Because eco-anxiety for us doesn't look like, "Oh, the ocean's warming," or "The forests on fire were sad," but it is literal survival for us because we are coming from these areas. Two days before I moved to Canada, there were massive floods in my city, and I still remember having to ziplock my documents and passports and put them on the top floor of the house because I didn't know if I could leave.
[Show Intro]
The world is changing. For most humans, change is uncomfortable and challenging to address. Financial and political uncertainty, friction with back-to-office mandates, and challenging hybrid workplace collaboration. Not to forget, important environmental, social responsibility, and governance initiatives combined with the rapid pace of digital transformation and the need for human-centered AI integration. Change is happening, and fast. This rapid change has highlighted the need for increased speed to innovation and long-lasting change adoption in many organizations. Whether you are a startup working on agile process or a mature organization navigating change within existing complex structures, the skill set and need to adapt has never been more vital. The team from Strategy Table want to help the wider world understand the need and approach to meaningful and impactful change management, helping organizations navigate disruption and make change accessible. It often starts with a meaningful conversation. This is *Accessible Disruption*.
Anthony Vade: Welcome to another episode of *Accessible Disruption*. I'm Anthony Vade, CIO at Strategy Table and joining me as always is my co-host and Chief Experience Officer, Tahira Endean. We're excited to speak with Ash Man today, but we're going to be digging pretty deep into it, so before we do, I want to do a fast reminder for all the listeners out there: please share, like, and subscribe to this episode to help spread this conversation and continue our mission to create positive change in our world. Head on over to the Strategy Table website, strategytable.co, sign up for your seat at the table and access exclusive content and conversations. Also, check out our Substack and our social channels which have been updated recently and there's some interesting content coming out on those. I think that's probably enough housekeeping. Tahira, you constantly amaze me with the people you encounter on your adventures around the world and through your amazing network. Who is our guest today and how do you keep finding so many impactful and inspiring humans?
**Tahira Endean:** Well, we are going to have a future guest who introduced us to today's guest, Ash Man. And I love this story, Ash, of how you originally met Elizabeth, so we're going to come to that a little bit later. But in the meantime, we had a very brief conversation and I was just like, how does one young human do all of the things that you have been doing? And so let's just start a little bit with who you are, where you come from, tell us about your company and the work that you're doing.
**Aish Mann:** Yeah, absolutely. Thank you, Tahira and Anthony, it's great to be here. My name is Ash. I am the founder and executive director of the Tanah Air Project. I'm a newcomer from Malaysia, so Tanah Air in Malay means land, Air means water, Tanah Air means homeland. And it's a homeland project that strives to create belonging as a climate solution. We primarily support newcomers, skilled immigrants who are new to Canada and are trying to find their space in the climate space. All because I was once that newcomer not too long ago, which was just actually about three years ago when I first moved to Canada and was trying to find my place and found amazing mentors like your future guest, Elizabeth. We'll get into that story in a bit. So Tanah Air focuses on creating belonging through a three-pronged approach. One is capacity-building workshops we do, it's all consolidated in this newcomer climate camp which is essentially a boot camp where it's very much understanding the contexts of Canada. So we do two-day programming, we do history of Canada, we do indigenous histories of the lands that we're on as well. We also reflect on our status quo examination and then we go into skill building: how do you network, how do you tell your story to folks, and how do you take care of yourself while doing it as well? You know, being in the climate space, especially as an immigrant navigating a new continent—for me it was an entirely new continent on the other side of the planet—how do you do that? How do you deal with eco-anxiety which can also look very different in newcomer and immigrant communities and how it shows up? And we kind of build that skills and we're now building a community to support everybody.
**Anthony Vade:** So many things there that we want to unpack. And I like that you start with capacity building as a key area, and shout out to a previous podcast guest where we talked about capacity being a starting point for all change when human beings are involved. That's fascinating. And full disclosure, based on the accent, I'm also an immigrant and had an immigrant experience moving over to Canada as well. So I'm thinking to myself like, oh my, where was this? This would have been amazing when, back in 2008 when we first made our way over here.
**Aish Mann:** I was in elementary school, so sorry.
**Anthony Vade:** Look, some of the things like you shared as well... we didn't have to deal with that when we came out. We had a financial crisis of a different type, but the climate conversation was very different back then too. Um, so yeah, there's certainly a great need for this kind of thing right now. Tahira, did you have any thoughts to add to that ramble?
**Tahira Endean:** Just would love to know a little bit more about your origin story of how you got involved in climate.
**Aish Mann:** So, I had an entire career in Malaysia as well. So my bachelor's is in economics. Originally from Kuala Lumpur, the capital city, but I lived in Borneo for my bachelor's and also worked with one of our state departments to promote sustainable tourism to Sarawak, which is one of our largest states in Malaysia in Borneo. I got out of university and started working with a news outlet covering economic, political news. I also covered some environmental news. So actually, my first sort of foray into it was when I interviewed this person who was a German hitchhiker, and he was running across the entire length of Malaysian Borneo, which I forget how many kilometers, but essentially it would have taken him a couple of months to do it. And so, I interviewed him and I was like, how do you think this makes change? What are you doing? And he's an engineer, he has quit his job, he was doing the van life, and getting to know him I think really started my interest also in the climate space. But of course, being in Malaysia, we have so many other pressing issues as well. It used to be an authoritarian state, it was very hard to be a non-Muslim—it's a Muslim country as well—so being a non-Muslim woman who's asking a lot of questions, that can get very tricky as well. We do play fast and loose with a lot of sovereignty and freedom of speech laws. Yeah, forayed into writing and then when I worked with the State Department, I worked on archiving a lot of our indigenous culture as well. But I realized that if I wanted to make actual change, I needed technical knowledge and also had to ensure safety. Canada, Vancouver, BC aligned most with my values. There was a program that I wanted to do. There weren't many that were available in my home country. So I moved here all by myself with two suitcases, didn't know anybody, um, in January 2022, and here we are. So yeah.
**Tahira Endean:** Amazing, incredible human story. You had an opportunity to be able to dive into this work over the last year. So tell us a little bit about that opportunity that you had and how you've leveraged that.
