Jim has led ESG efforts at Eli Lilly since September 2020. In this capacity, he oversees implementation of Lilly ESG strategy, has responsibility for coordinating ESG-related communications, and organizing and leading ESG stakeholder interactions.  In a significant advancement of Lilly’s approach, Jim led the development of Lilly’s ESG portal, a comprehensive source for ESG strategy, goals and results.  Jim also chairs the ESG Governance Committee at Lilly, which is a central body for development and execution of ESG priorities and communication to the Executive Committee and Board of Directors. Prior to his current role, Jim spent two years as a loaned executive to Elanco Animal Health, which was spun out of Lilly in an IPO in 2018.  Jim served as the Vice President of Investor Relations at Elanco.  He was responsible for leading all interactions with Sell-Side Analysts and Buy-Side Investors, including preparation of Earnings materials, participation in Investor Conferences, Non Deal Roadshows and investor visits to Elanco Headquarters.  He conducted investor outreach and targeting to build understanding of the Elanco investment thesis.  He worked closely with External Communications to provide consistent external dialogue and to prepare Elanco Senior Executives on key topics and messaging on relevant issues.  In 2020, Jim was ranked the number one IR leader for mid-cap pharmaceuticals by Institutional Investor. Prior to the role at Elanco, Jim spent 18 years at Lilly, holding numerous positions of increasing responsibility, including an assignment in Corporate Business Development, managing Lilly’s Venture Capital portfolio.  Jim has also served as the Chief Financial Officer of Lilly Canada, Senior Director of Finance for Lilly Research Laboratories, Manager of Investor Relations, Manager of Treasury Planning and Strategy, Senior Human Resources Representative and Senior Financial Analyst. Prior to joining Lilly, Mr. Greffet was a Consulting Manager for KPMG Consulting in Indianapolis, Indiana and St. Louis, Missouri. Jim Joins Sustainable Nation to Discuss: Eli Lilly’s Approach to ESG Lilly’s 30 by 30 initiative to improve healthcare for 30 million people by 2030 Progress toward goals and targets without the use of carbon offsets Advice and recommendations for sustainability professionals Jim’s Final Five Questions Responses: What is one piece of advice you would give other sustainability professionals that might help them in their careers?  Two words. Be pragmatic. This was a theme that came up in our conversation. There's the lunatic fringe on everything, and certainly in this space, on both ends of the spectrum. Tie your sustainability work to the purpose of your organization, be pragmatic, think in common sense terms, and you'll make a whole lot more progress.  What are you most excited about right now in the world of sustainability?  In the short four and a half years, this world has changed a lot. I think when I first came into it, it was sporadic, voluntary reporting by organizations, maybe a little bit of ‘accentuate the positive.’ It evolved into more rigorous and disciplined financial reporting. Over the last 18 months or so, I think we've seen the heavy hand of regulation start to come about, especially in Europe, which creates a lot more overhead. I think all of us would rather deploy our energy and resources to doing things than reporting about them. So to the exciting part, I now think we're starting to see a little bit more sensibility prevail in some of these regulations, maybe lifting the heavy hand of regulation a little bit so that we can have consistent, rigorous, well constructed reporting that's doable and doesn't take us away from the mission that we have in front of us. I'm optimistic and excited that we're going to land in a spot that's doing the right thing for the right reasons, consuming the right amount of energy.  What is one book you'd recommend sustainability professionals read?  George Seraphim, Purpose + Profit. He's a Harvard Business professor and he taught, you can see from the name of that book, Purpose plus Profit. It takes this pragmatic view of why sustainability can help you run your business better, not just be a fringe idea that's detached from what the business is supposed to do.  What are some of your favorite resources or tools that really help you in your work?  I'll give one shout out. Brian Matt with the New York Stock Exchange puts out an email each Friday called the ESG Top five. It's the top five sustainability topics of the week. He commits that it's a two minute read. If you get interested, it's going to be more than a two minute read, but you can certainly get the headlines in two minutes. There's certain emails that I can't delete fast enough. That's one that I open every time and I always learn something out of it.  Where can our listeners go to learn more about you and the work being done at Eli Lilly?  Sustainability.lilly.com. My performance is tied to website hits, so all your listeners, please open it up first thing when you get in the morning and hit refresh many times during the day. You'll do me a solid on my performance. Then LinkedIn, I have a LinkedIn page as well that captures some of the stuff we're doing here.

