Sustainable Business Summit | New York
Roundtable: Operationalizing Sustainability for a Resilient Future
December 7, 2022
The Bloomberg Sustainable Business Summit brought together business leaders and investors globally to drive innovation and scale best practices in sustainable business and finance. In this roundtable discussion, panelists delved into topics such as the role of technology in improving business outcomes and lowering emissions, and how to leverage data to shape sustainability strategy and create operational efficiencies.
Speakers included:
- Jenna Desmarais, Vice President, ESG & Digital Asset Product Strategy & Development, Bank of America
- Keelin Evans, Vice President, Sustainability, Macy’s
- Andrea Flynn, Vice President, Strategy, Governance & Citizenship, Global Corporate Citizenship & Sustainability, The Estée Lauder Companies
- Andrea Hennemann, Vice President, Sustainability Software Sales – Americas, IBM
- Sophia Mendelsohn, Chief Sustainability Officer & Head of ESG, Cognizant
- Denise Naguib, Vice President, Sustainability & Supplier Diversity, Marriott International
- Tobi Petrocelli, Lead Director, Environmental & Sustainability Management, MUFG
- Christina Shim, Vice President, Strategy & Sustainability, IBM Sustainability Software
- Jonah Smith, Global Head of Environmental Social Governance & President, Kraft Heinz Foundation, The Kraft Heinz Company
- Marlo Tablante, Head of Sustainability Transparency & Positioning, Meta
Bloomberg participants:
- Lauren Kiel, General Manager, Bloomberg Green
Event highlights:
The Role of Leadership in Advancing Sustainability
Lauren Kiel, General Manager, Bloomberg Green began the roundtable discussion by asking the panelists what they felt are the biggest hurdles to overcome in advancing the cause of sustainability. Andrea Flynn, Vice President, Strategy, Governance & Citizenship, Global Corporate Citizenship & Sustainability, The Estée Lauder Companies emphasized the importance of executives taking initiative in making sustainability a priority for their businesses, saying that “Leadership is critical in setting the expectation that sustainability is a core part of our brand.”
Sophia Mendelsohn, Chief Sustainability Officer & Head of ESG, Cognizant was pessimistic in this regard, admitting that “I do not trust the global business mind yet to inherently work on this as much as we say we do. I think most CEOs are still briefed, not engaged.” Christina Shim, Vice President, Strategy & Sustainability, IBM Sustainability Software noted the consequent necessity for a bottom-up approach, saying “We need to figure out how to make everyone working with us feel like sustainability is a part of their job. It’s not just the CSO, it should be embedded in the entire business.”
Oftentimes the hesitation amongst business leaders towards greater investment in sustainability comes from a lack of understanding of the desire for it from customers. Denise Naguib, Vice President, Sustainability & Supplier Diversity, Marriott International said “Our job is to surface sustainability demand from customers to stakeholders. It’s not because Denise said so, it’s because the customers are demanding it.”
Misinformation & Education
The large amount of misinformation and greenwashing surrounding discussions about climate change can obfuscate the true value of sustainability, which in turn hampers collective inclination to make further strides. Marlo Tablante, Head of Sustainability Transparency & Positioning, Meta spoke on efforts to clamp down on such misinformation being spread on social media, saying “Some of the work that we’re doing right now is tackling climate misinformation being spread on our platforms. We’re talking about how we can validate or invalidate false information so users can have access to actionable information.”
This prevalence of misinformation can also spur more reluctance from businesses to address sustainability out of fear of being accused of greenwashing if, for example, emissions-reduction targets are not met within the predetermined time frame. Jenna Desmarais, Vice President, ESG & Digital Asset Product Strategy & Development, Bank of America summarized this anxiety as “Our issue is not getting people on board with ESG, it’s how do we not greenwash?”
The lack of education about what sustainability is and isn’t can even lead to people rejecting sustainability without realizing that they actually do value and want it. Christina Shim, Vice President, Strategy & Sustainability, IBM Sustainability Software pointed out that “Some of our clients say they don’t really care about sustainability, they just want to do their work. But if we ask if they care about optimizing their business and reducing waste or emissions, the answer is yes of course. We need to educate our customers that they do actually care, they just don’t realize it.”
The Software Gap
The push for sustainability can only be as strong as the quality of the infrastructure used to facilitate it, which in many cases is software. Tobi Petrocelli, Lead Director, Environmental & Sustainability Management, MUFG expressed frustration towards the lack of viable software designed specifically for sustainability, lamenting that “Everything is done in an Excel spreadsheet. It is the most backwards and inefficient manner I have ever seen. Right now we are trying to work with software off the shelf, but there’s not one size that fits us, so we are curating stuff from scratch.”
Jonah Smith, Global Head of Environmental Social Governance & President, Kraft Heinz Foundation, The Kraft Heinz Company also recognized the issues posed by this software gap, adding that “We have a similar experience in terms of the spreadsheets. At Kraft Heinz, we are tackling this problem head on by investing a significant amount of our ESG budget towards fixing our data issues.”
This Sustainable Business Summit roundtable is Proudly Sponsored By
Summit Advisor
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