Lessons from climate speechwriters on how to talk about climate

Speakers

• Elias Kühn von Burgsdorff

  Speechwriter for President von der Leyen

  Belgium

• Gabrielle Cesvet

  Former Head Speechwriter, Office of the Prime Minister of Canada

  Canada

• Brent Kerrigan

  Former Speechwriter, UN Climate Change

  Switzerland

• Elias Kühn von Burgsdorff,  Speechwriter for the President von der Leyen, President of the European Commission, is responsible for crafting speeches and communicating the Commission's initiatives. Prior to this role, they served as a Policy Officer - Strategic Foresight in the Secretariat-General of the European Commission, focusing on climate, energy, and foreign policy. Before their work in the European Commission, Elias was an Editor for Are We Europe and The Economist.

• Gabrielle Cesvet, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau's Head of Speechwriting, wrote speeches in English and in French for more than four years, worked two federal election campaigns and led Prime Minister Trudeau's speechwriting team during his second mandate. Since then, she has worked in Communications at Meta and now serves as the Strategic Readiness Lead at TikTok.

• Brent Kerrigan, current Owner of Global Speechwriter, discovered early in his employment by the Government of Canada that ministers don't write their own speeches, so he decided to help. "I made a million mistakes. I swam in a sea of red ink. But I got better." In more than 10 years with the federal government, Brent was a speechwriter for the Department of Agriculture, the senior speechwriter for Transport Canada, and wrote for ministers, MPs, and, occasionally, speech content for two prime ministers. He left the government to launch Global Speechwriter and designed an online platform to train speechwriters throughout the world and he continued to write speeches for CEOs, ambassadors and others. In 2017, UN Climate Change (UNFCCC) hired Brent to write about climate change and he spent more than five years as their head speechwriter and the person who helped craft their narrative during a tumultuous stretch (think USA pulling out of the Paris Agreement, a pandemic and a last-minute country swap for COP25). He wrote approximately 200 speeches annually, equating to more than 1,000 speeches over a five-year stretch. But he says that "Numbers mean nothing. Quality matters. Reliability matters. Accuracy matters. Creativity matters."