**Aish Mann:** Yeah, so I started first as a volunteer. I was a student doing climate sustainability work on the side, which is how I met Elizabeth and was part of some of the programming that her organization had created. So I had been in the youth climate space and capacity building space for a while. And then early last year I got accepted into this fellowship by this youth-to-youth climate funder called FES, Finance Engage Sustain. And their entirely youth-led team, they are a charitable funder and they fund youth climate projects. And they were testing out a pilot, it's called the Abundance Fellowship. So they were picking six people who usually don't have access to that many resources to fund essentially projects that were exciting and new. And so I was one of the fellows that was picked, and there's six of us, BIPOC youth, and two of them were reserved for newcomers. I got $100,000 for it and essentially got to spend all of 2025. The first half was learning, tying up loose ends, doing a lot of reading, research strategy. And then we incorporated mid-of-the-year, and then most of Tanah Air's programming came after. So we did our pilot newcomer climate camp just last November. And we're continuing to build a community around understanding different policy that would help immigrant communities. You know, how do we reform immigration policy? I missed mentioning this earlier, but one of our main mandates for Tanah Air is also indigenous-immigrant solidarity building, because fundamentally we believe that you can't learn to belong on these lands without meaningful relationships with indigenous peoples. So most of my program educators are also indigenous youth, and we've co-developed programming for—as someone who's new, has questions, and we've just kind of done a lot of behind-the-scenes questions around, "Hey, is this rude if I ask this? Because I am new and I don't really know." And so we're kind of building that kind of community with Tanah Air.
**Anthony Vade:** How do you start that conversation with indigenous communities, and how do you bridge that initial gap to even put the idea forward of combining these two very different community groups?
**Aish Mann:** I think it starts with just being a genuine human being and building friendships. You know, because I've been in the youth climate spaces, I was a programs and coordinator for Leading Change Canada, and Leading Change Canada specifically works on building capacity for Canadian youth all over with the Globe series. This was like the youth arm, and they would essentially fundraise to get 150 youth from all over Canada, from all walks of life, to come and attend this conference. And so a lot of my network I built started building there. It was like the first conference I ever attended, and that's where I met Elizabeth as well. And so it has been just curiosity, I think, being genuine, you know, without, I guess, ulterior motives, just building those friendships and being like, "Hey, I'm kind of curious of that, can I tap you on the shoulder and kind of see where you're at?" This particular partnership around curriculum building for this particular newcomer climate camp, I actually was attending a webinar too by Indigenous Climate Action, and one of the speakers mentioned how we need to build more programming for non-indigenous folks to educate them as well. And so that particular speaker, Sunshine Dunstan-Moore, so her and I, we like started working together since last May and exploring what that education would look like.
**Tahira Endean:** So your company is called Homeland. You get to work with somebody named Sunshine. You are definitely bringing a lot of positivity around you. Would you consider yourself an extrovert?
**Aish Mann:** I think so. I think so. I do well in public settings, I think it's a bit of a mix because I also get drained very easily and I need to be in my enclosure, which is my office here, and I just like silence when I'm home, but yeah.
**Tahira Endean:** Which I think is—it's important to have that time and space for reflection. I ask the question about being an extrovert because you walked up to the president of Globe and just laid it all out there. So tell us how you met Elizabeth.
**Aish Mann:** Yeah, absolutely. I mean, she is just an amazing person to approach and talk to as well. It was... so I was attending the Leading Change Summit, and with that, I also got to attend Globe as a youth delegate. Uh, it was my first time at a conference, not gonna lie. And I had... I had been at school for a year. We're learning all these theories around—so I went to grad school for green business and sustainability management—and so we're learning, you know, different avenues of decarbonization, we're looking at different energy streams and, you know, different landscapes of the tar sands and all of that. But it was all theory. And Globe was the first place where I could see everybody like actually see people working on the solutions. So I was a kid in a candy store, and I was just like walking up to people: "You work on this? This is so cool! Do you—you have to come to my classroom and be a guest speaker!" and all of that. I think also Leading Change really helped with that, because we had one morning, which was about like three-ish hours, and we essentially had trainings on like, how do you network? How do you carry yourself in a space? People with big titles and all, they're just people at the end. I still remember Mike from previous—who was the former president—said that. And he was like, "We're all just people, you know, like just come up and chat with us, and this is like how you conduct yourself in a networking setting." So I felt pretty confident, I felt very supported as well as like a young person who was entering this space. And you know, I had seen Elizabeth speak. One thing that was very mesmerizing as a young student to me was, you know, how a lot of the leadership um in the in the Globe community also, like how they carry themselves, and they were very open to questions. Like, I could approach anybody and ask questions, and I'd just be like, "I'm a student, I'm just curious," and everybody would be so warm and, you know, passionate, and they would be welcoming. And so I had seen Elizabeth speaking, and I still remember she was with like uh I think some of the other leadership team, and I just kind of walked up to her and I was like, "Hi, this is my name. Um, I am a student here. I just have to say, um, I just really appreciate how you're able to take up space and be on stage with ministers or CEOs and you're still so gracious." And I don't know, sometimes it's—for the lack of a better word, Valentine's is right around the corner—it was kind of love at first sight because I love the way that she was able to practice this soft leadership. And to me, it was always taught that if you want to be a leader, if you want to be an executive, a CEO, you have to put on a hard face and you have to just be the smartest in the room or whatever. But I just for the first time was seeing a different type of leadership, and I was like, I want to be that kind of leader. And so I just kind of walked up to her. And to no surprise, Elizabeth was great. And this was in Toronto, and, you know, we exchanged information, and I messaged her later, asked her for a coffee chat in Vancouver, which is where we're based now. We're supposed to have, like, an hour-long coffee chat; it turned into a three-hour chat about just everything. And then at the end of it, I asked her to be my mentor, and here we are, three years later, and she's still there in my life, and I'm very grateful for that.
