I first met Robert Redford in the summer of 2005, in a canyon in the Utah mountains. He was hosting an inaugural Mayors’ Summit on Climate Protection, and I had been hired to produce and film the event. It was held at the Sundance Mountain Resort, which lies at the base of Mount Timpanogos where he had protected thousands of acres of land rich with alpine forests, majestic waterfalls, and multi-color meadows that were on full display. I had never made a film before, but I’d seen him star in plenty of them, and I was petrified of interviewing him.

 

Forty-eight U.S. mayors from all over the country — from Tacoma to Baton Rouge, Pittsburgh to Eugene, Ore. — had gathered to share challenges and enact solutions to help manage the effects of what he felt was the most important issue of our time: climate change. Bob, as I came to know him, greatly valued the influence of local leaders and their connection to their constituents. He wanted the mayors to experience the majesty of the canyon and put their attention on the environment as a point of universal connection. 

 

Opening night of the Summit, Bob welcomed the mayors with conviction, and a clarity of purpose and in-it-togetherness that I have come to know well. “What am I going to say to my kids? What are you going to say to yours about the Earth we left them?” Are we going to say I’m sorry? I find that unthinkable.” And then he landed the line that still keeps me going today. “Doing nothing is not an option. It’s simply not an option.”

 

In the pause that followed his call to action, I could feel the room fall under a spell. It was certainly a defining moment in my life, and a clarity of purpose that would shape the work I would take on for the next twenty years.

 

As a film industry veteran, Bob understood as well as anyone the power that stories have to move people. Once asked by his grandson Conor why he thinks storytelling through film can lead people to action and serve as such an impactful tool for change. Bob answered, “Because it can wake up the heart. You know, what’s in your heart? What’s your heart telling you to do?”

 

In the same year as the first Mayors Summit, Bob merged his environmental commitment with his passion for independent film to co-found The Redford Center with his late son James, who was also an extraordinary human, a celebrated documentarian and environmental advocate, and known by his beloved community as Jamie. My first film would lead me to make many more with Bob and Jamie over the years, and eventually, in 2012, I would become The Redford Center’s executive director. 

 

I think of this span of time as a 20-year apprenticeship, working under the Redford tutelage as a storyteller, activist, and leader, and learning intimately about the far-reaching impacts that can result from waking up hearts. As an example, our film Watershed, which Bob executive-produced and narrated, was released in 2012 and is an epic story about the fate of the Colorado River and solutions for the future of the American West. We used the film to draw attention to the river’s depleted Delta and advance a restoration plan that was underway. Bob attended film screenings and fundraisers, and helped launch the NGO coalition, Raise the River, whose efforts have been a singular, binational success. To date, the coalition has raised $33 million for the effort, restored 1,600 acres of riparian habitat, landed major policy wins, and created opportunities and nature access for the people who live in and around the Delta.

 

But my most profound learnings have come from knowing and experiencing Bob’s humanity. When I was newly in the executive director role, I was also new to motherhood, raising a one and a two-year-old with my husband. I asked Bob one day how he brought up such remarkable, grounded children. He answered, “I would just always bring them along.”  

Bringing people along was a formative principle of Bob’s life’s work, which he accomplished through stories, and maintaining a relentless commitment to creativity and hope, and an unwillingness to disengage. In a moment when 85% of the global population lives in areas affected by climate change and 99% of us are breathing polluted air, Bob’s vision and approach have never been more necessary. 

 

In 1987, Bob published a piece in the Harvard Business Review titled “Search for the Common Ground.” In it, he speaks to the dangers of needing to be right and expresses a certainty that “…concern for the quality of life is our common ground.” Much of his environmental work flowed from this belief as well as from knowing the potency of unlikely allyship that can come from shared experiences.

 

This is why, in addition to hosting mayors in the Utah canyon, over the years Bob convened oil executives and green group leaders, Russian and US scientists, water managers and ranchers, clean energy entrepreneurs and policymakers, and artists of many stripes and levels of experience. He leaned into our intersections and our interdependencies with a set point of exposing our collective humanity. 

 

In the days since Bob’s passing, scores of people have reached out and posted tributes on public platforms about the impact he had on their lives. I see this as a testament to his authenticity and his humanistic approach that established him early on as a cultural bridge builder. Bob was an honest dealer, and uniquely able to disarm polarized stances about the environment, even in his final days, as our country and much of the world is politically ripped apart.

 

I hold tight to Bob’s approach of inclusivity and elevating voices that are often overlooked, and I view The Redford Center’s work as an extension of the family’s persistent efforts to call people in and honor their life experiences. With Bob’s grandsons, Conor Schlosser and Dylan Redford, at the helm on The Redford Center board as third-generation filmmakers and humanitarians, I am as committed as ever to continue the work with them as they carry forward the family torch with the same conviction and humanity that threads through them all, and with fresh perspective and optimism built from their grandfather’s dream: 

 

“Let us rise above the fray and focus on what unites us,” Bob once said. “Our fate, as humans, that rests upon the earth.”