Suzanne Lindsay-Walker is Vice President, Sustainability, for Novelis Inc. In this role, Suzanne leads the development and implementation of the company’s global sustainability strategy and vision to achieve net carbon neutrality by 2050. She is also responsible for Novelis’ Corporate Social Responsibility efforts. Suzanne joined Novelis in May 2021. Prior to Novelis, Suzanne was the Chief Sustainability Officer and Vice President of Environmental Affairs for UPS. In this position, she was responsible for driving solutions and delivering results to achieve UPS’s sustainability goals, as well as developing the company’s forward-looking sustainability strategy. Before UPS, Suzanne held positions of increasing responsibility in sustainability at Brambles USA, The Kroger Co. and PetSmart. She began her career as a civil engineer, focused on land development for retail and commercial clients. Suzanne holds a bachelor’s degree in civil engineering from Lawrence Technological University in Southfield, Michigan. Suzanne Joins Sustainable Nation to Discuss: Novelis’ circular business model as the world’s largest aluminum recycler Novelis’ 3x30 sustainability strategy Collaboration and stakeholder engagement internally and externally Advice and recommendations for sustainability professionals Suzanne Final Five Questions Responses: What is one piece of advice you would give other sustainability professionals that might help them in their careers?  I would say when you hear “no,” and you will hear no often, take it as “no, not right now.” What I found in my career is that some good ideas usually take six months to a year or even more to seed, but keep at it. Keep planting the seeds, keep watering them, because business cases and attitudes will evolve over time. I'm a bit of a bulldog, and I don't let things die, so I'll just keep pounding away at things until I can find an opening. Sometimes you just have to be patient, but keep at it.  What are you most excited about right now in the world of sustainability?  How many opportunities there are in this space, how many jobs are available, and opportunities for young people to drive positive impact in their everyday work lives. I think that so much of what I see coming into the workforce is people that want to work for a company where they can do just that. There's so many jobs available, which I think is amazing. That, to me, is exciting because we need as many advocates and people that want to drive that positive impact as we can get, because we have a long way to go before 2050 hits.  What is one book you would recommend sustainability leaders read?  One that I read early on and it's kind of old school, but it was Strategy for Sustainability by Adam Werbach. He crystallized the business of sustainability in a very real way for me at a time when I worked at Kroger, when I was trying to think through the strategy there. The examples and things that he brought together, I think at its highest level, is still a frame that can work today. That's many, many years ago, but it's always one that I go back to.  What are some of your favorite resources or tools that really help you in your work?  I get a lot of daily digests and updates from Trellis, I get all the digests from WBCSD, WEF. I try to consume as much as I can in those formats because you do have to have a job to do, but I also like to keep a pulse on what's going on. I find that having that stuff delivered to you on a daily basis allows me to kind of keep the pulse of what's going on, and I enjoy reading them.  Where can our listeners go to learn more about you and the work being done at Novelis?  I would love for people to check out our 2024 sustainability report. We launched it several months ago, but it really tries to tell all the good stories and the proof points of what we're trying to accomplish here. Novelis.com is where you can find it.

Andrew started his career working in public policy and communications. He served as Deputy Chief of Staff & Legislative Director for Congressman Peter Welch in the US House of Representatives when Congress passed the only sweeping climate legislation to date. Leaving public government, Andrew spent six years working in the solar energy, renewables, and transportation sectors. During this time, Andrew became increasingly interested in how shared electrified transportation could move the needle on carbon emissions. With a passion for urban mobility and sustainability, Andrew was a founding team member at Lime. He initially focused on new market development, government relations, and policy strategy for the company. Today, Andrew and Lime have grown tremendously. Lime has logged over 200 million trips and expanded globally. Andrew now serves as the Head of Sustainability, managing Lime's zero-emission commitments, sustainability goals, and climate-focused initiatives. Andrew Joins Sustainable Nation to Discuss: Successful business growth while reducing carbon emissions Lime’s circular economy and lifespan extension practices Considering scope 4 emissions Advice and recommendations for sustainability professionals Andrew’s Final Five Questions Responses: What is one piece of advice you would give other sustainability professionals that might help them in their careers?  To be humble. I tend to be fairly reluctant to be saying other companies should be doing as we do, or be doing X, Y or Z, or that we're setting an example for the industry, simply because every business is different. I'd much rather be in a more humble position of doing what we can, knowing that there's always more to do, and trying to walk the walk instead of talking the talk.  What are you most excited about right now in the world of sustainability?  Back to circular economy. I really like some of the stuff that I'm seeing around technology driven circular economy innovations. Where I'm seeing the extraction of high value materials from things like motors, for example. I think that to be able to bring high value materials back into the economy without having to totally reprocess them or look at raw materials is incredibly exciting.  What is one book you would recommend sustainability leaders read?  A classic here, but The End of Nature by Bill McKibben. It was the foundational book on climate change and he was a New Yorker writer before penning that book, but he was the first person to write about climate change for the popular audience. It's just such an interesting perspective to see one, how long ago he wrote that, and two, the way he presented it to the public in a way that was truly innovative for its time, and obviously quite right in its foundation in terms of its science and what we're living through today.  What are some of your favorite resources or tools that really help you in your work?  One is tapping the expertise within our own organization. I think people often look fully externally as a resource, and they're often barraged by outside resources. I've found that looking within the team, whether it's our logistics team, our hardware team, our supply chain team, these are folks that are living day to day in the work, and if they're given the right tools and asked the right questions, they can be incredibly, incredibly helpful. The second, just the opposite of what I just shared from looking internally, looking externally towards folks that have an expertise in carbon is incredibly important. We've leveraged and used Opterra for our carbon services and our carbon inventory work. That's an example where they have an expertise and in many ways are an outsourced sustainability arm of the company where we just don't have the internal capacity. So, on one hand looking externally and the other hand looking internally, is incredibly valuable.  Where can our listeners go to learn more about you and the work being done at Lime?  One thing that I'm really excited about is we just released a carbon roadmap on Lime sustainability page. I'm also reasonably active on LinkedIn.

