UWA and me
I studied for a BA(Comms) at UWA before transferring to ANU for my fourth and final Honours year, where I received my undergraduate degree in Human Ecology. Soon after, I moved to New York where I received an M.S. in Journalism from Columbia University and stayed to work on Years of Living Dangerously, a documentary series about climate change created by James Cameron.
I now work for UNICEF, the United Nations children’s fund. As an advocacy specialist, it’s my job to encourage governments and the public to take action on development issues, from education and hunger to refugees and gender equality. One of the most important opportunities UWA gave me was the chance to study abroad at the Copenhagen University in Denmark, because it prepared me for many other international experiences to come. UWA coached us through the exchange process with excellent support, and I learned lessons about working with diverse people in new places that have stayed with me ever since.
Life as a screenwriting climate specialist
I care deeply about climate change and want to use my storytelling skills to reach more people about this critical issue. When I’m not at the office, I’m a screenwriter working on TV projects about the environment. This includes a new initiative to seed stories about climate change in mainstream TV, by working with Hollywood writers’ rooms. We’re crafting plotlines for beloved shows like Brooklyn 99 and Homeland, to help people understand what they can do about this challenge .
Writing for a new future
I love screenwriting, and it’s my hope that one of the scripts I’ve written will soon be produced. I also love working for the UN, and as my career progresses, I plan to fuse these two halves of my life more closely, using my creative skills to communicate to even more people about the most important issues in the world.
Words of wisdom
Do the things you love, not the things you feel obliged to do. You will achieve more perusing sincere interests, rather than things that seem important to you in other ways, like prestige, paycheques, or even, in some cases, social impact. This is because, over time, you will find yourself falling back towards what you really love, even if you have tried to avoid it. So choose what you love in the first place, and let the way you make money and make a difference flow from there.
Harriet Riley is a climate specialist and award-winning writer who works in Communications and Advocacy for UNICEF at the UN. Prior to this, she was a senior strategist with Purpose, a consultancy advising NGOs like the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, Doctors of the World, and UN Environment on challenges from international development to renewable energy. She was a consultant on Years of Living Dangerously, James Cameron’s Emmy-winning series about climate change, and has written five screenplays for TV /film projects about social and environmental themes.
She holds a Masters in Investigative Journalism from Columbia University in New York and studied International Security and Intelligence at Cambridge University under former head of MI6 Sir Richard Dearlove, where she addressed the response of the intelligence community to climate change. As an undergrad at UWA, she spent a year abroad at the University of Copenhagen in Denmark, and completed her Honours at ANU.
You can keep up-to-date with Harriet on Twitter and through her website.