What does leadership look like in a world of climate urgency, rapid tech change, and systemic upheaval? We spoke with Terry Slavin, Reuters Events Sustainable Business Editor-in-Chief of Reuters’ sustainable business magazine, The Ethical Corporation, for a deep dive into the 2026 Reuters Trailblazing Women Report. More than a list, it signals where innovation and influence are headed.
Key insights from this year’s report:
- The rise of relational “Trail Finders” connecting finance, business, and civil society.
- Women-led climate tech teams driving holistic solutions to urban water and heat risks.
- Breakthrough innovations—like coal-free steelmaking—powered by resilient optimism despite funding gaps and “climate hushing.”
Discover the women shaping a sustainable future and the trends every sector and community needs to watch.
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Watch the episode here
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The 2026 Reuters Trailblazing Women Report: The Leaders Shaping The Future With Reuters Events Sustainable Business Editor In Chief, Terry Slavin
I was so flattered and honored when Terry Slavin, who is the Reuters Events Sustainable Business Editor-in-Chief of Reuters Sustainability Business Magazine, Ethical Corporation, reached out to me requesting, “Can we sit down and talk about the 2026 Women Trailblazers and Pioneers list? I put together, it was such a great conversation last year.” That is when it gave me the opportunity to sit back and say, “When you do something a second and a third and such, that is when you really get to see the patterns, that pulse, a signal above where power is shifting and what leadership now is really requiring.”
Terry and I sat down talking about who made this year’s Trailblazing Women, but also not just who, but what the list tells us about the moment that we are in. How is this definition of trailblazer, which is probably more appropriate, especially with the female leaders, to be referred to as trailfinders, evolving in an era where we are shaped by climate urgency, technological acceleration beyond belief, and systems change?
We’re going to talk a little bit about where women are gaining real influence and where barriers still quietly hold. Spoiler, climate tech, and funding. We just have to get more women in these roles and businesses. Perhaps most importantly, what kind of courage sits behind the headlines? FYI, it is persistence and grit and really unwavering belief that it could be done in the first place. Let us listen in with Terry, and let us hear what other patterns exist, and stay to the end where I share my key takeaways. Look forward to continuing the conversation.
Women Advancing audience, I am so excited for our conversation because I am welcoming back Terry Slavin, who is the Editor-in-Chief of Reuters Events Sustainable Business Reuters Sustainability Business Magazine, the Ethical Corporation. We are going to be doing a deep dive into the 2026 Reuters Trailblazing Women Report. These are the folks who are literally leading and shaping the future. Terry, welcome back. I am so honored to have you back in the fray.
Thank you. It is great for you to have me back. I appreciate that. I have got a really great crop of women. Every year, I find more. I started out, I think it was three years ago, with people like Christiana Figueres. Just the very top. What you think is going to be the top level, but you realize that there is so much happening, so many really impressive women working on this around the world. There is almost an endless number of women that you’re really having to struggle to find just twelve, as we have this year.
To me, the thing that I thought is in looking, and we will go do a deeper dive into this shortly, but is both the breadth of industry and the breadth of type of organization and company. I think so often people think, “You always have to be part of either a large policy wonk or you are a nonprofit.” Not that there is anything wrong with either of those, but it is just so much more than that. I am really excited to talk about that. Every year, the list reveals something deeper about this moment that we are in. Are there themes or patterns that stood out to you across this year’s Trailblazing Women? If so, what do they tell us about where leadership is actually heading?
The Intersection Of Nature And Climate In Leadership & Progress
The women who are shaping what I see as the most progress on climate. That is where I have looked to find leadership. For me, it is at that intersection between nature and climate. That is where a third of the solutions lie is in nature-based solutions, but it is more than that. It is not just a matter of mitigating climate. That is just on the mitigation front. It is the adaptation that is getting increasingly more critical as we are seeing the impacts of climate change rise.
