Meet the SES advisory board

The Mission

The Sustainable Entertainment Society (SES) is a Canadian non-profit accelerating sustainable development through arts, culture, and entertainment.

We catalyze climate action through flagship events like the Sustainable Production Forum, workforce development programs: Sustainability Practitioners Internship Program and the Clean Energy Series, and targeted pop-ups integrated with industry gatherings and community climate weeks.

Our local-to-global approach delivers bespoke programming that equips entertainment professionals with practical tools, industry-specific knowledge, and credentials to drive real sustainable progress.

Our values

Hyper-Collaboration and Community Building
Local Development
Global Alignment with the UNSDGs -12, 13, 17

Our goals

Advance sustainable thinking and action
Accelerate sustainability and decarbonization in arts & entertainment
Activate climate goals through the power of storytelling

Work With Us

Our Story

Ten years ago, Zena Harris, President of Green Spark Group, asked a simple question: what would it look like if the entertainment industry took climate seriously? Not as a PR exercise, but as a genuine commitment, embedded in how stories are told, how productions are run, and how the next generation of creators is trained.

The answer has been unfolding ever since.

The Sustainable Production Forum began as that answer, a gathering place for the believers, the practitioners, and the changemakers who refused to accept that the screen industries couldn't do better. What started as a conversation became a community.

In 2023, the Sustainable Entertainment Society was founded to pursue that mission through a permanent non profit home, mission aligned, and built to hold and grow what the SPF sparked. Green Spark Group, founded and sustained the Sustainable Production Forum since 2016, and became SES's Foundational Partner. That relationship reflects not just a decade of shared mission and shared stages, but a commitment to ensuring the ecosystem has the knowledge, experience, and the community infrastructure to drive lasting change.

When we started, we were a small group of believers in a big idea. Today, we look back at a decade of presence in 7 cities: Toronto, Vancouver, Montréal, Halifax, St. John's, Los Angeles, and New York, and online. Over 1,000 speakers and experts have shared their knowledge from our stages. More than 500 sessions and workshops have equipped practitioners with the tools to act. Over 300 young people have found their footing in the green creative economy. And over 25,000+ participants have passed through our doors, each of them carrying something forward.

That is the ripple effect; not a single wave, but thousands of them, spreading outward in every direction. And it started with one question, asked by someone who believed the industry could be different.

Meet the Team