00:00:00
Clarke Murphy: Hello everybody, it's Clarke Murphy here and in honor of Climate Week, happening now in New York, we are re- releasing our most popular episode from season two. It features Chief Sustainability Officers, Sophia Mendelsohn and Kate Brandt. A really energizing episode. Please join us. Enjoy.
00:00:19
Sophia Mendelsohn: I don't want everyone gunning to be a professional sustainability practitioner. What we want is everyone gunning to bring sustainability into their professional career. If you're in policy or if you're an engineer, you're doing what you're trained to do, what you love, thinking about how the decisions you're making in the office will play out as a ripple effect through the community, through the ecosystem, and through the long game.
00:00:53
Nanaz Mohtashami: Welcome to Redefiners, a podcast designed for daring leaders who are changing what it means to lead in today's increasingly complex world. I'm Nanaz Mohtashami, a leadership advisor at Russell Reynolds Associates.
00:01:06
Clarke Murphy: And I'm Clarke Murphy, the former Chief Executive and also a Leadership Advisor. Nanaz and I have spent our careers exploring what works and what's next in the realm of leadership.
00:01:15
Nanaz Mohtashami: In each episode, we ask our guests steep and provocative questions about how they've challenged the norms and how they've redefined their organizations and ultimately themselves as leaders.
00:01:26
Clarke Murphy: Also, you can answer this one question, how are you redefining your leadership?
00:01:31
Nanaz Mohtashami: Perhaps the boldest question yet.
00:01:33
Clarke Murphy: Conversations that matter. Inspiration for us all, whether you're kicking off your career or crafting your legacy. Thanks for joining us. Let's dive in.
Hi everyone, and welcome to Redefiners. I'll be flying solo this week as Nanaz is on vacation and we're going to talk about sustainable leadership today. Sustainability has quickly risen to the top of everyone's agendas and leaders are saying, " What do I do? How do I do it? Who helps me do it?" I think of it as a barbell. At one end of the barbell are investors and the board of directors saying, " Hey, what are you doing?" At the other end of the barbell are the employees and the consumers saying, " Where do I want to work and what do I want to buy?" And both ends of the barbell are putting pressure on the middle of the bar. And there seems to be a divide between the talking and the doing when it comes to sustainability. Our research at Russell Reynolds Associates shows that 43% of C- suite executives say their organizations have a sustainable strategy that's being acted on.
Only 51% say their CEO is personally committed to advancing sustainability and that organizational progress has been made. Employees are even more skeptical as only 26% believe their organization has a clear sustainability strategy. So what do we need to do to move the needle on sustainability? Well, this theme is so powerful and so important. We've asked two guests to join us instead of one, and they are as well recognized on action and success around sustainable leadership as anyone else you'll hear from. I call them CEO whisperers, whispering about sustainability, the strategy and the action.
Before I introduce our guests, maybe it makes sense to give a quick definition in case some listeners don't know what a Chief Sustainability Officer or CSO does. Essentially, a CSO is a key leader when it comes to monitoring, measuring and reducing an organization's environmental footprint and impact, and in some situations literally help transform the company. No small task.
Our first guest is Kate Brandt, who is CSO at Google, where she leads sustainability across the firm's worldwide operations, products and supply chain. And prior to Google, Kate served as the first Chief Sustainability Officer of the US government in the Obama administration. Kate also serves on the boards of EVgo, BSR, Restore and the Corporate Eco Forum. Kate's joined by Sophia Mendelsohn, Chief Sustainability Officer and head of ESG at Cognizant.
Sophia has been leading corporate sustainability and ESG in the US and China for over a decade. Before joining Cognizant, she was CSO at JetBlue Airways and Head of Sustainability at Hayworth. She's a recipient of the US Environmental Protection Agency's Climate Leadership Award, serves on several boards and advisory councils. Both Kate and Sophia are featured in my book, Sustainable Leadership, which comes out on September 21st. Kate and Sophia, welcome to Redefiners.
00:04:28
Kate Brandt: Yes, well, so pleased to be with you and with Sophia, so thanks so much for having me today.
00:04:33
Sophia Mendelsohn: Likewise, thank you. It's an honor to be here with Kate.
00:04:37
Clarke Murphy: Let's get into it. Both of you came to your role as CSOs in different paths, different ways. So I'm curious, were you both always sustainable people and how did you get to become a CSO? Because when you all started there wasn't the term CSO. So Kate, love to ask you first, how did you come to this personally and professionally?
00:04:54
Kate Brandt: I love starting with the origin story and it is always so interesting to hear how people answer this question. So for me, my passion and interest in the environment and climate and conservation is something I've cared about for as long as I can remember. I had the great privilege of growing up in a really beautiful part of the natural world. I grew up on the coast in Northern California in a little beach town called Meir Beach that's surrounded by national and state parkland. So I really grew up outside playing in the tide pools and in the redwood forests, and from a very early age felt a really deep connection to the national world and to conservation. So this has always been a topic that I've had a personal interest and passion for.
And during my career, I came at this work more through the national security side of the house. So my academic background is in international relations, and I spent time early in my career at the Pentagon working on energy security and climate security. So over time I've been able to really bring together my personal interests in conservation and the natural world as well as my professional grounding or in national security and energy security and pull it all together into this fantastic role that we get to have these days called the CSO.
00:06:09
Clarke Murphy: So really the best of both worlds. Personal and professional, both come together. Sophia, you came to the CSO role in a very different way. Tell us about that.
00:06:17
Sophia Mendelsohn: Sure. Well, since Kate told a story about a really beautiful part of the natural world, I'll tell a story about a really productive, if not necessarily naturally beautiful part of the world. So I spent years of my career in China and working in export manufacturing in China, really convinced me on a deep personal level that consumer demand could and should reshape markets. And if we wanted to get this concept of sustainability into the global economy and we wanted to drive businesses towards a future that considered natural resources, we would need to kickstart that demand in the markets with consumers.
And since I was in manufacturing, I was thinking about materials and engineering and how companies would need to figure out different ways to make products, to package products even before they then needed to redefine how they sold them to the market. But I really fell in love with this idea of a free market solution. And I guess if you can call a passion for free market solutions, a personal passion, then it's really driven from there.
00:07:33
Clarke Murphy: Well, it's similar. Adina Friedman in the book, we've all worked on together, her forward is saying part of open and free markets is being able to put capital where the markets want it, and that's where sustainability is taking markets today. It's one of the reasons she's so passionate about this as well.
Okay. So let's go with this theme of finding your passions or your passions finding you. In each podcast we ask our guests about their Redefiner moments that help them become the leader or person they are today. I'm curious whether there was a pivotal moment in your careers that redefined or shaped your thinking about being a sustainable leader. Kate?
00:08:08
Kate Brandt: I think one of the greatest defining roles in my career was when President Obama got elected in 2008. So I had the privilege of working on his campaign, and so many people went to Washington right after the election to find if there was an opportunity for me to contribute and to serve. And I am and was very inspired by President Obama for many reasons, but one of them was his commitment to sustainability and particularly climate change. And I had the great privilege of at the transition team and then in the very early days in 2009 at the White House joining his climate and energy team. And so that to me, I think is still one of the most defining moments for me in my career.
00:08:51
Clarke Murphy: I can only imagine. That's redefining for sure. Sophia, was there a redefining moment for you that inspired you on your journey?
00:09:00
Sophia Mendelsohn: Yeah, well, I'll keep going with the origin story as Kate so accurately called it and I was in a job interview, which was a really pivotal interview for me. And the interviewee asked, " So if you get this job, how are you going to reduce our impact on climate change?" And I said, " That's the wrong question." Your first question should be, how can we reduce climate change's impact on our business? Because answering that question will require you to know what elements of your value chain and strategy are most at risk, and knowing that will provide the business case to get back to your original question, what can I do? What can my brand do? What can my CEO office do?
And I looked over at my future boss's face from across the room, and I realized that moment in time that Kate was talking about when she was in DC when I was in this interview was an opportunity for sustainability practitioners to really redefine the business dialogue on this topic from altruism to practicality. And I'm sure my past boss will be flattered to know that he was my president Obama.