Water Scarcity, Heat, & Equity In City Design
It is about the impact on communities that we are going to see with this transition that has to happen. Cities are really where a lot of the transition has to happen. That is where 70% of the emissions lie in cities. That is where more than half the people on the globe live in cities. A lot of the names on the list are really focused on that. One of them is Jo da Silva. She is the global sustainable development director at Arup.
I have seen her on a few different platforms. I saw her at COP 30 this year. She was at the Singapore pavilion talking about what Arup is doing to help ensure that cities are designed from the start, incorporating nature. She says that cities have been designed for the past, not the future. The biggest mistake in cities’ design has been not putting a value on nature, destroying trees, and building over waterways.
Leadership is actually heading toward the intersection of nature and climate. Share on XShe says you have to start with hydrology and typology, not transport networks and shopping malls. She says she sees Africa as an opportunity to really shape this new paradigm. There are these sponge cities around the world where the streets capture water, filter it, clean it, and store water. Water is really the critical thing you saw in Cape Town, maybe five years ago, they nearly ran out of water. That was the big Day Zero, when they almost ran out of water.
As cities become hotter, this is getting to be a much bigger problem. It has an impact on energy as well. You cannot run a hydroelectric project when there is not enough water. Water is a critically important resource. AI data centers are very water-hungry. These data centers are being built in places like Arizona.
Incredibly, some of the data centers are being built in some of the most arid parts. Water is really critical. There is also the heat element. A heat differential in a city can vary as much as 10 degrees Celsius. The hotspots are also where the poorest people live. The rich people have land outside. The hotspots are where the poorest people live. There is a real question of equity.
They’re doing things like using natural materials instead of using concrete, you can use seaweed on the face of a building, which actually extracts heat and generates thermal heat for a building. They’re growing entire buildings, mimicking coral reef growth. You’re not using cement, which is one of the leading reasons for carbon emissions. You are using natural systems. There is a lot of nature-led design, which I found really interesting.
Cities have been designed for the past, not the future. The biggest mistake in city design has been failing to value nature—destroying trees and building over waterways. Share on XMe too. Talk about true innovation. During my days at Catapult, I was always amazed at a lot of the solutions that a lot of the companies that the ocean division of Catapult supported. They have done a lot of work in Mauritius with regenerative ag too, which is super exciting to see. Can I ask a question, though? I am assuming, and this may be obvious, but I am assuming the reason why everyone is building these data centers in incredibly arid dry places is that the land is cheap.
Also, the humidity is low. Humidity is apparently a crucial issue.
Potential problem.
Also, if you’re going to use renewable energy, that is where you get a lot of solar radiation as well.
I know it is hot, but you could also potentially get, like I’m thinking, the Santa Anas down the southern parts of the states of US or the Southwest too. Wind potential, not that that is great.
That water risk is a growing risk globally, either too much or too little.
Redefining “Trailblazer” As “Trailfinder”
We do not have that Goldilocks moment as it were quite yet. Is there a new definition of trailblazer? It used to mean breaking into male-dominated spaces. How do you think the definition has changed as more and more women are getting into this moment, in the context of climate, tech, and systems change?
Trailblazing is probably more of a male type of word, because you get the idea of this scorched-earth approach. Blazing a trail. You see this in countries where there is suddenly deforestation where there was not previously, say, somewhere in Indonesia, Africa, or Brazil. It is those big roads that go in, those roads that go in with all the construction equipment. That is actually one of the big leading indicators that satellites pick up when they see these roads going in. They know that there is a real deforestation risk.
That is what I think, trailblazers. Trailfinders is a better terminology because it is little footpaths, little veins that connect, that go through different parts of the ecosystem that you need to shift to change to bring about systemic change. That is those connections between different parts. The climate finance part, the business part, and the civil society part. Also, connections between just parts of the climate system. You need to have those, almost like a honey what you see in a hive of bees, where you have different things, the connections.