Meghan Weinman joined Carrix and SSA Marine in 2024 as Vice President of Sustainability. She is an industry leader across the sustainability, transportation, and environment sectors and has worked throughout North America and internationally, including Latin America, Asia, the Middle East, and Africa.  Prior to joining Carrix and SSA Marine, Ms. Weinman was a Managing Director at Edison Energy, leading the Transportation Electrification and Clean Energy Practice. She has also served in roles in management, engineering, and consulting across sustainability and built infrastructure. Ms. Weinman has served as a mentor for the Clean Tech Alliance, an industry advisor at Kellogg School of Management, and is also a frequent speaker on topics relating to sustainability, transportation, clean energy transition, climate, and women in leadership. Meghan Joins Sustainable Nation to Discuss: The scope of sustainability at SSA Marine and 2030 targets Decarbonization strategies including renewable energy sourcing Renewable diesel and hydrogen fuel options Advice and recommendations for sustainability professionals Meghan’s Final Five Questions Responses: What is one piece of advice you would give to other sustainability professionals that might help them in their careers? Taking on different roles that strengthen understanding of the overall business is always something that would benefit sustainability. I started out in engineering, I went to business school, I'm now in my role today. That has been hugely helpful to understand different parts and wearing different hats and really being able to think cross functionally. With that, networking with other professionals not only in your industry, but adjacent industries. I always learn things when I talk to others in their roles. I had lunch with one of my colleagues who's at Alaska Airlines and we got to swap stories about how they're handling waste management. That was really helpful. Lastly, being a collaborative partner and really looking at how you can solve problems for stakeholders internally always is a way that can benefit not only sustainability, but the business overall.  What are you most excited about right now in the world of sustainability?  I'll go back to the answer that I gave around doing things that are really good for the business, but that can be sustainability initiatives. I get really excited about doing things that can be mutual wins across an organization. I've been working in electric vehicles now for almost 10 years through a couple of different roles, and there's been so much progress that's been made in terms of technological advancement. The commitment from automakers and equipment makers and increasingly the technology is becoming more and more of a mainstay, and that makes it easier and easier to incorporate into operations. It also brings about cost parity. Those are the things that I'm really getting excited about because it really is at a tipping point.  What is one book you'd recommend sustainability leaders read?  I’ll give one book in two different categories. One that jump started my interest in sustainability over 20 years ago, and I'm sure this is probably known to most readers, was Natural Capitalism. That really helped me think about sustainability in a different way and really put into perspective the work that we're doing. But more recently I'm enjoying books that are at the intersection of business and can really help in a sustainability role, and so they're actually negotiation books, and you might wonder why negotiation. It's about coming up with solutions that may benefit many stakeholders across an organization and finding solutions that benefit potentially both sides. If you're thinking about how to convince your CFO or your commercial team, really think about it from a perspective of: how do I get what I want in sustainability, and also the finance team gets what they want. I’m going to give two books here, but one of them is Negotiate Without Fear by Victoria Medvec, and the other one is Getting to Yes, which is a classic by Roger Fisher and William Ury. Those are two that I would recommend any sustainability professional think about in terms of their own organization.  What are some of your favorite resources or tools that really help you in your work?  I really do like getting newsletters. I love reading and finding out what's happening across the industry. A couple that I like is ESG Dive from Industry Dive. That one I find to be really great information about what's happening across different companies, a blend of news and initiatives. I also really like Fortune's newsletters. Fortune has a number of newsletters, but one that has a lot of sustainability topics in there is the Trust Factor. They talk a lot about how sustainability and ESG is really paramount to businesses. But they also have other great newsletters too, like CEO Daily and CFO Daily, and they dabble into sustainability in those newsletters, too.  Where can our listeners go to learn more about you and the work being done at SSA Marine?  You can connect with me on my LinkedIn, Megan Weinman. You can also go to SSA Marine's LinkedIn page or visit our website, ssamarine.com to learn more about our work. Our sustainability report is on there. You can read more stories about things that we've been doing across the company, and our 2024 report will be in there too later on in 2025.