00:10:12
Clarke Murphy: Yeah, there you go. And love the comparison to Kate's redefining moment. Both of you focus on how sustainability impacts the overall business. And you're right, Sophia, companies are more likely to change when they can identify what parts of their business are most at risk due to climate change. I got to tell you, my moment was at home and having four young children probably 15 years ago say, " What are we recycling? Why are we driving this big car? What are you doing about it, dad?" And then you start to link it to our business and being a leadership business, what are we doing to help leaders lead sustainably?
And so we had to figure out how to do that. Sophia, you worked for an airline where you were the first to issue an ESG report aligned to SASB standards. You were the first to announce domestic carbon neutrality. And Kate, you were the first CSO for the United States government, but neither of you had a playbook to work from. There were no rockstar CSOs to idolize when we were kids. So how do you figure out what to do, what to prioritize, how do you create the playbook?
00:11:18
Sophia Mendelsohn: It really start with prioritizing knowing the business, because if you know the business and if you know the CEO's core strategic elements, then you can wrap your sustainability program around those. You can consistently prove that the concept of sustainability is delivering value by framing it for the C- suite, by framing it for the board in terms of their objectives.
And the role that Kate and I do every day, Kate, if I may go out on a limb for both of us, is making sure that the dual objectives are being served at the same time. That I'm constantly creating value for the business by serving that strategy as well as making sure that I have my eye on the long- term ball and that while I may have coworkers who need to live and breathe by the quarter, the most privileged part of a Chief Sustainability Officer's position is that they're allowed to look out year to year, five year, 15 years, 30 years.
00:12:21
Kate Brandt: Yeah, very much resonate with everything you said, Sophia. Absolutely, and I think I would just add on, I've had this privilege, and as you point out Clark, this role hasn't existed for a long time so there isn't this generation of us who are going to be the firsts in many instances. And I think just to build on what Sophia said, a couple of other things that I've always focused on is in many organizations, of course this isn't going to be true across the board, the seeds have been planted and there has been work done in some aspects for a long time. And there's also been things that have been done that haven't worked for various reasons. And so I've also really always tried to come into these roles humbly to understand where is the organization, where have we come from, where has things worked? What are the gaps, what are the risks? And to really stand on the shoulders of all the work that has come before.
So I think that's very much been for me, a personal orientation in both of these roles. And then I would also just say too, I think that we have the privilege of coming into organizations, both of us that have had an interest in this or an opportunity to lead or drive change in some way. And that's very much also been my orientation, both doing this work for the federal government, but also for Google, where are we uniquely positioned to lead. The US Federal government is the single largest user of energy in the world. That were very distinct ways that I felt we could lead through setting our own greenhouse gas reduction targets through engaging our supply chain. And then similarly at Google, we are a technology company. We love to solve hard problems. So for us, it's really been where we uniquely positioned to lead through our technology, through our core products. So that's also been really front and center for me.
00:14:05
Clarke Murphy: Let's pull on that a little bit. Kate. You talk about not having all the answers and tackling hard problems. And one of the things we've talked about is CSOs don't just have high IQs, even EQs, but what they really believe is they have LQ or learning quotient, this ability to keep learning as an individual or a culture. Can you tell me a little bit about a time when you've had to adapt or pivot in this role to get something done or handle the deviation from the plan and say, " Oh my God, I got to figure this out because we got to have a whole different approach. We got to take this a different place." That's not taught in business school. How do you create the pivot in a whole new world?
00:14:45
Sophia Mendelsohn: Yeah, when was the last time we had to pivot, five minutes ago? The last meeting before this podcast?
00:14:52
Clarke Murphy: Reality hits. Yeah.
00:14:54
Sophia Mendelsohn: Yes. To tell a story, I have the privilege of running a decade old volunteering program at Cognizant. This program has served over 300,000 associates over its lifetime. Cognizant having some more than 350, 000 employees at any given moment in time. And this entire platform was really fueled by passion, which made it a great tool for our associate base, but it wasn't feeding into our clients, into our investors, into what our chief marketing officer needed. So what I had to do was pivot from a really passion driven, personally oriented platform to one that was focused on exactly as Kate said, what our company does best. And we are both working for technology companies here, which means we need to look at the unique and specific technology skills, knowledge tools we have.
So I took turning a tanker slowly, but with determination, refocusing some 300,000 people's passion on training for business skills and tech skills. And what that does is plug this program into tech company's biggest community challenges, which is training, skilling and retaining.
00:16:16
Clarke Murphy: Yeah. Great visual and couldn't agree more. You're talking about turning a tankers spot on for so many organizations today. Kate, what are your thoughts about the pivot?
00:16:26
Kate Brandt: Very much resonate, Sophia, with your opening comment on when are we not doing this? That's what makes these roles exciting and hard and why I love this concept that you all have introduced about the LQ. I think we need it in spades. So many examples, but I think one I will pick on is a lot of our orientation in our program at Google is around not only how do we lead by example in our own operations and our value chain with targets like net- zero by 2030, but also as I was sharing, what is the role of our technology in driving change in the world and enabling partners and enabling everyone to take action. And in that partners area of our work, we've done wonderful deep technical work for many years through our geo team. That's the part of the business that brings you Google Maps, but also things like Google Earth and Google Earth Engine.
And Google Earth Engine is an incredible tool that's over a decade old that includes over 30 years of Landsat imagery and data. So it enables you to see change on the Earth's surface over time in any given place. So one of the most poignant and devastating things you can do when you go to Earth Engine is you can zoom in on Lake Mead and you can see here's Las Vegas exploding over here and here's Lake Mead shrinking and disappearing over here. And there's many, many examples of this that are showing all of the negative impacts we've had on the planet, but there's bright spots too. You can see renewable energy emerging, you can see forests actually being replanted. So really powerful tool, but that was built for a very technical audience utilized by scientists primarily and offered for free in the way that we have the privilege of doing with so many of our products at Google.
But we wanted to figure out how do we pivot? And really not a pivot because it will still exist in that current format, but how do we expand this tool and make it much more useful to business who also would really benefit from these insights? And so there was a long- term partnership between our geo team and our cloud team that I've been engaged in to think about how do we actually make this generally available to Google's cloud customers? So this isn't just something that's used by a few academics but is actually used by businesses. And our lighthouse customer was Unilever who used this tool to deeply look into their palm oil supply chain.
And we just announced a couple of weeks ago this general availability. So this was a really interesting example of a journey that we are on and I hope a lot of business owners are on right now of thinking about how do you put sustainability core to your products, core to your value proposition for your customers? And so this was I think a really good example of where we needed to both pivot, but just expand our aperture and our thinking,
00:19:08
Clarke Murphy: Expanding the aperture. I love that term. I'm going to take that one home with me, I have to say. Sometimes the learning is to reinvent a product or a process or a strategy. Other times it's more a matter of changing our viewpoint to realize what's possible, change your own aperture. In the book, we talk about two kinds of executives. The first is what we call moon shotters. They go for big, bold, audacious thinking where they make a commitment to action without having all the answers.
And then there's what I call the 100 percenters, those that want every single detail, every single piece of data before they do anything. And guess what? Most of them never get going. So moonshotters, commit and go. 100 percenters, analyze. Kate, when you think about some of the moonshots that Google's taken on like Tidal, which is doing underwater cameras and understanding what's actually going on in the oceans real time, I'd be curious, can we keep going on this concept of moonshots?
00:20:07
Kate Brandt: Well, we absolutely need our moonshotters. And as you've pointed out, this has certainly been a focus for us at Google for many years. We even have formally known as Google X now X, which is our moonshot lab, which is where projects like Tidal come from. And I think that also it's important to not only have parts of the business that have that dedicated space, but also to bring that in to the core of our strategy. And this has very much been something that we've thought about for a long time as we think about sustainability at Google. What are our risks, what are our opportunities? But really coming back to the point I made earlier, where are we uniquely positioned to lead? Where are we uniquely positioned to drive value and to drive change? And so I think we have very much taken that lens and we haven't been afraid to set goals when we don't always know exactly how we're going to get there.
