Katie has worked as a sustainability professional for over 13 years, firstly within the Higher Education sector and now as the Sustainability Manager for Barbour, within the apparel and footwear industry. 

Her roles have focussed on pioneering and delivering Sustainability Strategy, from enhancing product circularity to developing education programmes for students.  Her role covers a breadth of responsibilities including carbon, biodiversity and waste, implementing ISO14001 certified Environmental Management Systems and ensuring compliance with (rapidly evolving) sustainability legislation across global markets. 

Danielle has been leading embedding and implementing sustainability throughout South Yorkshire Police since 2010. She works nationally, regionally and locally with emergency service organisations and a range of public sector partners, sharing best practice and delivering programmes to affect positive change. 

Danielle has developed and implemented a range of initiatives across all areas of force activity, and is currently leading the Net Zero agenda for the force.

Previously, Danielle worked as a senior environmental consultant leading a department within a multidisciplinary consultancy. She specialised in sustainable construction, developing and delivering training courses for the Construction Industry Training Board.

In this episode, we chat to Danielle about some of the unique challenges faced in embedding sustainability within a police force  as well as how she responds to the more typical challenges of delivering a dynamic agenda with a small team.

We consider the importance of a clear strategy, and how critical this has been for helping expand the focus from environmental to social sustainability. 

We discuss the need for leadership support, the impact of high staff turnover on sustainability efforts and the need to avoid ‘scope creep’

With over 20 years experience in education at both secondary school and higher education levels, Tania’s expertise lies in how institutions empower youth to participate in social-environmental scientific decision-making.

Tania collaborates with senior leadership, academics, and community stakeholders to drive practice and policy change. Her leadership in this field has been recognized through the 2023 UK and Ireland Green Gown Awards, and as a finalist in the 2024 International Green Gown Awards and the London Higher Awards 2024.

Additionally, Tania has served as an advisor and expert to the European Commission, the Azorean Government, Pearson Education and the Museums and Galleries of Scotland on Inclusion and Education for Sustainable Development, to name a few. She has designed participatory tools and training for civic engagement and youth on environmental and sustainable education (e.g.,  http://reda.azores.gov.pt, Education for Sustainability and Climate Change Pedagogy, BIG). 

Tania chats to us about her role in integrating sustainability into the academic framework at Kingston University, including highlighting challenges such as breaking down silos, aligning sustainability with existing agendas like ED&I, and how to avoid this adding extra burden on already overworked colleagues.

She shares how she has used the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) to embed sustainability into all courses and the ways she ensures authentic integration and avoiding tokenism. 

We again emphasize the importance of relational approaches, using existing systems, and where we can find the support needed to embed sustainability effectively.

We are sharing our conversations about sustainability to help you start your own.

Katherine has over 25 years’ experience working in the sustainability and environmental management profession. Her passion to do something about environmental issues was sparked from a young age when the ozone layer and acid rain were top of the agenda, and climate change was an emerging issue. She soon understood that to make an impact, sustainability needs to be integrated into business-as-usual, balancing economic prosperity with supporting everyone in society and reducing environmental impact. 

She worked for Heathrow for many years, and has advised many companies across different sectors how to integrate sustainability into their business. Now as Head of Sustainability for Wickes she is leading the delivery of their sustainability strategy - Built to Last - across the business by inspiring colleagues to lead with sustainability at the heart of their thinking and decision making. 

When she is not at work, she is trying to improve the sustainability of her own home ... including getting her two teenagers to turn the lights off when they leave a room!

We had a great chat with Katherine about translating sustainability into the language of the business you're working with, when (and why) you might want to be involved in ALL of the conversations and the difference between Sustainability with a Big S and sustainability with a little s.

The reminder that sustainability professionals can’t become bored of their own message is always worth hearing and we had get another mention of the importance of finding a supporting and cheerleading crew.

We are sharing our conversations about sustainability to help you start your own.

Louise is focused on helping VMO2 customers take 10million circular actions. A circular action might be keeping technology in use for longer, choosing a refurbished device, donating devices, repairing and recycling. Her work centres on building collaborations across the business to develop more ways for customers to take these actions, whilst embedding circularity into different teams within the business.

Alongside this, her day to day work includes managing the Time after Time E-waste fund with environmental partner Hubbub, engaging with industry bodies to affect widescale change, coordinating research projects on behaviour change, policy asks, developing ideas for customer offerings, and reviewing the most circular approach for how VMO2 uses technology in its own business.

Prior to this, Louise worked in coffee and agricultural supply chains for 15 years, firstly in marketing and brand management roles and latterly as Group Sustainability Manager.

Outside of work, sport and the outdoors play a huge role in Louise's life, where she can often be found running the trails and sea swimming with her nutty GSP dog who is just learning how to jump the waves. Her guilty pleasure is an extra large packet of cheesy wotsits.

