Summa & Friends

Food is the medicine we put in our mouths everyday, yet on average, we all cook just 12 recipes per year, says Kees Kruythoff, former President for the Global Home Care division for Unilever, former CEO of LIVEKINDLY Collective, now Thematic Chair for Sustainable Food for Summa Equity. But if we want to build a sustainable food system, one that works for everyone, globally, we should start by changing at least one of our recipes to something plant based. 

The world's biggest hunger, says Kees, is currently for climate change and inequality, but there's one system which desperately needs our attention, and the moment you see it, you can’t unsee it, and that’s our food and agriculture system. 

In this episode of Summa & Friends, Kees, Reynir and Vesna discuss the very real need to transform the global food system, and why the ultimate force to address these challenges is through business. 

To find out more, download and listen to this latest episode. 

On today’s podcast:

• Our food system is destroying the planet
• What we can learn from Paul Polman
• The evolution in the food industry
• Food is our medicine

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If you really want to form a high-performing team, says Stefan Beiten, entrepreneur, lawyer, film producer and public speaker, one that’s normative, collaborative, and takes accountability on all levels, you need conscious leadership.

“To move consciously from the I to the We and utilize the collective wisdom and collective intelligence that gives us, whether that's in your own organization or in the local community, or on a high level, if we are able to do that, we can solve a lot of the problems we are facing today.”

To find out more about conscious leadership, download and listen to this latest episode of Summa & Friends.

On today’s podcast:

• Become the awareness behind your thoughts
• How to create a conscious organization
• Finding your Argonauts
• It all starts with trust and purpose

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We're not formed as one individual with no ability to change, says Adam Grant, organizational psychologist at Wharton and best-selling international author, we can retrain, we can all grow and change, we can all find our hidden potential. The question is, what do we need to do to bring out the best in ourselves and those around us? 

In this episode of Summa & Friends, Adam discusses boundary setting, why we need a network of disagreeable givers, why we need to ask for advice rather than feedback, and why his ultimate passion is self improvement. 

“Steve Jobs understood the value of a challenge network, he surrounded himself with disagreeable givers who saw a better way to advance the mission, even though it conflicted with Jobs’ vision, and, hey, if you could challenge Steve Jobs, you could probably challenge anyone.”

To find out more, download and listen to this episode today.

On today’s podcast:

• The importance of setting boundaries
• How to create a culture of radical transparency 
• Build a network of disagreeable loyalists
• How to elevate yourself and others

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If your workplace is all love and hallelujah, says Gianpiero Petriglieri, Professor of Organizational Behavior at INSEAD, and one of the 50 most influential management thinkers in the world, then it’s a cult. If you want your organization to be high performing, you need some friction and debate, because we can’t always be real and feel good. 

“My passion is this idea of humanizing leadership, of making space for all that is messy and contradicting and complicated in people and in the systems they inhabit.”

Real leadership, says Gianpiero, is caring about people and bringing them to life in a way that isn’t just efficient, but is sustainable. How can we help each other? How do we hold each other up? How do we support and challenge each other as we build the kinds of organizations that we want to build, not just to invest in, but to live in. 

To find out more, download and listen to this episode of Summa & Friends.

On today’s podcast:

• Put your people before purpose
• The need to be able to shift pace
• What makes a leader in our times
• How to become a better leader
• Don’t let anyone call you a future leader

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Norway plans to be a low carbon economy by 2050, but the transition to get there keeps getting delayed, says Martin Skancke, Chairman of the Norwegian government's commission on transition to a low carbon economy, and Chairman of PRI (Principles for Responsible Investment) and board member in several companies. 

We’re thinking too short term, says Martin, we aren’t looking at a long time horizon and therefore we’re increasing the risk as we run out of time. What needs to happen is for all stakeholders to connect the bigger picture with their plan for how to get there. 

In this episode of Summa & Friends, Martin discusses where his passion and deep commitment to help resolve the climate crisis came from, what managers of listed equities can learn from managers of private equity in terms of addressing corporate governance issues, before delving into his work around Norway’s transition to a low carbon economy. 

“We started at the opposite end, we started by incentivising everyone to buy their own electric car, and we'll find that policy will be difficult to reverse. But if we had thought more systematically about a solution that has a natural place in 2050, we would have maybe thought about it differently.”

To find out more, download and listen to this episode. 

On today’s podcast:

• Developing a passion to resolve the climate crisis
• Norway’s transition to a low carbon economy 
• The global institutional failure to find a solution
• The risk side of transitioning too late
• Why the world needs more climate policy action

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We need strong private equity leaders to tackle the current challenges in the private equity investing space, says Tanya Carmichael, systems thinker, private equity investor, and return-on-impact advisor for ESG in PE & Pension Funds. And that leadership has to be authentic and genuine, inclusive and open. 