If I look back to 2012, this predates my time at the company, Google committed to 100% renewable energy, and that now sounds like a fairly normal corporate target. Back then, no one knew how to do this. Their PPAs barely existed if you weren't a utility. But we said, " Look, it is absolutely critical that companies drive greater clean energy on grids that we set this a target knowing we don't know exactly how to get there." And we went for it and five years later we were actually able to achieve it. But that was very much a moonshot for us then. And our new target that we refer to as a moonshot, because it absolutely is 24/ 7 carbon free energy.
We've said, " And by the way, 100% renewable energy is a signpost on that journey." Where we really need to get to is full decarbonization of grids. That's not just Google's goal. That needs to be our collective goal. So yes, moonshots critical piece of the conversation from my point of view.
00:21:46
Clarke Murphy: Sophia, your reaction to big bold commitments?
00:21:50
Sophia Mendelsohn: So I have worked both for a consumer oriented company with incredible brand value, and that's a household name and for a business to business company, and I will tell you Clark, it is equally hard in both, but there is, I just wanted to get a smile out of Kate. There is a path through for both B2B and B2C, and that's data, right? Google is producing a lot of that data, but so are your consumer researchers. So is your branding office, so is your HR office, and part of the role of the Chief Sustainability Officer is to be able to look at data beyond the quarter. So you're constantly driving towards running the business for the foreseeable future and its long- term value proposition.
And so you're pulling in data from all these different places, particularly to incredibly important elements of data, the climate change data, a lot of which can come from Google, its geographical products, and data sets as well as shifting consumer preferences. And these two data sets together make the full story. One dataset is the Earth and what it's telling you about the Earth you have to run your business on. And one dataset is the human response to that and what your consumers and clients are going to want in the future. These two data sets are interlocking. The more we see manifestation of the climate crisis, the more we're going to see a shift in consumer preferences.
00:23:29
Clarke Murphy: I love the interconnections there. You've got the moonshot, but you can be driven by data to fulfill the big commitment, but you can't lead and accomplish a moonshot all alone. I think you need the board, you need the CEO to drive a top- down approach so that all the stakeholders are involved. With that you need to be what I call a CEO whisperer, which both of you do quite well and are well known for it. Sophia, what's your advice on others how to forge this relationship at the top of the agenda with the CEO?
00:24:01
Sophia Mendelsohn: Sure. Well, I'm imagining my CEO listening to this podcast right now. So I'll tell him that I think of him as a juggler. He's standing, he's bouncing on a ball on one foot, juggling plates and cups at the same time. He's thinking about clients, he's thinking about investors, he's thinking about associates, he's thinking about the history of the company and the future of the company. And what I always try and do is be there for him to throw me a plate to take off his juggling routine rather than throw a plate to him to add.
00:24:34
Clarke Murphy: Love that.
00:24:35
Sophia Mendelsohn: And my focus really on engaging the CEO's office on sustainability is making sure that the CEO and his or her office believes that I understand their mission and their stress points. And if I can prove that, then I've earned my license to ask them to listen to me.
00:24:55
Kate Brandt: Yeah.
00:24:55
Clarke Murphy: Absolutely. I think every CEO would appreciate your point about trying to remove a plate from their juggling versus adding another one. But if we think about sustainability as a benefit and as an operational advantage, it shouldn't be just one more thing for the CEO or the board to worry about. Kate, we're going to throw the plate to you now. How do you juggle this one?
00:25:17
Kate Brandt: I love that image you just painted, Sophia. So I will say I am very privileged and not all CSOs have this, which is to say that sustainability has been a core value to Google since our founding. Our founding CEOs have cared about it deeply, and it's always been core both for our leadership and for our employees. And so I have the privilege of having the opportunity to work with our CEO, Sundar and his team and many other leaders across the company.
And what we really think about is a lot of the themes I've brought up before is how do we lead at Google, but also how do we support our partners? How do we enable everyone? And I think that vision is critical and unifying for us. It speaks to how we think of ourselves as a company, our core mission of organizing the world's information and make it universally accessible and useful, how we want to think about the helpfulness of our products. And so really for me, it's about continuing that longstanding dialogue and how we've thought about sustainability strategically at Google and placing it at the core of the role of our business in the world and how we want to show up for our users.
00:26:32
Clarke Murphy: I'd love it. I think the most successful sustainable leaders say, " Sustainability is the strategy of the company, not something separate." And that's how you drive vision and strategy and ultimately impact for the business, for your partners, for your supply chain. It's got to be a strategic imperative that's fully integrated, everybody on board, everyone moving in the same direction.
00:26:56
Sophia Mendelsohn: I'll add a story from my experience at Cognizant on how the CEO and Chief Sustainability Officer can really be thought partners in what the brand and the company adds to the solution. So at Cognizant, our tagline is intuition engineered. And the way we think about it is that the intuitive part is that business operates within a community, within society, within an interwoven web of natural resources, climate people, and that the solution to the problems that creates or presents need to be engineered. And a common theme you'll hear in Kate's, and my answer is, what does my company uniquely bring to the table? Obviously in this case of Google and Cognizant it's technology and tech solutions. That's the engineering part of these solutions from renewable energy to STEM education.
And I think the same goes for the relationship with the CEO. What can your CEO uniquely bring to the table. At Cognizant, our CEO is leading up to some 400,000 employees at a time. And when he speaks about sustainability and its integration into what Cognizant delivers for its clients, you have almost half a million people immediately understanding that sustainability is intuitive to the business case.
00:28:24
Clarke Murphy: Almost half a million people, I'd call that impact. Imagine the impact of every CEO, every leader integrated sustainability into their business vision and strategy like that. That's a powerful journey. So you both are incredibly visible. You've been on panels together, you've done all sorts of things together, and people say, " Okay, they're at the top, but how can I ever have that impact?" To those just beginning, and as you reflect on your career, Kate, what's your advice to someone who's 25 or 28 years old? What do you say to them about this is the path I want to take? What's the advice, what to do next, and to build from?
00:28:59
Kate Brandt: The thing that I often have the opportunity of speaking with folks early in their careers, I'm sure you both do as well, who are interested in getting on this path. And the number one thing I always say to them is there is not one path to these roles. And I think that's actually a really good thing because given the breadth and depth required to do this work, we need people with really varied skill sets. And I've had the privilege of working with sustainability leaders who come from engineering backgrounds, who come from business backgrounds, who come from policy backgrounds. And I think they're all served by that experience. And in fact, I think the thing that has served me the best is coming from a diverse background of having worked in the public and private sectors, having had different opportunities to work on these very complex systems' level challenges and then bringing that into these roles.
So that's often what I will tell young people that I don't think there's one straight line and that I think that's really positive and that following a career of impact that helps you to build your toolkit, helps you to develop a point of view on how you can best bring your talents and skills to drive positive change in the world. I think that's the great place to begin.
00:30:10
Clarke Murphy: Absolutely. Countless studies have shown that diversity is the engine for increased innovation and productivity. So it's no surprise having people with diverse backgrounds and skillsets and sustainability brings fresh ideas in thinking. Sophia, what advice would you give yourself when you were starting out?
00:30:28
Sophia Mendelsohn: I'm curious for Kate's reaction. Sometimes Kate, I feel the Chief Sustainability Officer is constantly trying to give their job away. They're constantly trying to work themselves out of a job. And I give this to young people because I don't want everyone gunning to be a professional sustainability practitioner. What we want is everyone gunning to bring sustainability into their professional career. So that, as Kate said, if you're in policy or if you're an engineer, you're doing what you're trained to do, what you love, thinking about how the decisions you're making in the office will play out as a ripple effect through the community, through the ecosystem, and through the long game.
And the second thing I say is buckle up. It's a wild ride. It may feel moonshots and long- term goals and getting to work on your passion, and it is, but it's also the day- to- day grind of constantly testing yourself and your sustainability strategy to make sure you are proving the relevance of long- term value on a day- to- day basis.
