In this episode, Valentine breaks down what actually happened: the origin of the reel (built around a voiceover by Instagram creator Bobby Opp imagining a hopeful vision of 2035), why the messaging worked, what the comment section revealed, and what it takes to be ready for a viral moment before it hits.

What we cover:

• The reel that started it all, built from a client-shared voiceover and existing stock footage
• Applying Donald Miller's three levels of problems (external, internal, philosophical) from Building a StoryBrand to explain why the reel's opening line worked
• Reading the comment section: tears, hope, skepticism, and a wave of bots and trolls
• What "being ready for virality" really means: DM automations, freebies, a clear bio, and a pinned post that actually represents the brand
• Why chasing virality for its own sake is a mistake if there's no offer or resource behind it
• Moving from awareness to action: how to respond to a community suddenly asking "what do we do now?"
• Turning a one-off spike into a repeatable content format through continuous testing
• Why monthly reporting matters even more in the weeks following a viral moment

Links mentioned in this episode:

• The reel that went viral: https://www.instagram.com/reel/Dc3LOXXIF_f/?utm_source=ig_web_copy_link&stkn=MzRlODBiNWFlZA==
• Parayma: https://www.parayma.co/
• Bobby Opp (voiceover creator): https://www.instagram.com/itsbobbyopp/
• Building a StoryBrand: Clarify Your Message So Customers Will Listen by Donald Miller
  
  Connect with (re)connect:

  green-socials.com | @reconnect.pod

Key topics

• Charlotte Gomes shares that consistency matters, but only when it is built into a system that fits your real life and creative season.

• She emphasizes that sustainable routines must account for mental health and physical health, not just productivity.
• Valentine Aouad asks about personal creativity rituals and grounding practices that help create consistency without burnout.
• Charlotte mentions her "find your path" practice as a core ritual she uses and says it can be adapted by anyone.
• She explains that assessing your creative season can help guide the kinds of rituals you need, and that she offers email guidance based on that assessment.
• Journaling comes up as a major practice for both speakers, especially for introspection, processing emotions, and understanding what shapes your work and life.

• Charlotte highlights the value of learning about brain energetics, nervous system work, and somatic worK.
• She shares that somatic experiencing has been life-changing in her own experience.
• Charlotte describes using a personal container

  ritual to avoid feeling drained online and to stay tuned into her body.

• The episode closes with Valentine’s signature question about the kind of world you want to live in, setting up a reflective ending.

Want the full conversation? Go over to (re)connect wherever you get your podcasts.

green-socials.com | @reconnect.pod

Jenny McCarty reveals how she’s reshaping what sustainable art can look like - from choosing watercolors and gouache over harsher mediums, to building a smarter, more ethical art practice that considers materials, packaging, shipping, and even what happens after a piece hangs in your home. If you’re an artist, collector, or just trying to make better choices with the supplies you already have, this conversation gives you a clear, practical way to start.Valentine Aouad pushes Jenny to get specific about the easiest path toward greener art, and Jenny breaks down the real-world strategy: use what you already own first, look for reuse centers like Boulder’s Art Parts, and then transition toward eco-friendly brands that are changing the market with earth-based acrylics, water-based oils, and lower-toxicity pigments. She also shares the checklist she created for asking artists the right questions about sustainability.

You’ll also hear the story behind the viral sticker that got over a million views after Jenny responded to a controversial national parks pass design. What started as a creative protest became a community-powered movement, with volunteers packing orders at her kitchen table and a full 100 percent of proceeds going to national parks.Jenny and Valentine also dig into the bigger question: what can art actually do? They connect the dots between creativity and activism, why artists often spot social problems early, and how expression becomes more powerful when it’s rooted in the world we’re living in right now.If you care about sustainability, public lands, or using your creative work for something bigger than yourself, this one is essential listening. It’s a grounded, hopeful reminder that small acts, made well and shared widely, can create real momentum.

Jenny McCarty is an artist and activist known for her eco-conscious watercolor practice and for creating a viral sticker campaign that has raised nearly $27,000 for national parks. Her work blends sustainability, community response, and visual protest into one powerful creative message.

