Rizing Evolution – The Future Proofed Enterprise Podcast

Episode 5 Transcript: What Does it Really Mean to Invest in Sustainability?

(Editors note: this transcript was machine generated then lightly edited. You can also read a summary of this episode, watch the original episode on LinkedIn or see the list of all podcast episodes.)

Intro

Welcome to a fresh perspective on business technology. This is Rizing Evolution. The future proofed enterprise presented by Rizing, a Wipro company you’ll hear from business and technology. The innovators who know how to use the latest technologies and business strategies to transform industries and, importantly, how these technologies and strategies can be shaped to your business needs in your way, help your organization move in exciting new directions. Now here’s your host and moderator, Bonnie D Graham.

Bonnie Graham

Bonnie D in the house. Thank you to the lady with the nice voice who introduces us. Happy to be here if I got a topic for you today. It’s been on the lips. The minds, the back burner, the front agenda of companies for a past couple of years. And we’re going to tackle it in a new, fresh way. So welcome to Rizing Evolution, the future proofed enterprise. Before I introduce my guests, you can see three smiling faces. If you’re watching us on LinkedIn, everybody wave hello to LinkedIn. Wave hello to Facebook and virtually wave hello to the business audience listening on voice America business channel and shout out to Andrew, our engineer. Today I have a little poem. Come after he’s with us today and he does several of my other shows and I will say we have Sana Zaidi with us, and we have Susan Kenniston, and they have not been accustomed yet to or introduced yet to the poetry I do for my show introductions with ChatGPT. I will warn you, although it’s AI and it’s very talented, there’s always a human component. Susan, Bonnie D the humans. I still am. I’ve checked. I checked today. I do the editing on the poem to make sure I really, really like it. So let’s go and everybody listen. And if you like it, thumbs up. If not, you’re off the show. OK, here we go. In the realm where airwaves speak in stories unfold a tale of questions of mysteries unfold. Untold do consumers. Truly care, the whispers inquire, or is sustainability just a tail spun by the fire? Who isn’t that provocative? McKinsey and Nielsen IQ joined Hands one February morn, their study of Beacon, a revelation born a correlation, emerged a Symphony of claims and growth in the realm of sustainable. Quality truths and myths, both leaders stand at the crossroads ESG and their gaze understanding varies in a myriad of ways. Environmental, social governance, the Trinity defined a compass for businesses, a map for the mindful mind across the globe, from east to West geopolitical landscapes. Put to. Test. Do differences linger in sustainability’s embrace or does Unity reign connecting every space way when I call your name? Tom Raftery, Sana Zaidi and Susan Kenniston speak with host Bonnie D Mining Insights a chorus unique together, they unravel the trends of the Susan likes us together, they unravel the trends of the day in the pursuit of knowledge. In the quest to sway. Beyond suspicion into realms unknown, what does it mean to invest where seeds are sown? Sustainability. A word in the air? Tune into our conversation as our panelists share beyond the suspicion a journey profound investing in sustainability, a concept now sound which all think. What do you think?

Tom Raftery

Nobel Prize winning stuff.

Bonnie Graham

But Sana, did you like it?

Sana Zaidi

Well, I think Shakespeare would have benefited from ChatGPT.

Bonnie Graham

Oh, the oh the bar. The bar. And I put in some of my notes and a little bit about each of you. And this is what I get out. And then I customize it to make sure the rhymes make sense. Susan. Which?

Susan Kenniston

When I like it, it was wider and deeper than I was expecting, but I liked it.

Bonnie Graham

I know, I know, going down the path. Yes, I use it for all my shows. And it’s been going over very well. So welcome to the three of you. Delighted to have you here and we can’t wait to get your insights. It is an important topic. It has been on the lips and the minds of so many companies, so many businesses. There are the ups and downs, INS and outs. The do we do it now can we do it now? Should we do it now? Did we forget to do it then? What if we do it later? All of these questions on the table. So let’s go around the table and get your bios. We’d love to know a little more about. Each of you what you do? Why is sustainability important to you and what do you what do you have to do with it? Why is it important to you? So, Tom Raftery, you’re on many of my shows during the year. I’m delighted to have you here, Tom. Putting you on speaker view. Please do me the honor of telling us. Remind us who you are and why you’re here.

Tom Raftery

Sure. Thanks, Bonnie. UM, yeah. So sustainability is something that has been close to my heart for a very long time. I’m a graduate biologist, although I’ve worked in technology for quite a long time, I’m actually a graduate biologist. And it’s uh be because I went in to do biology and university because I was, you know, really. Uh, caught up with animals and nature and all these kind of things. My dad was a professor of agriculture. I used to go on nature walks and visit farms at weekends so you know the love of nature has been. Inculcated in me for a very long time. And although I got distracted with that and went off and did technology for a few decades, umm, I’ve always been very close to sustainability and I got a chance in 2006. When uh, myself and a couple of friends needed to create needed to, to found a data center in Ireland I said look, if we’re building a data center, we got to make it hyper energy efficient and then we also got to open source it. And so we did that and I you know, I blogged about it. I put photographs of it on Flickr. Put videos up. You know the whole thing used all the social media of the 2006 time frame which you know wasn’t a lot, but was there. And by doing that I got a name for myself and the kind of energy and sustainability field, because not a lot of people were talking about it then. And then I joined a company called Redmonk as an industry analyst, and I headed up the arm of Redmonk, which dealt with energy and sustainability. And we called that green Monk. And I did that for a number of years before I was recruited into SAP as an IoT evangelist, but even in SAP, what I was doing there, I was a global VP, but I was operating at the kind of intersection of technology and sustainability all the time, I. Was. There. And Sana knows that she was at several talks like. Live on the topic and then I was impacted by the tech layoffs last year. So I’m out of my own now and I’m still working and they kind of. The  intersection of technology and sustainability, uh, for myself. For now, until I find another role.

