About

Focus the Nation is a national non-profit headquartered in Portland, Oregon. We believe that building a clean energy economy presents an opportunity to redefine American prosperity and US leadership at the local and international level.

We are driven by a fierce commitment to empower today’s Millenials with the imaginative, civic and systems-thinking skills to be powerful agents of change in the own communities.
 

Our programming focuses on supporting young people in every state between the ages of 18 -28 and providing opportunities for them to interface with current elected and business leaders on solutions to our energy world. However, in order to sustain the Energy Quest Transition that our communities and planet needs, there are four kinds of young leaders that we are particularly interested in working with (granted, they are not always mutually exclusive of each other):
 

• Innovators: People who are drawn to careers as an engineers, scientists, inventors and entrepreneurs coming up with clean energy solutions in their college labs, basements or garages.

• Technicians: Those who are interested in careers as electricians on wind farms, or steel workers building streetcars and light rail, or contractors erecting transmission lines to bring geothermal energy to the grid.

• Politicos: Young people who are drawn to careers as politicians, activism and/or public life that will keep money flowing (via legislation) toward the innovators and technicians.

• Storytellers: Young people who see themselves as journalists, communicators, artists, musicians and teachers. These are the people who will continually tie the narrative threads of their counterparts together so that we keep inspiring more people to join and re-write our energy story.

Since 2008, our Civic Engagement program portfolio has engaged more than 300,000 young leaders in direct dialogue with thousands of business and elected leaders. With our Focus Roots Fellowships, we have invested in the early careers of 5 social entrepreneurs whose projects have now touched nearly 50,000 people’s lives.


We are a small staff in Portland, Oregon with rock star volunteers and partners all over the country (and the world now! we have friends in China).