We chat to Louise about her work helping people understand how to become stewards rather than owners of tech, how she’s transferred skills from a marketing background and leaned into them as a sustainability professional and how that helps her to engage with humans in ways that help the agenda.

The conversation again considers the importance of networking (a definite theme in all of these chats) and what to consider when you are struggling to get people past the promise and towards delivery.

We are sharing our conversations about sustainability to help you start your own.

Jo is a passionate environmentalist with a strong connection to nature underpinned by a history of voluntary work to support human rights.

With more than 25 years working in Environment and Sustainability, she has led on the development and implementation of environmental and sustainability policies and strategy and management systems including energy and zero carbon planning. Projects have included resource efficiency, energy and water reduction, delivering sustainable travel and transport, biodiversity and land management, gardens and landscape.

As Head of Sustainability and ESG at WHG, Jo is playing a key part in integrating the association’s ESG and developing an innovative strategy to work towards net zero carbon status.

We have a wonderfully juicy chat with Jo about the wisdom that comes with age, what it means to be a curator of the possible and how to disguise the fact you are 100% hippie in the Boardroom. 

We consider the importance of finding your gang when it comes to building resilience and nurturing bravery, how the art of manipulation can be an important tool for sustainability professionals and the importance of values alignment on impact.

We are sharing our conversations about sustainability to help you start your own.

Rhian Sherrington is a career coach and sustainability expert, the founder of The Women in Sustainability Network. Since its foundation in 2014, the Network has helped over 10,000 women to flourish in their careers and take the lead in businesses tackling the climate and ecological emergencies.

As an executive and career transitions coach with over 12 years’ experience and a member of the International Coaching Federation Member, Rhian has personally supported 100s of women to shift mindsets, adopt new behaviours and nurture an inner resilience as they sought to transition and grow their careers in sustainability.

In 2023 Rhian was named one of the UK’s 5 Top Green Voices by LinkedIn for her expertise on regenerative leadership, women’s leadership in the sustainability sector and corporate responsibility. She is a Finalist in the Women in Green Business Awards 2024 for Diversity & Inclusion Champion category. 

We had a lovely chat with Rhian about the importance of finding your gang, what happens in women only spaces and how vital it is to do the inner work. She shares how her network was able to pivot during the pandemic thanks to her hard won adaptability and shares some brilliant tips for remaining hopeful.

Sheri-Leigh took the opportunity to remind her she is still waiting for her ‘WinS Superfan’ badge and Jenny mused on ways to take a professional pause during the working day.

We are sharing our conversations about sustainability to help you start your own.

Sarah West is a professor specialising in citizen science at SEI at the University of York, and is Director of SEI's York Centre. SEI is a research organisation connecting science and decision-making to develop solutions for a sustainable future for all. For the past 15 years she has been using citizen science approaches in her research on topics ranging from air quality in schools to parenting.

In our first conversation of this new series, we ask Sarah: what exactly is a Think Tank? (and more importantly, what makes a good one) chat about how to take research into practice, some really practical ways to manage emissions from travel when you are doing important work all over the world and creating space for tricky conversations.

We also talk about serendipitous solutions, the importance of building rapport online and annihilating slugs. 

We are sharing our conversations about sustainability to help you start your own.

Harriet Waters has been Head of Environmental Sustainability at the University of Oxford since 2013. She is responsible for the delivery of the University’s recently adopted environmental sustainability strategy. Harriet ensures that sustainability projects at the University are carried out in collaboration with academic staff, practitioners, students and external organisations. Prior to working in the Higher Education sector, she worked in ethical investment and consultancy. Harriet is a Chartered Environmentalist, a keen cyclist and loves cooking, particularly if she can use food grown in her edible garden.

We have both known Harriet for many years and loved an excuse to have this thoughtful conversation about the importance of a nourishing support network, how vital timing can be, ways of tackling the thorniest sustainability challenges (hello business flights!) and what we can learn from the way Oxford University developed its Sustainability Strategy.

We also talk about the loneliness of sustainability leaders, the importance of keeping plans warm and decarbonisation finances.

We are sharing our conversations about sustainability to help you start your own.

Sustainability sprints are designed to Fast-Forward your sustainability journey. We're sharing the conversations we use to help people, teams and organisations get there faster. So, whether you need to get off the starting line, demonstrate progress, or bring about radical change in your organisation, these conversations will help you sprint towards sustainability.

In this second season our conversations are focused on Breakdowns & Breakthroughs, and we’ve got guests!

We’re asking some of the most inspirational sustainability leaders we know about their personal and professional sustainability journey. They are going to share the things that have held them back or created barriers to progress so we can learn how best to navigate these inevitable bumps in the road.

We’re also chatting about times their journeys have accelerated; the times progress has been fast-tracked or activity has shifted up a gear.  

Our chats in this series are intended to help others accelerate their own sustainability journey – we’re thrilled you’re here!