This fall, Kirsten Brosbøl, who was a 2019-2020 Obama Foundation Scholar with Columbia World Projects, launched 2030beyond, a new organization that connects parliamentarians around the world to help achieve the United Nations 2030 Sustainable Development Goals. In a recent interview, Brosbøl explained how she dreamed up the idea for the organization, and how the Obama Foundation Scholars Program helped her get there.

Columbia World Projects: Can you tell us a bit about your new organization and the reason you started it?

Brosbøl: I’ve launched a “do-tank” on the 2030 Agenda. The aim is to contribute to accelerating action around the [United Nations] Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). The idea was born when I was still a member of the Danish Parliament . My impression was that we really needed a platform for parliamentarians to meet and to exchange ideas and best practices around how to implement the SDGs in parliamentary work. The focus for my do-tank is parliamentarians primarily, but I’m also hoping to link parliamentarians to civil society and private sector actors who are involved in the 2030 Agenda and the implementation of the SDGs.

How did your experience at Columbia help you crystallize these ideas?

Brosbøl: When I first came to Columbia, as an Obama Foundation Scholar, I already had the idea that I wanted to set up my own do-tank on the SDGs, but it was very much with a national focus. My background is in the Danish parliament, where I worked on the national implementation of the U.N.’s 2030 Agenda. Coming to Columbia, and sharing my story and my background with the people I met – both my colleagues in the Obama Scholars program but also professors that I linked up with and Professor Jeffrey Sachs, who chairs the global sustainable development solutions network, was quite transformative for me, because it meant that my focus completely shifted from a national to an international or global focus.

What are your future goals for the organization? Where do you see this headed?

Brosbøl: I am hoping to create a movement of parliamentarians from all over the world who can implement the SDGs in their work as parliamentarians. We know for a fact right now that only 14% of parliaments all over the world are actively engaged in the SDGs. If we want to accelerate action and if we want to deliver on SDGs in only 10 years, we need more parliamentarians to be involved. And that is the ultimate goal for us is to have active members of parliamentarians for the global goals in all parliaments all over the world and to identify the SDG champions in each parliament that can be the spearheads of change.

Can you tell us about your time in parliament before the Obama Foundation Scholars Program, and how you decided to join the program?

Brosbøl: I was elected to parliament in 2005, when I was 27 years old, and I spent 14 years as an elected MP. I also served as the Minister of Environment and, during that time I had the opportunity to be part of the Danish negotiation team leading up to the adoption of the Sustainable Development Goals in 2015. That very much shaped the last term I served in parliament from 2015 to 2019. I knew, probably in the middle of that term, that I wanted to change tracks – that I wanted to do something other than stay in parliament. I was at a time in my life where I felt that if I wanted to have a different experience professionally, this was probably a good time to do it, after 14 years in public service. I also felt really impatient about the pace and the speed of climate action and action around sustainability and felt that perhaps I could play a different role if I took some of the experiences that I had in the Danish parliament… That perhaps I could play a role in pushing for action elsewhere. So that's basically the background of why I was particularly happy to be able to join the Obama Scholars Program, because this was a very good segue for me into this new path, to be able to scale the work that I had done in Denmark.

Part of the Obama Scholars Program, of course, is to develop an action plan around what kind of actions you want to take after the program has finished. And this kind of naturally took shape through the different workshops that we had, working on our different career trajectories, developing our skills as leaders in the many conversations and team experiences that I had with my colleagues. These elements all helped me shape the idea of launching the do-tank. All in all, I would probably not be where I am right now if it were not for all these different elements of the Scholars Program.

Can you touch a little bit on how the pandemic has forced you to shift your work?

Brosbøl: I think the pandemic has affected everyone's life in some way. The Obama Foundation Scholars Program was basically disrupted in March: I came back to Denmark and I had to think about how I could start already to have some kind of activity in the do-tank and also come up with activities that would be relevant for parliamentarians in this time of crisis, of global pandemic, but also in a time where we've seen parliaments being sidelined in the action around COVID response.  I will say that this also made things easier somehow because we can organize things a little bit faster than if we had to organize in person. We can mobilize more people to the events than we would have if people had to travel to join.

Who from your Obama Foundation Scholars year are you working with on this new effort?

Brosbøl: Jeffrey Sachs is on my advisory board. [Fellow Obama Foundation Scholar] Christian Vanizette  is on my advisory board as well as [fellow Scholar] Trisha Shetty and Rosario Garavito from the Chicago scholars program. Shazeeb [M Khairul Islam], who is one of the scholars this year, his company in Bangladesh actually made us a website. So there's another link to another scholar there. I really use them for developing my ideas and getting inspiration on how to move forward.