In this episode of Summa & Friends, Tanya discusses how investment leaders can amplify their impact, how they can leverage holistic systems thinking to embed ESG initiatives in their private equity investing, and how they’ll be rewarded for their efforts both now and in the reimagined future.

“People love being part of the solution and being part of this. A lot of leaders I see are worried about this uncharted territory. It's important that leaders just admit: ‘I don't know how to get there and we need to do this together’.”

To find out more, download and listen to this latest episode, and read more about Tanya here: www.tanyacarmichael.com

On today’s podcast:

• The convergence of challenges
• How leaders of a reimagined future will be rewarded 
• How to navigate unchartered territory
• Global problems need collaborative solutions

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Over 20% of Europe’s CO2 emissions are a result of a linear economy, a number which can be reduced by 55% if we transition to a circular economy, says Bertrand Camus, former CEO of French multinational utility company SUEZ, now partner at Summa Equity. 

But that’s not the only reason to make the change… Moving to a circular economy has a potential value creation opportunity of between EUR 1-2 trillion, not to mention all the jobs that go along with that. 

And given the size and magnitude of what needs to be achieved to get there, there is room for anyone who wants to play a role in this great journey we need to embark on. So, how can you get involved? 

To learn more about Summa’s work in waste management, and to hear Bertrand discuss the theory of change, and reveal the massive opportunities that lie in the circular economy, download and listen to this episode today. 

“It's one of the most fantastic investment opportunities that I've seen, where you can really invest to create value and create jobs, and address the resource problem that we have, and the climate change issues and CO2 emissions that we have.”

On today’s podcast:

• What the future looks like 
• Understanding the theory of change
• The opportunities in a circular economy 
• What needs to be done to make circularity a reality in Europe

Links:

• https://summaequity.com/readings/eu-circular-markets-could-be-worth-eur-1.5tn-by-2040-and-save-650-mt-co2e-per-year

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The United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) has been described as a business plan for the world, highlighting 17 broad problem areas for which the world needs to find solutions. While originally intended for governments, the UN SDGs is also a powerful framework for investors who have both financial and sustainability objectives. 

Creating truly sustainable portfolios is hard and requires a fundamental rethink of the entire investment process to incorporate impact as a third dimension, alongside risk and return. So, says Carsten Stendevad, co-CIO for sustainability at Bridgewater who shares his perspective on the challenges and rewards of building sustainable portfolios in today’s episode.

On today’s podcast:

●       Bridgewater’s sustainable investing journey

●       How Bridgewater applies their systematic research approach to sustainability

●       Assessing net zero alignment – from macro to individual players

●       Balancing return, risk and impact to achieve strong financial and sustainability outcomes

●       Reflections on a sustainable future

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How do you make your money? Does your business have morals? The world is changing, says Alison Taylor, Clinical Professor at NYU Stern School of Business and Executive Director at Ethical Systems. People care, consumers care, employees care, everyone has started caring more. And if you want to futureproof your organization, you need to put morals back into it. 

It's not about how much money a company makes now, it's about how you make your money, and who wins and who loses while you’re doing that. 

A company needs to grow and make profit to survive, says Alison, that is not a debatable point. Just as human beings need a beating heart to survive. But a human being does not exist solely to be a vehicle for its beating heart, in the same way your company can no longer solely make profit to survive, you need to find another reason to exist. 

To find out more, download and listen to this episode of Summa & Friends.

On today’s podcast:

• Why ESG and sustainability are not the same thing
• Is ESG a moral issue?
• How to do governance - best practice advice
• The future for ESG
• The problem of ethics and morals with ESG

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Imagine playing a video game where data about you in the moment is being collected with sensor technology, performance metrics, emotional responses, body movements, brain activity. And this is all used in real time to guide the environment you're experiencing, personalizing both the challenges and rewards to improve your cognition. 

No, this isn’t the plot of a sci-fi movie. 

We’re in the midst of a cognition crisis and experiences are a powerful way of changing our brain, says Adam Gazzaley, neuroscientist, neurologist, inventor, author, photographer, entrepreneur, investor, and creator of the first ever digital medicine, and the first ever FDA cleared digital treatment for children with ADHD. 

In this incredible episode of Summa & Friends, Adam explains why the cognition crisis is getting worse on a global scale, especially for our children, and why his digital medicine was born out of a frustration at the lack of research and treatment that we as a species should have developed by now. 

To find out more, download and listen. 

On today’s podcast:

• What is digital medicine and who is it for?
• What is the cognition crisis
• Why we need a multi-modal approach to improving cognition
• The enduring nature of experiential medicine

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