**Anthony Vade:** What a great example of a healthy mentor-mentee start and relationship. It wasn't overly prescriptive, but really, it took you taking that first brave step. Now, I'm going to be optimistic for the people listening to this episode, uh, and they're catching up. Look forward and you'll see that episode and listen to Elizabeth's episode and exploring everything that Profoundry does. And those of you who are listening in sync with us, that episode's coming up, so stay tuned for that one coming. We're going to take this opportunity to take a really short break here. If you want to listen to these episodes ad-free, you want to engage in a deeper conversation, and check out our resources, head over to strategytable.co where you can join up and experience the bookshelf, some really interesting posts within our community as well. But for now, we're going to take a short break and we're going to come back really soon.
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**Anthony Vade:** And we're back. And I want to jump into a little bit more of the immigrant side of the work that you're doing in particular, because I think it's quite interesting. This concept of a green stream and understanding what permanent residency looks like and the pathways that people could take. What's the work look like that you've been doing in that space?
**Aish Mann:** Yeah, so before I get into the immigration stream itself, I want to build a little bit of context of who exactly is the community that I'm serving. A lot of us are coming in with expertise from our home countries. You know, um, when I went to school, we're almost 100% international students. Um, someone had double engineering degrees from their home country. Someone had worked on decarbonizing the shipping industry in Mexico. Someone had invented a new way of irrigation in Pakistan or, you know, someone worked with the city on waste management. So everybody in my classroom already actually was coming with a lot of expertise. And for about two years that I was at school, I can confidently say I learned so much more from my classmates because they had lived experience, and I just loved the conversations we were having. Unfortunately, though, most of them have had to leave the space because of the red tape around how climate work is presented. Um, so we know with investments and all that, it's very hard to have full-time work that is like climate and clean, and everybody struggles with the job. But there is an added layer as an immigrant to it, because when I was looking for employment, trying to get into the climate space, I actually needed full-time employment because that was my visa requirements after university. Because I could have taken contract work, but that just doesn't count towards my PR then. Because you need, like, certain points after one year of experience, and then you apply for your permanent residency. And so the immigration system, if you've studied in Canada, you're trying to become a permanent resident after, there are, like, everything your profile carries certain points. If you're under 30 years old, there are certain points you get. If you have studied in Canada, you get certain points. And then it becomes your profile, you enter a pool, and then yada yada yada. It takes about a two-year plus, two years plus for you to do just that. So in that, when I was looking for, especially youth-centered programming, a lot of it was contract work, where it was "Yes, we can't really do employment EI benefits, but we can give you a six-month contract here." Or, "Actually, yeah, this youth organization can't hire me because I don't qualify for wage subsidies," and so because a lot of these wage subsidies are for PRs or Canadians. And absolutely fair, but it also means that we are spending way too much time—like, I am, I still don't have my permanent residency. I'm still on a visa. I actually just submitted my documents two days ago, and it's gonna take another seven or eight months for me to maybe get it. Um, and that means that it's about five years, five, six years of my life that I'm just trying to get settled here. During that time, I've already gone into some other industry because, well, the climate space isn't able to support me. And there goes, you know, someone who could have actually worked on some solutions. And most of my classmates unfortunately have gone that route as well, because I had the privilege, I was young, I, you know, didn't have responsibilities. A lot of them were moving with young children or with their spouses, and they couldn't afford to just take some contract work or wait it out or buy a plane ticket and go to Toronto for a four-day conference, miss work and all of that. So, with the green stream immigration pathway, it's a very simple change that we're trying to make with IRCC, which is the immigration department. They usually have needs, like certain categories that they have listed. So if you're an engineer, if you're a doctor, it's easier for you to get your PR because you're in a different job category. We just want green and climate skills listed as a need for Canada, and that anybody who has climate skills, you can be qualified under that stream, and that it cuts the red tape and makes it easier for you to qualify. And then, of course, there's opportunity to consult on what climate skills are. It's not just your engineering hard skills, but also the soft skills and communication skills. So that's essentially what we're trying to do. How we're embedding that into our programming is at our newcomer climate camps right now. Because we're so new, we have town hall consultations. And all I'm doing right now is, so that it's not just me and my team that think this way, we're building a database of perceptions, we're doing consultations on, "Hey, would this actually work for you? And what else do you want to see from the federal government or immigration policy?" Because these are all people that are navigating it. And so we're collecting that, and we are also starting preliminary conversations with some of our MPs here in Vancouver. I think the first one's going to be in a couple of weeks' time. Just starting those conversations, I mean, we all know policy change can take some time, and so hoping that next two or three years we can get there. We'll see.
**Anthony Vade:** I'll give a shout back to one of our previous episodes too with Dr. Farhan Gray, where talking about mental health policy and the sluggishness of government, and I think in a similar—as we look at the many polycrises that are going on in the world, I think sustainability, climate change, the environment, is one of those hot topics along with mental health, I think really equal. I'm not going to ask you how positive you feel about the rate of change within, because it's going to put you in a challenging negotiation space perhaps. Uh, but with that in mind, how can people get involved in the movement, perhaps if they've been through the PR process, or are there ways that they can connect with you and contribute to this momentum towards moving the beast that is government?
**Aish Mann:** Oh, absolutely. So we are in a fundraising phase right now. We are hoping that we can provide more programming in the middle of the year and later in the year we'll be doing some more in-person consultations as well. You can follow us Tanah Air Project, so T-A-N-A-H-A-I-R Project CA, that's our Instagram handle, and tanahairproject.com, that's our website. You can always reach out to us and get involved. In fact, even on LinkedIn itself, folks have reached out to us and community who have seen our messaging have reached out and they have actually informed some of our programming as well, because again, even though a lot of Tanah Air is built out of my lived experience, I want it to belong to the community. And feel free to reach out to me on LinkedIn too, and I'm happy to have conversations around how we can move forward. And also, even if you have your PR but you've gone through that process, like, please still come hang out and chat because some of our community members are folks that have just gone through the process. But it's still about knowing and having a community. And so, yeah, absolutely.
**Tahira Endean:** So I have a two-part question for you, Ash. So one part is around this reality of climate anxiety. And you said it is different depending on really your origin story and what country you're coming from and different levels of climate anxiety. So some of the differences that you see would be interesting to me, as well as how you are working to storytell and communicate how we can manage some of that anxiety.