Bonnie Graham

Tom Raftery, I have had you, at least on a dozen of my shows in the past three or four years. I have never heard, never heard that version of your bio. This is all new to me about biology, about how you got to Red Monk about what your dad did in Agra. Culture. A revelation. Thank you very much. Good to know. And now I really know why we invited you. Thank you very much. Let’s go around the table. Sana Zaidi. So happy to have you here. Let’s put you on Speaker view and please tell us about who you are and why is this important.

Sana Zaidi

Sure. Thank you so much for having me. I’m been in the EHS Environment, Health, safety and sustainability space for 20 years. Actually, I started getting interested in it when I was in high school. So it was a long time ago. I was much younger and better looking at the time, and I had a very optimist view of. The world. So I took AP environmental science, and it was me and a couple of my buddies from high school. And I remember the three folks that were in that class. They were the only people throughout college and through now that I’m still friends with. So we have very we have very fond memories of our environmental science. But then I went to university and majored in risk management and insurance, and I did an internship at a Fortune 500 company and I was on the other end of sustainability. I was on the data collection side. So back then it was very, very manual and I had to take a look at the regulatory reports we had to submit. And figure out where to get that information, how to collect it and make sure that it didn’t get in trouble by putting it in late, right? So this is all paper based at the time we’ve come quite a long way since then. I’ve joined SAP where I met Tom. I was there for a little over 8 years and that’s when I transitioned to the technology side of things. And got to see how we could automate some of the EHS applications and processes. And I really saw how we could transform the entire business process and it was something that was really exciting to me. I joined Rizing about four years ago now and it was not to do sustainability. It was actually completely different and I saw an opportunity and I told our leadership team, I said, you know what, with the  client base that we have and the challenges that they’re facing, we have a real opportunity to talk about sustainability in DHS and drive this from. Our current client base and they said you know what, have at it and then we grew practice from scratch and it’s now a global practice and we’re very, very excited to interact with different members understand their challenges and really try to deploy the right technology and business processes for them. I’m based out of Atlanta and I also am a new mom, so I’m also in the market for a lot of new baby gear and I’m seeing all of the sustainability green wise options that are out there in the market, which is really interesting to see. Congratulations.

Bonnie Graham

Wonderful.

Tom Raftery

Congrats.

Bonnie Graham

And I was at SAP for nine years until 2019. I was a tech layoff a couple of years before Tom and. And uh, I think our paths might have crossed at some point. I started Game Changers radio for SAP in 2011 and did it until 2019 and after I left even it was a coffee break with game changers and 48 other series based on the Game Changers Roundtable concept. So I have a feeling we’ve met and I’m so happy to have you here and interesting this bio is are very, very interesting.

Bonnie Graham

We’re doing more storytelling than this is my job, and these are the people who report to me and this is my mandate and Gee whiz is my CV. I love the people bio, Susan. No pressure on you, Susan. Too tough acts to follow. Go ahead. Welcome and tell us who you.

Susan Kenniston

Yeah. So first of all, you know, I do love here. The other bios, there’s definitely some themes there. So I too similar Tom and Sana, have a bit of a background in terms of just, you know the passion for the environment starting with my environmental science degree. So it really was that kind of love for nature and getting grounded with that and then expanding it into very similar technology. And the combination of that background of the education and then being in technology for about 30 years and similar to Sana around some of the data is a huge part of this. And so you know that combination of threading you know sustainability, love of nature, just the passion plus technology, all just kind of coming together. Over the last 30 years for me and then where it really it came to life for me in my work. I actually had opportunities to do sustainability work in the projects I was doing, working for HP, Nike and in my consulting and that’s how I learned sustainability and I feel so grateful to all those efforts that I was pulled into and to learn. I learned it along the way over the last 10-15 years, 5th going on 15 years and. Amazing opportunities around chemistry, zero chemistry around apparel and sustainability from the materials and to the product and to the procurement and to the manufacturing into the distribution. And you know I really I learned so much from other people giving me opportunities. And to learn on the job like that. And I think that that’s really right now I’m at work Pro leading and scaling sustainability there and it’s one of the things that brought me to Wipro was their foundation as a company based on sustainability, but also the opportunity to scale it and give that opportunity. So many other people, both at our clients but also in work for themselves. This is what gets me up every day is being able to help other people. Be part of this journey because people did that for me and so I feel like my whole job is to help other people be part of this. And what’s so awesome? This is where we’re at in the world right now is that sustainability is getting operationalized in businesses, in our communities. And what we all do every day. So that is that’s really what gets me going. And I feel really, really honored to have. Have that journey, but also to be gifting it forward. So let’s just a little bit about my background.