Jeff Yorzyk has over 20 years of experience in sustainability across a broad range of sectors, and has held leadership roles in both commercial and consulting companies spanning program development, strategic management systems, product sustainability and life cycle assessment. Based in Berlin, Germany, HelloFresh is the leading meal kit provider in the world, operating in 14 markets. As director of sustainability for HelloFresh US, Jeff oversees packaging lifecycle management, operational and supply chain sustainability and regulatory compliance and permitting. Jeff also has participated in building the profession of sustainability, leading sustainability nonprofits such as the International Society of Sustainability Professionals (ISSP) in the development of the first professional credential for sustainability practitioners, and strategic partnering with GBCI for its independent delivery. Jeff Joins Sustainable Nation to Discuss: How HelloFresh addresses packaging impacts Life cycle emissions of HelloFresh compare to restaurant or supermarket trips Addressing food waste in production Advice and recommendations for sustainability professionals Jeff’s Final Five Questions Responses: What is one piece of advice you would give other sustainability professionals that might help them in their careers?  I have two here. Number one is be ready to do anything, get dirty. In my own professional journey, I found that if I took the tasks or the projects that people didn't want to do because they looked boring or hard or just not exciting to people, they led me to some of the most exciting work that I ever did. So sometimes something that looks boring or just kind of a grind at the beginning actually turns into something really incredible. Never be afraid to take those things and, in fact, seek them out. Number two is keep a journal and ask yourself if you're making the impact you want through your career. It’s a really broad field, and that's a good question to be asking ourselves regularly. I started my career in environmental consulting in the 1990s. That's really what we had available to us. We didn't have this thing called sustainability, but as I moved forward in my career, I noticed this thing called sustainability evolving and really was able to direct myself into it. So pay attention, keep a journal, and then take the jobs that people don't want because they don't have to be dirty jobs.Those things will usually lead you to some of your greatest successes.  What are you most excited about right now in the world of sustainability?  In a word, it's mainstream. To put a little more color behind that, we're in a fascinating period right now where companies are being asked to make ambitious goals, and they're also being really held accountable to achieve them. We've moved beyond this period of lofty goals and even, to some extent, talking about moonshots. I think for some of us in the field that has been a little bit confusing because the moonshot was this inspiring thing that we were looking to gather people around, and I think there's still room for that. But we're being held accountable as companies to have realistic plans underneath them and to convince people that they're achievable. These high expectations are coming together with these enhanced greenwashing laws to really create this interesting space for companies. I know this has created side effects like what they call green hushing and companies talking less about what they're doing, but I think it's pushing us in the right direction for us to really be a lot more realistic, but still quite ambitious.  What is one book you'd recommend sustainability leaders read?  I'm currently reading a book called the Customer is the Planet. It's quite new and really it has a nice mapping of environmental and social issues against the European ESRs standards. Anything that makes the European ESRs easier to digest and actually put in my brain is welcome to me. If you haven't read Natural Capitalism or The Natural Step or even Our Stolen Future, which are books from a previous century, they're fantastic and they're really great foundational reading.  What are some of your favorite resources or tools that really help you in your work?  I got my MBA in 2002 and that was my pivot from environmental consulting into sustainability. Right about that time, this guy named Joel Makower was starting up this website called GreenBiz. It's now called Trellis. They pivoted into a really network based approach. That has always been one of the key sources that I turn to. That newsletter has been very useful for me to observe things. You watch these things over time, you start to see trends, patterns, you see how things transform. It's really been a fantastic resource. Then LinkedIn. It took me a while to get the algorithm working for me, but it feeds a lot of really good content to me these days. I highly recommend both of those.  Where can our listeners go to learn more about you and the work being done at HelloFresh?  The HelloFresh website has a sustainability section. You can also go to our Instagram site @hellofresh. They really are great at putting some fun videos and reels in there and TikTok. They've done a great job, it actually gets quite funny. Then of course you can find me on LinkedIn under Jeff Yorzyk.

