is a writer, environmental advocate, and social impact strategist.
Peter writes about art and culture, environment and conservation, history, subcultures, politics, urbanization, social justice, and whatever he’s distracted by at a given movement.
He also helps politicians, philanthropists, NGOs, and brands create and execute content, impact, and engagement strategies that realize their mission- and market-driven goals.
At the core of Peter’s approach is a belief that tangible, lasting change is brought about by building creative partnerships, mobilizing grassroots public action, leveraging resources to accelerate impact, and shifting mindsets through powerful storytelling.
What does this look like?
Sometimes it’s creating the social media voice and producing experimental activations around a dinosaur named “Frankie,” the United Nations Development Programme’s #DontChooseExtinction spokesperson, helping to establish Frankie as a globally recognized climate influencer (a campaign that earned a 2023 Shorty Award Silver Honor).
Sometimes it looks like launching a campaign in collaboration with an expansion professional rugby team in New Zealand—founded to represent the pride of Pasifika—to mobilize funding to help rebuild homes in tsunami-ravaged Tonga.
Sometimes it’s writing persuasive op-eds that help thwart an ill-conceived highway-building project poised to destroy a delicate riverine ecosystem – or motivating a divided city council to remove a Confederate memorial from a public park.
For more than a decade, Peter was a writer with D Magazine and a widely published investigative reporter. The City and Regional Magazine Association named him “Best Columnist” in 2017 for an essay reckoning with the history of violence and race in America, and he was a finalist for that organization’s “Writer of the Year” in 2021. His longform narrative about the origins of MDMA and its historical connections to underground psychiatric treatment and the birth of club culture is perennially courted by Hollywood studios, but, alas, still hasn’t made it to screen. You can find some of that work here.
Contact or follow him on social media here.
Subscribe to his Substack here.
If you want to get in touch, reach out to psimek [at] gmail [dot] com.