Bonnie Graham

Thank you very much. I love the learning and sharing and giving back. But one thing we would love to know about rumor has it that you were at Davos. Could you? Tell us. Come on, little star power here, Susan.

Susan Kenniston

I have. I’ve had so many. Yeah. So actually, I’ve had so many lovely speaking opportunities to be able to share again and I really appreciate just like this like what you’re doing, Bonnie, is the to be able to use our voices and to share stories about what is happening in the world and sustainability and. At Davos, it was great to be able to speak about, you know, sustainability and what does it mean in terms of business and the value transformation. And it is just such an incredible time to be in sustainability, especially over the last couple of years. And I’ve been able to speak at Techonomy, another great hosting entity and then recently Climate Week, we taught a master class at climate, like around responsible procurement. And so there’s just so much, so much great sharing right now. And I think it’s, you know the more I think each of us have a responsibility to share.

Bonnie Graham

Thank you very much. I am very, very impressed. Go ahead, Tom. Yes please.

Tom Raftery

Bonnie. Sorry, I should have mentioned as well that I do run a couple of podcasts. Uh, one of them is the digital Supply Chain podcast, which goes out every Monday and Friday. Uh. But the other one, which is more pertinent to this, is the Climate Content Podcast, which goes out every Wednesday, and that’s one where I try and highlight successful emissions reductions. Stories and strategies to kind of inspire and educate more people in how to act so just as Susan was talking about uh, you know, sharing voices and things that I thought I’d mentioned that as well.

Bonnie Graham

Thank you. I appreciate that you did and what I can say to our listeners, our viewers is that we’ve assembled a panel. I’m just not going to use the word experts. These are people in the trenches who know what’s going on. They care, they learn, they’re passionate about it. They’re sharing the information. And this isn’t just woohoo pie in the sky. This is what’s really going on with. If I add up all the learning from SANA and Tom and Susan, we’ve got decades, even though it only came into, as Tom said, 2006 when you started, it really wasn’t, I don’t know, it wasn’t really being talked about that much, but it has grown in awareness and consciousness and that’s why we’re here on this round table today. I’m very, very honored to welcome the three of you and I’m going to learn a lot too. So let’s go to the part of the show where I’ve asked each of you to please send me. What we’ll call a pop culture quote, a fictional character in a movie or TV show or a song lyric, and you’re going to tell us what it has to do with our topic sustainability to. Day Tom Raftery has sent a very classic quote from Rocky Balboa, played by who else? Sylvester Stallone in this scene. He’s talking to his son, Robert Balboa. Junior, played by Milo Ventimiglia. The movie is Rocky Balboa 2006 and rocky. His ring name was the Italian stallion is a fictional character of the Rocky Film Series created by Sly Stallone, who portrayed him in all eight of his films and just say that the. After Tom is considered Stallone’s most iconic role, the one that started his film career, and when he reprised it for Creed in 2015, he received his first Golden Globe Award for Best Supporting Actor. I thought that was interesting, so let’s go to the quote. This is a strong one. You, me or nobody is going to hit as hard. As life but. It ain’t about how hard you hit. It’s about how hard you can get it and keep moving forward, how much you can take and keep moving forward. That’s how winning is done. I don’t do a Sylvester Stallone accent. I’m sorry. That’s the best I can do. Tom, go ahead. Relate this to our topic please.

Tom Raftery

Neither do I. Sure. Of course. So it speaks really to the fact that there is a lot of news out there at the moment about climate, particularly in the run up to COP 28 next week and the news that is generally out there about climate is 99.999% of it is bad news. And it’s really, really hard to keep taking those knocks and keep getting back up. And so that was actually one of the reasons why I started the Climate Confident Podcast was because I wanted to be sharing the good news stories that are out there about climate because there are a lot of them. I’m talking every week to companies that are doing good things in the climate space. But B and kind of slightly selfishly, it also meant that I was getting to hear at least one good climate news story week. And so that I wasn’t, you know, falling into a crying heap on the floor. It meant, you know, I was getting some good news as well. Alan, so that that’s kind of the thinking behind the quote it’s you know you have to you really have to force yourself to get up and go on and fight another day as it were, because this climate space is really, really important and it’s one where we need to work really hard despite all the bad news that comes in because there’s a lot of good stuff happening there too.

Bonnie Graham

I’m glad for the good news. We try to be positive and optimistic moving forward. Thank you very much, Sana Zaidi. I’m looking at your quote. This was a new one for me. It’s from a song. Where did all the time go by? Doctor dog? I have never heard of them. I hate to admit American rock band on their 2010. They’ve been around a while album shame. Shame the deluxe. Addition, I must say, lead vocals are shared between and I’ve got the names contributing harmonies, but what’s interesting is each band member has a nickname starting with the letter T. And friends of the band got nicknames as well, based on their lives and their personality. So former member Andrew trial Jones is a licensed attorney. I thought that was interesting. Their musical style is indie rock, influenced by bands of the 60s, The Beatles, The Beach Toys, Beach Boys, the Beach Toys and all kinds of other 1990 indie rock. Fans and then they became more polished in their production of. That’s what Wikipedia says. Here’s the quote Son has picked where all the I’m not going to sing. I don’t even know song where it all the time go. It’s starting to fly. Let’s go. Waving goodbye. Oh, that’s pretty. Sana. How’d you find this one? Talk to us. Do you want to sing it? You want to sing?