00:31:47
Clarke Murphy: Just to that point, your point about working yourself out of a job, the real nexus behind this book is we need everyone ultimately to become a sustainable leader, not to have a CSO appointed inside a company. So I'm 100% with you about integration and skillset for sure, but this has to be everybody on board thinking and acting in new ways and not just one person trying to lead everything. It's nearly impossible. That's the sustainable leadership opportunity.
So last question for you both. Climate Week in New York City is coming up, where you've got business, government, climate, community, UN General Assembly, regulators, investors all coming together. Partnerships seem to define success and sustainability, but it's trick, it's hard, but you all have really been good at it. What advice do you have for ensuring partnerships or for someone to figure out with whom to partner to be more successful around sustainability? Kate, how do you look at partnerships?
00:32:44
Kate Brandt: Partnerships are absolutely critical. All of these systems challenges are larger than any one business or even any one large entity like the US federal government. And partnerships are how we're going to drive the change, how we're going to find the unlocks. We've had some very successful examples of partnerships in this space and we have been very choosy about when to enter into partnerships because there's so much opportunity. But I think you really need the ingredients of ambition and a shared level of ambition as well as complementarity that you also really want to have partners that can compliment one another on the journey. So just a couple of examples I would give. One is the Clean Energy Buyers Alliance, CEBA. This is an organization that Google's been a part of for many years and goes back to what I was sharing earlier about our commitment to 100% renewable energy back in 2012.
There weren't a lot of companies to be partnering with back then. Now there are, but we need to be working together. And so this is an alliance of nearly 300 companies that have come together around this vision for achieving a 90% carbon- free US electricity system by 2030. Incredibly powerful from showing demand, sharing best practices, partnering on policy change and influence. So this has been a really critical group.
And then more recently we came together in an area that is much more nascent, which is the space of carbon removals. And we all believe we need to reduce global emissions as much as possible, but what science shows us is we absolutely also need to be removing carbon from the atmosphere. And so we came together with currently a smaller group of companies than we have today in CEBA with Shopify and Meta and McKinsey and Stripe. And we said, " We're coming together to put together an advanced market commitment of nearly billion dollars around carbon removals to really create certainty and to say, " If you built it, we will buy it.""
And that's again, I think a place where that shared ambition, that shared goal was really critical and we're hoping that many others will join us. But those are a couple examples where I think partnership has worked well based on those ingredients.
00:34:54
Clarke Murphy: Those are incredibly powerful partnerships. That's exactly what people want to understand. Sophia, your thoughts?
00:35:01
Sophia Mendelsohn: I'll keep pulling on the thread that Kate just laid out and say that if we are going to find systemic changes for the good of us all through business, we need to pick the right NGO partners. And technology companies like Google and Cognizant have shown that when you do that, you can move mountains. So take STEM education, technology skilling, made when we technology companies looked at some of our largest challenges, we knew that we could both create knowledge and skill sets for this while creating jobs in the United States and other countries creating upward economic mobility, especially for genders and ethnicities that have been underprivileged.
And you've seen a complete shift in that training and skilling largely driven by this combination of business and society coming together. What Kate said particularly about partnerships around sequestration is something I think we should spend just a little bit of time on this podcast because it is going to take an ecosystem of partnerships and technology solutions to get the numbers to where we need them to be on climate change. And that could include technology that supports high quality carbon offsets or reliable carbon offset market, which of course feeds directly into high quality carbon sequestration, all enabled by technology. And that is going to unleash a new ecosystem of demand for skilling training and jobs. And if we can do it with STEM education, I believe we can do it with climate, technology and education.
00:36:37
Clarke Murphy: Well, I can speak from experience that Russell Reynolds Associates partnership with United Nations Global Compact, UNGC, it was the spark that lit the flame in our firm to improve the way the world is led by having more sustainable leaders identified, developed, and now parts of CEO succession. And we didn't agree on everything on either side, and ultimately we worked it through. Great partnerships come from flexibility and patience, and that's why we're sitting on a podcast right now having this talk, was UNGC and the spark for our flame.
00:37:08
Kate Brandt: Yes.
00:37:10
Clarke Murphy: Listen, we always end Redefiners podcast here with some rapid fire questions. Sophia, first question, what's your favorite way to decompress from a long day of work.
00:37:20
Sophia Mendelsohn: Reading climate science. I'm sorry. It's true.
00:37:23
Clarke Murphy: Okay, but I think you deserve probably to decompress a little bit more than that. Kate, if you could immediately learn a new skill or talent, what would it be you would learn?
00:37:35
Kate Brandt: Tree planting.
00:37:37
Clarke Murphy: Love it. Okay, we got a theme going here. Sophia, at what age did you take your first big risk and what was it?
00:37:43
Sophia Mendelsohn: Oh, 19. I took all my babysitting money and bought a one- way ticket to China.
00:37:50
Clarke Murphy: A one- way ticket. Well, that's commitment to say the least. Okay, Kate, next question. Who is your inspiration and why?
00:37:58
Kate Brandt: I've talked about President Obama, but I will name another great leader, Ray Mavis, who was the Secretary of the Navy when I worked at the Pentagon. Just incredible inspirational leader for me.
00:38:08
Clarke Murphy: And for you both. Final question is, what's the best piece of advice you've ever heard? Sophia?
00:38:13
Sophia Mendelsohn: Sure. It was a me mocking that quote, " Do what you love and you won't work a day in your life." It said, " Do what you love and you'll work every day over time." I think Kate, again, if I may speak for us, we're doing what I love. We're working it into the system and taking others along on the ride.
00:38:34
Kate Brandt: Love that. I will add in a recent nugget that was shared with me by a wonderful colleague, which is a new concept of being a solutionist. How do we be really focused on solutions in our role? And so I am coming to think of myself as a solutionist and want to bring all of us together around that concept of being in service of solutions and being solutionists.
00:38:59
Clarke Murphy: Love that and well said. Become a solutionist that loves what you do and brings everyone along for the ride. What a perfect summation of it all. Speaking of summaries, we've covered a lot of ground in our conversation today. First, leaders need to shift the question from how we're going to reduce our business impact on climate change to how we can reduce climate change's impact on our business. And that would help ensure sustainability is truly embedded in the core business strategy and business operations. Sophia's juggling visual is a perfect metaphor for how CEOs often operate the juggling a lot of plates to keep the business in motion. So instead of adding one more to the stack, how can we as sustainable leaders remove one of the plates so it's one less thing the CEO needs to worry about? And to do that, you need to have really high learning quotients or LQs.
The ability to continuously learn and to adapt to our changing business, to our physical environments is critical for leaders to navigate near constant change. That's the world we're in today. Sustainability is not a one size fits all challenge. It's unique in anything we've ever seen. The solutions each company puts in motion need to resonate with their products, their services, their brand, their customers. And finally, there's no single path for sure to becoming a CSO. If you can think in these innovative ways to think on the moonshot approach, we certainly need everyone to evolve so all the talents and skills are welcome, but we think longer term, we think action and we start the journey. We don't overanalyze what the first step should look like.
Kate and Sophia, thank you both again and again for taking the time to be with us on Redefiners. This was fantastic and incredibly energizing. We can make the difference. We got to just take the first step.
00:40:46
Kate Brandt: Thank you so much, Clarke and Sophia. It's been such a pleasure talking with you today. Thanks for having me on Redefiners.
00:40:51
Sophia Mendelsohn: Thank you, Kate. Thank you Clark. And of course, thank you to you for listening.
00:40:56
Nanaz Mohtashami: Thanks for joining us on this episode of Redefiners. For more dynamic insights from leaders from across industries and around the world, listen to Redefiners wherever you get your podcasts.
00:41:07
Clarke Murphy: And to learn more or get in contact with us, visit our website at russellreynolds. com. Find us on LinkedIn and follow us on Twitter at raonleadership. See you next time.
Do you have a question on leadership, career development, joining a board or other topics you'd like to ask one of our consultants? Well, now's your chance. Send us your question. Email us at redefiners@russellreynolds.com for an opportunity to have your question answered on the podcast by one of our experts. See you next time on Redefiners.
