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I have a strong background in general management and business operations. I started in travel retail, a very dynamic industry where nothing ever stops. After working in travel retail for five years, I joined Soho House for the Cowshed brand in the UK. This was my first interaction with sustainability. We did significant work introducing biomaterials and sustainable packaging, which was a breakthrough for me.
Being a long-time vegetarian who loves nature, I realised how much sustainability could be integrated into a thriving private business. This experience made me passionate about sustainability. Over the past decade, I’ve served as Chief Operating Officer in social impact startups and consumer goods D2C businesses with a sustainability focus. I’ve managed sustainability functions, set up teams, and aimed to hit triple bottom line targets—balancing financial goals with sustainability objectives. This intersection of profit and purpose is what I love about my work.
There’s a lot to cover here. Sustainability is such a broad area—it can mean everything and nothing. With regulations increasing, scrutiny over greenwashing, and varying stages of sustainability adoption across companies, the field is rapidly evolving. Some startups have sustainability embedded in their business model, while mid-sized companies might just be starting.
Although sustainability has scientific roots dating back decades, it’s now front and center for businesses. The challenge is how to deal with it. Fractional and interim roles are excellent for companies that know they need sustainability but aren’t sure where to start. For instance, a startup or mid-sized company might be doing a bit on sustainability and wants to advance. They might need help with decarbonisation, circularity, or social equity projects, such as reviewing a complex supply chain with multiple suppliers in different countries. A sustainability professional can provide holistic support, helping different teams navigate these complexities despite resource constraints.
Another example is governance and regulatory pressures, especially with new regulations in Europe. Large organisations need to ensure compliance and might hire a sustainability expert to manage reporting and regulatory adherence. This expert can then help cascade sustainable practices throughout the organisation, identifying further opportunities.
In simpler terms, it’s like starting a fitness journey without knowing whether to hire a personal trainer, lift weights, or join a class. A fractional sustainability expert helps businesses figure out where to start, what to prioritise based on their mission, vision, products, and resources. They tailor strategies to fit the unique constraints and opportunities of each business. While core principles of sustainability apply broadly, each business requires a customised approach due to differences in resources, sizes, industries, and products.
As you mentioned, there’s a lot of regulatory pressure coming from Europe, which I know sounds daunting and challenging. But I think it’s great because, in addition to regulation, what I’m hoping will happen is that we set the foundation for what’s next. This includes providing a framework and some form of education. Through the reports put in place, sustainability experts, teams, and leadership will understand where to focus. Although all this reporting is happening, we know it’s not enough. Regulation is necessary but not sufficient because changes also need to come from within the organisation itself.
Investor demand is increasing because we now understand that a sustainable business is also a profitable one. This is due to risk mitigation, competitive advantage, and leveraging your unique selling proposition (USP) for long-term gains. It’s also driven by internal factors such as consumer expectations and employee advocacy, especially from the younger generations pushing for better practices.
Yes, it’s hard, but the effort leads to reinforcing your business USP. I often use sports analogies because they resonate with people. Just like training for a marathon, achieving excellence requires hard work. It’s essential to find ways to make the process enjoyable because it’s a long journey. Patience and humility are key, and the focus should be on regulation, investors, consumers, and employees.
Depending on the maturity of businesses, there are various challenges, especially for startups and scale-ups, which are my primary experience. Resources are always a major constraint, and I’m not just talking about financial resources. Companies are constantly chasing goals and managing urgent operational tasks, such as supply chain issues or unexpected events like COVID or natural disasters.
Sustainability requires a long-term view, and results won’t be immediate. One challenge is integrating sustainability into daily or weekly operations and maintaining focus on it amidst other urgent tasks. This includes business operations, supply chain management, HR, and financial planning. Leadership teams, especially CEOs, have to balance these priorities.
Financial resources are another challenge. While long-term gains and strengthened business USP are the benefits, there are upfront investments required. This might involve hiring sustainability experts or setting up a sustainability team, sourcing low-impact materials, or implementing circularity practices. These steps take time and can impact gross margins.
Knowledge is a third challenge. Keeping up with regulatory changes and sustainability trends is crucial and challenging due to the fast pace of developments. Effective stakeholder management, communication, and balancing strategic vision with daily operations are essential. Setting a clear roadmap with objectives and key results (OKRs) and breaking down tasks into manageable milestones is critical. It’s like training for a marathon where you need a plan and must be flexible enough to adapt and still make progress.
Internal buy-in and team involvement are crucial. Sustainability can’t be managed by one person alone; it requires alignment across the company. This means embedding sustainability into the company culture, regularly discussing it in meetings, and incorporating it into hiring processes. Companies serious about sustainability should reflect this in their hiring practices, ensuring that new hires have a passion or appetite for it. This will help achieve long-term sustainability goals.
For example, Patagonia, a leader in sustainability within the fashion industry, reflects this commitment in their hiring process. Companies just starting to embed sustainability should consider adding these criteria to their hiring processes to support their long-term goals.
This is a very important question. Depending on where a company is in their sustainability journey, the approach will differ. Think of it like a marathon: you won’t approach it the same way for someone who has never run before versus someone preparing for their fifth marathon. It’s essential to understand who you’re talking to, their appetite for sustainability, and how far they are on their journey.
For companies deeply embedded in sustainability, where it’s part of their core business and mission, the challenge often lies in getting buy-in for specific projects. Everyone may agree on the need for a decarbonisation strategy, but the difficulty comes in implementing it. For example, suggesting an in-setting strategy like investing in solar panels for factories in Portugal or China involves hard work and negotiation. It’s about presenting a business case, explaining the plan, the costs, and the long-term benefits like reducing scope 3 emissions and decreasing energy bills, even if the results aren’t immediate. It’s similar to hiring: it costs money upfront, but it’s an investment to drive the business forward.