Ara Erickson is Vice President of Corporate Sustainability at Weyerhaeuser, where she is accountable for the development and implementation of the company’s comprehensive sustainability strategy, including three areas where the company is in a unique position to participate: working forests contribution to climate change solutions, the role of sustainable products in ensuring housing for everyone, and support for thriving rural communities. She serves as a board member for American Forests, the oldest national nonprofit conservation organization in the United States, is a founding steering committee member for the Women’s Forest Congress, and uses her voice to be an advocate for sustainable, working forests. Ara is an authentic, compassionate, and driven leader, best known for building partnerships through collaboration, transparency and honest communication. Prior to Weyerhaeuser, she served as Director of the Green City Partnerships program with a regional conservation organization, Forterra, and as a forest-based researcher, environmental consultant and educator. She received her M.S. in Forest Resources from the University of Washington and her B.S. in Resource Management from the University of California, Berkeley. Ara Joins Sustainable Nation to Discuss: The development of Weyerhaeuser’s sustainability strategy How timber harvesting is done sustainability  Weyerhaeuser’s forest carbon credit principles  Plans for achieving emissions reductions goals by 2030 Advice and recommendations for sustainability professionals Ara’s Final Five Questions Responses: What is one piece of advice you would give to other sustainability professionals that might help them in their careers?  I think all of us in sustainability are here because we're passionate about sustainability, but primarily there's also something that drove us here. For me, I'm passionate about forestry and forest and these products that make our lives so much better. We get warm, cozy homes to live in, we hope, and I've been able to channel my passion for sustainability and forestry at the same time. So I always recommend finding the thing that you get excited about and want to be part of, whether that's outdoor recreation or literature, whatever it might be, and then channel sustainability through that passion.  What are you most excited about right now in the world of sustainability?  I love that sustainability is finding its way into all the nooks and crannies inside companies, whether that's company level strategy or employee volunteering programs or community involvement. That it is so broad and that can make it really complex, but I just love that I'm seeing sustainability showing up in so many levels of companies now, and so many very important decision making levers and places where employees feel really connected to it and communities are directly impacted. To me, that feels like sustainability has reached the point where people are recognizing how important it is to help drive strategy and help drive outcomes for both their own employees and and their communities.  What is one book you'd recommend sustainability leaders read?  I have one sitting on my desk right now that I just started to read. I'm about a quarter of the way through it and it's been wonderful so far. It's called Chief Sustainability Officers at Work: How CSOs Build Successful Sustainability and ESG Strategies and by Chrissa Pagitsas. It's a great compilation of an incredible amount of leadership from all different types of companies on how they've been able to drive these strategies in their companies.  What are some of your favorite resources or tools that really help you in your work?  I have a set of things that I rely on a lot. One of them is just the basic Strunk and White old book which has been around for a long time. But as sustainability professionals we really need to know how to write compelling pieces that are clear, so I always have that in my toolkit. I also think it's really important for us sustainability professionals to be able to take care of ourselves and make certain that we still have the energy to keep doing our work well, whatever that means for our daily practices of self care. I personally do a lot of meditation and journaling in the morning and tea drinking in order to really help settle me into a space where I can be really productive and impactful when I show up to my job. Where can our listeners go to learn more about you and the work being done at Weyerhaeuser?  We have a full website at www.weyerhaeuser.com. At www.weyerhaeuser.com/sustainability we have tons of information and resources, great examples that we talked about today like the principles documents and our carbon record. There's some fun videos on there as well. Then there's a ton of information about forestry in general that's put out by some organizations like the National Alliance of Forest Owners, and there's a great tool that the American Wood Council has created that's about fiber sourcing and where your wood comes from. You can actually type in the grade stamp of the lumber if you happen to buy a piece of lumber and find out the region it comes from. Those are both sites that we've really helped generate a lot of the content for and fed materials to so that people can be learning about these incredible forests and the products that come from them.