**Aish Mann:** The differences I've seen I think is again based on experiences with the newcomer climate camp or worked with other partner organizations like Break the Divide. And we kind of developed curriculum for newcomer communities specifically. Because eco-anxiety for us doesn't look like, "Oh, the ocean's warming," or "The forests on fire were sad," but it is literal survival for us because we are coming from these areas. Two days before I moved to Canada, there were massive floods in my city. And I still remember having to ziplock my documents and passports and put them on the top floor of the house because I didn't know if I could leave. And I slept on the cold marble floor because our dog was downstairs and I was like, "Oh, I want to be able to grab her and run upstairs." So I slept downstairs. So that is literal survival and anxiety for us, right? That we had—we were on a hill, we had landslide scares. And so it's a lot of that. And what we're seeing in the community also is there's a lot of frustration and wanting to do something, we just don't have avenues to do it because we're stretched so thin. While I was going to Leading Change also, or other conferences or spaces, I'm taking from my experiences also, but I assure you that this has been reflected in my community's experience as well. But while I was going to these conferences, I was working two jobs at different restaurants. I used to close a bar at 4 a.m. and would wake up at 7 a.m. to volunteer with a non-profit so that I could still be in this space. And that is the story of a lot of newcomers that are trying, and there's massive frustration because we don't have that economic privilege to just not work. And so we're seeing a lot of that survival-based anxiety and it's manifesting in a lot of anger and frustration. Um, and so we were very grateful to be able to provide a space for all of that to come out. Not gonna lie, there was a lot of crying at this session. We all hugged each other. It was just a very beautiful space to be in. In terms of how we deal with it, it's very interesting. A lot of it was just being in company with one another and just crying together. With our climate camp, it was very important to us to also incorporate different ways of medicine. So music was medicine. We had a band who came and played and we just kind of sang along, you know, so that was incredible. We're also right after the eco-anxiety session, we had one indigenous youth from the Secwepemc Nation host a session on rooting self-care in indigenous ways of knowing. And it was very interesting to connect with the frustrations of the indigenous communities and indigenous youth that were part of our team as well, because we could really root in that same helplessness. And this particular youth showed us how to offer tobacco to cedar, and we went to do ceremony. And I think even as we expand our programming, we want to do a little bit more land-based knowledge, because connecting with the land, we believe, not only creates more belonging, but also roots you in healing. And so that's what we're trying to do. Again, that was one pilot, which, if I can say so myself, went really well, and we're hoping we can make the programming available for more audiences, more communities, and make it bigger. And I think again, coming back to non-technical solutions, which is just: go touch grass, go and talk to a tree. And that's what we're seeing with these solutions. Yeah.
**Anthony Vade:** I think it's interesting that you raise the point about the sharing that happened human to human and the depth of shared vulnerability, and I think that kind of links into this idea of, we say softer leadership, but I think really it's more open leadership, it's more willingness to embrace vulnerability as a positive potential for solution finding. I think that's part of the power. A lot of what you've shared and what I think we've experienced within some of the circles we're in gets back to that storytelling side of how do we share with each other and how do humans really learn and connect both with each other and with the land and elements like that. I think we fall into the trap when we're trying to lead change of hitting people with statistics to try to convince them: "Well, 28% says this and 15%..." It doesn't connect with our brains in the way that we think it does, compared to millennia of storytelling to each other. What's your personal philosophy on the story? You tell a beautiful story and you're very compelling in the way that you speak, but how do you see storytelling being used and how can it be used better to create change, like the change we've been talking about?
**Aish Mann:** I'm a writer by training. Storytelling is just something that I've had a love-hate relationship with sometimes, because especially as an economics person as well, who's very data-driven, so with my work I always try to blend the two and see where data is more valuable and storytelling, but absolutely I think stories have a way to move us, to make us tear up, to connect with one another, to hold each other in each other's pain, and really understand that what we're doing is bigger than us, but here we are being there for one another. I think in terms of where storytelling needs to go, I think it needs to highlight stories that haven't been told before. And I think one of the things that I admire about our space, and I love about our spaces, is just how we're working to solve these problems. And one of the biggest things that is rewarded is creativity, the ability to look at problems in a different perspective. And I think stories help us do that. And so I think that is a very soft way of exploring maybe nuances or issues that we hadn't heard of or considered before, and I think that's where probably, I'd say, new perspectives that we need in stories. Yeah.
**Anthony Vade:** So we're rapidly coming to the end of this episode unfortunately. I feel like we could be talking all day, and we say that every time, but we mean it every time too. Uh, I think we're going to have to reconnect with you in the future because we want to hear about the progression you're going to make with all these initiatives that you are driving forward. Uh, as is customary at the end of every episode of *Accessible Disruption*, we like to deliver a little simple call to action that our listeners can apply in their everyday world to help make change happen. Uh, we're going to go with Tahira first. What is your call to action for this episode?
**Tahira Endean:** My call to action is get involved, learn how you can be a part of the solution when it comes to supporting climate change, and leaning into the people that, wherever they come from, that are the smartest people to do the work we need to do.
**Anthony Vade:** Perfect. Ash, what's your call to action for our listeners?
**Aish Mann:** Hmm, I think... I'm reminded of that line that the director Bong Joon Ho—I forget his name, he's the director of *Parasite*—but in his Oscar recipient speech he said, "Once you get over that two-inch barrier of subtitles, you'll be exposed to a lot more stories." And I'd encourage the community, you know, if you can get past the barrier of an accent or maybe certain cultural norms are not exactly the same, give the newcomers a chance. I promise we have incredible stories to tell and I promise we have incredible perspectives to offer. And that might just be what you need to turn your ship around. So yeah.
**Anthony Vade:** That could not be a more perfect call to action at the end of it. So I won't ruin it by getting too philosophical, but I'm going to give them one: I'm going to say, be more like Ash. Be brave, start the conversation, walk up to the person who you want to connect with that inspires you that is making the change, and ask them to be your mentor. Engage in that conversation because you never know, they might say yes. In fact, they probably will. And with that, brings us to another end of an episode of *Accessible Disruption*. Thank you, Ash, for joining us. Thank you, listeners, for joining us. And of course, head on over to strategytable.co to join this conversation, because ideas are great, movements are important, but it's nothing without massive action. So that can be a first step that you can take. Click on the links in the description, join this conversation, share it widely, because we need to make action in this space, both for immigrants, for indigenous, and for the climate change movement. And with that, thank you for listening, and we'll see you on the next *Accessible Disruption*.