Clarke Murphy: Hello everybody, it's Clarke Murphy here and in honor of Climate Week, happening now in New York, we are re- releasing our most popular episode from season two. It features Chief Sustainability Officers, Sophia Mendelsohn and Kate Brandt. A really energizing episode. Please join us. Enjoy.
00:00:19
Sophia Mendelsohn: I don't want everyone gunning to be a professional sustainability practitioner. What we want is everyone gunning to bring sustainability into their professional career. If you're in policy or if you're an engineer, you're doing what you're trained to do, what you love, thinking about how the decisions you're making in the office will play out as a ripple effect through the community, through the ecosystem, and through the long game.
00:00:53
Nanaz Mohtashami: Welcome to Redefiners, a podcast designed for daring leaders who are changing what it means to lead in today's increasingly complex world. I'm Nanaz Mohtashami, a leadership advisor at Russell Reynolds Associates.
00:01:06
Clarke Murphy: And I'm Clarke Murphy, the former Chief Executive and also a Leadership Advisor. Nanaz and I have spent our careers exploring what works and what's next in the realm of leadership.
00:01:15
Nanaz Mohtashami: In each episode, we ask our guests steep and provocative questions about how they've challenged the norms and how they've redefined their organizations and ultimately themselves as leaders.
00:01:26
Clarke Murphy: Also, you can answer this one question, how are you redefining your leadership?
00:01:31
Nanaz Mohtashami: Perhaps the boldest question yet.
00:01:33
Clarke Murphy: Conversations that matter. Inspiration for us all, whether you're kicking off your career or crafting your legacy. Thanks for joining us. Let's dive in.
Hi everyone, and welcome to Redefiners. I'll be flying solo this week as Nanaz is on vacation and we're going to talk about sustainable leadership today. Sustainability has quickly risen to the top of everyone's agendas and leaders are saying, " What do I do? How do I do it? Who helps me do it?" I think of it as a barbell. At one end of the barbell are investors and the board of directors saying, " Hey, what are you doing?" At the other end of the barbell are the employees and the consumers saying, " Where do I want to work and what do I want to buy?" And both ends of the barbell are putting pressure on the middle of the bar. And there seems to be a divide between the talking and the doing when it comes to sustainability. Our research at Russell Reynolds Associates shows that 43% of C- suite executives say their organizations have a sustainable strategy that's being acted on.
Only 51% say their CEO is personally committed to advancing sustainability and that organizational progress has been made. Employees are even more skeptical as only 26% believe their organization has a clear sustainability strategy. So what do we need to do to move the needle on sustainability? Well, this theme is so powerful and so important. We've asked two guests to join us instead of one, and they are as well recognized on action and success around sustainable leadership as anyone else you'll hear from. I call them CEO whisperers, whispering about sustainability, the strategy and the action.
Before I introduce our guests, maybe it makes sense to give a quick definition in case some listeners don't know what a Chief Sustainability Officer or CSO does. Essentially, a CSO is a key leader when it comes to monitoring, measuring and reducing an organization's environmental footprint and impact, and in some situations literally help transform the company. No small task.
Our first guest is Kate Brandt, who is CSO at Google, where she leads sustainability across the firm's worldwide operations, products and supply chain. And prior to Google, Kate served as the first Chief Sustainability Officer of the US government in the Obama administration. Kate also serves on the boards of EVgo, BSR, Restore and the Corporate Eco Forum. Kate's joined by Sophia Mendelsohn, Chief Sustainability Officer and head of ESG at Cognizant.
Sophia has been leading corporate sustainability and ESG in the US and China for over a decade. Before joining Cognizant, she was CSO at JetBlue Airways and Head of Sustainability at Hayworth. She's a recipient of the US Environmental Protection Agency's Climate Leadership Award, serves on several boards and advisory councils. Both Kate and Sophia are featured in my book, Sustainable Leadership, which comes out on September 21st. Kate and Sophia, welcome to Redefiners.
00:04:28
Kate Brandt: Yes, well, so pleased to be with you and with Sophia, so thanks so much for having me today.
00:04:33
Sophia Mendelsohn: Likewise, thank you. It's an honor to be here with Kate.
00:04:37
Clarke Murphy: Let's get into it. Both of you came to your role as CSOs in different paths, different ways. So I'm curious, were you both always sustainable people and how did you get to become a CSO? Because when you all started there wasn't the term CSO. So Kate, love to ask you first, how did you come to this personally and professionally?
00:04:54
Kate Brandt: I love starting with the origin story and it is always so interesting to hear how people answer this question. So for me, my passion and interest in the environment and climate and conservation is something I've cared about for as long as I can remember. I had the great privilege of growing up in a really beautiful part of the natural world. I grew up on the coast in Northern California in a little beach town called Meir Beach that's surrounded by national and state parkland. So I really grew up outside playing in the tide pools and in the redwood forests, and from a very early age felt a really deep connection to the national world and to conservation. So this has always been a topic that I've had a personal interest and passion for.
And during my career, I came at this work more through the national security side of the house. So my academic background is in international relations, and I spent time early in my career at the Pentagon working on energy security and climate security. So over time I've been able to really bring together my personal interests in conservation and the natural world as well as my professional grounding or in national security and energy security and pull it all together into this fantastic role that we get to have these days called the CSO.
00:06:09
Clarke Murphy: So really the best of both worlds. Personal and professional, both come together. Sophia, you came to the CSO role in a very different way. Tell us about that.
00:06:17
Sophia Mendelsohn: Sure. Well, since Kate told a story about a really beautiful part of the natural world, I'll tell a story about a really productive, if not necessarily naturally beautiful part of the world. So I spent years of my career in China and working in export manufacturing in China, really convinced me on a deep personal level that consumer demand could and should reshape markets. And if we wanted to get this concept of sustainability into the global economy and we wanted to drive businesses towards a future that considered natural resources, we would need to kickstart that demand in the markets with consumers.
And since I was in manufacturing, I was thinking about materials and engineering and how companies would need to figure out different ways to make products, to package products even before they then needed to redefine how they sold them to the market. But I really fell in love with this idea of a free market solution. And I guess if you can call a passion for free market solutions, a personal passion, then it's really driven from there.
00:07:33
Clarke Murphy: Well, it's similar. Adina Friedman in the book, we've all worked on together, her forward is saying part of open and free markets is being able to put capital where the markets want it, and that's where sustainability is taking markets today. It's one of the reasons she's so passionate about this as well.
Okay. So let's go with this theme of finding your passions or your passions finding you. In each podcast we ask our guests about their Redefiner moments that help them become the leader or person they are today. I'm curious whether there was a pivotal moment in your careers that redefined or shaped your thinking about being a sustainable leader. Kate?
00:08:08
Kate Brandt: I think one of the greatest defining roles in my career was when President Obama got elected in 2008. So I had the privilege of working on his campaign, and so many people went to Washington right after the election to find if there was an opportunity for me to contribute and to serve. And I am and was very inspired by President Obama for many reasons, but one of them was his commitment to sustainability and particularly climate change. And I had the great privilege of at the transition team and then in the very early days in 2009 at the White House joining his climate and energy team. And so that to me, I think is still one of the most defining moments for me in my career.
00:08:51
Clarke Murphy: I can only imagine. That's redefining for sure. Sophia, was there a redefining moment for you that inspired you on your journey?
00:09:00
Sophia Mendelsohn: Yeah, well, I'll keep going with the origin story as Kate so accurately called it and I was in a job interview, which was a really pivotal interview for me. And the interviewee asked, " So if you get this job, how are you going to reduce our impact on climate change?" And I said, " That's the wrong question." Your first question should be, how can we reduce climate change's impact on our business? Because answering that question will require you to know what elements of your value chain and strategy are most at risk, and knowing that will provide the business case to get back to your original question, what can I do? What can my brand do? What can my CEO office do?
And I looked over at my future boss's face from across the room, and I realized that moment in time that Kate was talking about when she was in DC when I was in this interview was an opportunity for sustainability practitioners to really redefine the business dialogue on this topic from altruism to practicality. And I'm sure my past boss will be flattered to know that he was my president Obama.