Valentine Aouad guides the conversation with a focus on practical sustainability, community feedback, and the future of art as a force for connection and change.

Want the full conversation? Go over to (re)connect wherever you get your podcasts.

green-socials.com | @reconnect.pod

In this episode of (re)connect, Valentine sits down with Charlotte Gomes, founder of Collective Roots PR, to talk about what it means to build a creative practice from the roots up instead of chasing KPIs first.

Charlotte's path started young, booking over sixty live music shows across Europe at eighteen, then shifted a decade later when chronic health symptoms led her to somatic work and nervous system awareness. That thread of "invisible connection" became the foundation of Collective Roots, a practice blending storytelling design, nervous system work, and brain energetics for creatives, visionaries, and changemakers who don't want to burn themselves out to be seen.

They get into:

• Why "well marketed" and "deeply rooted" are two different things, and what changes when you tune into a project's felt sense before you promote it
• Charlotte's four creative seasons (winter, spring, summer, autumn) and how they map to her five-pillar framework: root, express, embody, connect, expand
• A simple personal / public / sacred exercise for figuring out what's actually safe to share online before you're dysregulated by it
• A grounding ritual to run before you open Instagram, so you're not scrolling from a place of dissociation
• Where AI fits in, and Charlotte's honest take on the line between using it as a tool and letting it swallow your own voice
• The "find your path" creative ritual for getting unstuck
• Charlotte's answer to the podcast's signature closing question: what does the world you want to live in actually look like

A note from Charlotte:

We Root Before We Rise is a seven-week self-paced journey for creatives and changemakers who want to tend to what lives beneath their work, before it is asked to be seen. Across seven reflective workbooks and ten guided audio practices, you move at your own pace, reconnecting with your creativity, your nervous system and the deeper roots of your work. Everything is gathered in one Notion space you can return to whenever you need to slow down or begin again.

Early-bird pricing is open until 10 August.

🔗 collectiverootspr.com/werootbeforewerise

Connect with Charlotte: Collective Roots PR → collectiverootspr.com

Connect with (re)connect:

green-socials.com | @reconnect.pod

Takeaways

• Small steps for healthier indoor air
• Awareness and informed decision-making

Want the full conversation? Go over to (re)connect wherever you get your podcasts.

green-socials.com | @reconnect.pod

Want the full conversation? Go over to (re)connect wherever you get your podcasts.

green-socials.com | @reconnect.pod

In this episode:

• Why Jenny was pushed toward STEM and away from art growing up, and what it took to call herself an artist again
• Burnout, a career coach, and the moment painting came back into her life
• Living and working in East Africa, New Zealand, and across the US, and how it reshaped her view of conservation
• The 10% giving framework baked into her art business from day one, and the four organizations she supports
• Growing up on ranches in Colorado, and why horses and mountains show up in her paintings
• The hidden heart in her whale shark painting
• What most people don't know about acrylic and oil paint (hint: it's petroleum) and why she switched to watercolor
• Practical, low-cost ways to start transitioning to eco-friendly art supplies
• The story behind her viral National Park Pass sticker: over 6,000 sold, close to $27,000 donated to national parks
• Art as activism, and what it means to turn a personal decision into a movement

Resources mentioned:

• Free guide: What to Ask an Artist About Sustainable Art — a checklist covering materials, packaging, and shipping, useful whether you're buying art or making it
• Book: The Artist's Way

Connect with Jenny:
Instagram: @sage_leaf_studio

Connect with (re)connect:

green-socials.com | @reconnect.pod

green-socials.com | @reconnect.pod

Businesses Alex Recommended

• Fabric All Wood (Montreal) — Handcrafted custom wood furniture, zero-waste production
• Studio Bâte (Montreal) — Light fixtures handcrafted from reclaimed and found materials
• Sage Leaf Studio (Jenny McCarty, US) — Eco-friendly art with sustainable, low-impact packaging; donates proceeds to national parks
• Urs (Canada) — Eco-friendly furniture
  