Sana Zaidi

Oh, now, if I were to sing, I think our audiences would turn off the podcast, I will spare you. But the song is something that’s near and dear to my heart. I was thinking about not only from a personal perspective, but professionally. I heard a statement today from a company I was working with that they want to be net 0 by 2040 and in my head I still think I’m 20 years old and 2040 is decades and decades away and it’s, you know, part of the future and it won’t get there for a long time. But it’s already 2023. It’s less than two decades away, and when I think about, you know, all the hands waving goodbye, I look at those as our fiscal quarters at work and everyone has these very short term goals that are set up. And maybe they’re not aligned to the long term vision of getting to net 0 by 2040 and some folks are doing a great job of it, but others are struggling and where is that balance of that short term execution and goal and that long term long term vision that? That we need to. And then from a personal perspective, I think about my 5 month old baby and I feel like I just brought him home yesterday and now he can’t fit into any of the outfits that I bought for him. So yeah, I’m thinking about where the time has gone quite often.

Bonnie Graham

Life is good, isn’t it? This I have to ask, does the baby sleep through the night?

Sana Zaidi

He just started, I think in the last two weeks. So yeah.

Bonnie Graham

Good. OK, mine didn’t for the first year and a half. So I have great empathy. We’ll leave that one alone. So you, too, Susan Kenniston. I’m looking. We, Susan and I went back and forth lately. And yesterday on a quote. And she we finally settled on one from a movie.

Tom Raftery

Same.

Bonnie Graham

Well, high fidelity 2020, fairly recent American romantic comedy drama. Susan, when you combine genres, only a few get hyphenated. Comedy drama is one of those. Nations, the characters Rob Gordon, played by the lovely the Wonderful John Cusack, is directed by Stephen Frears, starring John Cusack, Jack Black, Todd Louisa, Lisa Bonet. Haven’t heard in many years. It’s based on the 1995 British novel by and I’ve never heard a novel. Described as a British novel, I thought it was a novel by British writer Nick Hornby, but they said British novel. Nick Hornby, with the setting, was moved from the novel for the movie from London to Chicago and the name of the protagonist was changed. Let me just give an intro here. Rob Gordon is a music loving man with a poor understanding of women. Ohh no. After being dumped by his living girlfriend of two years Laura, he tries to understand how he failed in his relationships by seeking out his old partners, the film is styled around Rob talking to the camera and narrating his most painful breakups. But what’s interesting is Nick Hornby was surprised at how faithful the adaptation was to his book, saying at times it appears to be a film in which what John Cusack read. It’s my book. Very interesting. And here’s the quote Susan has picked. I’m very good at the past. It’s the present I can’t understand Susan.

Bonnie Graham

We had Doctor Seuss before this one. This is a better one because I was looking at children’s audio books. I like this better. Susan, what does this have to do with our topic please?

Susan Kenniston

Well, it’s interesting. Listening tom talk about, you know, actually doing his podcast a little bit to hear about a story a week that gives him hope. Right. And so first of all, I don’t know anybody that doesn’t like high fidelity. It’s one of my favorite movies and seeing which Cusack and the reason that that quote really resonates to me is that you know, and to seeing his comment about, you know, what are we’re seeing is that. It this is, you know what we’re seeing right now that we’re all part of this. Pretty incredible journey. Of becoming something different as a global. You know, as a, as a global force is this change to living differently to being differently, to being more responsible in everything we do as a company, as individuals, as communities, you know? And I think it’s such a big force that. You know, it is hard to not think about this as change. And helping people through change. And so that’s why it is, I think sometimes in the work that we do in sustainability, it can be very much like do the reporting do the reporting, you know, get the transparency, all these regulatory requirements. And yet at the same time, there’s this massive. Undercurrent that what is really underneath it is a way of doing things differently. And so I think that we’re I go and where I really like that quote is I think that we have to give each other grace. And patients and help in the journey of wherever people are at, and because everybody wants to do, but most everybody wants to do better, right? We only point. And so I think that there’s just a lot of people that maybe want to do more around this, but it’s hard. It’s hard to let go of wherever you’re at in the comfort zone, whether it’s your really, you know goals and metrics. And so I think that I just think a lot about that. I think about the change and the momentum and the inertia to help people through this. And I think that that’s as big of a part as of our roles and what we’re doing is sustainability leaders as anything else. So that’s why it really resonates to me is this is a massive change for our entire planet. And you know that’s that’s a lot to get your head around and just to bring it down to the personal level, every interaction you have. Right. How are we? How are we helping everybody? And so that’s why I really think it’s really incredible what we’re. You’re saying?

