Media and the Environment

The official bio is below, but the reason I am here on this blog is because I created it. I’m the Professor of the Media and the Environment course currently taught at the University of Kansas School of Journalism and Mass Communications. I’m the School’s Lacy C. Haynes Professional-in-Residence, which means I teach, conduct research for my book, and work in the field. I’m the contributing environmental correspondent for NBC News, the host of Sundance Channel’s environmental programming The Green (on-air and online), and the author of an upcoming book on stories about the products we use in our everyday lives. All of these opportunities are amazing, but one of my greatest joys is bringing these experiences back into the classroom at KU.

I never expected to be an environmental story-teller: I have never taken a journalism class and failed the one class I did take on The Earth. I failed it because it focused on the shifting of tectonic plates and bored me to tears. To this day, I only care about tectonic shifts relative to how they impact communities. I saw the impacts of multi-national corporations on poor communities in India (after a long tenure at MTV News, making documentaries in the US, then being asked to join on-air and anchor the news for MTV Asia and create the news department for MTV India) and I knew I wanted to tell those stories. But I didn’t have the language to do it. So I went back to school to get an MBA in sustainable management, looking at the social and environmental impacts of business, and learning how to tell the stories I have the privilege of telling today.

This course is designed to give students the language and literacy required to tell stories about our environment - from how we eat to what we wear, from how we work to how we live. We do not exist outside of our eco-system, and we all care about our future. In my mind, that makes each of us environmentalists, every day (whether we’re vegan or omnivores, treehugging conservatives or liberal businessfolks, we aren’t just one thing.).

What I hope is that, in this course, we start to see the ways in which we share values and desired outcomes, and we develop the language for bridging divides, inspiring people to action, and ensuring the sustainability of our natural resources for all.

The Official Bio:
Simran Sethi is a freelance journalist, focusing on issues of social and environmental sustainability. The award-winning journalist is a contributing environmental correspondent and expert for NBC News and the Lacy C. Haynes Visiting Professional Chair at the University of Kansas School of Journalism, where she currently teaches a course on Media and the Environment. Sethi is writing a book on the impacts of American consumption for Harper Collins and is the contributing author of Ethical Markets: Growing the Green Economy (Chelsea Green, 2007), the companion guide to the first PBS series on sustainable business Ethical Markets for which she served as host and writer. She was named an inaugural Goddard Fellow by New York University (September 2007) and is an Associate Fellow for the Asia Society (November, 2007).

Sethi is the co-host/ writer of Sundance Channel’s environmental programming The Green, and a featured commentator and former story consultant for the original series Big Ideas for a Small Planet, the 2007 winner of the Environmental Media Award for Best Documentary. She is the creator of the upcoming Sundance web series The Good Fight, highlighting global environmental justice efforts, and the anchor of the Sundance interstitial business series EcoBiz. Sethi is a member of NBC Universal’s internal environmental initiative Green is Universal.

Sethi co-created, hosted, and oversaw all video and audio content for TreeHugger.com, the largest environmental website on the Internet. Under her management, TreeHugger won the 2006 Vloggie for Best Green Vlog. Lauded in Vanity Fair’s green issue (April 2007) as the environmental “messenger,” Sethi hosted a forum on global warming with Nobel Laureate Al Gore for MSN.com and created an audio podcast series for Gore’s non-profit, The Alliance for Climate Protection. She has been identified as a Variety magazine Woman of Impact (August 2007), and named one of the top Eco-Heroes of the Planet by the UK’s Independent (July 2007).

Sethi has contributed environmental segments to the Oprah Winfrey Show and has been featured on the Ellen DeGeneres Show, Today Show, and Martha Stewart Show, highlighting ways we can become more environmentally friendly. She is the “eco-expert” on the syndicated green home makeover show The EcoZone Project and recent host of Voom HD Network’s social and environmental series Keep It Green on Equator HD. Sethi has lectured on corporate social responsibility and sustainability in media at: the Business Alliance for Local Living Economies Conference, the Green Business Conference, the CERES Conference, Cornell University’s Johnson School of Business, M.I.T., Smith College, NYU’s Stern School of Business, Beth Haverim Temple, Bioneers by the Bay, and the democratic think tank Demos.

Sethi produced and anchored the news for MTV Asia, created and oversaw the MTV India news division, and developed programming for the BBC and others through her own production company SHE TV. She holds an MBA in sustainable management from the Presidio School of Management and graduated cum laude with a BA in Sociology and Women’s Studies from Smith College.

-Simran Sethi