I was just going to say connecting the different dots, and that truly is where you can see. Also, frankly, seeing connections where others do not. Longer term, understanding the impact. We are going to do this now, the short-term move, but then have a better understanding overall of the long-term consequences and implications.
That is it. In fact, one of our trailblazing women is Ana Toni, who is the COP30 president. She is all about bringing different parts of the climate system together. What COP30 produced was two roadmaps. One roadmap to end deforestation and one roadmap to end fossil fuel expansion.
They failed to achieve that. There will be more meetings in the next couple of months, where we will be looking at both of those things, and they both have to actually work together. If you tackle ending fossil fuel expansion by going into biofuels that are unsustainable or biomass unsustainable, you can really cause a lot of problems on the other side, which is deforestation. It is joining those thoughts.
It upsets the apple cart in a different way, which also then demonstrates how it is all connected.
It is all connected. That is also another thing about why female leadership is really important, because women tend to see those connections. Men, they are good at marketing, big promises. Actually it is the women who are going to do the in real the real world work that is going to be required to pull all these things together.
It’s all connected. That’s why female leadership is so important—because women tend to see those connections. Share on XJust the fact that I keep thinking this term is just patience, that could come in the form of capital. Patient capital, realizing you are not going to get any immediate returns. It could come in the idea of letting the necessary connective tissues get acquainted so that a true, steady foundation can really result in a long-term, sustainable solution that will last, as opposed to just doing a quick fix, adhesive, sticking a little Band-Aid on it?
That is the long-term idea. That is the other thing, the markets are very short-termist, and to actually have a long-term view. Back to the Ana Toni example, the approach for Brazil’s COP was, “We are not going to set another, we are not going to focus on some top-level new goal because most of the climate goals are way off track.” A lot of the goals are world. We are going to look at implementation.
We are going to try to build from the bottom up, bring in communities, bring in business. Bring in all the what is known as stakeholders that are actually going to have to do this stuff on the ground. We have an endurance. They were actually looking at creating this. It is called a global mutual. It comes from an indigenous terminology. They were actually looking at a five-year plan, that this was going to last way longer than just Brazil.
It is going to be seen that they are actually carrying on unusually for a COP president. They are actually carrying on for another year until the next COP, which is going to be in Turkey. They will see whether the next step will be taken up again, taken up, and extended. That is the idea. It cannot just happen over the year on, you are not going to see results year on year. It has to be something over a longer term.
That is something that we have seen again and again and again across so many different areas of any partnership. What is coming to me really is this is how you shift the definition of success. To your point, you look at indicators. The broadest shift is moving away from transactional, but really more relational in every sense of that word.
The Critical Need For Female Leadership & Funding In Climate Tech
That is where you get more female leadership is needed. You also need more female leadership in climate tech. The funding in the tech industry, eleven percent of executive positions are held by women. Female founding teams account for only a little over one percent of climate tech funding. That is half of VC funding for all sectors, which is pathetic at two percent. That is even half of that. The reason that matters is that almost 42% of female-led climate tech funding is going into climate solutions that are addressing both mitigation and adaptation.
It is a twofer. You are getting two things. You are getting two areas.
That is actually where we need to be. We can no longer have the luxury of just looking at mitigation. That is compared to thirteen percent for male-only teams. That is how critical it is. One of our trailblazers is the founder called Laureen Meroueh. She is the CEO of Hertha Metals, which is a really innovative steelmaking company.
Her breakthrough was this coal-free steelmaking process, where you go just in one step from iron ore to a liquid fuel. That is in the US. It is producing steel 25% cheaper, 35% less energy intensive, 50% fewer emissions than conventional methods. She is 33 years old, which is extraordinary. Just talking to her, but you have got a situation now, a year on, of the Trump administration.
US emissions are now set to drop by just 3% by 2030, and we need to get to 40% in order to actually get anywhere near the Paris. It is nowhere. How does she remain optimistic? She said that this has been a real wake-up call. What has happened in terms of all the reductions in climate funding and the scrapping of much of the Inflation Reduction Act?
