Aina Abiodun is shaping a more resilient future

Aina Abiodun never set out to be a climate advocate.

Then, while living in New York and working as a freelance brand strategist, she witnessed the devastation wrought by Hurricane Sandy in October 2012. She volunteered to help and was quickly struck by the disparity in recovery efforts between wealthy and low-income areas. Her already strong passion for social justice and climate awareness accelerated.

For the past year, Abiodun has served as president and executive director of Portland, Oregon-based VertueLab, a nonprofit that provides funding, mentorship and federal grant assistance to early-stage cleantech entrepreneurs. In 2024 alone, it supported more than 120 companies across all its programs. Those companies created almost 800 jobs and received nearly $2.5 million in federal grants.

VertueLab is mostly remote but operates out of the Seattle Climate Innovation Hub in downtown Seattle, a public-private partnership between the city of Seattle, the University of Washington and VertueLab designed to boost green technology.

It’s been quite a ride for Abiodun, who was born in Nigeria and fled with her family to Canada when she was just 15 years old. Along the way, she’s served as a writer, director and producer at the Lifetime Network; a founder of a TV, web and corporate production company; a cofounder of a platform for creative technologists around the globe; and a founder of Just & Green partners, a climate tech consultancy.

Abiodun, who is based in Tacoma, is also an investor who sits on several climate-related boards, including the Washington State Green Bank, Candide Group and Climate Solutions. One that’s been particularly meaningful to her is Community Power South, a New Orleans nonprofit that helps communities obtain access to solar energy and backup power systems.

“I’m all about community, community, community,” says Abiodun, who notes that climate change must be explained in practical rather than abstract terms. “My interest has always been how to effectively mobilize around the climate crisis. Can we make our buildings more resilient, our environment more prepared? That’s what resonates.”

What did Hurricane Sandy teach you? It was so life-changing. In all of New York City the lights went out, but within a week or so most of that was restored. (But) in the outer reaches of the city, where you have a lot of senior housing and public housing projects and lots of low-income families, a lot of them were completely flooded. There was no electricity, no heat. It was an experience that really shook me. That was really the moment when I became aware.

We talk about climate change a lot, but not everyone seems to understand. Is there a better way to get people interested or involved? I think the most important thing is that people feel engaged and empowered to participate in this climate movement, if you want to call it that. It’s not really a movement, but a moment.

How do you educate people on a broader scale? There has to be some reason you believe this is important, and that lies primarily in the hyperlocal experience people have. If you live in a neighborhood that's polluted, or if your experience with transportation is terrible, I promise you I can draw a line between that and any climate solution. If you're thinking about your heating and your cooling and your costs, the economic side of things, there's absolutely a connection to climate.

What mistakes do advocates make in explaining this? I think the mistake is trying to get all kind of “tree hugger” about it. Conservation is largely the provenance of the elite. You cannot get people to think about conservation who cannot figure out how to fill their tank with gas. It's just not possible. If you use the language of conservationism to try to sell the green transition, it doesn't work.

What does? What am I getting out of it? What are my benefits? The vast majority of people in the world and even in this country are concerned for their air, for their water, for pollution, for their children when they go to school every day. That's the language we have to be talking. Nobody cares about the actual planet as an abstract object.

Final thoughts? I actually don't think this can be done on a global scale. This is a region-by-region problem. We have unique problems, unique solutions, unique needs. I want to see us change our economic systems and our way of thinking about the climate transition.