Certifications to Look For

• GREENGUARD Gold — Tests furniture (wood and upholstered) for thousands of chemicals and off-gassing; certifies the finished product, not the full supply chain
• OEKO-TEX 100 — Tests textiles and fabrics (including polyester) for harmful chemicals; a newer "OEKO-TEX Green" certification is in development
• MADE SAFE — Screens products against a list of chemicals of concern
• GOTS (Global Organic Textile Standard) — Certifies organic cotton across the full supply chain, from farming through the finished product
• GOLS (Global Organic Latex Standard) — Certifies natural latex foam used in upholstered furniture
• GoodWeave — Certifies rugs and textiles as free from child, forced, and bonded labor, with supply-chain inspections

That question led to an independent lab test. The team sent their ten best selling US competitors to a third party lab alongside KOOSHOO's own ties. The result: KOOSHOO hair ties came back two to three times stronger than the nearest competitor.

This clip gets into the real story behind that data: how an entire industry built around disposability shaped what consumers expect to pay, why "made in the US" isn't automatically the more ethical choice, and what it means to build a product designed to be kept rather than replaced.

Want the full conversation? Go over to (re)connect wherever you get your podcasts.

In this episode, Audrey shares her full journey: from a French military family with roots in the Southern Alps, to five continents, to building People For Nature on forty acres of Australian bushland. We talk about what it actually looks like to walk away from the capitalist system when you stop believing in it, and what it takes to choose active hope instead of cynicism.

We also get into Citizen COP, People for Nature's initiative to bring the global climate convention into local communities across Australia, and Audrey's philosophy that every single person is not a drop in the ocean, but the entire ocean in one drop.

This is a conversation about grounding, about motherhood as a multi-generational lens, about asking questions until you actually understand, and about what it means to build something with stubborn optimism.

Learn more about People For Nature & Citizen COP: https://www.peoplefornature.org.au/citizen-cop

green-socials.com | @reconnect.pod

Timestamps:

00:00 — Introduction
02:00 — Growing up in a French military family and finding roots in the Southern Alps
05:15 — Moving across cities and what finally made her stay in Australia
08:00 — Is physical grounding a prerequisite for connecting with nature?
11:00 — Motherhood as a multi-generational lens
16:50 — The full journey: US at 16, South America, China, India, Hong Kong
26:00 — Ten years inside a clean-tech startup
31:00 — Uncovering the financialisation of climate fear
35:20 — Advice for people working inside greenwashing organisations
41:20 — Moving from cynicism to active hope after walking away
46:50 — What is People for Nature and how does it work?
50:30 — The ripple effect: the train-the-trainer ambassador model
53:20 — Citizen COP: bringing COP31 into local communities across Australia
56:25 — Is the hunger for reconnection growing?
1:02:00 — What does the world you want to live in actually look like?

It started in Borneo, on a budget backpacking trip, standing in the middle of industrial waste that existed entirely to serve Western consumption. That moment planted a seed that took years, a detour through Peru, and a yoga teacher training in India to eventually become the world's first plastic-free hair accessory brand.

In this episode, we get into the full story. The winding path to hair accessories.

The decision to move manufacturing from Los Angeles to a Fair Trade nonprofit run by nuns in southern India and a family rope mill in Japan, and why "made locally" is not the straightforward win we assume it is.

What a Japanese manufacturer said the first time he saw a 55-pack of American hair ties.

And what Norfolk Island, where Rachel grew up and where KOOSHOO is now headquartered, still quietly teaches about community, scarcity, and living in connection with the land.

This is a conversation about doing business differently.

Learn more about their business: kooshoo.com

green-socials.com | @reconnect.pod

In this episode, Valentine breaks down why most sustainability content fails to land, what's actually driving that gap, and the shift that changes things: leading with decision-making over declarations, specificity over positioning, and honest imperfection over polished credentials.

Learn more about our studio work: green-socials.com

Follow us on Instagram @reconnect.pod

In this first solo episode, Valentine introduces herself and the thesis behind (re)connect: that the stories we tell about the future shape the future we build. Drawing on the works of Jules Verne and the science of eco-anxiety, she makes the case for why learning to dream differently might be one of the most radical acts available to us right now.

Learn more about our studio work: green-socials.com

Follow us on Instagram @reconnect.pod