[Show Intro]
The world is changing. For most humans, change is uncomfortable and challenging to address. Financial and political uncertainty, friction with back-to-office mandates, and challenging hybrid workplace collaboration. Not to forget, important environmental, social responsibility, and governance initiatives combined with the rapid pace of digital transformation and the need for human-centered AI integration. Change is happening, and fast. This rapid change has highlighted the need for increased speed to innovation and long-lasting change adoption in many organizations. Whether you are a startup working on agile process or a mature organization navigating change within existing complex structures, the skill set and need to adapt has never been more vital. The team from Strategy Table want to help the wider world understand the need and approach to meaningful and impactful change management, helping organizations navigate disruption and make change accessible. It often starts with a meaningful conversation. This is *Accessible Disruption*.
Anthony Vade: Welcome to another episode of *Accessible Disruption*. I'm Anthony Vade, CIO at Strategy Table and joining me as always is my co-host and Chief Experience Officer, Tahira Endean. We're excited to speak with Ash Man today, but we're going to be digging pretty deep into it, so before we do, I want to do a fast reminder for all the listeners out there: please share, like, and subscribe to this episode to help spread this conversation and continue our mission to create positive change in our world. Head on over to the Strategy Table website, strategytable.co, sign up for your seat at the table and access exclusive content and conversations. Also, check out our Substack and our social channels which have been updated recently and there's some interesting content coming out on those. I think that's probably enough housekeeping. Tahira, you constantly amaze me with the people you encounter on your adventures around the world and through your amazing network. Who is our guest today and how do you keep finding so many impactful and inspiring humans?
**Tahira Endean:** Well, we are going to have a future guest who introduced us to today's guest, Ash Man. And I love this story, Ash, of how you originally met Elizabeth, so we're going to come to that a little bit later. But in the meantime, we had a very brief conversation and I was just like, how does one young human do all of the things that you have been doing? And so let's just start a little bit with who you are, where you come from, tell us about your company and the work that you're doing.
**Aish Mann:** Yeah, absolutely. Thank you, Tahira and Anthony, it's great to be here. My name is Ash. I am the founder and executive director of the Tanah Air Project. I'm a newcomer from Malaysia, so Tanah Air in Malay means land, Air means water, Tanah Air means homeland. And it's a homeland project that strives to create belonging as a climate solution. We primarily support newcomers, skilled immigrants who are new to Canada and are trying to find their space in the climate space. All because I was once that newcomer not too long ago, which was just actually about three years ago when I first moved to Canada and was trying to find my place and found amazing mentors like your future guest, Elizabeth. We'll get into that story in a bit. So Tanah Air focuses on creating belonging through a three-pronged approach. One is capacity-building workshops we do, it's all consolidated in this newcomer climate camp which is essentially a boot camp where it's very much understanding the contexts of Canada. So we do two-day programming, we do history of Canada, we do indigenous histories of the lands that we're on as well. We also reflect on our status quo examination and then we go into skill building: how do you network, how do you tell your story to folks, and how do you take care of yourself while doing it as well? You know, being in the climate space, especially as an immigrant navigating a new continent—for me it was an entirely new continent on the other side of the planet—how do you do that? How do you deal with eco-anxiety which can also look very different in newcomer and immigrant communities and how it shows up? And we kind of build that skills and we're now building a community to support everybody.
**Anthony Vade:** So many things there that we want to unpack. And I like that you start with capacity building as a key area, and shout out to a previous podcast guest where we talked about capacity being a starting point for all change when human beings are involved. That's fascinating. And full disclosure, based on the accent, I'm also an immigrant and had an immigrant experience moving over to Canada as well. So I'm thinking to myself like, oh my, where was this? This would have been amazing when, back in 2008 when we first made our way over here.
**Aish Mann:** I was in elementary school, so sorry.
**Anthony Vade:** Look, some of the things like you shared as well... we didn't have to deal with that when we came out. We had a financial crisis of a different type, but the climate conversation was very different back then too. Um, so yeah, there's certainly a great need for this kind of thing right now. Tahira, did you have any thoughts to add to that ramble?
**Tahira Endean:** Just would love to know a little bit more about your origin story of how you got involved in climate.
**Aish Mann:** So, I had an entire career in Malaysia as well. So my bachelor's is in economics. Originally from Kuala Lumpur, the capital city, but I lived in Borneo for my bachelor's and also worked with one of our state departments to promote sustainable tourism to Sarawak, which is one of our largest states in Malaysia in Borneo. I got out of university and started working with a news outlet covering economic, political news. I also covered some environmental news. So actually, my first sort of foray into it was when I interviewed this person who was a German hitchhiker, and he was running across the entire length of Malaysian Borneo, which I forget how many kilometers, but essentially it would have taken him a couple of months to do it. And so, I interviewed him and I was like, how do you think this makes change? What are you doing? And he's an engineer, he has quit his job, he was doing the van life, and getting to know him I think really started my interest also in the climate space. But of course, being in Malaysia, we have so many other pressing issues as well. It used to be an authoritarian state, it was very hard to be a non-Muslim—it's a Muslim country as well—so being a non-Muslim woman who's asking a lot of questions, that can get very tricky as well. We do play fast and loose with a lot of sovereignty and freedom of speech laws. Yeah, forayed into writing and then when I worked with the State Department, I worked on archiving a lot of our indigenous culture as well. But I realized that if I wanted to make actual change, I needed technical knowledge and also had to ensure safety. Canada, Vancouver, BC aligned most with my values. There was a program that I wanted to do. There weren't many that were available in my home country. So I moved here all by myself with two suitcases, didn't know anybody, um, in January 2022, and here we are. So yeah.
**Tahira Endean:** Amazing, incredible human story. You had an opportunity to be able to dive into this work over the last year. So tell us a little bit about that opportunity that you had and how you've leveraged that.
