Jamie Beck Alexander said it best: No matter where we work, every job is a climate job now. But figuring out how to bring climate into our work can be a long and winding road, and we need fellow travelers. Shane Tierney, co-lead of the Green Design Lab at Microsoft, knows this well. He was on his own journey to discover his place in a climate-conscious work community when he stumbled upon All We Can Save. “When I came across the Project, I fell a little bit in love,” he says. “It felt like a wonderful opportunity to bring some of my colleagues along on that journey.” 

He wasn’t alone. His colleagues Jacqueline Yeung, Abigail Cawley, and Felipe Almeida were all looking for ways to connect their work with climate, and they wanted “a space to explore a different way of relating,” as Felipe puts it. With the support of the sustainability team at Microsoft, the four embarked on a weekly workplace Circle. 

Holding space for climate emotions at work might feel like a contradiction in terms, but for all four, the experience was meaningful and transformative. “A Circle in the workplace challenges you to be vulnerable and brave with your colleagues, people with whom you spend so much of your time and form so much of your identity around,” Abigail reflected. Meeting every Friday, they gained different insights and perspectives from each other, grew their boldness to ask big questions, and wove tight bonds that hold to this day. 

“It helped us speak to the elephant in the room: Can we be sustainable in work and life?” says Jacqueline. Looking back, she’s grateful for “knowledge from my wonderful colleagues, healing from being heard and supported by my group, and time with brilliant minds from diverse walks of life.” Felipe found “invaluable and long-lasting moments of sincere and deep connection” with his colleagues, many of whom he now considers dear friends. For Abigail, the Circle cultivated “confidence, insights, courage, and much-needed perspective from worlds quite different from my own.”

“The Circle was just this beautiful container where we could all show up however we were feeling that day,” Shane recalls. “There was space to laugh, to cry, to breathe, and just to learn together.”

Since participating in this inaugural workplace circle at Microsoft, each of them has experienced a blooming of climate action. Felipe is directing his climate work towards providing space for heartful conversations, rather than only technological solutions. Abigail is working with climate startups to help them achieve ambitious sustainability goals. Jacqueline is digging into her food journey and working to reduce systemic plastic waste. And Shane has gotten more involved with internal efforts in the workplace advocating for stronger climate policies and principles.

Building meaningful climate action, whether within or outside the workplace, is hard. But when we share open, honest space with colleagues, the relationships we form become the bedrock of our work in the future. Or as Abigail explains it: “The climate challenge has gotten harder; [it] makes me sadder and simultaneously more determined to put in the work in that fight. The peace and energy and stability that the Circles experience provided me—it’s something I think back and rely on often to keep going.”

Our conversations with participants have been edited for clarity + brevity.