Three Strategies for Developing Current and Future Sustainability, ESG Leaders
A common challenge for every business committed to sustainability is recruiting, retaining, and developing the right talent. Companies in Southeast Michigan and beyond are faced with the accelerating need to formalize their sustainability efforts, collect and analyze data, respond to government policies, answer to stakeholders, and more. And they need highly skilled people to lead all of these functions while tying them back to company strategy, operations, and business model. That’s the driving factor for WholeWorks, SustainabiliD, and The Erb Institute, which work to educate current and future business leaders in sustainability. Laura Asiala and the team at WholeWorks help business leaders, professionals, and functional experts accelerate their ability to connect the most important, or material, ESG issues in their organizations to achieve a return on investment and make a sustainable impact across the triple bottom line. SustainabiliD – owned and led by Kerry Duggan – is a strategic advising firm focused on innovating to net zero. SustainabiliD offers leadership sustainability counsel, strategy, implementation, and communication services. In short, Duggan and her team help coach and shape sustainability leadership within businesses. Erb Institute Managing Director Terry Nelidov and his colleagues are preparing the CSOs, CEOs, and sustainability leaders of the future. SBN Detroit posed questions about educating current and future business leaders in sustainability to these three industry leaders to learn their perspectives. Q: What will the impact of future chief sustainability officers have on businesses and society? Asiala: I see the CSO’s responsibility as critical for a sustainable business—at least for the foreseeable future. Three key roles are distinct for this leader. The first is the ability to reframe business opportunities and risks in environmental, social, and economic terms, as opposed to merely economic. The second is the ability to connect the dots between ESG opportunities and risks to contribute to a return on invested capital—and that can either be focused on increasing that rate of return or strategically protecting it. Both are valuable. Without a return on invested capital that meets the expectations of investors, there is no sustainable business. Finally, there is the ability to move seamlessly inside the organization, creating and encouraging a community of like-minded professionals that are seeded throughout the critical functions of the organization. These same attributes are also important in interacting with key stakeholders outside of the organization. This is much more about translation and influence than command and control. Duggan: Maybe it’s time to get away from buzzwords that keep us in one “boutique” corner. Future leaders will need to be able to integrate across their organizations, sectors, and throughout society. The impact needs to touch every corner of the global economy; therefore, we need to think of these leaders as chief integration and innovation officers! Nelidov: An enormous impact, two ways in particular. First, a CSO should be the chief advocate—along with the CEO— for business and sustainability within the company. The CSO needs to have a clear voice with the CEO since the CEO is ultimately responsible for integrating sustainability into all aspects of company strategy and operations. The CSO is there to help the CEO and to ensure that sustainability is not left out of the priorities. In terms of influence on society, the CSO plays a very significant role. The role of business in society keeps growing. Business is the most powerful force in the world. It’s the role of the CSO to harness that power for human rights, and positive social and environmental impact. Stakeholders – both internal and external – are asking companies to play an active role in social and environmental development, and that all points back to the CSO. Q: What kinds of traits do you think ultimately make someone a strong CSO? Asiala: It’s very important to have a trusted, respected leader and people on his/her team who can work across and within the company to identify the most important ESG issues and translate them both into competitive strategy and positive impact – socially, economically, and environmentally. That’s because integrating sustainability into an enterprise is not only the responsibility of a few select professionals, but the necessary work of a broad array of business functions: marketing and sales, business development, consulting, sourcing and supply chain, manufacturing, operations, and logistics, research and development, product development, IT, finance, and HR, among others. More than ever, a critical success factor is to equip managers and functional experts to integrate sustainability into the areas of the business for which they already have responsibility and authority. A CSO needs to lead that effort and create an environment for ongoing learning, experimentation, and innovation. That’s more than making resources available—although it is that—it’s about creating a community of support, encouragement, and accountability around these issues. Duggan: In many ways, you have to have the willingness to put your head down and do the work, not just talk about it. 21st-century leadership in sustainability means you need to understand the technical and financial feasibility of necessary work, but you also need a skillset in community engagement. I’m finding more and more movement in collaboration and creativity. Collaboration is a soft skill and a contact sport. It’s not easy but it’s absolutely necessary. The silos we spend our days in are not helping advance sustainability measures. We need more silo busters on the field! Nelidov: They are, essentially, the same traits that business leaders need but with a focus on science and social/environmental impact. That’s why we created this dual-degree program at the graduate level. CSOs need the skills to be able to understand the impact of science on business, and the impact of business on society. They need to understand climate change and the business implications that come with it. They need a grounding in stakeholders, communities, and social justice. CSOs also need strong people skills and relationship-building skills. They need to understand the changing expectations for business in society and the emerging role of business and nonprofit leaders. They need to get things done for sustainability by
