Fierceness without bitterness might be the rarest quality in activism, and in leadership, right now.
Meet Kamila Drzewicka, a senior lawyer at ClientEarth, and total badass.
Her and her colleagues sue some of the biggest companies and governments around the world for their conduct and impact on people and planet. So I’ll be honest about what I expected walking in.
A drill sergeant. A hard-line eco-warrior. Some principal-level enforcer with a permanent furrowed brow.
I was carrying a stereotype, and she humbled that right out of me.
Yes, there was a furrow, but it came with a lightness. The ease of someone so clear on who they are and what they’re for that they have nothing left to prove.
She was part of the team behind Poland’s first ever greenwashing lawsuit, the “ekogroszek” case.
A coal marketed as “eco”, burned in up to 30% of coal-heated Polish homes, that 43% of its users genuinely believed was good for the environment. Read that again, good for the environment.
Except it wasn’t.
Working with scientists at Warsaw University of Technology, they showed its dust emissions could exceed legal limits up to 40 times over.
I mean at this point you need to slow clap these companies for getting away with this for so long right?
Anyway, the case ended in a settlement:
- The “eco” name, gone.
- The green packaging, gone.
- A shiny fresh precedent set for the whole country to build off.
Her work is one of the fundamental pillars for any advocate or sustainability influencer.
Her team also took Nestlé to court over exactly the kind of “100% recyclable” labelling on plastic bottles that misleads all of us into thinking we’re helping the planet when we’re often not.
I made a video about that very issue, and only realised during our conversation that it was her team’s work that made it possible in the first place.
And here’s the thing, these aren’t one-off wins.
For years, Kamila and her colleagues have been building the legal backbone that the rest of us now get to stand on.
Every case and legal strategy sets a precedent. Every precedent makes the next fight easier, not just for ClientEarth, but for local advocates, regulators, and honest businesses across Europe.
She’s part of why “greenwashing” went from a word people scoffed at to a genuine legal risk companies now have to take seriously.
That’s not a campaign. That’s a legacy.
But this is what moves me most:
She has every reason to be bitter.
Over a decade of fighting companies that “vigorously defend” the indefensible. Regulators who look away. And still, she chooses empathy over contempt.
She believes that companies that genuinely invest in doing better should profit, and deservedly so.
She’s pro-business.
Her team doesn’t only litigate.
Often the issues that arise are due to oversight and a need for more education.
So they talk, they educate, and they meet the people in the companies where they are. Real empathy in action.
I told her I thought people like her were the rocks that stand firm while the river of short-term profit rushes past.
But that is wrong.
They are not rocks trying to block the river.
They are hard-working beavers!
Quietly reshaping where it flows, so it does less harm, and shelters more life along the way.
Empathy gets called soft. Kamila is living proof it is the opposite. Hers is substantiated. Tangible. It walks, it reasons, and it wins in court.
She is moving on in two weeks. So this one is a big thank you to her mahi.
More Kamilas, please.