ChangemakerXchange: Superconnecting

ChangemakerXchange, a global community of young social entrepreneurs, activists and changemakers

London

Role: Delegation Curator & Superconnector (3 months)

Open doors and connections for fifteen leading youth climate leaders so they could maximise their impact during London Climate Action Week.

Context:

ChangemakerXchange is a global community of 1,600 young social entrepreneurs, activists and changemakers working across 130+ countries. Its climate strand, Changemakers for the Planet, brings cohorts together made up of individuals who are at an important inflection point in their work. The 2026 delegation to London Climate Action Week was fifteen strong. It included the Director of World's Youth for Climate Justice, a driving force behind the ICJ climate ruling, the coordinator of YOUNGO's Global Youth Statement, The Gambia's Lead Gender Negotiator, a global coordinator of the Loss and Damage Youth Coalition, founders working on seaweed biomaterials, advocacy leads for clean energy and water resilience across Latin America and climate litigation in Austria. CXC covered travel, accommodation and the cohort experience, and runs many programmes like this from their HQ base in Berlin.

The Challenge:

CXC had funded places and a cohort. What they didn't have so much was access to the London ecosystem. Their team is Berlin-based, and London Climate Action Week happens over nine days, with 1300+ events, scattered across the city, where the rooms that really matter tend to be invite-only or word of mouth. One delegate described previous climate weeks as “an absolute jungle without support”. The goal was to ensure every cohort member got what they personally needed from attending LCAW while encouraging a sense of belonging and peer-based support as a result of the network effect.

The Work:

Fifteen one-to-one calls, 30 to 45 minutes each, completed within 4 weeks to meet and discover everyone’s individual story, motivations and goals for LCAW 2026. This is where empathy, heart and humour comes in because building trust and understanding for a globally diverse group of very exceptional Gen Z leaders was critical. I mapped what each delegate was working on, what they needed from the week, who they were hoping to meet and what they were worried about, then built the programme back from that which included my own suggestions of who they should meet.

I created a cohort delegate pack which supported not just their professional experience of LCAW but also their personal experience of London.

Over half of the cohort had never been to London let alone LCAW, while 1/3 were London-based. My aim was to make at least one exceptional connections per person. In the end I made around 25 warm introductions across the cohort and was able to share invitations into flagship LCAW moments that aren't publicly bookable, using my position producing three LCAW flagship events and working directly with the E3G and LCAW Secretariat teams. Delegates gained access to 8 closed-door events including the E3G State of Climate Politics Forum, Climate Governance Forum and the UN’s Information Integrity Forum.

I created and managed a project management page and made sure to complete the project docs for the programme. As with all event-related projects, we divided up the work into three areas of work: Pre-LCAW activities, LCAW 2026 itself, and the debrief, which is so easy to miss or skip but where the impact comes to life. This gave me the chance to make further relevant 1-2-1 introductions.

“Liz is a door-opener in a world of gatekeepers! After meeting at ChangeNOW, we realised some exciting overlaps around London Climate Action Week and Liz jumped in to support our cohort of young climate leaders there. She is incredibly generous with her network and connections, and does everything with heart, care and humour! What could have been an overwhelming week for everyone became a fun, productive and impactful experience!”

Nick McGirl, Co-Founder & MD, ChangemakerXchange