00:10:12
Clarke Murphy: Yeah, there you go. And love the comparison to Kate's redefining moment. Both of you focus on how sustainability impacts the overall business. And you're right, Sophia, companies are more likely to change when they can identify what parts of their business are most at risk due to climate change. I got to tell you, my moment was at home and having four young children probably 15 years ago say, " What are we recycling? Why are we driving this big car? What are you doing about it, dad?" And then you start to link it to our business and being a leadership business, what are we doing to help leaders lead sustainably?
And so we had to figure out how to do that. Sophia, you worked for an airline where you were the first to issue an ESG report aligned to SASB standards. You were the first to announce domestic carbon neutrality. And Kate, you were the first CSO for the United States government, but neither of you had a playbook to work from. There were no rockstar CSOs to idolize when we were kids. So how do you figure out what to do, what to prioritize, how do you create the playbook?
00:11:18
Sophia Mendelsohn: It really start with prioritizing knowing the business, because if you know the business and if you know the CEO's core strategic elements, then you can wrap your sustainability program around those. You can consistently prove that the concept of sustainability is delivering value by framing it for the C- suite, by framing it for the board in terms of their objectives.
And the role that Kate and I do every day, Kate, if I may go out on a limb for both of us, is making sure that the dual objectives are being served at the same time. That I'm constantly creating value for the business by serving that strategy as well as making sure that I have my eye on the long- term ball and that while I may have coworkers who need to live and breathe by the quarter, the most privileged part of a Chief Sustainability Officer's position is that they're allowed to look out year to year, five year, 15 years, 30 years.
00:12:21
Kate Brandt: Yeah, very much resonate with everything you said, Sophia. Absolutely, and I think I would just add on, I've had this privilege, and as you point out Clark, this role hasn't existed for a long time so there isn't this generation of us who are going to be the firsts in many instances. And I think just to build on what Sophia said, a couple of other things that I've always focused on is in many organizations, of course this isn't going to be true across the board, the seeds have been planted and there has been work done in some aspects for a long time. And there's also been things that have been done that haven't worked for various reasons. And so I've also really always tried to come into these roles humbly to understand where is the organization, where have we come from, where has things worked? What are the gaps, what are the risks? And to really stand on the shoulders of all the work that has come before.
So I think that's very much been for me, a personal orientation in both of these roles. And then I would also just say too, I think that we have the privilege of coming into organizations, both of us that have had an interest in this or an opportunity to lead or drive change in some way. And that's very much also been my orientation, both doing this work for the federal government, but also for Google, where are we uniquely positioned to lead. The US Federal government is the single largest user of energy in the world. That were very distinct ways that I felt we could lead through setting our own greenhouse gas reduction targets through engaging our supply chain. And then similarly at Google, we are a technology company. We love to solve hard problems. So for us, it's really been where we uniquely positioned to lead through our technology, through our core products. So that's also been really front and center for me.
00:14:05
Clarke Murphy: Let's pull on that a little bit. Kate. You talk about not having all the answers and tackling hard problems. And one of the things we've talked about is CSOs don't just have high IQs, even EQs, but what they really believe is they have LQ or learning quotient, this ability to keep learning as an individual or a culture. Can you tell me a little bit about a time when you've had to adapt or pivot in this role to get something done or handle the deviation from the plan and say, " Oh my God, I got to figure this out because we got to have a whole different approach. We got to take this a different place." That's not taught in business school. How do you create the pivot in a whole new world?
00:14:45
Sophia Mendelsohn: Yeah, when was the last time we had to pivot, five minutes ago? The last meeting before this podcast?
00:14:52
Clarke Murphy: Reality hits. Yeah.
00:14:54
Sophia Mendelsohn: Yes. To tell a story, I have the privilege of running a decade old volunteering program at Cognizant. This program has served over 300,000 associates over its lifetime. Cognizant having some more than 350, 000 employees at any given moment in time. And this entire platform was really fueled by passion, which made it a great tool for our associate base, but it wasn't feeding into our clients, into our investors, into what our chief marketing officer needed. So what I had to do was pivot from a really passion driven, personally oriented platform to one that was focused on exactly as Kate said, what our company does best. And we are both working for technology companies here, which means we need to look at the unique and specific technology skills, knowledge tools we have.
So I took turning a tanker slowly, but with determination, refocusing some 300,000 people's passion on training for business skills and tech skills. And what that does is plug this program into tech company's biggest community challenges, which is training, skilling and retaining.
00:16:16
Clarke Murphy: Yeah. Great visual and couldn't agree more. You're talking about turning a tankers spot on for so many organizations today. Kate, what are your thoughts about the pivot?
00:16:26
Kate Brandt: Very much resonate, Sophia, with your opening comment on when are we not doing this? That's what makes these roles exciting and hard and why I love this concept that you all have introduced about the LQ. I think we need it in spades. So many examples, but I think one I will pick on is a lot of our orientation in our program at Google is around not only how do we lead by example in our own operations and our value chain with targets like net- zero by 2030, but also as I was sharing, what is the role of our technology in driving change in the world and enabling partners and enabling everyone to take action. And in that partners area of our work, we've done wonderful deep technical work for many years through our geo team. That's the part of the business that brings you Google Maps, but also things like Google Earth and Google Earth Engine.
And Google Earth Engine is an incredible tool that's over a decade old that includes over 30 years of Landsat imagery and data. So it enables you to see change on the Earth's surface over time in any given place. So one of the most poignant and devastating things you can do when you go to Earth Engine is you can zoom in on Lake Mead and you can see here's Las Vegas exploding over here and here's Lake Mead shrinking and disappearing over here. And there's many, many examples of this that are showing all of the negative impacts we've had on the planet, but there's bright spots too. You can see renewable energy emerging, you can see forests actually being replanted. So really powerful tool, but that was built for a very technical audience utilized by scientists primarily and offered for free in the way that we have the privilege of doing with so many of our products at Google.
But we wanted to figure out how do we pivot? And really not a pivot because it will still exist in that current format, but how do we expand this tool and make it much more useful to business who also would really benefit from these insights? And so there was a long- term partnership between our geo team and our cloud team that I've been engaged in to think about how do we actually make this generally available to Google's cloud customers? So this isn't just something that's used by a few academics but is actually used by businesses. And our lighthouse customer was Unilever who used this tool to deeply look into their palm oil supply chain.
And we just announced a couple of weeks ago this general availability. So this was a really interesting example of a journey that we are on and I hope a lot of business owners are on right now of thinking about how do you put sustainability core to your products, core to your value proposition for your customers? And so this was I think a really good example of where we needed to both pivot, but just expand our aperture and our thinking,
00:19:08
Clarke Murphy: Expanding the aperture. I love that term. I'm going to take that one home with me, I have to say. Sometimes the learning is to reinvent a product or a process or a strategy. Other times it's more a matter of changing our viewpoint to realize what's possible, change your own aperture. In the book, we talk about two kinds of executives. The first is what we call moon shotters. They go for big, bold, audacious thinking where they make a commitment to action without having all the answers.
And then there's what I call the 100 percenters, those that want every single detail, every single piece of data before they do anything. And guess what? Most of them never get going. So moonshotters, commit and go. 100 percenters, analyze. Kate, when you think about some of the moonshots that Google's taken on like Tidal, which is doing underwater cameras and understanding what's actually going on in the oceans real time, I'd be curious, can we keep going on this concept of moonshots?
00:20:07
Kate Brandt: Well, we absolutely need our moonshotters. And as you've pointed out, this has certainly been a focus for us at Google for many years. We even have formally known as Google X now X, which is our moonshot lab, which is where projects like Tidal come from. And I think that also it's important to not only have parts of the business that have that dedicated space, but also to bring that in to the core of our strategy. And this has very much been something that we've thought about for a long time as we think about sustainability at Google. What are our risks, what are our opportunities? But really coming back to the point I made earlier, where are we uniquely positioned to lead? Where are we uniquely positioned to drive value and to drive change? And so I think we have very much taken that lens and we haven't been afraid to set goals when we don't always know exactly how we're going to get there.
