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  • money meets emotions #2: Sanjana Sekhar, climate author & filmmaker

money meets emotions #2: Sanjana Sekhar, climate author & filmmaker

how the woman who makes climate action sexy thinks about money

Author

Sneha Rampalli
January 28, 2025

Table of Contents

hi lil bees!

We’re back with money meets emotions, a series where I chat with dope woman building cool sh!t and ask them about their relationships with money.

So, drumroll please!!! 🥁 🥁 🥁 

Money meets emotions #2 features Sanjana Sekhar, a South Indian-American author, filmmaker, and climate activist.

She is a storyteller who aims to make climate action the hottest place to be, literally and figuratively. Her focus is on reclaiming and healing extractive narratives to instead build a healthy human future on Earth. How is that not sexy! 

Her first feature documentary Expedition Reclamation follows twelve everyday Black, Indigenous, and women of color redefining “outdoorsy” and reclaiming belonging in outdoor recreation.

So, let’s get into it.

want to watch snippets? releasing each day this week on instagram 🙂 

background

Specifically, what pulled Sanjana to climate work and storytelling?

Sanjana recalls a memory from her three-year old when she was living in Bombay, where she acted as a fairy in her school play. All the flowers were dying from pollution, and she was tasked with bringing them back to life. She’s lived many lives since then, to now be a climate change storyteller & activist.

She’s been in the intersection of climate & storytelling since she graduated from college, through a lot of different lenses, like literature, film, documentaries. She wants to make climate a relatable space through sharing narratives, since each and everyone of us are impacted by climate change.

Lots of people look at storytelling as a floofy, soft skill that only people with privilege can use. But she thinks that could be farther from the truth: it’s an essential survival mechanism.

We compared it to money & emotions. We always say money is numbers, it’s logical & rational. Yet why is it as polarizing to bring into a conversation as religion and politics? It’s something that impacts us each and everyday in unique ways. Similarly, climate is a science. But more than that, it’s about the heart and spirit.

The words in our mind, they dictate our behaviors, the structures we build, the systems we live in. Similar to how I create a space where money and emotions exist, she gives room for heart in the climate conversation so that we can all be climate activists.

And quite frankly, if she could work a conventional 9-5 job, she would. But climate action feels more pressing & imminent, and she feels as though she has a unique opportunity to go solve for it. This came with having conversations with herself and her mom about privilege and financial security. More on that to come 🙂 

money on an individual basis

I brought up How Real Artists Don’t Starve with Sanjana. Specifically, there’s a lot of purists who believe artists will always struggle vs other creatives who don’t believe in this. I wanted to hear how, as a full-time creative, she viewed money. And how her upbringing may have influenced this.

She knows people who are struggling, starving artists. They’re so committed, and that leads to success and security. However, many, many, many full-time creatives have a safety net or another source of financial security or some form of client-work. She mentions an interesting example where the most famous painters worked on art for the nobles, which never see the light of day but gave them the commissions to fund their art for the world. That was their “client” work. But it’s just not talked about because it’s such a taboo to talk about.

Obviously, in a developed country, artists would be able to make a living wage. But money is a reality and art often times, critiques a system. Therefore a system has no incentive to reward it, so it can be quite difficult to find funding sources and a steady income.

Upbringing-wise, she didn’t experience financial insecurity but it wasn’t far removed since her mother experienced it. Sanjana grew up in financial security but was raised by someone who might have come from a more humble background.

But a very real thing, especially for immigrant children, is the guilt. She’s had a multitude of conversations with her mother, but she’s constantly reminded that her mother made sacrifices for her to take action.

We chatted about how coming from wealth can create ease to continue existing in the status quo, in comfort and sedation. Whereas she asked, how can she use her financial privilege for good? It’s like a muscle that one exercises or has inherently based on circumstances.

The more you have, the more insulated you feel. You lose trust with yourself that you could survive without what you have or with any less than what you have. You're like, I've gotten used to this. If I don't have this, everything's going to crumble. And so you hold on as tight as you can. Whereas if you have lived a range of experiences or you've lived without, you're like, I know how I can figure this out, you know? And that's not to like glorify not having resources because obviously that's not.

Sanjana Sekhar

money on a collective level 

As Americans, we tend to look at things from the lens of individualism. Take care of yourself and your home before you take care of others. But activism’s basis is collectivism, and a lot of cultures operate community-first. I wanted to hear how she looked at money, for the collective.

This felt really relevant, given the wildfires that have ravaged L.A. Also, where Sanjana is living. Something she mentioned was that, there is a lot of media attention in L.A. because of richer communities being completely demolished. However, a lot of the city’s population is working class.

When the fires first started, it was the lower-income communities who were mobilizing first to help their neighbors. Opening up their bakeries, providing mutual aid. They went out on the streets first.

Having a lot of money and privilege can make it hard to get over the inertia to go outside of your comfort zone, and can keep you siloed to just doomscrolling on your phone rather than getting out onto the streets.

Funnily enough, this reminded me of the show Silo on AppleTV+ which does a wonderful job depicting classism. But also, a quote my dad always says to me: “You can have $5 in your bank account or $1 million in your bank account. If you can’t give with $5, you will never give with $1 million.”

I was curious to see how she functions as a climate activist who lives in a capitalistic society. Her response was that she’s in the belly of the beast. She doesn’t spend too much energy to wallow and lament. She accepts that money talks. She can run or hide, but it won’t stop it from being true. She faces that fact and becomes more solution-oriented, since you can’t solve without facing the problem.

Also, she doesn’t waste too much time thinking about hypocrisies. She lives within a system that she is trying to change. It’d be egotistical of her to say she’s out of grasp from capitalism’s influence. She’s still going to take a flight to India to see her grandma, because she is apart of the diaspora. But that doesn’t mean she isn’t qualified to build a better system. You just need to give a fk and start taking action.

It’s also difficult to escape a society based on hierarchy. Isabel Wilkerson ends her book Caste with, there will always be alphas & underdogs in society. We’re social and comparative beings. But something Sanjana said to me in our first conversation was that doesn’t mean a better baseline can’t exist.

A lot of people feel that humans are not motivated by a fear factor. That there is no motivation to innovate or create change without the threat of homelessness, hunger and death. She acknowledges she has a community where this is not the status quo. And quite frankly, there is no such thing as a utopia, since that is so subjective to each person. We can just do better, where people are not only motivated by fear to take action or evolve. Which, might I add, is different from urgency 🙂 

closing thoughts

This conversation with Sanjana genuinely felt like a conversation. I forgot we were recording. She is a gem of a human and truly a thoughtful individual that wants to leave the world a better place than she found it. I’d watch the full interview if you have time 💛 

She also writes an auto-ethnographic newsletter all about making climate action sexy. Be sure to subscribe and check it out!

This conversation re-energized me, especially because so many things I read/watched in the last year entered the conversation. Books / shows / movies like:

So cheers to talking more about money, and more interviews to come 🙂 Let me know your thoughts/feedback/cool women I can interview 👀 

until the next 🐝  and with 💛 ,

Sneha

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