right now,” Levin said. “And I think the way that we do that is supporting them, is providing them with community, is asking them what they need, rather than telling them, ‘Here’s what we need, and can you help us do it?’”
Content that’s come out of the work with Ground Crew has proven unique to each creator. Makeup artist Abby Wren painted her head as three different ecosystems to coincide with Earth Day. ASMR creator Whispering Willow created a TikTok to soothe listeners worried about their climate future. Comedian Kareem Rahma produces the Emmy-nominated Instagram show SubwayTakes and interviewed marine biologist Dr. Ayana Elizabeth Johnson about climate solutions.
The idea of tapping into creator networks to boost certain messaging is hardly new—and it’s been leveraged honestly, like getting celebrities to speak out against injustices, and insidiously. We’ve seen gas industry campaigns pay influencers to promote the benefits of cooking with gas stoves; Russian operations dupe far-right influencers to push pro-Kremlin talking points; and even Democratic and dark money groups pay Democratic influencers to stick to certain messaging.
It makes sense, in a world where audiences increasingly get their information from social media while turning away from mainstream news, that various groups explore new ways to get their positions out there for better or worse. But climate change, as urgent as it is, can be a challenging topic to captivate audiences with on social media. It’s often highly technical, esoteric, and frequently an all-around bummer.
“The thing that I had to get re-reminded of is: Doom and gloom is really hard to talk about,” Dunlap said, “especially when we live in a very dystopian society where I can talk about climate change and I can swipe up, and then it’s a Get Ready With Me, and I can swipe up, and it’s Taylor and Travis’ wedding, and like that just feels crazy.”
Part of Ground Crew’s campaign strategy is to help creators bring up climate-related issues in a way that seems natural. Representatives say they view their work as impact, not marketing. And they knew they could leverage TED’s brand recognition to get more people involved.
“Our goal is to kind of upskill the space and to create a community of storytellers who feel empowered to step into the climate conversation, in the ways that make sense for them,” said Jon Mallow, TED’s head of impact.
Mallow said the idea to engage with creators came from the realization that TED itself was becoming a message driver for climate solutions and a convener of thinkers.
“We really believe firmly that we need to work together in bigger ways, and getting creators to work with each other and getting creators to work with climate people feels like a really important part of that,” Mallow said.
TED first experimented with training non-traditional media hosts to speak about climate with a 2022 workshop in London, Mallow said. That event, held for 50 Europe-based YouTubers, taught them how to engage followers on major environmental issues.
That was followed by another in-person workshop, held in December 2024 in New York City, for creators across all formats. Comedian Rahma and environmental activist and drag queen Pattie Gonia hosted. TED offered four more events since then, featuring a wide range of creator attendees whose focus issues range from fashion to food to comedy.
“The thing about climate that is so challenging and yet also wonderful, in a way, is that it affects us all,” Mallow said, “and it affects every part of our economy, and affects every part of our lives—and so that can make it feel incredibly overwhelming and kind of intractable, which I think is part of why we need the narrative shift that I was talking about in the first place.
“But it also is this incredible opportunity because there are entry points for everyone,” he continued. “Whatever you’re into is a climate story, and so that’s what we’re trying to help creators understand and help creators to communicate in ways to their audiences that engage the audiences rather than turn them off.”
TED representatives say they don’t pay creators to attend events or post, but it does give them stipends to work on content. One in 5 creators they work with are supported through TED’s in-house creators, TED’s network, or production stipends.
Creator V Spehar, host of the YouTube show Under The Desk News, got a Ground Crew stipend to launch a monthly show in May focused on climate and environmental justice issues called HOT! & Bothered.
Nimay Ndolo is another creator who said she’s done four posts that were financially supported by TED. She attended the Costa Rica quest and joined TED Countdown at its 2025 event in Kenya. She said the climate crisis became real to her in 2023, when Canadian wildfires turned the skies over her home in New York City bright orange.
“Someone said something that has haunted me,” she said. “They said climate will not become a main concern until it’s too late to care about it. And at the time I thought, ‘Oh my God, oh my God!”
On her Instagram account, Nimay routinely talks about issues some might consider taboo. She advocates for reproductive justice and voter awareness, and eventually realized she wanted climate change to be part of her conversation with her followers.
“I also want them to be aware of climate because again, having it be a back-burner topic is going to land us in a horrible place.”
Tori Dunlap ultimately opted to tackle climate change on her podcast and integrated it into an episode on homebuying, where she touched on the issue in the context of “the climate risk nobody’s pricing in correctly.”
“People see their insurance premiums go up all the time if they live in places that you know are more prone to wildfires,” Dunlap said. “The cost of goods is going to get more and more expensive every single year. There are wars happening already over water in certain countries … I always joke that I can relate anything back to money.”
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TED Now Trains Influencers to Talk about Climate
