A digital resource hub that turns clinical psychology research into practical tools for climate activists and campaign leaders.
Project InsideOut is a global initiative bringing together activists, psychologists, and organizations to address one of the most difficult challenges of our time: climate inaction. At its core is the understanding that lasting change doesn’t come from information alone, but from human behavior. The platform combines clinical psychology with real-world activism, offering tools and frameworks that help organizations move people from awareness to action, while supporting the emotional complexity that often blocks change. For a project grounded in depth and systems thinking, the digital experience needed to hold complexity, guide people through layered ideas, and turn research into something practical, not just present it.
Getting there meant working through every phase in order: concept and content strategy first, since a project this dense had to be thought through before it could be designed. Wireframes were built around Renee’s own frameworks and writing directly, not placeholder text standing in for it. Creative direction followed once the structure was right, and only then did the build begin, each stage grounded in the one before it rather than skipped past to reach a finished screen faster.
Renee Lertzman’s work draws on clinical psychology to explain why climate information alone doesn’t change behavior, but that research lived in workshops, decks, and a founder’s own expertise, not somewhere an activist or campaign lead could use directly. The site needed to hold real depth, a self-assessment, named frameworks like the Three As and the Quadrants of Engagement, without becoming another resource dense enough that nobody finishes it.
At the same time, the platform had to serve several different audiences, activists, educators, and organizational leaders, each arriving with a different question and needing a different next step.
Project InsideOut turned dense psychological research into something people could actually act on, not just read about.
The build started with the content itself. Renee’s own frameworks and writing were mapped and structured before any design happened, so the site never carried placeholder text standing in for real thinking.
From there, the site became a self-directed hub: a changemaker self-assessment, the Three As, the Guiding Principles, and a resource library, structured so someone could arrive with one question and leave with a specific next step rather than a wall of theory.
The self-assessment quiz is built on decades of psychological research, not a marketing feature bolted onto a content site, it’s the mechanism that turns a passive read into something someone actually does.
Project InsideOut launched as a real working resource, not just a description of one: a self-assessment people actually complete, frameworks they can name and reference back to, the Three As and the Quadrants of Engagement among them, and a structure built to grow as Renee’s own work keeps evolving.
The site is still live today, still the place Project InsideOut points people who want to move past the guilt-and-inaction loop and into something they can actually do.
One brand. Several programs. A system that can keep growing.
A wellness studio built before it existed, with Forge & Spark and Mariana Tek.
Forge & Spark is a content marketing agency helping purpose-driven brands grow through authentic, high-quality storytelling, and the relationship here runs deeper than one project: Design Guidelines and a full site build made to last, an ongoing fractional seat as VP, Creative Strategy, and now AI getting worked into how the site runs.