Bonnie Graham

Thank you very much. I’m going to reflect for two seconds here for 60 seconds on in my community here. I’m in Tennessee and the big debate is on garbage services and they recently were told by the garbage service and a lot of people have left the service because they don’t like the policy that there will be no separate recycling bin. And the reason is that there’s no money in it because when they take it, wherever they take it. If they took it there in the first place. There’s no money to the company for separating the plastic and the cardboard and the glass and the tin cans and aluminum, whatever it is, so they simply stop. So we’re down to twice the price for one garbage can a week. But a lot of residents have stopped using the service and they are taking their garbage in their car to a garbage dump. And to a recycling place about 20 minutes away, in another city next to ours, we’re on a kind of a peninsula here, and I found that very interesting talking about choice and responsibility. And I I’ve always been separating the garbage for years, and I couldn’t imagine that I’m just throwing it all every time I put a milk carton or a. Soda can my kids drink soda, I think. Why? How can I be doing this so I may make some changes in the new year, but when you talk about coming down to the personal level don’t we all have to make these decisions? Isn’t that really where it started from?

Susan Kenniston

Yeah, that’s where it’s at, yeah.

Bonnie Graham

So thank you all for the quotes appreciated. I learned a couple of new movies and songs and there you go. So let’s go to our real round table here. I’m going to start with a statement from Tom. I’ve picked statement #4. I’m going to read just a little bit of it. I know Sana had one similar. So I know when I asked you Sana to agree or disagree, I can imagine where you’re going. And then Susan, I’ll bring you in to agree or disagree with either or both of them. So Tom says while Europe has shown considerable progress in integrating. ESG, environmental, social and governance policies, the global landscape reveals varied levels of commitment and implementation. The geographic and geopolitical differences in embracing sustainability indicate that A1 size fits all approach may not be effective. I’m going to stop there, Tom, and let you finish that. Please go ahead.

Tom Raftery

Yeah, sure. I mean. We got to remember that. We are in a global, uhm, in, in, in, in a global world and global planet, you know we are all in this together. We have one atmosphere which we are sharing, but we are using it very differently, you know. The US, Europe, we’re heavily industrialized and have been for 100 and 5000 and 70 years or more and we’ve put a lot of pollution, a lot of carbon, into the atmosphere. And yes, now we are in Europe doing an OK job in the US, catching up with the IR a past, uh, always feel a little strange being an Irish person talking about the IR A, but that’s another story altogether and we’re starting to see China making huge. Steps in the energy space, particularly with the rollout of renewables and electric vehicles as well, but every country, every region has its own history, which it brings to this as well, and consequently they every country comes from its own context. And so it’s, it’s different everywhere. So that’s what I’m trying to say with the one-size-fits-all approach can’t work and you know Sana talked earlier about how you know dealing with different companies and helping them. It’s the same each company comes from its own context as well. And so I’m sure Sana will probably agree with this I am hoping. So, but you know, you can’t go with a copy paste solution from one company to the other because every company has its own context, its own industry, its own priorities, etc, Its own quarterly reports. And you know and it’s the same in countries as well. So we have to approach this in a very. Empathetic mode being open to listening to what people’s expectations and priorities and contexts are. You know you can’t impose solutions on them. You have to find what’s right for them.

Bonnie Graham

Context and empathy. New words for me with sustainability. Interesting, Sana. We’d love for you to agree or disagree with the man with the hat. Go ahead.

Sana Zaidi

I absolutely agree. So I was doing a sustainability roadshow in Europe and we had a mixed audience for the sustainability and digital supply chain. Went to four different countries and the last stop I believe was. London and there was bad weather. The trains had stopped and the sustainability portion of the audience was a small group. But there were no shows. So then I ended up having to present to the supply chain folks and I said, you know what? These folks are, they’re not really going to be interested in what I have to say. I was presenting to a group of. Automotive engineers, mechanics, and for a big automotive manufacturing company in the UK. And I gave my presentation and they were so engaged. They were asking me about, you know, the scope one emission sources talking about where it would be on the plant, about the renewables circular economy. And I was just amazed at how the sustainability, context and topics were really ingrained in their common knowledge already. Had I had that same conversation in the states, I think that we usually need to tailor it to a more focused audience that is responsible for sustainable. And I feel like that’s the case, because in the EU and the UK, they’ve been a lot more progressive and a lot more responsive about sustainability initiatives and accountability. I feel like there’s a more personal touch to it. Having lived in London for four or five years, it’s there’s just more exposure to sustainability and also more demand from the consumer as well. It’s just an expectation because it’s been around for much longer for the general consumer, popular. Whereas in the States, I feel like it’s more of a preference for a certain group of people and it’s starting to just get to the general population now.

Bonnie Graham

Interesting. Susan, join us. Agree or disagree with either or both, go ahead.

