Heather Fipps

Heather Fipps builds the connective infrastructure between the environmental field and the cultural channels where public understanding and sentiment are formed. As founder and executive director of Context Collaborative, she translates climate urgency into cultural implementation, mobilizing the media industry’s institutions, networks and storytellers toward collective response.

At the center of that effort is the Hollywood Climate Summit, the media industry’s largest annual convening on climate, which Heather co-founded and leads through Context Collaborative. Hosted at the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, it draws over 6,000 professionals each year into a standing network of 40,000+ creative professionals and 7,000+ companies across 65 countries. Partners include Netflix, NBCUniversal, Warner Bros. Discovery and CAA alongside NRDC, Climate Power and the UN Environment Program.

At The Redford Center, Heather served as senior program director, building the organizational strategy and grantmaking infrastructure behind a $22 million portfolio supporting over 50 environmental films and impact campaigns that have shifted policy, mobilized communities and amplified frontline voices. She is the lead researcher and author of the first dedicated climate storytelling guidance for the global gaming industry, developed in partnership with UNEP’s Playing for the Planet and NRDC’s Rewrite the Future.

Previously, as a professor at California State University, Los Angeles, she founded the university’s first impact filmmaking program, funded by a $1 million grant from Hauser & Wirth. Heather has spoken at the United Nations, the Clinton Foundation and the National Science Foundation. Her work has been featured in The Hollywood Reporter, the Los Angeles Times, The New York Times, Forbes and Newsweek.