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When you’re trying to change the world — in Phaedra C. Pezzullo’s case, by improving the environment — you need more than scholarly publications to create impact.��

It’s why one of her favorite stories involves the fact that her first solo-authored book,��, inspired the lyrics to a punk-rock song by the band The Holland Dutch.��

“Something like that reaches people in more profound ways than just talking about policy or politics,” said Pezzullo, CU Boulder communication professor in the College of Media, Communication and Information (CMCI).��

In early 2025, Pezzullo opened��. And while an academic lab in a formal university setting may sound out of step for someone whose work galvanizes protesters and inspires musicians, she sees it as an exciting next step in the shifting conversation around sustainability.��

“The lab is already becoming a space where people from a range of disciplines who study sustainability — students, staff, faculty and community partners — can build relationships and consider the role of storytelling in the field,” she said.��

As with any university lab, creating high-impact learning opportunities for students is key.��

Activist Becomes Academic

Pezzullo’s formative educational experiences inspired her teaching philosophy. While a graduate student at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, she interviewed activists and community members in Warren County — known as the birthplace of the environmental justice movement — where landfill toxins were poisoning the water source serving a predominantly Black community.��

Listening to their voices and adding her own to the cause helped Pezzullo to see how a single story could unlock millions of dollars to clean a landfill. Cleanup work began as she completed her studies.��

“I became hooked on stories,” she said. “When we put storytelling into practice in service of complex problems, like sustainability, we discover why communication is captivating.”��

It’s part of why Pezzullo doesn’t limit her storytelling to scholarly publications. Her public-facing work on sustainability includes a podcast,��, where she explores sustainability issues like plastic bag bans, disability justice and environmental treaties with other voices from the field.��

One of these voices was��Emy Kane (IntlAf’13), managing director of��, an organization that raises awareness about and offers alternatives to problematic plastics through partnerships with brands and engagement with companies, scientists and the global youth movement.��

“What inspired me most about Phaedra is her commitment to sharing stories borne from empathy and action,” said Kane. “I’m thrilled to see my alma mater support her platform and research so that the next generation of leaders are equipped with the stories they need to reimagine the systems that run our world.”��

Conversations on the podcast helped inform Pezzullo’s 2023 book,��, which won three national book awards. Highlighting success stories, she said, is important to counteract the defeatism and fatalism that typically accompany sustainability stories — and she’s seeing such sentiments rising, even in her classroom.��

Oftentimes, in the wake of a victory, “people point out just how much is still wrong with pollution, with our climate, with the world,” she said. “Success isn’t that there won’t be more disasters — it’s that, with more thoughtful choices, future disasters may be less impactful. And that is a more challenging story to tell.”

Science Demands Better Stories

Amid news of rising temperatures, invasive microplastics and melting glaciers, it might seem frivolous to talk about sustainability in terms of good storytelling. But experts argue that we’ve struggled to make progress on environmental issues because the deeply scientific nature of these problems makes it hard for the general public to relate.

Robert Cox��— Pezzullo’s mentor at UNC Chapel Hill, where he remains an emeritus professor — credited his protégé with laying the basis for how understandable stories can change the course on climate.��

“All the work being done to communicate climate science in the public sphere is now being talked about in terms of relatable stories that demonstrate the impact of climate change,” said Cox, a three-time president of the�� environmental organization and co-author (with Pezzullo) of a textbook on the discipline. “Those stories resonate far beyond just the pages of an academic article. Phaedra’s work really laid the basis for the importance of narrative, of storytelling, to make complex environmental issues approachable.”��

In her lab, Pezzullo is searching for that impact by forging partnerships within CMCI and CU Boulder to bring different kinds of expertise to the challenge of impactful storytelling — something she’s already doing as director of the university’s��graduate certificate in environmental justice. She’s lectured at universities across the globe and has collaborated extensively with�� on climate change. In the meantime, she and her students build digital “story maps” that illustrate how Colorado communities are affected by environmental and climate injustice.

Pursuing Stories with Confidence

Independent reporter��Anthony Albidrez��(MJour’24) took a foundational course in environmental justice with Pezzullo to better understand how journalism supports sustainability through storytelling and rigorous news reporting standards.��

Because of his class experiences, Albidrez turned a course project about a stream cleanup in Honolulu, where he lives, into a report detailing how the local unhoused population was blamed for a mess that, when cleaned, amounted to 16 tons of trash being removed from the Makiki Stream.��

“I don’t think a group of homeless people can drag tons of trash into a streambed, but from my research, they were receiving the brunt of the blame,” Albidrez said. “Phaedra’s course helped give me the confidence to go beyond the government numbers and explanations and find the real story.”��

Pezzullo’s ability to encourage that sort of intellectual curiosity is what Cox most appreciates about her impact. Though he’s quick to credit her with pushing the boundaries of their field, Cox most admires how Pezzullo has guided the next generation of thinkers as they seek to advance sustainability through storytelling.��

“So many of her students are pursuing academic, business and nonprofit work in this area, and that speaks to her strength as a mentor,” Cox said. “She is such an unselfish person in terms of contributing her labor to the field of environmental communication — and that’s the kind of champion a story like this needs.”��

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Illustrations by Scott Bakal��