If I look back to 2012, this predates my time at the company, Google committed to 100% renewable energy, and that now sounds like a fairly normal corporate target. Back then, no one knew how to do this. Their PPAs barely existed if you weren't a utility. But we said, " Look, it is absolutely critical that companies drive greater clean energy on grids that we set this a target knowing we don't know exactly how to get there." And we went for it and five years later we were actually able to achieve it. But that was very much a moonshot for us then. And our new target that we refer to as a moonshot, because it absolutely is 24/ 7 carbon free energy.
We've said, " And by the way, 100% renewable energy is a signpost on that journey." Where we really need to get to is full decarbonization of grids. That's not just Google's goal. That needs to be our collective goal. So yes, moonshots critical piece of the conversation from my point of view.
00:21:46
Clarke Murphy: Sophia, your reaction to big bold commitments?
00:21:50
Sophia Mendelsohn: So I have worked both for a consumer oriented company with incredible brand value, and that's a household name and for a business to business company, and I will tell you Clark, it is equally hard in both, but there is, I just wanted to get a smile out of Kate. There is a path through for both B2B and B2C, and that's data, right? Google is producing a lot of that data, but so are your consumer researchers. So is your branding office, so is your HR office, and part of the role of the Chief Sustainability Officer is to be able to look at data beyond the quarter. So you're constantly driving towards running the business for the foreseeable future and its long- term value proposition.
And so you're pulling in data from all these different places, particularly to incredibly important elements of data, the climate change data, a lot of which can come from Google, its geographical products, and data sets as well as shifting consumer preferences. And these two data sets together make the full story. One dataset is the Earth and what it's telling you about the Earth you have to run your business on. And one dataset is the human response to that and what your consumers and clients are going to want in the future. These two data sets are interlocking. The more we see manifestation of the climate crisis, the more we're going to see a shift in consumer preferences.
00:23:29
Clarke Murphy: I love the interconnections there. You've got the moonshot, but you can be driven by data to fulfill the big commitment, but you can't lead and accomplish a moonshot all alone. I think you need the board, you need the CEO to drive a top- down approach so that all the stakeholders are involved. With that you need to be what I call a CEO whisperer, which both of you do quite well and are well known for it. Sophia, what's your advice on others how to forge this relationship at the top of the agenda with the CEO?
00:24:01
Sophia Mendelsohn: Sure. Well, I'm imagining my CEO listening to this podcast right now. So I'll tell him that I think of him as a juggler. He's standing, he's bouncing on a ball on one foot, juggling plates and cups at the same time. He's thinking about clients, he's thinking about investors, he's thinking about associates, he's thinking about the history of the company and the future of the company. And what I always try and do is be there for him to throw me a plate to take off his juggling routine rather than throw a plate to him to add.
00:24:34
Clarke Murphy: Love that.
00:24:35
Sophia Mendelsohn: And my focus really on engaging the CEO's office on sustainability is making sure that the CEO and his or her office believes that I understand their mission and their stress points. And if I can prove that, then I've earned my license to ask them to listen to me.
00:24:55
Kate Brandt: Yeah.
00:24:55
Clarke Murphy: Absolutely. I think every CEO would appreciate your point about trying to remove a plate from their juggling versus adding another one. But if we think about sustainability as a benefit and as an operational advantage, it shouldn't be just one more thing for the CEO or the board to worry about. Kate, we're going to throw the plate to you now. How do you juggle this one?
00:25:17
Kate Brandt: I love that image you just painted, Sophia. So I will say I am very privileged and not all CSOs have this, which is to say that sustainability has been a core value to Google since our founding. Our founding CEOs have cared about it deeply, and it's always been core both for our leadership and for our employees. And so I have the privilege of having the opportunity to work with our CEO, Sundar and his team and many other leaders across the company.
And what we really think about is a lot of the themes I've brought up before is how do we lead at Google, but also how do we support our partners? How do we enable everyone? And I think that vision is critical and unifying for us. It speaks to how we think of ourselves as a company, our core mission of organizing the world's information and make it universally accessible and useful, how we want to think about the helpfulness of our products. And so really for me, it's about continuing that longstanding dialogue and how we've thought about sustainability strategically at Google and placing it at the core of the role of our business in the world and how we want to show up for our users.
00:26:32
Clarke Murphy: I'd love it. I think the most successful sustainable leaders say, " Sustainability is the strategy of the company, not something separate." And that's how you drive vision and strategy and ultimately impact for the business, for your partners, for your supply chain. It's got to be a strategic imperative that's fully integrated, everybody on board, everyone moving in the same direction.
00:26:56
Sophia Mendelsohn: I'll add a story from my experience at Cognizant on how the CEO and Chief Sustainability Officer can really be thought partners in what the brand and the company adds to the solution. So at Cognizant, our tagline is intuition engineered. And the way we think about it is that the intuitive part is that business operates within a community, within society, within an interwoven web of natural resources, climate people, and that the solution to the problems that creates or presents need to be engineered. And a common theme you'll hear in Kate's, and my answer is, what does my company uniquely bring to the table? Obviously in this case of Google and Cognizant it's technology and tech solutions. That's the engineering part of these solutions from renewable energy to STEM education.
And I think the same goes for the relationship with the CEO. What can your CEO uniquely bring to the table. At Cognizant, our CEO is leading up to some 400,000 employees at a time. And when he speaks about sustainability and its integration into what Cognizant delivers for its clients, you have almost half a million people immediately understanding that sustainability is intuitive to the business case.
00:28:24
Clarke Murphy: Almost half a million people, I'd call that impact. Imagine the impact of every CEO, every leader integrated sustainability into their business vision and strategy like that. That's a powerful journey. So you both are incredibly visible. You've been on panels together, you've done all sorts of things together, and people say, " Okay, they're at the top, but how can I ever have that impact?" To those just beginning, and as you reflect on your career, Kate, what's your advice to someone who's 25 or 28 years old? What do you say to them about this is the path I want to take? What's the advice, what to do next, and to build from?
00:28:59
Kate Brandt: The thing that I often have the opportunity of speaking with folks early in their careers, I'm sure you both do as well, who are interested in getting on this path. And the number one thing I always say to them is there is not one path to these roles. And I think that's actually a really good thing because given the breadth and depth required to do this work, we need people with really varied skill sets. And I've had the privilege of working with sustainability leaders who come from engineering backgrounds, who come from business backgrounds, who come from policy backgrounds. And I think they're all served by that experience. And in fact, I think the thing that has served me the best is coming from a diverse background of having worked in the public and private sectors, having had different opportunities to work on these very complex systems' level challenges and then bringing that into these roles.
So that's often what I will tell young people that I don't think there's one straight line and that I think that's really positive and that following a career of impact that helps you to build your toolkit, helps you to develop a point of view on how you can best bring your talents and skills to drive positive change in the world. I think that's the great place to begin.
00:30:10
Clarke Murphy: Absolutely. Countless studies have shown that diversity is the engine for increased innovation and productivity. So it's no surprise having people with diverse backgrounds and skillsets and sustainability brings fresh ideas in thinking. Sophia, what advice would you give yourself when you were starting out?
00:30:28
Sophia Mendelsohn: I'm curious for Kate's reaction. Sometimes Kate, I feel the Chief Sustainability Officer is constantly trying to give their job away. They're constantly trying to work themselves out of a job. And I give this to young people because I don't want everyone gunning to be a professional sustainability practitioner. What we want is everyone gunning to bring sustainability into their professional career. So that, as Kate said, if you're in policy or if you're an engineer, you're doing what you're trained to do, what you love, thinking about how the decisions you're making in the office will play out as a ripple effect through the community, through the ecosystem, and through the long game.
And the second thing I say is buckle up. It's a wild ride. It may feel moonshots and long- term goals and getting to work on your passion, and it is, but it's also the day- to- day grind of constantly testing yourself and your sustainability strategy to make sure you are proving the relevance of long- term value on a day- to- day basis.