She says it is a wake-up call, and she thinks that the solutions that are going to come from this period are going to be more resilient. We are learning how to build models that work and make sense in the real world, not just the lab, regardless of the policies that are in place. We will be able to scale solutions that are better for people, planet, and without having to rely on funding, which may or may not come.
The solutions emerging from this period will be more resilient. We’re learning to build models that work in the real world, not just in the lab. Share on XHow do we get more female leaders? One of the things I was going to ask, we have got some of the women on the list, they’re founders, they’re policymakers, and finance. Where is this leadership needed most, which we kind of have an idea of, climate tech? Where are the biggest barriers? It’s part of the reason why there are so few founders in climate tech, which is uncorrelated to STEM. Women in STEM, girls in STEM?
It could be. I am not an expert on that. That’s probably, but I do not think it is just in that narrow field. There are a lot of barriers that need to come down attitudinally, and getting women also on boards. Interestingly, the sustainability business, one study found that chief sustainability officers, 65% of chief sustainability officers were women. That was quite interesting. That role has been under threat a bit because I think with some of the rollbacks, women are being taken out of that sustainability role and put elsewhere in the business where they’re in a more competitive environment.
They may be a bit disadvantaged potentially. Education is really important. One of our trailblazers is Anne Hidalgo, who is the mayor of Paris. She has been the mayor of Paris since 2014. She has done a lot of stuff. She was the first woman to lead Paris. Under her, Paris became the first city to align its climate plan with the Paris Agreement. She has brought in radical transformation, including really tackling transport.
SUVs in particular. Carbon emissions have come down by twenty percent. The air pollution has come down 50%. There has been a huge amount of change. One of her proudest achievements has been the establishment of this Climate Academy that the city established to try and get young people interested in climate and women, girls among them, but boys as well, just showing the available careers, and why it matters. It is aimed at even young people up to 20 or 25. Not just schools, but school grades.
That would be amazing. As we’re having this conversation, so much of at least the East Coast of the US is under siege. We’ve all had items, families halted. I’ve got family members here who have been stranded since Sunday. They’ll finally maybe stand a shot to get home tomorrow. I am wondering, will this help people wake up and understand why it matters?
That’s one of the things, just the climate, all of it, it seems to me, I think of it as an operating system where everyone goes along blindly until they cannot get the plane to go home or go where they cannot take a train. Their lives are directly impacted, and I am just hopeful as much as I do not like any of this that this will get people to understand, especially those who are somewhat naysayers, that TikTok is the clock, and we are not kidding around. It is not some bleeding-heart, tree-hugging thing. It is life and livelihood, and even impacts those who are maybe potentially anti-all of that.
There have been so many climate shocks, haven’t there? It just seems to be rolling over and over again, and you wonder what exactly it is going to be. In the global South, you’re really seeing some strong female leadership there. A lot of that is because it is in the global or in the global majority, as one of my trailblazers said. It is completely true.
It is the majority of people who live in what we would describe as the global South. It is the women who were at the end of communities that are on the front lines of this. The ones who are on the front lines have the least power and access to finance to solve it. Which is what I liked about the idea of cities being designed in Africa, where you could see that urban opportunity. We’ve got some strong climate leaders from there.
I know you have some from corporates like Amazon and such.
That is Kara Hurst. She has actually been in post. She has been the global sustainability officer since 2014, actually the same year that Anne Hidalgo took office. She has really been leading on their efforts and also the Climate Pledge, which they brought in, and they’ve got some 600 companies that have now signed up to this Climate Pledge.
I am trying to remember what it was exactly, but it is about 2040, some huge amount, like a climate commitment to 2040. Actually, what is interesting is that despite what has happened over the past year, I think they had double the number of companies joining as the previous year. Companies are actually committing themselves more to this.
