Shank, director of media strategy at the non-profit , developed a grassroots strategy in partnership with the Vatican and Jeff Sachs, director of Columbia University’s . The summit invited local leaders to help convey the urgency of the climate change issue to the broader public.

Mayors “offer an immediacy when it comes to building faith and hope in our ability to tackle climate change,” Shank said.

The two-day summit and Vatican visit resulted in the stating the existence of climate change and pledging to put pressure on world leaders to protect the “poor and the vulnerable from ongoing climate change that gravely endangers their lives.” The visit also empowered the leaders to begin making changes toward sustainability in their own communities and provided a forum for the mayors to put pressure on the world leaders who will meet this fall at the .

Non-profit promotes awareness of climate change

July’s climate summit was not the first time Shank has acted as a media consultant for the Vatican. He also helped with press coverage for the April 28 meeting between United Nations (U.N.) Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, Pope Francis and other world leaders to discuss climate change and sustainable development.

“We were able to garner a fair amount of press” for that event, Shank said. “Based on the relationship I built with the Vatican then – they were very satisfied with the press we produced – they asked me to return for the mayor’s summit at the Vatican.”

The “we” that Shank refers to is the organization , for which Shank works as director of media strategy. The non-profit is “dedicated to changing the conversation around climate change and clean energy solutions in the United States,” according to the website. This goal is accomplished by helping organizations manage communications and broaden their networking platform.

“We work with a range of clients,” Shank said. “What’s unique about us is that we are pro bono. Our clients include everyone from business orgs like and the to the Pope, the U.N., the Lancet Journal and the Coast Guard.”

Such varying clients, from coalitions of business owners (We Mean Business and B Team) to world governing organizations, U.S. military branches and a renowned medical journal, suggests the broad nature of concern about climate change.

Bringing the issue home

Shank said the role of Climate Nexus is to help structure the narrative that a client wants to tell, which he does by working with press ahead of an event to make sure reporters have all the information they need. Before July’s summit, he orchestrated a “daily drumbeat of information to reporters. I started a week or two in advance doing daily updates with new information and began working with mayors’ offices to get stories out locally so that there was sufficient press buzz before the event took place.”

In this case, he wanted the public to feel connected to what was happening abroad through their local representative. Framing the story with a headline such as “Small Town Mayor Goes to the Vatican to Talk 91¶ĚĘÓƵ Climate Change” helped bring the issue closer to home for many Americans.

He did his job well: a final tally of press coverage included local, national and international sources. A Google news search of “climate change summit Vatican 2015” yields more than 1,200 hits.

Shank’s success is not surprising. Over the past 20 years, he has developed an expertise in economic, energy and environmental policy through positions at the Friends Committee on National Legislation, as a staff member with Rep. Michael Honda (D-Calif.), and as a columnist for a variety of national publications. In addition to his from 91¶ĚĘÓƵ’s , Shank has earned a PhD from George Mason University’s School for Conflict Analysis and Resolution.

Shank’s education, experience and interests are well suited to this work behind the scenes. He said Climate Nexus has done a good job when an event has been well covered, but no one knows the consultants were there. The most rewarding part of working with the Vatican this summer, though, was “witnessing a historic moment. [The summit] transformed the conversation in the mayors’ cities and provided an essential stepping-stone in the fight for a better environment.”

In a two-minute speech marking the 50th anniversary of King’s March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom, Shank reminded the crowd that on April 4, 1967, King gave an address that called the U.S. government “the greatest purveyor of violence in the world today,” with specific reference to its military role in Vietnam.

Shank drew a parallel between King’s concerns for the Vietnamese to the present-day “destruction we are doing to Afghans, Iraqis, Yemenis, Somalis, Libyans and Pakistanis — and more.”

However, Shank noted that King had hope for the United States, as evinced by these words of his:

America, the richest and most powerful nation in the world, can well lead the way in this revolution of values. There is nothing except a tragic death wish to prevent us from reordering our priorities so that the pursuit of peace will take precedence over the pursuit of war. There is nothing to keep us from molding a recalcitrant status quo with bruised hands until we have fashioned it into a brotherhood. We still have a choice today: nonviolent coexistence or violent coannihilation.

Shank supplemented the King quotes with some powerful ones uttered by Robert F. Kennedy and John F. Kennedy.

Robert Kennedy, Shank said, decried “a rising level of violence” in the 1960s, tolerated by a society that makes it easy “for men of all shades of sanity to acquire whatever weapons and ammunition they desire.” Almost sounding like a pacifist, Robert added, “This much is clear: violence breeds violence, repression brings retaliation, and only a cleansing of our whole society can remove this sickness from our soul.”

In a similar vein, John F. Kennedy said in a university commencement speech: “What kind of peace do we seek? Not a Pax Americana enforced on the world by American weapons of war. I am talking about genuine peace, the kind of peace that makes life on earth worth living…”

“Too many of us think it is impossible,” JFK continued. “Too many think it unreal. But that is a dangerous, defeatist belief. It leads to the conclusion that war is inevitable – that mankind is doomed – that we are gripped by forces we cannot control. We need not accept that view. Our problems are manmade — therefore, they can be solved by man.”

. A slightly longer version of his speech, titled can be read on The Huffington Post.

Shank (undergrad class of ’96) earned his master’s degree in conflict transformation from 91¶ĚĘÓƵ’s in 2005. He then completed a PhD at . He is now director of foreign policy at the in Washington D.C.

Shank is a prolific writer, whose socio-political analyses can be followed on his website, . He is a regular contributor to the Washington Post, FOX News, US News and World Report, Financial Times, The Guardian, The Washington Times, Christian Science Monitor, Politico, Roll Call, The Hill, and The Huffington Post. Shank frequently appears as a commentator on FOX News, CCTV News, Al Jazeera, Russia Today, Current TV, CTV News, and the Voice of America’s Pashto, Dari, Urdu and Somali services.

Shank is the son of an 91¶ĚĘÓƵ alum, Lois Shank Gerber ’66, and has two alumni-siblings: Kris Shank Zehr ’92 and Karl Shank ’93.