For Fran Reuland, being part of a team — and sometimes leading one — is one of the most powerful driving forces of her life. That has proven to be the case on the soccer pitch, as a climate advocate, and in her important work in the climate nonprofit space. And now she is delighted to join a new team, the EcoAthletes Champions.

“Being an EcoAthletes Champion gives me the opportunity to bring sports and climate communities together in ways I never thought possible,” said the former defensive midfielder for the legendary University of North Carolina Tar Heels. “I am beyond excited about working with my fellow Champions on programs that engage sports fans and other athletes on climate.”

That Reuland would want to be part of the Tar Heels soccer program is understandable: She loved the sport since she was five, she grew up in Chapel Hill, home to UNC, and the Heels have won 21 National Championships in 41 years.

Now, it’s one thing to want to be a Tar Heel; it’s quite another to actually make it.

Reuland’s strong work ethic and her sense of team gave her a chance.

“I was talented, but I wasn’t gifted in the way of typical Carolina recruits,” she recalled. “I just loved playing soccer and was blessed to play with the same group of girls for more than a decade while growing up. It was a competitive, close, strong team environment and that helped propel me to levels I wouldn’t have reached otherwise, including being invited to play in showcase tournaments for top college scouts.”

Reuland considered Michigan (her dad’s an alum) and some Ivy League universities. North Carolina? That was a “dream”. And she worked hard to make that dream come true.

“I was persistent,” noted Reuland. “I knew I’d get in academically, and I also knew that the coach, Anson Dorrance, occasionally had local walk-ons make the team. So, I showed up for pre-season technical and physical testing. Anson said that if I was able to be a starter by the end of pre-season, I’d be on the team.”

She ended up deciding to go to Carolina and see if she could make the team in the fall of her freshman year. Turns out that Reuland wasn’t good enough technically or athletically to make the cut so, she played on the UNC Club Team (“it was wonderful!”) and continued to work to get better.

When it came time for spring tryouts, Reuland was ready technically and fitness-wise and she made the team, mostly as a reserve.

“In the spring, which isn’t our main season, Anson would schedule us against teams from the NWSL,” shared Reuland. “I got to play against Gotham FC (then-Sky Blue) and the NC Courage, our local club. Then, in my junior year, we made the 2016 Final Four in San Jose, California. I got an award at the banquet that preceded the games for having the highest Grade Point Average (GPA) among the players for the four competing schools. I was beyond honored! Another highlight was during my senior year. Anson subbed on a big group of reserve players. Getting to be on the field when we scored a goal was a special moment!”

Since NWSL didn’t seem to be in the cards for Reuland, she went in a different direction. She was initially drawn to climate thanks to the summer she spent in Buenos Aires, Argentina to study Spanish after her sophomore year.

“The air pollution there was very bad,” she remembered. “My host family mom would tell me ‘I can’t leave my house because I have asthma and I can’t breathe.’ Not only did this make me sad; it also showed me that climate change is among other things, a public health issue and one that needs to be solved. So, I pivoted. My dad, who is a medical doctor with a specialty in public health, encouraged me.”

Upon her return, Reuland moved to the Gillings School of Public Health at UNC. Her senior thesis involved quantitative and qualitative field research on the links between environmental and public health in low- and middle-income countries, with a focus on Malawi in southeastern Africa.

She observed that “the challenges were much different than what you’d see in the developed world. Many hospitals didn’t have access to reliable sources of energy, which made offering care very difficult. Malawi is largely powered by hydro and the grid is unreliable. Hospitals don’t know on a day-by-day basis whether there would be electricity. The more complex services like surgical and maternity wards need more stable energy to run, meanwhile climate change makes things more erratic. It became a big Catch-22 as I found that public health, climate change and energy policy were inextricably linked.”

Her work led to a one-year post-graduate Carnegie Fellowship in Washington, DC in its energy and climate program focused on measuring methane leakage in the fossil fuel industry. Methane is more than 80 times as potent a greenhouse gas than CO2, yet per Reuland, its leakage has been largely untracked and ignored.

While working on the methane measurement problem at Carnegie, Reuland found that she missed playing soccer at a high level with a team that wanted to train and practice.

More Reuland: “I thought that maybe I could play internationally for a year. I think my boss might’ve been surprised, but she ended up talking with a colleague at the International Energy Agency in Paris. It turned out that they had a one-year job in the methane program.”

Once in the City of Lights, Reuland found a team, Issy Les Moulineaux, in the second division of France’s National League through an agent.

“What a great experience that was,” she gushed. “I played as a defensive midfielder, and we ended up undefeated and winning the league! Ironically, coming from a place like Carolina where I was just trying to keep up with some amazing athletes, France had a different style, and I was one of the fittest players on the club. It was difficult to work my full-time job, train and play but I made it work and just loved it.”

COVID had other ideas for Reuland. Her job with IEA ended in March 2020 just as the pandemic was hitting, then the league shut down, so she came back to the States. And she was ready.

“I had met people at the Rocky Mountain Institute; they offered me a job in their Oil & Gas Solutions Initiative before I went to Paris,” said Reuland. “I asked if I could defer, and I’m grateful they agreed. So, off I went to Boulder.”

Her work takes the emissions reduction work that she started at the Carnegie Fellowship to the next level.

“Methane mitigation is my thing; my team’s projects involve giving methane emissions increased visibility,” Reuland reported. “We build an emissions inventory, study technologies that can detect methane leaks, and then use a ‘data-to-action’ mindset to make recommendations on what can be done to reduce methane with policy and market solutions.”

Methane mitigation is not Reuland’s only thing; she is continuing her soccer career with the Colorado Rapids of the Women’s Premier Soccer League (WPSL), the second-tier US women’s soccer league, only below the NWSL. Last season, Reuland help bring the Rapids to the championship match where they fell to the California Storm.

In some ways, the RMI climate team and Reuland’s soccer squads’ goals are shared: “We’re fighting collectively to win something we feel deeply passionately about!”

That attitude is just what EcoAthletes co-founder and CEO Lew Blaustein is looking for when it comes to the Champions roster.

“Fran’s action-oriented, team-first, can-do approach is so EcoAthletes Champions,” Blaustein enthused. “Having someone who is working to dramatically reduce the impacts of the fossil fuel industry is important for us. In sports as in the #ClimateComeback, understand the problems and then you have a shot at winning. We’re excited to take that shot with Fran Reuland on the Champions squad.” 

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