When Dakota Gruener first began her career in global health policy, she was driven by a simple but powerful question: what are the biggest levers we can pull to improve human wellbeing? In pursuing that question, she’s traveled across continents and disciplines, from vaccine access in Cameroon to digital identity systems in Bangladesh. After a stark revelation about climate displacement, she’s now taking on one of the most complex and controversial frontiers in climate science: sunlight reflection.

Today, as a Resident at the Astera Institute, Dakota leads Reflective, a research organization focused on evaluating the science, risks, and governance of methods that could reflect sunlight away from Earth and potentially cool the planet. We sat down with her to explore her approach, why sunlight reflection demands urgent research, and what it means to pursue climate solutions that could prove essential, even when they come with a great deal of unknowns.

Read the full interview on our Substack: https://asterainstitute.substack.com/p/reflecting-on-and-for-our-future