Susan Kenniston

You start with the easy ones. I would say I agree and disagree. I think that I definitely agree that I think that there I just am back from Australia for several weeks and supporting the globe around this and living also in Asia for several years. Definitely there is a local influence. Tom’s point. I think it’s very valid, especially in terms of the culture. And the history. Of the locality, let alone the natural resources. Of the region, because their industry is very driven by their own natural resources of what they can do. And so I look at it very much of us going a little bit backwards too. You know, the roots of our location and the resources that we have to support us and the constrained resources. And the issues there that are then driving behaviors depending upon where you live, I think that there are definitely regional differences. I think in terms of is there a play for global? I think absolutely, I think that this is where I see that there is a benefit to having some standards people are looking for, you know. Tell me what needs to be you know, what is the 25 or the 30 most important things for me as an industry as an organization in an industry to be measure. I do think you know some level of accounting standards evaluation standards so that we can compare companies across the across the world run for valuation but two so that they can see where they’re at because again going back companies are trying to do better and so they need to have some measurement that they think is grounded so they can see if they’re making progress. So I do think some of the global standards. There’s maybe a little bit of overplay and some of the metrics and the standards. I think that you can get to a handful and you’ve got enough. But I think the standards is a global thing that is beneficial. I do think there is a difference between some of the markets. I think Europe to me is leading on standards and policies and a little bit slower in the pickup to be very honest, in terms of activation. I actually see the US is activating faster and but don’t doesn’t have the tops down on the standards and the policies. But because I’ve been able to experience a lot of these companies that are doing this work. It’s impressive. It is really impressive what a lot of the companies are doing to talk to what he hears every week. There’s problems being made now. It’s just not as much as in your face as what you’re seeing. But it’s absolutely happening. And then, you know, I think Asia in that area, they too are doing it. It just depends on what their resources are and what their focus is and where they’re making progress there and so. That’s why I think it’s a little bit of a mixed answer and I think that the hybrid is not a bad thing because I think it’s, it’s almost like competition, it’s improving the overall situation and moving the needle for everybody. And so you know I think I think I see things moving forward because of that.

Bonnie Graham

Thank you, Susan. Tom, you want to, I hate to use the word, but you want to comment back to Susan and Rosanna, go ahead.

Tom Raftery

No, I agree absolutely with everything. I when I was talking about copying and pasting solutions and imposing them, I was talking about solutions, not standards. Standards are different and absolutely we need standards for, you know, comparing apples to apples, as it were. You know, we all need to be reporting the same standard. We’ve got similar standards for financial reporting. We’re gonna have to have similar standards again for sustainability reporting and the sustainability reporting standards are going to have to be audited in the same way that the financial reporting is currently audited, which means that the sustainability officer role, which in many organizations today reports into the CMO because of the rigor required now for sustainability reporting or soon. I suspect the CSO will shift to be reporting into the CFO, not the CMO, which would be a great thing.

Bonnie Graham

Interesting. A little prediction on job descriptions and the  hierarchy and the tree of life of a company. There you go. Not the latter, but the. But there was a word for that. They used to have all kinds of charts. Who report to remember the lines and this one word. Charts. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Live through a whole bunch of those. Thank you, Tom. Very provocative conversation starter.

Bonnie Graham

Appreciate that, Sir. Sana I’m looking at your statement. Number two, I think Susan just tiptoed into it just a little bit. But I want to go deeper. So Sana says sustainability recording is a cumbersome activity. And in the current state, the accuracy of sustainability KPI’s may be severely lacking. Sana, take us through this, please.

Sana Zaidi

Awesome. Yeah, I think that it was touched on a little bit already by Tom and you take a look at some of the sustainability related KPI’s and some are very easy to measure correctly. Energy consumption for example or water consumption, wastewater generation, you might have a meter, you get a number, it might have an IT device that’s connected to it. It’s very neat and tidy to get those metrics. Other metrics though, especially when you get into scope two and scope 3 emissions that are kind of more distant from your main focus in operations. You start getting into some estimates and depending on which standards you’re taking a look at the accuracy of that data is questionable. In some cases I think there was a McKinsey report that had come out that said that emissions data that is being published today in some cases. Can be up to 10 to 50 times in excess of what it needs to be. Has a variances in how the data is being collected and differences and how the  measurement points are being accounted for. I think that until we get to something that’s as transactional as an accounting standard, that discrepancy is going to remain in place.

Bonnie Graham

Thank you. Let’s go around the table. Susan, you’re virtually sitting next to Sana right now, so why don’t you agree or disagree? Go ahead.

Susan Kenniston

Yeah. A little bit of both. I think that having a data background as well and working in the data ecosystem for 25 or 30 years. There’s absolutely truth that. The data readiness. Across a companies value chain. Is still building in maturities, but I think that the, the and is that we have to keep in mind that the shift to tracking our natural resources, our social resources, our human resources, which are just additional forms of capital that Tom was mentioning that are going into our financial statements that. Set that set of capital. We are only now hardening into our transaction systems or our IT ecosystem end to end. And so because we’re only bringing in sustainability data as new capital from materials that we acquire from product designs from you know manufacturing, we’re only bringing that into all those transaction systems that we’ve been doing for decades. With their other financial goods, right, our value chain, we’re just catching up. The systems are just catching up on the rigor that’s needed for that capital accounting of those resources. And so I think. It’s where we’re in the journey of hardening this in as true resources that get that are part of the business value chain and getting accounted for in the financial statement. And so yes, I think that we have to have a lens on the data. What it should be used for just yet, right? It’s not quite to what I would call auditable financial data, but we’ll never get there unless we get started and we start seeing the confidence level of where we’re at and beginning to get a sense of, you know, are we are we doing the right things from sustainability to reduce our footprints or improve our social footprints? And so I think it’s about having, you know, the wisdom about how to be using that data and how to keep improving it along the way. And help our you know the transaction systems and technology continue to build up the rigor. So it has that auditability and nature to it and it’s just a reminder of how fast this train is moving right. How much is being asked of our of a lot of organizations right now and how they’re just trying to keep up, right. So I think it’s, it is really interesting. I think it’s going in the right direction, but I think we have to just be careful how we use the information.