Brian W. King joined ADS in September 2020 and serves as Executive Vice President, Product Management and Marketing. Mr. King came to the Company with over 25 years of product management and marketing experience in both consumer and commercial businesses. From 2013 to September 2020, Mr. King worked at Owens Corning, a Toledo, Ohio-based company that develops and produces insulation, roofing and fiberglass composites and related materials, serving as Vice President, Strategic Marketing from 2016 to 2020 and Director of Strategic Marketing from 2015 to 2016. Prior to Mr. King’s role at Owens Corning, he held leadership positions at The Stanley Works, Elmer’s Products Inc., and Avery Dennison Corporation. He holds a Bachelor of Commerce from McMaster University. He has received certifications in Marketing Management and Executive Education from York University and the University of North Carolina respectively. Brian Joins Sustainable Nation to Discuss: ADS’ plastic recycling operations and achievements Strategic efforts at ADS to reduce GHG emissions and their recognition as one of America's climate leaders by USA Today Partnerships that advance recycling and sustainability initiatives Advice and recommendations for sustainability professionals Brian’s Final Five Questions Responses: What is one piece of advice you would give other sustainability professionals that might help them in their careers?  I think we tend to underestimate what change we can make over a decade, and so I think we need to look at change over a longer period. We overestimate what you can do in a year. We're always very aggressive about what you can do in a year, and then we underestimate what you can do over a decade. But if you look back, you find that we've made great change over decades. So I think we need to adjust how we look at how change. The change we make and the impact that we have needs to be longer term.  What are you most excited about right now in the world of sustainability?  I get really excited when people say plastics recycling doesn't work, because it does. Even though there's no silver bullet in solving the plastics problem. Because plastics in the environment is a problem, and we need to work together to solve that. I get pretty excited because a lot of people tell us that plastics recycling doesn't work, and ADS is an example that, yes, it does. We can actually effectively create circular economies for plastics and we can help to solve the plastic problem. That excites me because that is a big deal.  What is one book you'd recommend sustainability leaders read?  My favorite is Cradle to Cradle. It's remaking the way that we make things. As someone who's done product management for a lot of their career, sustainability is key to product management. We need to think about end of life. When you design a product, it shouldn't just be around the economic value or the features and benefits or the value proposition that the product's delivering. You need to think about what happens at the end of life. Cradle to Cradle is a great way to open your eyes to that.  What are some of your favorite resources or tools that really help you in your work?  We talked about one of them, being partners with groups like the Recycling Partnership. There's passionate individuals, people who are doing things across the country that you can hear from. The Ohio State Sustainability Institute being another one I talked about. Talking to those like minded companies, talking to those like minded people, people finding those like minded organizations out there that are aligned with what it is that you want to do from a sustainability perspective. Sustainability professionals listen to this. We have to make sure we make those connections because some of the best resources are talking to people about what they've learned, what failed, what worked. That gets me really excited.  Where can our listeners go to learn more about you and the work being done at ADS?  If anyone wants to email me here at ADS, it's [email protected]. I'm on LinkedIn, Brian W. King. LinkedIn is the way to find me. If you want to go to our website, adspipe.com/sustainability we have an interactive version of our 2024 sustainability report that allows you to dig into some of the good work that we're doing.

Meredith Lindvall earned a BS in Environmental Science and a Master of Public Health in Environmental Health both from Emory University. She has a passion for the relationship between people’s health and their environments that has led to a commitment to careers in the environment. An Atlanta native, she has worked in the health research, environmental and sustainability departments at Emory Pediatric Pulmonology, Delta Air Lines, The Home Depot and Cox Enterprises where she currently serves as the Assistant Vice President of Waste, Water, Nature & Biodiversity. Meredith joined Cox in 2011 and led Cox’s recent industry leading achievement of Zero Waste to Landfill by 2024. She currently serves on the board of LiveThrive Atlanta, who operates the Center for Hard to Recycle Materials, and as Secretary of the Board of the Keep Georgia Beautiful Foundation. Meredith Joins Sustainable Nation to Discuss: Steps to achieving 90% waste diversion rate Employee engagement strategies and initiatives, including translating zero waste to KPIs  Cost benefits of moving to zero waste Advice and recommendations for sustainability professionals Meredith’s Final Five Questions Responses: What is one piece of advice you would give other sustainability professionals that might help them in their careers? My advice is to meet people where they are. The reason that's important is because you are trying to gain buy-in. If you can put yourselves in their shoes, figure out why they should care, you can translate sustainability to a really wide range of audiences. Think about, when you're not talking to sustainability professionals, how can you translate what your mission is into a way that this person can be passionate about it? Whether that is a time savings, whether that's that they like to go out on the weekends with their grandkids and learn about the environment, they want to deliver financial savings, they want to have a different relationship with their supplier. I would encourage you to carve out time to think about your audience and meet them where they're at and then bring them on that journey with you. What are you most excited about right now in the world of sustainability? I am excited that the sustainability world is really rapidly expanding past carbon to add things like biodiversity and nature that really, for me, connect our why back to nature and ecosystems and the planet. You heard me say up top that that's really where my passion has been. We're really interconnected, the environment, humans