How to Lead a Sustainable Business with Alannah Weston

In a moment of profound despair about the environment, how can we cultivate hope that our generation has the opportunity to shape a green future? In this episode, Alannah speaks with Christiana Figueres, the internationally recognized climate change negotiator, and campaigner. In 2015, she spearheaded the Paris Agreement which saw nearly every country in the world commit to reducing emissions and move towards a sustainable economy. She speaks to Alannah about how she is both outraged and optimistic about what is arguably the most consequential moment in human history, and how business leaders urgently need to chart their path to halving emissions.

A quick update about the mid-season break in the series. We'll be back soon with guests including Christiana Figueres, Zamzam Ibrahim and Mariana Mazzucato.

How can purpose driven businesses pave the way for opportunity in the new green economy? In this episode Alannah speaks with acclaimed scholar and Harvard Business School professor Rebecca Henderson. Rebecca is one of the world’s most influential scholars focused on driving large-scale change. Her research explores purpose-driven capitalism and the ways in which the private sector can help build a more sustainable economy. Rebecca’s latest book, Reimagining Capitalism: How Business Can Save the World, lays out a pragmatic roadmap on how business can help catalyse the systemic change we need to build an economy that works for everyone.  Rebecca talks to Alannah about how to marry purpose with clarity of strategy, the importance of redefining growth to include measures of wellbeing and offers insight into why business leaders find transformational change so difficult.

What if you could get the best return on capital by investing in companies that place people and the planet at their heart? In this episode, Alannah sits down with one of the leaders in sustainable investing, David Blood. In 2004 David co-founded Generation Investment Management alongside Vice President Al Gore. David has helped shift the dial towards long term sustainable investing, not merely because it’s the ethical thing to do, but because it has an undeniably robust business case. When David speaks about moving towards a sustainable world, he’s not just talking about emissions or plastic. He’s talking about tackling equality, poverty, social justice, health, and governance challenges that are tightly interlinked with climate change and will drive future economies.

What does it take to be a leader in a world where climate change turns capitalism inside out? In this episode Alannah speaks with John Elkington, a world authority on corporate responsibility and one of the founders of the global sustainability movement. As the Co-Founder and Chief Pollinator at Volans, he works closely with governments and business leaders to achieve transformational change. John has been a central voice on these issues for more than four decades and has written 20 books on the subject, including the bestselling Green Consumer Guide and his latest book Green Swans: The Coming Boom in Regenerative Capitalism.

 John talks to Alannah about the kind of leadership we’ll need for businesses to become part of the solution to climate change, and to be better businesses as a result.

How can we mobilise mindsets to turn anxiety about the climate crisis into action?
 
In this episode, Alannah speaks with activist Clover Hogan, the 21-year-old founder of ‘Force Of Nature’ - a youth-led organisation empowering Gen Z to step up, rather than shut down in the face of the climate crisis. 

Clover has passionately highlighted one of the hidden side effects of the climate crisis, the rise in eco-anxiety. At age 16, as she was lobbying decision-makers at the Paris climate meeting, she realised that the threat greater even than climate change was the universal feeling of powerlessness in the face of it. 
 
After graduating from the Green School in Indonesia, Clover worked with Impossible Foods on national youth strategy and consulted multinationals at Volans. She has worked alongside the world’s leading authorities on sustainability and consulted within the boardrooms of Fortune 500 companies.
 
Clover shares with Alannah her remarkable journey and her mission to wake business leaders up and inspire them to take action. 

In this inspiring new podcast, you can join Alannah Weston, Chairman of Selfridges Group, as she speaks with thought leaders at the forefront of sustainability and business to find out how we can make transformational change. 

What does it take to be a sustainable leader? In this episode, Alannah speaks with Paul Polman, former CEO of Unilever. Early in his tenure, Paul realised that capitalism as it was being practised did not meet the challenges of today. In 2010 he launched Unilever’s audacious Sustainable Living Plan, designed to decouple growth from their environmental footprint while increasing positive social impact. Widely hailed as a game-changer, Unilever under Paul’s leadership proved that sustainable businesses are the future. Here, we hear about how Paul brought about these changes and how they continue to benefit both the business and our planet.