Common Spark Turns 4! Who We’ve Become and What’s Next
Collage of Common Spark Team using funny zoom filters including unicorn, reindeer, rainbow eyes, grass, northern lights, and mustache.
As Common Spark rounds its fourth run around the sun, I, as its founder, have accepted an invitation by my team to reflect on what we’ve done together and what it means to me personally.
For those that don’t know, Common Spark was born out of a series of questions in 2018:
Can I grow as a professional, while working less than full-time so I can be available for the son that my husband and I were expecting?
Can I do exciting and meaningful work around my family’s needs, and contribute something financially too?
After two years, I declared the experiment a success, and off I went, with a bright-eyed baby boy who inspires me to build a healthier world for everyone and a portfolio of work that challenged me to grow and learn.
Over the last couple years, our collaborative has grown. Common Spark boasts a team of unrivaled heart and talent. We co-create our vision of work and the impact we aspire for all while holding each other accountable to making it happen. And it does happen!
“Common Spark boasts a team of unrivaled heart and talent.”
Today, our portfolio of work reflects our strength as a team of energy policy practitioners and facilitators, grounded in our commitment to support and amplify the work of environmental justice and community-based organizations and those they represent and serve. In just this last year, we've had the privilege to:
Support conversations, research, and coalition work across the nation in California, the Midwest, and the East;
Conduct community-based research and interviews to inform local government policy, state agencies, and regulatory advocacy;
Get into the nitty gritty details of implementing normalized metered energy consumption policy and trajectories for statewide decarbonization efforts;
Dive deeply into the topic and questions of affordability and justice in housing advocacy; and
Support dynamic organizations in their strategic planning, just a few examples among our proud portfolio.
Leading Common Spark to this point has been an exciting experience, but not all my own. For several months this last year, I relied on our team to carry on our work while I tended to a new baby daughter. Willful and strong, she is so many of the things I have aspired and aspire to be. While I spent time getting to know her and our family as four, the strong leadership of our team showed me that Common Spark had become more than just a pseudonym for my independent work, and was now a collective vision with a momentum of its own.
“Just as I rely on the Common Spark team to support my personal life, my professional life relies on the support of my family team.”
Lastly, I cannot share any of this without underscoring the depth of support I have from my partner, Stu. He shows up for our family in so many ways; not only providing us support, care, and love, but also doing so in a way that has allowed me and my own work with Common Spark to thrive from its inception to today. Just as I rely on the Common Spark team to support my personal life, my professional life relies on the support of my family team.
“So, four years. This last year. How does it all feel?” one of our Senior Consultants asked me.
I feel grateful. I’m so grateful for all our partners (some might call them clients) we work with, their trust in us and our work with them, and everything each of them has taught me. As I reflect over this year, I’m especially grateful for the long-standing partnerships that have helped us build who we are today.
I feel curious and challenged. Our team is the strength and joy of Common Spark. I never expected Common Spark to grow beyond myself. Yet today I enjoy questions about how to be intentional about our growth and direction, while staying grounded in our values and truth about who we are and want to be. Our team is gold and am honored to think about how Common Spark’s next chapter can reflect our own growth and personal development.
And I feel excited for the future! Common Spark supports a kind of growth that is both challenging and rewarding. Our work poses hard questions, requires creative thinking, and prioritizes building trusted relationships. It is a special place to deepen my practice as facilitator, advocate, manager, leader, partner and mother.
“Common Spark is a special place to deepen my practice as facilitator, advocate, manager, leader, partner and mother. ”
Altogether, the next year at Common Spark looks, well, sparkly! Building on our work and growth from last year, and in response to requested and observed needs in our energy community, we are incubating some of our own projects and initiatives. These initiatives are focused on expanding access to policy-making processes and challenging the inequities of our industry’s status quo. As these initiatives come to fruition, we look forward to sharing them with you and inviting your engagement.
Most notably, Common Spark is consolidating our experiences and learnings—from conversations and partnerships across environmental and climate advocates and environmental justice and community-based organizations alike—into a holistic training that we’re calling Energy (in)Equity. This training will apply a racial justice and equity lens to understand how the energy industry culture has supported and continues to perpetuate systemic injustices throughout policy advocacy and implementation work. More importantly, it offers practical ways of how we can begin to do our collective work differently. Through facilitated conversation, case studies and examples, and tools to reframe popular (and unpopular) questions and challenges, we hope participants will leave resourced and inspired to change the status quo.
If you’re excited, so are we! Stay tuned for more details and early access to registrations in early 2023!
Common Spark Consulting not only works externally with our clients and partners, but we also strive to work inwardly, recognizing that we must internalize the care, thoughtfulness, and intention we hope to represent as individuals and an organization. The Thought Library is where we share our ideas and thoughts, where we are at right now, on topics and issues that we hope will spark conversation for a brighter, more inclusive energy future.