and the planet and species. I'm excited to see biodiversity goals and some of these other things that are really more closely connecting the dots between climate change, species, habitat, and traditional environmental work that, in my opinion, has been a little bit siloed. I'm excited about those coming together. What is one book you'd recommend sustainability leaders read? I'm guessing everyone's read Green to Gold, so for a more current one, I would say Drawdown, which builds on Paul Hawkins’ work in the ecology of commerce and really breaks it into truly actionable steps that we as a society can take to combat climate change in the next 50 years. What are some of your favorite resources or tools that really help you in your work? Knowing that your audience are experts in this field, some I'm sure they've been to themselves, but I would say GreenBiz, which is now Trellis, Sustainable Brands, Environment+Energy Leader, in-house tools. Big helpful things for us have been to gamify the actions that we want employees to take. Whether that is an in-house tool or an off the shelf tool, I would just encourage people to look at what can you do to amplify your work given that sustainability teams are often very small. One that I did want to throw out there that folks might not be as familiar with, but again where my passions intersect, is the National Association of Environmental Managers, which really, from my perspective is connecting the environmental health and safety and sustainability work together. As sustainability becomes more regulated and compliance based, I really see a lot of synergy there in that association. Where can our listeners go to learn more about you and the work being done at Cox? Listeners can go to coxenterprises.com and look under the Our Impact tab and there you can see our impact report. You'll see a call out on all of our sustainability work where you'll be able to check out the zero waste to landfill achievement, our water work, our carbon work, and then you'll also be able to look at our social impact impact work there as well for 34 by 34. You can find me on LinkedIn, Meredith Lindvall.

Allison Berg is sustainability manager for DS Smith North America, where she manages the delivery of the company’s Now & Next Sustainability Strategy, which focuses on closing the sustainability loop through better design, protecting natural resources by making the most of every fiber, reducing waste and pollution through circular solutions and equipping people to lead the transition to a circular economy. Allison is passionate about bringing positive change to communities who are underserved and are directly impacted by climate change. Allison Joins Sustainable Nation to Discuss: Circularity and circular design metrics DS Smith’s nature focus area and biodiversity targets Bundling low ROI projects like water with higher ROI projects for leadership buy-in Advice and recommendations for sustainability professionals Allison’s Final Five Questions Responses: What is one piece of advice you would give to other sustainability professionals that might help them in their careers?  Get your hands on as much as possible. Sustainability is such an evolving large field ranging from reporting and regulations, carbon water waste projects, circularity, community engagement, safety, biodiversity, etc. The more that you can get your hands on, the better. My role at DS Smith, managing our sustainability strategy specifically for North America, has allowed me to get my hands on a lot of different topics that maybe you wouldn't if you're in a company that's a bit more siloed. If you have the opportunity to do something random, like you're focused on water and someone says, "do you want to pick this community piece up?" Go ahead. If you're open to it, you might as well try. Especially in the job markets, they're really looking for multifaceted people that could do a lot of different varieties of things. That'll put you one step ahead if you’re doing all sorts of different things.  What are you most excited about right now in the world of sustainability?  Scope 3, because it's such an evolving field that everybody is currently trying to sort through, us included. It'll be really interesting to see that legislation as well. I know the SEC and scope 3 conversation was around recently and didn't really happen here in the US, but it's happening in Europe, so it's only a matter of time before that'll make its way over here. That, and I would say 2030 sustainability goals. I'm really looking forward to when 2029, 2030 comes around. All these companies have these big 2030 goals. Are they going to hit them? And if they don't, what are the consequences that we're going to see from these companies if they do not hit their established targets? I'm definitely looking forward to the next six years or so. It should be interesting.  What is one book you'd recommend sustainability leaders read?  I do a lot of different nonfiction reading at work between reports and standards and regulations and so on, so I'm typically a fiction reader. However, I highly recommend sustainability professionals if they haven't really done so already, to watch An Inconvenient Truth, which is the documentary by Al Gore back in 2006. That documentary in particular is what inspired me to do what I do now. I was hooked the second I watched it. It was really inspiring the way Al Gore presents, he's an amazing presenter. I highly recommend watching that. I know he's done an updated Inconvenient Truth in the last couple of years as well that's more with the times, but I highly recommend it for those who have not seen it yet.  What are some of your favorite resources or tools that really help you in your work?  Recently I joined the International Society of Sustainability Professionals, the ISSP. They have a lot of interesting resources as well as a new certification called the SEA and the SEP, the Sustainability Excellence Associate and Professional. They have a lot of interesting tools. I would also say relevant industry associations. For example, for me being in the pulp and paper industry, our main trade association, the American Forest and Paper Association, they have a large sustainability component as part of what they do. I assume other relevant industry associations will also have some sustainability component as everybody, including trade associations, have some sort of sustainability goals at this point. Those could be interesting resources as well.  Where can our listeners go to learn more about you and the work being done at DS Smith?  I am on LinkedIn, Alison Berg, PMP if you'd like to find me. To learn more about DS Smith specifically, dssmith.com/sustainability is where you can find some updates on how we're doing on our sustainability strategy.