I have seen this elsewhere as well, that companies are actually committing more funds, making more of a commitment to this, not just in Europe or elsewhere, but in the US as well. There is this phenomenon you may have heard of called climate hushing. That is where you are just carrying on. You’re doing what you’re doing. You’re doing what you’re doing, and you’re doing it actually because you know it makes sense to your business, and actually investors, but you’re not talking about it, or you’re calling it something else.
There’s a phenomenon called ‘climate hushing.’ It’s when companies act on climate because it makes sense for their business, but they don’t talk about it—or they call it something else—even with investors. Share on XCatherine McKenna, who is the former Canadian environment minister, is doing a lot of high-level work with the UN, and she started about a year ago, or so, she founded something called Women Leading on Climate. There are some 500 women, very top-level sustainability professionals and leaders in climate, a lot of whom are working alongside indigenous women on climate. She makes this point about climate hushing as being a real problem, and then that women are more likely to call that out.
Personal & Professional Courage In Climate Leadership
Which is great because if we continue that, we are going to go absolutely nowhere. It is just going to accelerate. We celebrate the outcomes so often. It is going to be a weird question, maybe, but not so much the risks. That is in my mind, the individual. What kinds of personal and professional courage do you see especially reflected in the women on this year’s list?
Two names stand out for me, and I have already mentioned Anne Hidalgo. She has been subject to the worst. Online hatred campaigns, death threats, etc, and aiming for things like SUVs. Far-right-orchestrated extremists. She has had an unrelenting pressure on her, and she has carried on. The fact that she is Spanish-born, not born in France. She has just carried on. Catherine McKenna is another example.
These are just two that I know about. She brought in carbon taxes in Canada on industry and also on consumers. These taxes were recycled. For the consumers, it was a tax on using fossil fuels for transport. The funds that were raised were actually recycled to low and middle-income people. In fact, it was found that they actually got, they were better off than that. She has taken so much stick for that. She was referred to as a Climate Barbie by opposition members, and she has just risen above it.
The Political & Economic Importance Of The Nature/Conservation Agenda
There is a lot of that. Any woman who is very prominent online is going to get it. In the climate space, given the attitude now, it has just become very toxic. In the UK, as well, which is where I am based, there used to be a climate consensus between the parties. That is fractured now. There is just what used to be accepted is no longer, and it is very unfortunate.
It is because now everything’s getting so dire. Why? Is that just human nature? What is causing that? Is it also because things are getting worse, and it feels like it is spinning out of control, and where are we going to find the money? How are we going to fix it? People are just a perfect storm of bad things happening.
It is being seized on by populist groups. That is, net zero has become that cereal has really become a toxic brand. That is why the nature agenda is so important, I think, because the nature and adaptation agenda is so important. After all, who does not like trees? Even Donald Trump, in his first administration, was promoting the trillion trees.
Conservation is the other word. That conversation is a bipartisan thing. That is where a lot of that’s where you can find common ground. It is that ground. That’s why I guess the whole fight against deforestation and nature loss and trying, and especially also bringing that into the cities, you create a really broad-based appreciation for the importance of it in terms of economic value.
Conservation is a bipartisan issue, and that’s where you can find common ground. Share on XI was just going to say the economic value of it all. Terry, thank you so much. I know we are going to post this before this goes live, but I will include a link as well. Tell us, are there going to be festivities surrounding the release?
I do not know about festivities.
I do not know why I thought of that word. It felt like a thing.
I am going to put out a piece on Reuters.com, and then we will be producing this report, and that will be distributed to all our readers, etc. Some of the people who are doing our next big climate event for Reuters Events are going to be in Boston, which is Boston’s first Climate Week. There is going to be a breakfast to celebrate some of the trailblazing women, and some of the women who US women who were on the list are being invited to that.
That is fantastic. If I am up there at that time, I will try to make it to it.
No, that would be great.