Bonnie Graham

Thank you, Tom Raftery. Agree or disagree with either or both, go ahead. OK, that was fast. Mom, we want more.

Tom Raftery

What I was going to say is, yeah. The sustainability reporting space and the KPIs that SANA was talking about, it’s a very immature space yet as Susan was saying as well, it’s one that is maturing, yes, but it’s going to take time. Uh, the financial reporting space that you know, we’re using as kind of an analogy, it’s taken decades for that to mature to the state it’s in now. You know, it really only started after the crash in 27, the kind of regulations around financial reporting. So we’ve had almost 100 years of maturing and building standards. We don’t have the same amount of time for sustainability reporting. We need to, you know, kick ___, uh, if you’ll pardon my language and get that mature as quickly as possible and agree standards because a lot of the standards are still, uh, in kind of in move in be moving around there’s a lot of moving pieces particularly around things like scope 3 emissions which are the hardest to quantify. And so we need to harden those down and get them in. Technology is playing a major role in this. I was talking to a company on my Supply Chain podcast actually called EO Live. And what they do is they help companies. Be compliant with the new European deforestation regulations and if you’re not familiar with the deforestation regulations, these are regulations which say if you are importing goods into Europe, if they are in any of these seven categories and the seven categories or things like coffee and meat and soy and things like that. That and timber if you’re importing them into Europe, you have to be able to show that the goods you’re importing have not caused any deforestation in the area that they were produced from since December 2020 so historical data and that’s from January of next year that comes into effect. And so to be technologies helping companies be compliant with this by using satellite imaging data and historical satellite imaging data to look at where the goods were produced and say yes or no, deforestation was or wasn’t, I mean this wouldn’t have been possible ten years ago, because there wasn’t the uh fidelity of satellite data available to do this, and now it is, and these are the kind of advances now the ability to look at the ability to capture satellite data and the ability to have technology scan it and say yes or no on deforestation or not or whether the crops themselves. Or what the people reporting them are, or whether the fields would be capable of producing the amount that they say it has produced, you know, so there’s all kinds of levels to this and it’s, you know, this is where technology is helping us enormously.

Bonnie Graham

It sounds exciting. It sounds compelling. It sounds complicated. Is it? It sounds complex. How do you have historical data on a crop on deforestation or not back three or four years? Interesting. Sana, this was your topic. Anything you want to say, back to your colleagues on the panel?

Sana Zaidi

Now, I think that they’ve just about covered every aspect of it that I can think of, but I have noticed that there’s different perspective based on which type of industry we’re trying to target and every industry and region has a different progression point that they’re at. So it’ll be really interesting to see. Kind of how we move forward with the different clients working with.

Bonnie Graham

Thank you very much. I’m so glad we’re doing this because already we’re going to go to our talking point from Susan in a moment. But already we’ve seen such a wide depth and breadth of aspects of this topic, right, Sana and Tom and Susan, we’ve covered so many things in 41 minutes that you wouldn’t necessarily get somewhere else. That’s why I like the round table format.

All of your ideas, and we just bring them in and keep expanding and expanding. And but I’m learning a lot. I didn’t even know about it. And I hope that our viewers and listeners. For Susan, it’s your turn. We covered a lot of your talking statements and what you were commenting back to Susan and back. I’m sorry, back to sign in time. So I’m going to #4. I like this one a lot. Susan says it’s coming home to us and what we do personally, what is happening in our communities, especially around natural resources, how we engage with our employers around how we work. To make change, it requires policy shift organizational shift. But more and more, we’re seeing the increased role of individuals, communities and their surroundings. This seems like a beautiful I’m going to use that word advisedly, a beautiful way to round out the conversation, Susan, go for it, please.

Susan Kenniston

Yeah, I love it. And just a quick shout out tom on the conversation on the technology and the GIS and I’m so excited about what the technologies can do for us around that whole data collection. I think it’s really going to. Flip. It. And so I think that that is really exciting. We can have a whole show just on that in terms of the new technologies that are. We’re gonna help us get lunch, right? And do things.

Tom Raftery

I have nearly 150 episodes of the podcast that we can go back over.

Susan Kenniston

Uh. I love this one about bringing it home so and so I I’m sitting in my own home, which I turned at 0 or less two years. So I bought a 100 year old farm hose. And I shared a quote with Bonnie earlier that is, you know, you have to go there to know there. And what I really love about that saying is that and I think about that a lot in sustainability right now and working with all of our clients is you know, this is so new for so many people that you know, they don’t, they just don’t even know what it looks like. And so I think so I did the same thing. The term to see what it meant to actually go net 0. What does it look like? What does it feel like? What are the decisions? How easy? How hard was it? It was hard. It was really hard to do and it I came out the other side and I realized that the way we’re looking at housing is completely off. Fundamentally, just the mechanical way that we’re doing it, and so there’s a whole different and to get that experience in that mind shift is how do we do that, not just you know with organizations, but with our communities in and the decision making with each of our environmental plans.