Lisen Wirén is a sustainable business leader with over 15 years of industry experience. Her extensive background includes tackling labour migration and human rights issues in South East Asia and advancing sustainability in product design and working with social entrepreneurship. Her leadership led IKEA to win the most sustainable retailer award and a nomination for Wirén for the prestigious Sustainability Manager of the Year award in the Netherlands. Key to her approach is the seamless integration of sustainability into every function and team to reach the set organizational goals. She is based in Helsingborg, Sweden. Pia Heidenmark Cook is a Senior Advisor with Teneo, working with the ESG and Sustainability team to advise clients on how to develop and operationalise sustainability strategies and the implications for reputation strategies. Prior to Teneo, Pia was the Chief Sustainability Officer for IKEA, where she led the development and implementation of the IKEA People and Planet Positive strategy. Her cross-functional team worked closely with the business on developing circular business models (including take back offers, leasing and second hand), launching new sustainable offers (such as selling solar panels across 14 markets) and helping customers to live more sustainable and healthier lives. During this time, IKEA ranked in the top three most sustainable brands and managed to decouple carbon dioxide emissions from its commercial growth across the value chain. Pia and Lisen Join Sustainable Nation to Discuss: Their co-authored book, Embedding Sustainability First steps for companies getting started with sustainability, including engaging stakeholders Tips for incorporating sustainability into each employee's day to day job and tying these actions to sustainability objectives Advice and recommendations for sustainability professionals Pia and Lisen's Final Five Questions Responses: What is one piece of advice you would give other sustainability professionals that might help them in their careers?  Pia: I would start by saying understanding that sustainability and working with sustainability is as much about technical competence to understand the topic and all its facets as it is about change management and understanding how to work with people and change management.  Lisen: This field has become very much about reporting and that's something Pia and I have discussed quite a lot and of course that's very important and that's something that is driving sustainability and is also a wake up call for many businesses. But I would also encourage sustainability managers to try not to get too stuck in that, but to involve other relevant functions to support with the reporting so that they can still keep a strategic focus and lead the sustainability agenda. What we see is that the sustainability leader, manager, CSO, should be orchestrating the change, um, rather than getting too stuck in reporting. What are you most excited about right now in the world of sustainability? That  Pia: That it's becoming more and more mainstream. We're still not doing enough, but most people just know that it's here to stay, it's something we need to deal with. There's  levels of how deep the integration is and how far they come, but people are not questioning that the long-term direction is that companies need to deal with social and environmental issues to stay in business and be relevant.  Lisen: One of the persons that we interview is a designer and she talks about that 80% of the climate footprint sits in the design stage. For me that really triggers something for me to think about the real opportunity that sits within circularity. When designers and product developers and architects and so on, when they are opening up their eyes for the possibilities of circularity and getting excited about the creativity and innovation that that requires, I think there's unlimited possibilities.  What is one book you'd recommend sustainability professionals read?  Pia: I would say a mix of books that paint a picture of 'why' to more CSO handbooks. Books that are more hands-on, painting the picture of the environmental challenges or the social challenges so you build that knowledge, to those where where you get practical, concrete examples from others that have done the work. I think it's a lot about recognizing different situations and learning from them to get tools to keep doing the change journey yourself. I would also recommend one of the many books by Berne Brown about leadership and personal leadership and being your authentic self.  Lisen: I would go for a more action oriented solution-focused book, and that one is called Exponential Climate Solutions by Rebecka Carlsson. She's a Swedish author and she started at Singularity University and focused on different solutions that can have an exponential development. That's a very interesting, practical hands-on book with loads of examples.  What are some of your favorite resources or tools that really help you in your work?  Pia: Talking to people, meeting people, listening to people. Maybe not a lot of newsletters, of course to stay updated, but really the dialogue when you listen and talk to people and learn from them.  Lisen: To compliment that answer, one of the advices or suggestions that we give in the last part of the book is actually to sometimes look at what you need for yourself to keep on going, since this is not a sprint, but it's rather a marathon. You need to be able to last long as a leader, and one tool to do so can also be to sometimes zoom out from negative news and practice basically a news detox, trying to focus on the long-term positive improvements that are happening and that might not be an phone alert. Balance the negative news with some positive long-term development.  Where can our listeners go to learn more about both of you and your book? Embeddingsustainability.com or our LinkedIn pages.