00:31:47
Clarke Murphy: Just to that point, your point about working yourself out of a job, the real nexus behind this book is we need everyone ultimately to become a sustainable leader, not to have a CSO appointed inside a company. So I'm 100% with you about integration and skillset for sure, but this has to be everybody on board thinking and acting in new ways and not just one person trying to lead everything. It's nearly impossible. That's the sustainable leadership opportunity.
So last question for you both. Climate Week in New York City is coming up, where you've got business, government, climate, community, UN General Assembly, regulators, investors all coming together. Partnerships seem to define success and sustainability, but it's trick, it's hard, but you all have really been good at it. What advice do you have for ensuring partnerships or for someone to figure out with whom to partner to be more successful around sustainability? Kate, how do you look at partnerships?
00:32:44
Kate Brandt: Partnerships are absolutely critical. All of these systems challenges are larger than any one business or even any one large entity like the US federal government. And partnerships are how we're going to drive the change, how we're going to find the unlocks. We've had some very successful examples of partnerships in this space and we have been very choosy about when to enter into partnerships because there's so much opportunity. But I think you really need the ingredients of ambition and a shared level of ambition as well as complementarity that you also really want to have partners that can compliment one another on the journey. So just a couple of examples I would give. One is the Clean Energy Buyers Alliance, CEBA. This is an organization that Google's been a part of for many years and goes back to what I was sharing earlier about our commitment to 100% renewable energy back in 2012.
There weren't a lot of companies to be partnering with back then. Now there are, but we need to be working together. And so this is an alliance of nearly 300 companies that have come together around this vision for achieving a 90% carbon- free US electricity system by 2030. Incredibly powerful from showing demand, sharing best practices, partnering on policy change and influence. So this has been a really critical group.
And then more recently we came together in an area that is much more nascent, which is the space of carbon removals. And we all believe we need to reduce global emissions as much as possible, but what science shows us is we absolutely also need to be removing carbon from the atmosphere. And so we came together with currently a smaller group of companies than we have today in CEBA with Shopify and Meta and McKinsey and Stripe. And we said, " We're coming together to put together an advanced market commitment of nearly billion dollars around carbon removals to really create certainty and to say, " If you built it, we will buy it.""
And that's again, I think a place where that shared ambition, that shared goal was really critical and we're hoping that many others will join us. But those are a couple examples where I think partnership has worked well based on those ingredients.
00:34:54
Clarke Murphy: Those are incredibly powerful partnerships. That's exactly what people want to understand. Sophia, your thoughts?
00:35:01
Sophia Mendelsohn: I'll keep pulling on the thread that Kate just laid out and say that if we are going to find systemic changes for the good of us all through business, we need to pick the right NGO partners. And technology companies like Google and Cognizant have shown that when you do that, you can move mountains. So take STEM education, technology skilling, made when we technology companies looked at some of our largest challenges, we knew that we could both create knowledge and skill sets for this while creating jobs in the United States and other countries creating upward economic mobility, especially for genders and ethnicities that have been underprivileged.
And you've seen a complete shift in that training and skilling largely driven by this combination of business and society coming together. What Kate said particularly about partnerships around sequestration is something I think we should spend just a little bit of time on this podcast because it is going to take an ecosystem of partnerships and technology solutions to get the numbers to where we need them to be on climate change. And that could include technology that supports high quality carbon offsets or reliable carbon offset market, which of course feeds directly into high quality carbon sequestration, all enabled by technology. And that is going to unleash a new ecosystem of demand for skilling training and jobs. And if we can do it with STEM education, I believe we can do it with climate, technology and education.
00:36:37
Clarke Murphy: Well, I can speak from experience that Russell Reynolds Associates partnership with United Nations Global Compact, UNGC, it was the spark that lit the flame in our firm to improve the way the world is led by having more sustainable leaders identified, developed, and now parts of CEO succession. And we didn't agree on everything on either side, and ultimately we worked it through. Great partnerships come from flexibility and patience, and that's why we're sitting on a podcast right now having this talk, was UNGC and the spark for our flame.
00:37:08
Kate Brandt: Yes.
00:37:10
Clarke Murphy: Listen, we always end Redefiners podcast here with some rapid fire questions. Sophia, first question, what's your favorite way to decompress from a long day of work.
00:37:20
Sophia Mendelsohn: Reading climate science. I'm sorry. It's true.
00:37:23
Clarke Murphy: Okay, but I think you deserve probably to decompress a little bit more than that. Kate, if you could immediately learn a new skill or talent, what would it be you would learn?
00:37:35
Kate Brandt: Tree planting.
00:37:37
Clarke Murphy: Love it. Okay, we got a theme going here. Sophia, at what age did you take your first big risk and what was it?
00:37:43
Sophia Mendelsohn: Oh, 19. I took all my babysitting money and bought a one- way ticket to China.
00:37:50
Clarke Murphy: A one- way ticket. Well, that's commitment to say the least. Okay, Kate, next question. Who is your inspiration and why?
00:37:58
Kate Brandt: I've talked about President Obama, but I will name another great leader, Ray Mavis, who was the Secretary of the Navy when I worked at the Pentagon. Just incredible inspirational leader for me.
00:38:08
Clarke Murphy: And for you both. Final question is, what's the best piece of advice you've ever heard? Sophia?
00:38:13
Sophia Mendelsohn: Sure. It was a me mocking that quote, " Do what you love and you won't work a day in your life." It said, " Do what you love and you'll work every day over time." I think Kate, again, if I may speak for us, we're doing what I love. We're working it into the system and taking others along on the ride.
00:38:34
Kate Brandt: Love that. I will add in a recent nugget that was shared with me by a wonderful colleague, which is a new concept of being a solutionist. How do we be really focused on solutions in our role? And so I am coming to think of myself as a solutionist and want to bring all of us together around that concept of being in service of solutions and being solutionists.
00:38:59
Clarke Murphy: Love that and well said. Become a solutionist that loves what you do and brings everyone along for the ride. What a perfect summation of it all. Speaking of summaries, we've covered a lot of ground in our conversation today. First, leaders need to shift the question from how we're going to reduce our business impact on climate change to how we can reduce climate change's impact on our business. And that would help ensure sustainability is truly embedded in the core business strategy and business operations. Sophia's juggling visual is a perfect metaphor for how CEOs often operate the juggling a lot of plates to keep the business in motion. So instead of adding one more to the stack, how can we as sustainable leaders remove one of the plates so it's one less thing the CEO needs to worry about? And to do that, you need to have really high learning quotients or LQs.
The ability to continuously learn and to adapt to our changing business, to our physical environments is critical for leaders to navigate near constant change. That's the world we're in today. Sustainability is not a one size fits all challenge. It's unique in anything we've ever seen. The solutions each company puts in motion need to resonate with their products, their services, their brand, their customers. And finally, there's no single path for sure to becoming a CSO. If you can think in these innovative ways to think on the moonshot approach, we certainly need everyone to evolve so all the talents and skills are welcome, but we think longer term, we think action and we start the journey. We don't overanalyze what the first step should look like.
Kate and Sophia, thank you both again and again for taking the time to be with us on Redefiners. This was fantastic and incredibly energizing. We can make the difference. We got to just take the first step.
00:40:46
Kate Brandt: Thank you so much, Clarke and Sophia. It's been such a pleasure talking with you today. Thanks for having me on Redefiners.
00:40:51
Sophia Mendelsohn: Thank you, Kate. Thank you Clark. And of course, thank you to you for listening.
00:40:56
Nanaz Mohtashami: Thanks for joining us on this episode of Redefiners. For more dynamic insights from leaders from across industries and around the world, listen to Redefiners wherever you get your podcasts.
00:41:07
Clarke Murphy: And to learn more or get in contact with us, visit our website at russellreynolds. com. Find us on LinkedIn and follow us on Twitter at raonleadership. See you next time.
Do you have a question on leadership, career development, joining a board or other topics you'd like to ask one of our consultants? Well, now's your chance. Send us your question. Email us at redefiners@russellreynolds.com for an opportunity to have your question answered on the podcast by one of our experts. See you next time on Redefiners.