**Aish Mann:** Yeah, so I started first as a volunteer. I was a student doing climate sustainability work on the side, which is how I met Elizabeth and was part of some of the programming that her organization had created. So I had been in the youth climate space and capacity building space for a while. And then early last year I got accepted into this fellowship by this youth-to-youth climate funder called FES, Finance Engage Sustain. And their entirely youth-led team, they are a charitable funder and they fund youth climate projects. And they were testing out a pilot, it's called the Abundance Fellowship. So they were picking six people who usually don't have access to that many resources to fund essentially projects that were exciting and new. And so I was one of the fellows that was picked, and there's six of us, BIPOC youth, and two of them were reserved for newcomers. I got $100,000 for it and essentially got to spend all of 2025. The first half was learning, tying up loose ends, doing a lot of reading, research strategy. And then we incorporated mid-of-the-year, and then most of Tanah Air's programming came after. So we did our pilot newcomer climate camp just last November. And we're continuing to build a community around understanding different policy that would help immigrant communities. You know, how do we reform immigration policy? I missed mentioning this earlier, but one of our main mandates for Tanah Air is also indigenous-immigrant solidarity building, because fundamentally we believe that you can't learn to belong on these lands without meaningful relationships with indigenous peoples. So most of my program educators are also indigenous youth, and we've co-developed programming for—as someone who's new, has questions, and we've just kind of done a lot of behind-the-scenes questions around, "Hey, is this rude if I ask this? Because I am new and I don't really know." And so we're kind of building that kind of community with Tanah Air.
**Anthony Vade:** How do you start that conversation with indigenous communities, and how do you bridge that initial gap to even put the idea forward of combining these two very different community groups?
**Aish Mann:** I think it starts with just being a genuine human being and building friendships. You know, because I've been in the youth climate spaces, I was a programs and coordinator for Leading Change Canada, and Leading Change Canada specifically works on building capacity for Canadian youth all over with the Globe series. This was like the youth arm, and they would essentially fundraise to get 150 youth from all over Canada, from all walks of life, to come and attend this conference. And so a lot of my network I built started building there. It was like the first conference I ever attended, and that's where I met Elizabeth as well. And so it has been just curiosity, I think, being genuine, you know, without, I guess, ulterior motives, just building those friendships and being like, "Hey, I'm kind of curious of that, can I tap you on the shoulder and kind of see where you're at?" This particular partnership around curriculum building for this particular newcomer climate camp, I actually was attending a webinar too by Indigenous Climate Action, and one of the speakers mentioned how we need to build more programming for non-indigenous folks to educate them as well. And so that particular speaker, Sunshine Dunstan-Moore, so her and I, we like started working together since last May and exploring what that education would look like.
**Tahira Endean:** So your company is called Homeland. You get to work with somebody named Sunshine. You are definitely bringing a lot of positivity around you. Would you consider yourself an extrovert?
**Aish Mann:** I think so. I think so. I do well in public settings, I think it's a bit of a mix because I also get drained very easily and I need to be in my enclosure, which is my office here, and I just like silence when I'm home, but yeah.
**Tahira Endean:** Which I think is—it's important to have that time and space for reflection. I ask the question about being an extrovert because you walked up to the president of Globe and just laid it all out there. So tell us how you met Elizabeth.
**Aish Mann:** Yeah, absolutely. I mean, she is just an amazing person to approach and talk to as well. It was... so I was attending the Leading Change Summit, and with that, I also got to attend Globe as a youth delegate. Uh, it was my first time at a conference, not gonna lie. And I had... I had been at school for a year. We're learning all these theories around—so I went to grad school for green business and sustainability management—and so we're learning, you know, different avenues of decarbonization, we're looking at different energy streams and, you know, different landscapes of the tar sands and all of that. But it was all theory. And Globe was the first place where I could see everybody like actually see people working on the solutions. So I was a kid in a candy store, and I was just like walking up to people: "You work on this? This is so cool! Do you—you have to come to my classroom and be a guest speaker!" and all of that. I think also Leading Change really helped with that, because we had one morning, which was about like three-ish hours, and we essentially had trainings on like, how do you network? How do you carry yourself in a space? People with big titles and all, they're just people at the end. I still remember Mike from previous—who was the former president—said that. And he was like, "We're all just people, you know, like just come up and chat with us, and this is like how you conduct yourself in a networking setting." So I felt pretty confident, I felt very supported as well as like a young person who was entering this space. And you know, I had seen Elizabeth speak. One thing that was very mesmerizing as a young student to me was, you know, how a lot of the leadership um in the in the Globe community also, like how they carry themselves, and they were very open to questions. Like, I could approach anybody and ask questions, and I'd just be like, "I'm a student, I'm just curious," and everybody would be so warm and, you know, passionate, and they would be welcoming. And so I had seen Elizabeth speaking, and I still remember she was with like uh I think some of the other leadership team, and I just kind of walked up to her and I was like, "Hi, this is my name. Um, I am a student here. I just have to say, um, I just really appreciate how you're able to take up space and be on stage with ministers or CEOs and you're still so gracious." And I don't know, sometimes it's—for the lack of a better word, Valentine's is right around the corner—it was kind of love at first sight because I love the way that she was able to practice this soft leadership. And to me, it was always taught that if you want to be a leader, if you want to be an executive, a CEO, you have to put on a hard face and you have to just be the smartest in the room or whatever. But I just for the first time was seeing a different type of leadership, and I was like, I want to be that kind of leader. And so I just kind of walked up to her. And to no surprise, Elizabeth was great. And this was in Toronto, and, you know, we exchanged information, and I messaged her later, asked her for a coffee chat in Vancouver, which is where we're based now. We're supposed to have, like, an hour-long coffee chat; it turned into a three-hour chat about just everything. And then at the end of it, I asked her to be my mentor, and here we are, three years later, and she's still there in my life, and I'm very grateful for that.
**Anthony Vade:** What a great example of a healthy mentor-mentee start and relationship. It wasn't overly prescriptive, but really, it took you taking that first brave step. Now, I'm going to be optimistic for the people listening to this episode, uh, and they're catching up. Look forward and you'll see that episode and listen to Elizabeth's episode and exploring everything that Profoundry does. And those of you who are listening in sync with us, that episode's coming up, so stay tuned for that one coming. We're going to take this opportunity to take a really short break here. If you want to listen to these episodes ad-free, you want to engage in a deeper conversation, and check out our resources, head over to strategytable.co where you can join up and experience the bookshelf, some really interesting posts within our community as well. But for now, we're going to take a short break and we're going to come back really soon.
