What about ChangeNOW
Even though the Christmas break is just around the corner, it’s full steam ahead for me right now as I put the finishing touches to #DisComcierge2026 – our curated conference experience at the fantastic ChangeNOW sustainability event in Paris next March.
I attended ChangeNOW for the first time in 2021, and I’ll admit I only went because I wanted to see if a conference held in France could really be completely delivered in English for an international audience.
Now, it’s one of my all-time favourite sustainability events – so much so that I created a signature offering, DisComcierge, around it, enabling professionals to enjoy ChangeNOW as a completely personalised experience, alongside like-minded peers.
📸 Yours truly moderating a panel on Designing Business Collaboration with Glenn Mandziuk MEDes. MCIP FRSA of World Sustainable Hospitality Alliance, Brune Poirson former Secretary of State for Ecology and former CSO of Accor Hotel Group and Kevin Tayebaly, Co-Founder of ChangeNOW on the Collective Stage.
Why is ChangeNOW such a special convening moment?
🪧 It brings together almost all types of stakeholders, AND everything is solutions-focused. The entire conference is built around a clearly signposted marketplace of 1,000 vetted solutions designed for environmental and/or social action on the most important challenges of our time.
🌍 With visitors from 140 countries, ChangeNOW has the widest and most global audience I’ve come across. It brings the world’s most innovative minds and sustainability leaders invested in deploying concrete actions for the planet to make progress and help these ideas spread across industries and geographies. It brings together entrepreneurs, corporate leaders, policymakers, investors, authors, academics, governments (local and national) and the public.
🎙️ There’s always a fantastic range of speakers. Some are the titans and leaders in the field such as you might expect, like Mary Robinson (Former President of Ireland), Satish Kumar (Indian British Activist and Founder of Schumacher College), and Kate Raworth (Economist and Author of the Doughnut Economics). Others are maybe more surprising such as Natalie Portman (Actress and Film Producer). But even better is the fact that every year, ChangeNOW features fresh, new voices. Two highlights for me in 2025 was meeting two young change champions, Nalleli Cobo, who played a crucial role in passing SB 1137, a California state law creating a 3,200-foot buffer zone between oil wells and communities. and peace therapist Jin Dawood, who is a refugee-turned-entrepreneur offering therapy to over 85,000 trauma victims.
🚮 With sustainability at the heart of the event, you won’t find the mountains of pointless swag or plastic tat you usually get at conferences. The live and breathe their values.
🏰 It’s all housed in the stunningly iconic Grand Palais on the banks of the Seine.
But (and because this is a Discombobulated Diaries entry, you know there’s a ‘but’!) while ChangeNOW is an amazing, inspirational convening space for everyone looking to build a better world, I’m still mindful of its inherent contradictions.
Firstly, ChangeNOW is ultimately just another sustainability event, in a long list of global sustainability events. If sustainability were having the global impact that events like ChangeNOW want it to, then it wouldn’t need its own standalone event – it would be de facto integrated into all other industry conferences.
And let’s face it, we’re nowhere near that stage yet. Look at this year’s London Tech Week, for example, which was all about the wonders of AI, but there was only the smallest feature of tech’s social and environmental impacts.
A post panel group photo from the Session Don't Drill Baby, Don't with Ramon Mendéz Galain, (President of REN21 and former Energy Secretary of Uruguay), Adam Weiss (Chief Programmes and Impact Officer, ClientEarth), Tori Tsui (Global Coordinator, Fossil Fuel Non-Proliferation Treaty & Climate Campaigner) Shradha Pandey (Founder and Project Leader, Grassroots Energy Management Support) and Nalleli Cobo (Environmental Activist and Storyteller, Goldman Environmental Prize winner 2022 North America, People Not Pozos)
Secondly, ChangeNOW itself has been the subject of controversy ever since a 55% stake in the event was purchased by Les Echoes-Le Parisien, a media company owned by LVMH. This has, understandably, prompted discussion about the intersection of luxury conglomerates and climate action.
Additionally, LVMH owns Le Crayon, a platform that has hosted climate change deniers and far-right activists – neither of which aligns with ChangeNOW's vision and mission.
But, based on this, can we discount the tremendous good that ChangeNOW does? Does it undo any of its positive impact? Definitely not.
I’ve been attending ChangeNOW for five years, and I’m very happy to report that its editorial programme is as ambitious, and its list of attendees is as diverse, as ever – if not more so, as the conference aligns its sense of urgency with the escalating climate and biodiversity crises, the finite resources we’re using as if they are infinite and the growing levels of inequality and exclusion.
Once again, this clarifies that doing business with purpose isn’t squeaky clean, and that two things can be true at the same time. It’s the net result that’s important.