Terry, thank you so much for recognizing all of these amazing leaders and for raising their voices and their work and getting everybody to shake some trees loose and help us understand why this all matters and how we are all connected to roll our sleeves up and start helping more quickly.
Everyone has a role. That is the key thing. It does not matter where you are in the climate system, where you are in your life, or anything. Everyone has a role.
Everyone has a role—that’s the key point. It doesn’t matter where you are in the climate system or in your life; everyone has a role to play. Share on XReally quickly, I know we’ve done this before, but what is one thing people could do right now?
Plant a tree.
There you go. Recycle.
Recycling is a big one, especially plastic. It is also just going for a walk in nature and appreciating it.
That is really true. I do that as part of my sort of self-regulation. It is your wellness, but you will not be so well if it all goes away. Living in a place like Charlottesville now. I have been here, it will be five years, but I look out, and there are so many of this sort of cardboard-built apartment houses that never seemed to fill, but we keep building more. What has happened is that they have taken down and away so many farms and just left open land. It makes me sad. It is devastating. It would be one thing if that were really helping, but it does not seem to be. It is building for not.
That’s a shame. Eighty percent of construction waste and construction materials are wasted and get to landfill. That is one of the things you need to be more circular, and you can extract so much value out of that. Keep it in the system. If you do that, then you are going to have lower CO2 emissions. You just need to have those materials, or else we are mining more. We cannot sustain our way of life unless we actually make circular things from recycled materials.
I look forward to seeing you in 2027, lady, and we are going to see some different numbers, hopefully before that. It is fabulous to see the breadth, as I said, which is really great. Some up-and-coming voices, that is wonderful to do. Let us continue to celebrate them and add more to the fold.
Thanks for your part in doing that.
My pleasure.
Take care. See you in a year.
Terry, thank you.
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I really enjoyed my conversation with Terry last year. I was so honored when she reached out to me this year and said, “Can we do that again?” Incredibly impressive list of leading female voices in the sustainability and climate space. She does a terrific job. She and Reuters do a terrific job of chronicling them.
I will say in terms of my key takeaways, so many facts and figures could be somewhat disheartening. On the other end, the fact that there are so many strong women, some voices across such a broad swath of organizations, be they for-profit, nonprofit, private, public, educational institutions, policymakers, it is so heartening to see everybody starting to play their part. That means all of us as well.
It’s exciting to hear about the adaptations and the nature-based solutions. Wild, that fact about using seaweed in the walls of buildings, which is such a great heat mitigator. Water is critical. No kidding. We have to really make sure. I have noticed those around me here sometimes, definitely wastewater. Let us get on that for sure.
Education, making sure that people really understand the impact of choices, their short-term choices, and the long-term impact. Let us see if we can lengthen that out. Finally, climate, sustainability, this whole area is such a potential hotbed for opportunity for women. This is really where our systemic thinking comes into play.
It is not a hard lift for us because we cannot help but see all those dots that need to be connected. Be sure to check out this year’s Trailblazer and Pioneer list. It will be available in the first weeks of March. Let me know what you think. Meanwhile, I look forward to continuing the conversation. Until next time.
Important Links
- Terry Slavin on LinkedIn
- Terry Slavin on X
- Reuters Sustainability Business Magazine
- Women Leading on Climate
About Terry Slavin
Terry Slavin is editor-in-chief of Reuters Events Sustainable Business, and edits Ethical Corporation, Thomson Reuters’ sustainable business magazine, based in London. She also commissions commentary and contributes to the Industry Insights column on the sustainability section of Reuters.com.
Terry has specialised in business and environment issues throughout her career, both as a writer and editor. She has worked for news publications in her native Canada, Australia, for the Asian Wall Street Journal in Hong Kong, Knight-Ridder news agency in London and The Guardian, among others, before becoming editor of Ethical Corporation. She is particularly interested in the intersection between business, nature and development issues. @tslavinm.