I’m in the northwest and we just released our sustainability plan and it calls for all sorts of things. And one of the things that I really liked about it in terms of bringing it home is that it talks about doing like what I did with my house but at the neighborhood level. So you get things like the momentum of block by block by block because then you can begin to address how we are each reducing our footprints not just on the energy use but water. What are we doing with water? Are we sitting at the right places? Right? What are we doing to help each other from a social perspective? And so I think that the reason that I like to bring it home is and it goes back to how we started this conversation. That a lot of what is showing up is local. It’s regional because the resources are there, the natural resources are what is supporting a lot of the community and the companies and the organizations are there. And so you’re starting to see more and more shift to community impact. You’re seeing that, for example, with the release of the TNF D. Which is all about biodiversity which is thinking about the resources around each organization, whether you’re an airport or you’re a corporation and thinking holistically a little bit wider about that berm around. Do and so you’re seeing that not just in the organization and their national resources, but then for their employees. And what does it mean for their employees with where they live and their commutes to and from? What does it mean for their employees to have a voice in the company’s sustainability efforts? Is it in their job descriptions? Are they having a voice? Policies in the in the company you’re seeing it as citizens, we’re getting pulled into smart city design. How you design for an experience, how you design for an equitable community, how you design for the natural resources of the community to be considered for events we have fires in the Northwest and so you are literally seeing it brought home just like you mentioned you’re recycling. That’s a very real story for our food waste and so I think it’s just it is now there is not a. But there’s nobody separated from this. We’re all involved in this and it’s in all the different hats that wear every day. And I think that I love that because that means it’s actually normalizing it. It’s normalizing it. And to who we are, how we live. And to me, that’s a real signal of the change of where we’re going. And so I’m really excited about that. And making that progress, but it also means that we got to think differently. About how our responsibilities as in in organizations as members of this, the community as members of a family and just what we’re doing and so that’s some of the shift that we’re seeing and I it’s very exciting to me because I think I like the normalization factor.

Bonnie Graham

Thank you, Susan. I’m going to do a level set here, TNF. I didn’t know what that was. I looked it up and what I have here is task force on nature related financial disclosures is that the one?

Susan Kenniston

Yeah, it’s basically based on the biodiversity factors, which is a huge, very, very well done work. And so you’re starting to see that rolled out Tom’s 1 of the global standards. It’s really incredible work.

Bonnie Graham

I have 3 minutes left. I want to divide them equally. Let’s see Tom. You’re sitting next to Susan virtually on the table. This time, one minute of commentary back to her. Agree or disagree, Tom, go.

Tom Raftery

Bit of both. I think it’s great that people and some people are taking personal responsibility. I’m of a net zero house myself, it’s, you know, five kilowatt solar array on the roof, all electric coming in. There’s no fossil fuels coming in etcetera, etcetera, etcetera, EV in the in the garage. But most people aren’t going to do that. And so I think. It should be mandated that all new build houses are passive. It should be mandated that uh, all new cars from say 2030 on are UH0 emissions. Uh, it should be. You know, these kind of things. These kind of changes, we need systemic changes. We can’t rely on people to make individual choices we need the eggs of what happened in Norway with EVA’s, for example, is a great example where they, uh, subsidized EVA’s and they gave people who had EVA’s particular. Uh, incentives like you get free rides and ferries, you get to use the carpool lane, you get free parking in certain areas, things like that. Make people you know, make it advantageous for people to make the right choice and they will. And when you make those kind of systemic level changes, then you start to see real change. And for people listening, I think the most important thing you can do. Is use your vote to vote for politicians who have a strong climate record and then the changes will be made.

Bonnie Graham

Thank you, Sana, one minute. That’s it. Go. You got last word.

Sana Zaidi

So Susan mentioned something about having a voice and I think that becomes so important. There’s one aspect to regulatory enforcement, but there’s another aspect for getting to our goals where we want a person to have a voice, to engage in the goals of sustainability, to have a personal. And personal drive toward those goals. And so if we have it from a bottom up perspective where we are listening to especially young voices in the community. The we will drive a lot more change than regular regulations that may not be enforceable at this point.

Bonnie Graham

Thank you very much. I want to thank the three of you. Tom Raftery. Wonderful always to see you. Sana, pleasure to meet you. I think we met before when I was doing game changers at SAP.

Sana Zaidi

And I’m I’m also from Queens, so we might have.

Bonnie Graham

Nice check on your list of what you’ve accomplished. Thank you to Andrew, our engineer at Voice America business. Everybody wave goodbye. Don’t go away. Panels wave goodbye to LinkedIn. Wave goodbye to Facebook. Wave goodbye. To voice America, I’m Bonnie D Bonnie Graham. And I will say that if people tell you the future is already here, I want you to tell them. No, no, no. That was yesterday’s future. We are all going to do our best. To make the real future a better one, everybody wave. Good bye. Bye. Bye. We’ll see you next Tuesday. Here on Rizing Evolution.