CATF Donor Spotlight – Ralph Taylor and Flo Brown
“What makes CATF different is that you are able to accurately size-up the climate change challenge before us and equipped to do something about it.”
-Ralph Taylor, CATF donor partner
Ralph Taylor and Flo Brown have been donor partners of Clean Air Task Force since 2019, however, Ralph has been a passionate advocate for the clean air and climate movement since the mid 1980’s.
Over the course of his engagement, he came to the conclusion that it would take a shared sense of how to measure and manage data relevant to the solutions, collaboration between unlikely bedfellows and persistence to address the complexity of the challenge. Ralph first stumbled on implementing this approach while serving on the board for CERES, a coalition which brought together investors, operating companies and activist organizations together in an effort to make progress on sustainability issues. Over the course of his board tenure, he seed funded both the Global Reporting Initiative and the Greenhouse Gas Protocol — initiatives which remain foundational to global efforts on the businesses and governments to measure and manage their carbon footprints and other impacts.
In 2010, following a disappointing failure to pass the American Clean Energy and Security Act (Waxman-Markey) Ralph turned to supply chains as a philanthropic priority for reducing carbon footprint.
Enter, Clean Air Task Force.
Through his involvement with The Philanthropy Workshop, he learned about CATF from another participant. Ralph was immediately impressed with founder and executive director, Armond Cohen and his theory and outcomes for high impact change.
Ralph describes his first contribution to CATF as being somewhat oblique. It supported a specific study and modeling research conducted in partnership with RAND Corporation as a method in helping climate change philanthropies, NGOs and other industry leaders expand their thinking to a broader solution set. This method of expanded thinking is core to Ralph’s philanthropy–so much so that he named his foundation “Metanoia,” meaning “to change one’s way of thinking.”
This is true for Clean Air Task Force as well. We pride ourselves on championing solutions for clean air innovation in neglected low-carbon technologies.
Ralph continues to invest in Clean Air Task Force by providing both seed funding for emerging and innovative ideas as well as challenge grants that help encourage others to contribute.
“CATF opened my eyes to an approach and scale for the challenge we’re up against. Now I feel very confident, CATF has the most realistic assessment of the challenge and realistic approach to doing something about it.”