Kerry C. Duggan Works With Game-Changing Sustainability Businesses in Detroit
SBND interviews Kerry C. Duggan,national political advisor and visionary climatech executive and former Obama White House official. Founder and CEO of SustainabiliD in Detroit, and recently named the founding director of the University of Michigan’s SEAS Sustainability Clinic, Duggan shares her thoughts on a local level, highlighting key women and businesses who are making an impact and offering advice on approaching sustainability. Duggan is a board director of Perma-Fix (NASDAQ: PESI) and a senior advisor at RockCreek. She also sits on several corporate advisory boards, including Our Next Energy (ONE), Lux-Wall, Aclima, Walker-Miller, Arctaris Impact Investors, BlueConduit, and Commonweal Ventures. She is a senior fellow at the Federation of American Scientists and a member of the International Women’s Forum. Duggan’s current public service includes serving as an appointee to the (U.S.) Secretary of Energy’s Advisory Board (SEAB) under Secretary Jennifer Granholm and to the State of Michigan’s Council on Climate Solutions under Gov. Gretchen Whitmer. Q: Kerry, please tell us about your current work. A: I started SustainabiliD five years ago. It is a woman-owned,service-disabled veteran-owned, Detroit-based diverse small business working with game-changers to equitably solve the climate crisis.So, I have no small mission statement. As such, I’ve spent the last five years working on climate solutions in two ways: On the institutional side, I’m working to help develop the business model around place-based work for larger organizations. I have been appointed as the founding director of UM’s SEAS sustainability clinic in Detroit, and we are currently focused on three goals: To seek equitable and just solutions to the city’s most pressing sustainability-related issues; to lower operating costs—particularly in energy management for city operations—while reducing carbon emissions; and to support the delivery of services directly to the city and, through partner programs, to improve residents’ quality of life. Second, I work with climate solution companies. These are the game-changers. For example, Our Next Energy (ONE) recently set a world record of EV miles traveled on a single charge: 752 miles, in December, in Michigan. This is a very big deal. I work to help these businesses navigate opportunities to scale with the speed that we all need to combat the climate crisis. Q: Your work is largely around energy, climate, and environment.Where does your passion in these areas come from? A: First, I’m a mom. Climate is the most urgent issue of our time, and I want to create a safer, more sustainable planet for the next generation. Second, I have always loved doing my work in Detroit. My ancestors immigrated to Detroit from Ireland, so from a generational perspective, I try to give back to the place that has given my family so much. In this way, I’m very grounded in Detroit. I was also blessed to spend many summers of my youth on the shores of the Great Lakes, home to 21% of the world’s fresh surface water. How lucky are we? I work to protect that and make it available for my kids. Lastly, I have a basketball background, and the skills I gleaned from playing high-level hoops have transferred to my work. I’ll give an example. There is a move in basketball called the ‘give-and-go move’ where you give the ball away, then cut to the net, and get the ball back to make the lay-up. In my work, I listen to the needs of leaders in communities, putting aside my point of view, because if I don’t listen to real and immediate needs, we are just talking past one another – and no one wins. I put the give-and-go into practice in this way a lot. Q: What is your vision behind SustainabiliD? A: I grew up in a suburb of Detroit. Kids twenty miles down the road living in the city of Detroit faced injustices that I did notand conversely did not have the opportunities I had. That’s been my charge: how can we change this and ensure the city is not only vibrant and safe but also offers equitable opportunities to everyone? Q: The SustainabiliD team is predominantly women. What are your thoughts on women as leaders in sustainability? A: I think if I created a pie chart of my calendar, we’d see that daily I’m mostly speaking with female leaders across the globe, who are mostly non-white. These are the voices that have been left furthest behind in every conversation to date on the planet. I know I don’t have all the answers, but I always try to listen to people of color, women, other minorities, and people with underrepresented identities on what their needs are and try to help them position themselves to win the future. That’s where I’ve chosen to spend my time. Q: Speaking of women, what Detroit female business leaders in the sustainability space can you point to who are making a difference? A: Carla Walker-Miller. I work with a variety of companies but one that is an absolute stand-out is Walker-Miller Energy Services. In addition to what they do, which is to help relieve folks of energy burden by doing energy retrofits, Carla is an equitable economic development leader and a woman of color. I admire her not only for her company’s work but for her leadership. She is a national figure living and working in Detroit making a great impact on equitable economic development. Her work constantly informs what I’m doing now. Carla Walker-Miller has hired Dr. Brandy Brown as Chief Innovation Officer for Walker-Miller. She is another amazing talent. Before joining Walker-Miller, Dr. Brown served as Climate & Energy Advisor within the Michigan Department of Environment, Great Lakes & Energy. She also serves as part of the Environmental Justice faculty for the University of Michigan’s School for Environment and Sustainability and as an appointee to Michigan’s National Resources Trust Fund Board. A native Detroiter, Dr. Jalonne L. White-Newsome was recently tapped to be the new White House Council on Environmental Quality’s Senior Director for Environmental Justice. She has tackled environmental challenges from a wide range