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**Anthony Vade:** And we're back. And I want to jump into a little bit more of the immigrant side of the work that you're doing in particular, because I think it's quite interesting. This concept of a green stream and understanding what permanent residency looks like and the pathways that people could take. What's the work look like that you've been doing in that space?
**Aish Mann:** Yeah, so before I get into the immigration stream itself, I want to build a little bit of context of who exactly is the community that I'm serving. A lot of us are coming in with expertise from our home countries. You know, um, when I went to school, we're almost 100% international students. Um, someone had double engineering degrees from their home country. Someone had worked on decarbonizing the shipping industry in Mexico. Someone had invented a new way of irrigation in Pakistan or, you know, someone worked with the city on waste management. So everybody in my classroom already actually was coming with a lot of expertise. And for about two years that I was at school, I can confidently say I learned so much more from my classmates because they had lived experience, and I just loved the conversations we were having. Unfortunately, though, most of them have had to leave the space because of the red tape around how climate work is presented. Um, so we know with investments and all that, it's very hard to have full-time work that is like climate and clean, and everybody struggles with the job. But there is an added layer as an immigrant to it, because when I was looking for employment, trying to get into the climate space, I actually needed full-time employment because that was my visa requirements after university. Because I could have taken contract work, but that just doesn't count towards my PR then. Because you need, like, certain points after one year of experience, and then you apply for your permanent residency. And so the immigration system, if you've studied in Canada, you're trying to become a permanent resident after, there are, like, everything your profile carries certain points. If you're under 30 years old, there are certain points you get. If you have studied in Canada, you get certain points. And then it becomes your profile, you enter a pool, and then yada yada yada. It takes about a two-year plus, two years plus for you to do just that. So in that, when I was looking for, especially youth-centered programming, a lot of it was contract work, where it was "Yes, we can't really do employment EI benefits, but we can give you a six-month contract here." Or, "Actually, yeah, this youth organization can't hire me because I don't qualify for wage subsidies," and so because a lot of these wage subsidies are for PRs or Canadians. And absolutely fair, but it also means that we are spending way too much time—like, I am, I still don't have my permanent residency. I'm still on a visa. I actually just submitted my documents two days ago, and it's gonna take another seven or eight months for me to maybe get it. Um, and that means that it's about five years, five, six years of my life that I'm just trying to get settled here. During that time, I've already gone into some other industry because, well, the climate space isn't able to support me. And there goes, you know, someone who could have actually worked on some solutions. And most of my classmates unfortunately have gone that route as well, because I had the privilege, I was young, I, you know, didn't have responsibilities. A lot of them were moving with young children or with their spouses, and they couldn't afford to just take some contract work or wait it out or buy a plane ticket and go to Toronto for a four-day conference, miss work and all of that. So, with the green stream immigration pathway, it's a very simple change that we're trying to make with IRCC, which is the immigration department. They usually have needs, like certain categories that they have listed. So if you're an engineer, if you're a doctor, it's easier for you to get your PR because you're in a different job category. We just want green and climate skills listed as a need for Canada, and that anybody who has climate skills, you can be qualified under that stream, and that it cuts the red tape and makes it easier for you to qualify. And then, of course, there's opportunity to consult on what climate skills are. It's not just your engineering hard skills, but also the soft skills and communication skills. So that's essentially what we're trying to do. How we're embedding that into our programming is at our newcomer climate camps right now. Because we're so new, we have town hall consultations. And all I'm doing right now is, so that it's not just me and my team that think this way, we're building a database of perceptions, we're doing consultations on, "Hey, would this actually work for you? And what else do you want to see from the federal government or immigration policy?" Because these are all people that are navigating it. And so we're collecting that, and we are also starting preliminary conversations with some of our MPs here in Vancouver. I think the first one's going to be in a couple of weeks' time. Just starting those conversations, I mean, we all know policy change can take some time, and so hoping that next two or three years we can get there. We'll see.
**Anthony Vade:** I'll give a shout back to one of our previous episodes too with Dr. Farhan Gray, where talking about mental health policy and the sluggishness of government, and I think in a similar—as we look at the many polycrises that are going on in the world, I think sustainability, climate change, the environment, is one of those hot topics along with mental health, I think really equal. I'm not going to ask you how positive you feel about the rate of change within, because it's going to put you in a challenging negotiation space perhaps. Uh, but with that in mind, how can people get involved in the movement, perhaps if they've been through the PR process, or are there ways that they can connect with you and contribute to this momentum towards moving the beast that is government?
**Aish Mann:** Oh, absolutely. So we are in a fundraising phase right now. We are hoping that we can provide more programming in the middle of the year and later in the year we'll be doing some more in-person consultations as well. You can follow us Tanah Air Project, so T-A-N-A-H-A-I-R Project CA, that's our Instagram handle, and tanahairproject.com, that's our website. You can always reach out to us and get involved. In fact, even on LinkedIn itself, folks have reached out to us and community who have seen our messaging have reached out and they have actually informed some of our programming as well, because again, even though a lot of Tanah Air is built out of my lived experience, I want it to belong to the community. And feel free to reach out to me on LinkedIn too, and I'm happy to have conversations around how we can move forward. And also, even if you have your PR but you've gone through that process, like, please still come hang out and chat because some of our community members are folks that have just gone through the process. But it's still about knowing and having a community. And so, yeah, absolutely.
**Tahira Endean:** So I have a two-part question for you, Ash. So one part is around this reality of climate anxiety. And you said it is different depending on really your origin story and what country you're coming from and different levels of climate anxiety. So some of the differences that you see would be interesting to me, as well as how you are working to storytell and communicate how we can manage some of that anxiety.
