Episode 26 | Stories Make Markets: Sherrell Dorsey on Strategies for Funding Futures and the Politics of Climate Tech

Sherrell Dorsey enters this conversation with the certainty and clarity that sustainability is a return to our original intelligence and is the design lab where climate tech, capital, innovation and narrative control decide who gets to build tomorrow. In this episode she traces the ways climate action becomes transformative when rooted in storytelling, culture and technological fluency. Sherrell breaks down how fashion, beauty and wellness shaped her early understanding of systems and how those nonlinear experiences led her into the climate tech landscape. She explains that sustainability demands a deep reconnection to self and to the earth and insists that we already possess the regenerative solutions we need. The real barrier is not innovation but access and subsequently the power that money brings. Sherrell details the importance of learning how technology moves, who funds it and how narratives create entire worlds that shape our desires, economies and sense of possibility.As the conversation unfolds Sherrell reveals the urgent need for Black communities to unapologetically show up with precision in policy rooms, funding environments and climate negotiations. She examines the emerging universe of green tech investments, the rise of climate funds and the limitations of venture capital for long term climate solutions. Sherrell offers a strategic framework for negotiating community benefit agreements, building institutional power and moving from reaction to proactive civic engagement that’s also rooted in care. She argues that AI and climate technology will determine economic mobility for the next decade and warns that the train has already left the station. This episode calls listeners to build relationships, become fluent in the language of power and step into rooms that were not designed with us in mind. It is a masterclass in understanding sustainability as an ecosystem of storytelling, infrastructure and political strategy.https://www.sherrelldorsey.com/Compost, Cotton & Cornrows: the space where Black & Afro-Indigenous Vanguards are redefining sustainability through storytelling!@Compost_Cotton_Cornrows