What if the real betrayal isn't crossing enemy lines — but refusing to?
Bill Shireman is an environmentalist, coalition-builder, and rare San Francisco Republican who has spent his career doing the thing his own movement told him never to do: sit down with the other side. He's the CEO and president of Solution Citizen, the founder of the nonprofit Future 500, a co-curator of the EarthX Congress of Conferences, and the author of In This Together: How Republicans, Democrats, Capitalists, and Activists Are Uniting to Tackle Climate Change and More. Over the years he's brokered some improbable alliances — the first corporate sustainable-forestry standards between Mitsubishi and Rainforest Action Network, the California CRV container-deposit system, and a 2008 agreement in which Greenpeace and ExxonMobil each backed the same federal carbon tax.
Decades ago, fighting to pass that bottle bill in California, Bill was losing to industry money. So he stopped organizing bigger, angrier campaigns and started calling his opponents — including the head of Coors — looking for a human opening. He found one, built a coalition across the left and the right, and got the bill signed into law. And then, he tells Renay, about half his allies in the environmental community abandoned him: "You have now compromised with the devil." It was "traumatic, and damaging, and painful."
This is not a policy war story. It's about what it costs to solve a problem instead of fighting over it forever — and where you have to find your nourishment when the applause never comes. "You cannot do this for the acclaim," Bill says. "If you betray your cause in order to be popular… that is the true betrayal."
Bill and Renay cover growing up in the engineered sameness of Silicon Valley and becoming an observer of his own life; the epiphany, mid-apple, that he was "a flow" rather than a fixed self; the four phases every living system moves through, and why "our diversity is our resilience"; being raised by a "pragmatically atheist" father and finding his own faith; and why he now designs laws to adapt over time instead of commanding a fixed result.
Through the Noise is about the inner capacities that let leaders sustain themselves and the work. This one is about doing the right thing before it's popular — and learning to need no one's permission for it.
Bill Shireman
Bill Shireman is CEO and President of Solution Citizen, where he helps donors, companies, causes, and campaigns advance pragmatic solutions to climate change and other complex issues through data, analytics, deliberative polling, and strategic communications.
A lifelong climate advocate, Bill is Co-Curator of the EarthX Congress of Conferences and Founder of the non-profit Future 500, where he has spent decades bringing together unlikely allies from business, environmental organizations, and across the political spectrum. His work has helped advance major sustainability initiatives, including corporate supply chain standards for sustainable forestry and California landmark “bottle bill” recycling program.
Bill has taught leadership and negotiations at the UC Berkeley Haas School of Business and serves as chairman of BridgeUSA, which brings together young people across political perspectives to strengthen dialogue and collaborative problem-solving.
He is the author of 7 books. His latest, In This Together: How Republicans, Democrats, Capitalists, and Activists Are Uniting to Tackle Climate Change and More, can be found on Amazon and in leading bookstores.
J. Renay Loper
Renay is a Clinical Faculty in Organizational Leadership for the Bard MBA in Sustainability, where she focuses on justice-centered transformation in the workplace. Previously, she was the Vice President of Program Innovation at PYXERA Global where she served on the Executive Leadership Team, led five country offices, drove the development of new business and programs, co-led the organization's work on inclusive circular cities, and advised corporate clients on their social impact strategies. Renay also led the organization’s ARC (Antiracist Collective) initiatives, which included internal and external efforts toward dismantling unjust systems. To this end, Renay created Rhetoric to Action, a series of conversations to bridge sectors toward collective action around social and racial justice.
Prior to PYXERA Global, Renay led the grassroots exchange and education grant portfolio at the Japan Foundation Center for Global Partnership, and has served in a variety of leadership roles in higher education, nonprofit, and business prior to that. Renay is an avid speaker and facilitator, has authored and edited numerous publications, including a resource journal, Student Affairs Professionals Cultivating Campus Climates Inclusive of International Students (Jossey Bass). Renay serves on the board of directors of nonprofits including Community Change, Harpswell Foundation, and Girl Rising.