Case study · Facilitation, Speaking & Performance
Same boat,
opposite sides.
The inaugural Ocean Plastics Leadership Summit put 160 executives, activists, scientists, and operators on an expedition ship in the middle of a plastic gyre — for three days of cross-sector workshops co-facilitated with IDEO and Hatch.
The client
Ocean Plastics Leadership Summit (inaugural). A 3-day summit in the Sargasso Sea bringing 160 corporate executives, environmental activists, scientists, operators, and policymakers onto a single expedition ship at the inflection point of one of the world’s five plastic gyres.
The challenge
When the people who make plastic and the people who fight it share a room — design thinking alone won’t bridge it.
- 01
The inaugural Ocean Plastics Leadership Summit set out to do something rare: get the people who make plastic, the people who fight against it, and the people who manage it all into the same conversation.
- 02
160 stakeholders — executives from PepsiCo and Nestlé, activists from Greenpeace and the World Wildlife Fund, operators from Municipal Recycling Facilities, scientists, and policymakers — all on one expedition ship, for three days, in the middle of the Sargasso Sea.
- 03
The challenge wasn’t intellectual — these were some of the smartest people in their fields. It was relational: how do you get organizations that are usually in opposition to share data and design a path forward together?
The approach
Put the room inside the problem.
In partnership with IDEO and Hatch, I facilitated three days of design-thinking workshops on the ship — across ideological lines, through the emotional reality of swimming in a plastic gyre, and toward outputs the room could carry home.
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Cross lines
Facilitate across deep ideological differences between corporate executives and environmental activists.
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Shared outputs
Design workshops that produced shared frameworks, not just shared experiences.
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Hold the room
Through the emotional reality of swimming in a plastic gyre and confronting the pollution firsthand.
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Anchor in feeling
Speak and perform to anchor the experience in something humans could feel, not just think about.
Across three days at sea
- 01
Cross-sector facilitation
Bringing PepsiCo and Greenpeace, Nestlé and the WWF, into structured conversation with each other — without papering over the conflict.
- 02
Design-thinking workshops
Three days of workshops with IDEO and Hatch — moving from felt problem to shared frameworks to concrete commitments.
- 03
Holding the emotional room
When 160 people swim in a plastic gyre, the room shifts. Holding that shift through structured conversation was the work.
- 04
Speaking & performing
Anchoring the experience in something humans could feel — not just think about — so the workshops landed in the body, not just the slides.
- 05
From field to deck
Translating the felt experience into structured action people could carry back to their companies, agencies, and movements.
The outcome
A summit became a network.
- 3 days of workshops on the expedition ship
- 5 plastic gyres — they sailed into one of them
- OPLN cross-sector network born from the summit
- 1st time this stakeholder mix sat in one room
Three days of workshops delivering:
- Cross-ideological facilitation that produced shared frameworks, not just shared experiences
- Design-thinking workshops co-facilitated with IDEO and Hatch
- Speaking and live performance to anchor the felt reality of the gyre
- A translation layer — moving the room from felt problem to structured action
- A launchpad for what became the Ocean Plastics Leadership Network
Stakeholders in the room
Why it worked:
- Design thinking on its own doesn’t change minds; immersion does. The summit put the room inside the problem.
- By the time the workshops began, no one in the room could pretend the issue was abstract.
- The Ocean Plastics Leadership Network (OPLN) — now a leading global platform on cross-sector plastic pollution — was born from this summit.
- It’s the kind of facilitation most consultants can’t do, because they’ve never had to hold the room when the room is on a boat in the middle of an ocean gyre.
- A working model for what cross-sector convening looks like when the bar is high enough.
Facilitating across stakeholders who don’t usually talk?
Cross-sector facilitation, design-thinking workshops, and speaking — for the rooms where the people who built the problem and the people fighting it have to sit together.
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