Jeffrey Skoll

As an industry, the film industry is better than most. It's not perfect - I wish every company would carbon-offset their productions - but it's better than one would expect.

When I started Participant, I felt that the movie business was ripe for a company that dealt with big issues in a systemic way. I was a little surprised that nobody had done it before. But to most people, entertainment is escapism.

As a teenager I read a lot of books. Books with lots of scary trends, things like nuclear weapons and overpopulation and global diseases, and I thought, 'Wouldn't it be great to write stories that showed people these problems and that we could do something about them.'

The goal of Participant is to tell stories that serve as catalysts for social change. With our television channel, we can bring those stories into the homes of our viewers every day.

We remain committed to inspiring and compelling social change to the world's most pressing problems through the power of great stories and engaging our audiences to take meaningful action.

We gravitated to the idea of social entrepreneurs when it was a fairly nascent thing. We began to build the organization, focused on investing in and celebrating social entrepreneurs. Not long after that, we realized there was another opportunity to help bring them together and tell their stories.

I learned Hollywood is a small community, and you really have to be a part of the community to get anything done. Unlike traditional industries, where you can do things from afar with phone calls and e-mail, this town is really about being social. Because that's how trust gets built.

By 2007, 85% of Americans cited climate change as an important issue, compared with just 33% in prior years. The phrase we invented, 'An Inconvenient Truth,' became a part of the lexicon.

Looking at America, which has so much wealth and potential and yet has so many deep-rooted problems, I think it gives us, as Canadians, an opportunity to be on the world stage on the climate change issue.

When I first moved to Hollywood from Silicon Valley, I had some misgivings. But I found that there were some advantages to being in Hollywood. And, in fact, some advantages to owning your own media company. And I also found that Hollywood and Silicon Valley have a lot more in common than I would have dreamed.