For businesses earlier in their sustainability journey, it’s crucial to spend more time developing their sustainability strategy. I’ve worked with different startups to define their strategy based on their industry, whether fashion, beauty, or fintech. This involves defining sustainability pillars and setting achievable goals. For instance, in the fashion industry, focus areas might include carbon footprint, materials used, waste, and chemicals. It’s about setting realistic goals and not expecting to go from zero to 100 in a year.
Getting investor buy-in is also crucial. For companies where sustainability is already part of their mission, it’s about maintaining good habits like including sustainability updates in board packs, even if it’s not as prominent as sales or hiring updates. For companies early in their journey, choosing the right investors and working closely with current ones is key. It’s about collaboration, making sure they understand that sustainability is a long-term commitment that requires resources and time. But with data, we know it will ultimately make the business stronger, more successful, and more profitable by mitigating operational risks.
My approach is very business-oriented, focusing on practical strategies and clear communication to integrate sustainability into the core of business operations.
There are two ways to look at it: from a soft skills point of view and from a hard skills perspective. In terms of soft skills, any sustainability leader needs to be able to manage stakeholders at different levels and with different expertise. Communication is another critical skill because sustainability is complex and takes time. You need to translate what sustainability means for everyone in the organisation, what it means for you, for each team, and how it will impact their work because they will have to think differently.
More importantly, it’s about building relationships and being curious due to the evolving regulations and technological innovations. Building relationships internally with your peers, within the industry, or even outside your own industry is crucial. Sustainability is so complex and challenging that you can’t do it alone. Being involved in the sustainability community with like-minded people is key. On a day-to-day basis, being part of Slack groups or WhatsApp groups allows you to ask questions, like how to tackle a new regulation, and get support when you struggle to understand how to implement changes internally. This is absolutely essential from a soft skills perspective.
In terms of hard skills, having a holistic understanding and business acumen is very helpful. After 15 years in business operations, working with different teams to drive growth has been amazing because sustainability also requires balancing strategic thinking with day-to-day operations. It’s great to have a fancy sustainability strategy, but if you can’t translate it into quarterly goals, it’s not going to work.
For example, if your sustainability strategy includes decarbonisation or circularity, you need to understand what this means for each team. How do you embed biomaterials in new products? What does this mean for the finance team, the HR team, or the supply chain team when they go to a factory in Portugal? Being able to juggle strategy and operations is absolutely key.
Context switching is also important. As a Chief Operating Officer, I’ve had to switch tasks frequently—one hour you might be interviewing a candidate, the next you’re in a board meeting, then you’re on a call with the supply chain team about an urgent factory issue, and later you’re working with the CEO on a three-year plan. Adaptation and being able to handle these transitions are crucial skills.
So, the main skills and leadership traits for success in sustainability include managing stakeholders, strong communication, building relationships, being curious, having business acumen, strategic thinking, and the ability to adapt and switch contexts seamlessly.
I love this question. One of the big ones, probably a bit boring for some, especially in the D2C industry, is regulation. It’s crucial and constantly evolving, which I think is a good thing. Regulations will keep changing, and different bodies will have to adapt. For example, this year, changes were made in carbon reporting. Initially, carbon credits weren’t necessarily accepted, but that changed as adjustments were made to align with private sector practices. Now, we understand that carbon credits aren’t the best way to decarbonise; direct work on supply chain decarbonisation is key. This regulatory evolution is ongoing, and we need to get comfortable with being uncomfortable, much like in sports. Yes, it’s hard, but it’s necessary, and the good news is we will learn and adapt together. Sometimes we might go in one direction only to find it wasn’t the best way, and that’s okay—we adapt and change.
The second essential aspect is innovation and technology, which are driving incredible progress. For instance, in the fashion industry, companies like Pangaea are doing remarkable work with lab-grown spider silk and mushroom leather. The field of biomaterials is just getting started, and it’s fascinating to see startups in London and the UK working on innovations like bio-dyes. This is an exciting area full of potential.
I foresee that social impact and equity will become even more amplified. We often focus on the environmental aspects of sustainability and ESG, but social impact and equity are equally crucial. Trends will emerge around strengthening communities and fostering closer connections between businesses in the West or North and communities in the Global South.
For example, Ocean Bottle‘s model of selling water bottles to fund waste management centres in local communities in India is a great example of this trend. Technology will likely facilitate this, perhaps through apps that enable consumers to directly support positive impacts on other communities. More businesses like Depop, which centre community in their models, will emerge, creating more businesses for good.
AI and blockchain will play significant roles in supporting and strengthening these trends and innovations. I would also say that having a supportive community of people interested in sustainability is vital. They don’t all need to be experts; passion and curiosity can drive innovation and bring new ideas. For instance, I recently received a beneficial article from a friend not directly involved in sustainability, highlighting the value of diverse perspectives.
The complexity of sustainability is what makes it so interesting. It really is like running a marathon, it’s incredibly challenging but also rewarding. I started running a year ago and completed the London 10K marathon recently. It was tough, and there were moments when my body resisted, but crossing the finish line was incredibly rewarding. Sustainability work is similar: it’s challenging, requires perseverance, and is immensely rewarding once you achieve your goals. This mindset is essential for sustainability leaders and anyone with big ambitions in their work or business.
Read other related interim articles:
Renoir Flashes of Brilliance – In Conversation with Edoardo Turelli, CTO
Renoir Flashes of Brilliance – In Conversation with Amber Skinner-Jozefson, CMO
Renoir Flashes of Brilliance – In Conversation with Sophie Theen, COO, CPO
