Want to Help the Environment but Don’t Know Where to Start?

Master's student Julie Heck noticed it almost immediately upon arriving at Harvard: passionate people everywhere wanting to take action on climate issues, but no centralized way for them to find each other or access resources. Heck saw a unique opportunity. “There’s this incredible energy around sustainability, but it is scattered across schools and departments,” Heck says. “People organize climate events but struggle to reach the right audience, or they want to get involved but not know where to start.”

This fragmentation was inefficient and undermined the climate action the university community wanted to pursue, says Heck, who has worked in Alaska, Germany, Indonesia, and the United States. It also represented the perfect intersection of her educational expertise and environmental passion. “I've always been drawn to creating opportunities that help people engage more effectively,” she says. “Whether it was designing interactive experiences as an eco-tour guide or developing teaching methods as a piano instructor, I’m fascinated by how we remove barriers to meaningful participation.

Drawing on this diverse background, Heck began developing a digital platform to serve as a central hub for climate action across Harvard. The initiative quickly gained attention from the university’s Salata Institute for Climate and Sustainability, where Heck now works as a student ambassador to help connect students, faculty, and resources on all things climate. With a prototype expected in the coming months, Heck plans to begin pitching the platform to climate organizations, aiming to either launch it independently or embed it within an existing sustainability effort.

As part of her broader effort to make sustainability tools more accessible, Heck also co-designed a guide to help campus organizations reduce waste at events. “We don’t need to reinvent everything,” she explains. “We need to build better bridges between what already exists.” Created through her work with the Council of Student Sustainability Leaders — a student-run group under the Harvard Office for Sustainability — the guide provides practical strategies for hosting lower-waste events. Heck saw its potential firsthand after noticing excessive single-use plastic in the food packaging at a Harvard Innovation Lab event. Rather than simply flagging the issue, she offered a solution by connecting the lab’s community manager with the guide.

Heck's latest project extends beyond traditional resource sharing. She's developing an interactive online game that helps people understand their role in climate solutions in an engaging way. Drawing on her expertise as a communications specialist, she's designing the game to translate complex environmental concepts into accessible, visual experiences. “Climate change is such an enormous challenge that it can paralyze people,” she says. “My goal is to help break it down into parts that feel actionable, to create entry points for everyone regardless of their background or expertise level.” Ultimately, Heck envisions creating a comprehensive online hub where tools like the interactive game and the events platform can live alongside other climate and sustainability resources — a one-stop shop to help people engage with climate solutions more easily and effectively.

Looking ahead, Heck plans to expand her digital platform focus beyond Harvard into the greater Boston and Cambridge communities. The idea first came to her during beach cleanups in Indonesia, where she struggled to find local environmental initiatives. “I was in the second most polluted country in the world for ocean plastic, asking myself. ‘Where do I find the cleanups?’” she recalls. “That’s when I realized we need a way for people to filter events based on their specific interests — whether it's agriculture, energy, or waste management — as well as their location and availability.”

But Heck's vision extends beyond just connecting people to events. She sees her platform as addressing multiple societal challenges simultaneously. “There's a loneliness epidemic in this country, and we lack ‘third places’ — the kinds of informal public spaces like cafés, parks, or community centers where people can gather outside of home and work,” she explains. “By building community around local climate initiatives, we create opportunities for meaningful connection. People aren’t just addressing environmental challenges — they're forming relationships and finding belonging.”

This community-based approach reflects Heck’s conviction that lasting change happens when people engage with complex problems together, learning from one another while taking manageable steps toward solutions. “The most important thing I’ve learned is that when we work at the local level first, we achieve something powerful,” she says. “It's not enough to care about global problems — we need community structures where people can convert caring into collective action. That's where both people and the planet can thrive.”