**Aish Mann:** The differences I've seen I think is again based on experiences with the newcomer climate camp or worked with other partner organizations like Break the Divide. And we kind of developed curriculum for newcomer communities specifically. Because eco-anxiety for us doesn't look like, "Oh, the ocean's warming," or "The forests on fire were sad," but it is literal survival for us because we are coming from these areas. Two days before I moved to Canada, there were massive floods in my city. And I still remember having to ziplock my documents and passports and put them on the top floor of the house because I didn't know if I could leave. And I slept on the cold marble floor because our dog was downstairs and I was like, "Oh, I want to be able to grab her and run upstairs." So I slept downstairs. So that is literal survival and anxiety for us, right? That we had—we were on a hill, we had landslide scares. And so it's a lot of that. And what we're seeing in the community also is there's a lot of frustration and wanting to do something, we just don't have avenues to do it because we're stretched so thin. While I was going to Leading Change also, or other conferences or spaces, I'm taking from my experiences also, but I assure you that this has been reflected in my community's experience as well. But while I was going to these conferences, I was working two jobs at different restaurants. I used to close a bar at 4 a.m. and would wake up at 7 a.m. to volunteer with a non-profit so that I could still be in this space. And that is the story of a lot of newcomers that are trying, and there's massive frustration because we don't have that economic privilege to just not work. And so we're seeing a lot of that survival-based anxiety and it's manifesting in a lot of anger and frustration. Um, and so we were very grateful to be able to provide a space for all of that to come out. Not gonna lie, there was a lot of crying at this session. We all hugged each other. It was just a very beautiful space to be in. In terms of how we deal with it, it's very interesting. A lot of it was just being in company with one another and just crying together. With our climate camp, it was very important to us to also incorporate different ways of medicine. So music was medicine. We had a band who came and played and we just kind of sang along, you know, so that was incredible. We're also right after the eco-anxiety session, we had one indigenous youth from the Secwepemc Nation host a session on rooting self-care in indigenous ways of knowing. And it was very interesting to connect with the frustrations of the indigenous communities and indigenous youth that were part of our team as well, because we could really root in that same helplessness. And this particular youth showed us how to offer tobacco to cedar, and we went to do ceremony. And I think even as we expand our programming, we want to do a little bit more land-based knowledge, because connecting with the land, we believe, not only creates more belonging, but also roots you in healing. And so that's what we're trying to do. Again, that was one pilot, which, if I can say so myself, went really well, and we're hoping we can make the programming available for more audiences, more communities, and make it bigger. And I think again, coming back to non-technical solutions, which is just: go touch grass, go and talk to a tree. And that's what we're seeing with these solutions. Yeah.
**Anthony Vade:** I think it's interesting that you raise the point about the sharing that happened human to human and the depth of shared vulnerability, and I think that kind of links into this idea of, we say softer leadership, but I think really it's more open leadership, it's more willingness to embrace vulnerability as a positive potential for solution finding. I think that's part of the power. A lot of what you've shared and what I think we've experienced within some of the circles we're in gets back to that storytelling side of how do we share with each other and how do humans really learn and connect both with each other and with the land and elements like that. I think we fall into the trap when we're trying to lead change of hitting people with statistics to try to convince them: "Well, 28% says this and 15%..." It doesn't connect with our brains in the way that we think it does, compared to millennia of storytelling to each other. What's your personal philosophy on the story? You tell a beautiful story and you're very compelling in the way that you speak, but how do you see storytelling being used and how can it be used better to create change, like the change we've been talking about?
**Aish Mann:** I'm a writer by training. Storytelling is just something that I've had a love-hate relationship with sometimes, because especially as an economics person as well, who's very data-driven, so with my work I always try to blend the two and see where data is more valuable and storytelling, but absolutely I think stories have a way to move us, to make us tear up, to connect with one another, to hold each other in each other's pain, and really understand that what we're doing is bigger than us, but here we are being there for one another. I think in terms of where storytelling needs to go, I think it needs to highlight stories that haven't been told before. And I think one of the things that I admire about our space, and I love about our spaces, is just how we're working to solve these problems. And one of the biggest things that is rewarded is creativity, the ability to look at problems in a different perspective. And I think stories help us do that. And so I think that is a very soft way of exploring maybe nuances or issues that we hadn't heard of or considered before, and I think that's where probably, I'd say, new perspectives that we need in stories. Yeah.
**Anthony Vade:** So we're rapidly coming to the end of this episode unfortunately. I feel like we could be talking all day, and we say that every time, but we mean it every time too. Uh, I think we're going to have to reconnect with you in the future because we want to hear about the progression you're going to make with all these initiatives that you are driving forward. Uh, as is customary at the end of every episode of *Accessible Disruption*, we like to deliver a little simple call to action that our listeners can apply in their everyday world to help make change happen. Uh, we're going to go with Tahira first. What is your call to action for this episode?
**Tahira Endean:** My call to action is get involved, learn how you can be a part of the solution when it comes to supporting climate change, and leaning into the people that, wherever they come from, that are the smartest people to do the work we need to do.
**Anthony Vade:** Perfect. Ash, what's your call to action for our listeners?
**Aish Mann:** Hmm, I think... I'm reminded of that line that the director Bong Joon Ho—I forget his name, he's the director of *Parasite*—but in his Oscar recipient speech he said, "Once you get over that two-inch barrier of subtitles, you'll be exposed to a lot more stories." And I'd encourage the community, you know, if you can get past the barrier of an accent or maybe certain cultural norms are not exactly the same, give the newcomers a chance. I promise we have incredible stories to tell and I promise we have incredible perspectives to offer. And that might just be what you need to turn your ship around. So yeah.
**Anthony Vade:** That could not be a more perfect call to action at the end of it. So I won't ruin it by getting too philosophical, but I'm going to give them one: I'm going to say, be more like Ash. Be brave, start the conversation, walk up to the person who you want to connect with that inspires you that is making the change, and ask them to be your mentor. Engage in that conversation because you never know, they might say yes. In fact, they probably will. And with that, brings us to another end of an episode of *Accessible Disruption*. Thank you, Ash, for joining us. Thank you, listeners, for joining us. And of course, head on over to strategytable.co to join this conversation, because ideas are great, movements are important, but it's nothing without massive action. So that can be a first step that you can take. Click on the links in the description, join this conversation, share it widely, because we need to make action in this space, both for immigrants, for indigenous, and for the climate change movement. And with that, thank you for listening, and we'll see you on the next *Accessible Disruption*.
