A letter from The B Team's CEO

In 2025, the easier path was clear. Commitments were reversing, coalitions dissolving, and climate ambition suddenly required defense in rooms where it had never been questioned. The pull toward insularity was strong.

Many leaders retreated, but for B Team Leaders, that was not an option.

They came into the year already practiced in honest, uncomfortable conversations – expecting to be pushed by their peers, believing that going further together was possible even when everything around them suggested otherwise. When the pressure came, that foundation held.

What struck me most wasn't any single action but the consistency. They kept showing up to conversations with no guaranteed outcome. They kept bringing nature, climate, and the people most affected by them into the rooms where real decisions were being made. And they kept building relationships across divides that most organizations were quietly abandoning, because a decade of working this way had made the uncomfortable conversation feel like the only one worth having.

The stories in this report show what that looks like in practice: individual leaders making choices that raised the standard for everyone around them – and a collective that pushed each of them further than they might have gone alone. That gives me genuine hope, and I’m honored to work alongside every one of them.

Leah Seligmann (CEO, The B Team)