Erik Distler - VP, Head of Sustainability at AEG
Sustainable Nation
Erik Distler is responsible for overseeing AEG Sustainability, the organization’s corporate sustainability program. In this capacity, he focuses on global strategies and tactics that address operational impacts and capture and measure data across key environmental metrics, such as greenhouse gas emissions, water consumption, and waste reduction. He also supports AEG’s global business units in the implementation and execution of sustainability initiatives, manages external partnerships related to sustainability, facilitates the sharing of best practices, and ensures that sustainability is a...
info_outline
Ellen Jackowski - Chief Sustainability Officer and EVP at Mastercard
Sustainable Nation
Ellen is spearheading the integration of Mastercard's Environmental, Social and Governance (ESG) strategy into the organization. As part of this work, she is driving climate leadership for Mastercard-wide programs and commitments, such as reaching net-zero emissions by 2040, and helping accelerate the company’s impact in climate action initiatives like Priceless Planet Coalition. Mastercard’s ESG efforts, established more than a decade ago, are rooted in a belief of doing well by doing good in order to have true impact and enable both people and the planet to thrive. Previously, Ellen...
info_outline
Jonah Smith - Vice President, Environmental Social Governance Strategy and Programs at IBM
Sustainable Nation
Jonah Smith joined IBM in 2023 as Vice President, Environmental Social Governance Strategy and Programs. In addition to leading global ESG strategy, goals, stakeholder engagement, reporting and governance, Jonah’s responsibilities also entail the development and implementation of environmental social innovation programs such as the IBM Sustainability Accelerator. Prior to IBM, Jonah led ESG at Kraft Heinz as its Global Head of Environmental Social Governance & President of the Kraft Heinz Foundation. Prior to Kraft Heinz Jonah held similar roles at Grainger and...
info_outline
Allison Jordan - Executive Director at California Sustainable Winegrowing Alliance, Vice President, Environmental Affairs at Wine Institute
Sustainable Nation
Allison Jordan joined Wine Institute and the California Sustainable Winegrowing Alliance (CSWA) in 2003, shortly after the publication of the California Code of Sustainable Winegrowing. Since 2007, she has served as the Executive Director of the Alliance and Vice President, Environmental Affairs for Wine Institute. Previously, she was a Senior Associate at SureHarvest and Vice President and Executive Director of Resource Renewal Institute. Jordan holds a master of Public Policy from the Goldman School at UC Berkeley and a Psychology bachelor's degree from Allegheny College, a Certificate in...
info_outline
Marissa McInnis - Senior Director, Global Sustainability at Verizon
Sustainable Nation
Marissa is responsible for overseeing the continued evolution and implementation of Verizon’s Sustainability Strategy as well as its enterprise wide relationships across its sustainability portfolio. She focuses on operationalizing Verizon’s internal and external commitments while tracking its progress across the enterprise to ensure holistic management in the areas of sustainability and driving profitable growth. Prior to joining Verizon, Marissa was with the Department of Defense in Washington DC, leading Climate Policy and Interagency engagement. She served as the climate policy...
info_outline
Todd Brady - Chief Sustainability Officer and Vice President of Community Relations and Sustainable Operations at Intel
Sustainable Nation
Todd Brady is the Chief Sustainability Officer for Intel Corporation, and Vice President of Community Relations & Sustainable Operations. As Chief Sustainability Officer, he leads Intel’s global sustainability initiatives including climate, energy, water, green buildings and circular economy. Currently, Todd’s organization is focused on achieving Intel’s ambitious 2030 sustainability goals and commitment to achieve net zero greenhouse gas emissions in Intel’s global operations by 2040. Todd’s Community Relations teams oversee local stakeholder engagement, community relations,...
info_outline
Erin Hiatt - Vice President, Corporate Social Responsibility at RILA
Sustainable Nation
Erin is the lead for RILA’s ESG and corporate responsibility portfolio, encompassing its Diversity Equity & Inclusion, Sustainability, and Responsible Sourcing Committees, and ESG engagement activities. She organizes educational content and convenes and facilitates benchmarking discussions, resource development, and stakeholder engagement for corporate retail issue leads in each of these areas. Erin has been with RILA since 2012, serving in a variety of roles supporting and leading the association’s CSR communities. Erin serves on the International Sustainable Standards Board’s...
info_outline
Derek Young - Vice President ESG at CBL Properties
Sustainable Nation
Derek Young is an ESG, CSR, sustainability, and communications professional with over 25 years of experience. He is recognized as a thought leader capable of working across industries, analyzing and determining needs and opportunities for risk reduction, value creation, and building and delivering strategic ESG, CSR, Sustainability programs, messaging and branding campaigns, and community and stakeholder engagement efforts. Derek has led ESG consulting for Summit Strategy Group as well as served as the in-house CSR/Sustainability leader for a number of companies, including TGI Fridays, FedEx...
info_outline
Norman Vossschulte - Director of Fan Experience & Sustainability at the Philadelphia Eagles
Sustainable Nation
Norman Vossschulte is originally from Berlin, Germany. His culturally rich background included ten years living abroad in Africa, Iraq and Spain before moving back to Germany to finish High School and College. He studied Biology and Physical Science before deciding to move to New York City in 1996 to attend the Herbert Berghof Institute for Fine Theatre Arts and Drama. Norman’s work experience is as eclectic as his upbringing. He has worked in the hotel industry, the non-profit industry, as well as both sports and entertainment industries. 25 years of practicing customer and client...
info_outline
Thomas Stanchak - Director of Sustainability at Stoneweg US
Sustainable Nation
Thomas Stanchak is a seasoned Commercial Real Estate professional with over 20 years of diverse experience. He began his career with his current employer, Stoneweg US in 2017 as an Asset Manager, where he was responsible for overseeing operations, maximizing occupancy, and maintaining budgets for 17 assets in the Midwest region. In 2019, he was promoted to Senior Asset Manager assuming operational responsibility for more than 50% of total AUMs; where his operational leadership was hugely impactful in Stoneweg US’ ability to deliver healthy returns to its investors that year. In 2020, Tom...
info_outlineCamille Richard is Head of Sustainability at Back Market, the leading marketplace dedicated to refurbished devices and reducing electronics’ negative impact on the environment. She has led the company to become a Mission-Driven Company in 2022 and a B Corp-certified company in 2023. Working in the environmental sector for 10 years, prior to Back Market Camille was Sustainable Performance Manager for Suez, a waste and water recycling company, in Brazil, Mexico, and France. She received in 2021 the Hub35 Sustainable Award from the Hub Institute.
Camille Joins Sustainable Nation to Discuss:
- How Back Market ensures quality of refurbishers
- How Back Market communicates and advocates for the Right to Repair movement
- Efforts to engage suppliers in advancing their sustainability efforts
- Advice and recommendations for sustainability leaders
Camille’s Final Five Question Responses:
What is one piece of advice you would give other sustainability professionals that might help them in their careers?
Be pragmatic and patient. When you work in the sustainability department of a company, you may understand that not everybody in the company is as mature as you wish on this topic. Sometimes you need to be ready to take one step backward today to be able to take two steps forward in a year. So it's something that you have to have in mind all the time, and it's not because you have to compromise at some point or that your project is not going to come out at some point. I would say as well to push sustainability strategy as an efficiency factor in the company. As a sustainability professional, working corporate, you are the defender of a long-term vision and it's not always the easy way, but nine times out of ten adopting sustainable practices leads to reduced cost and risks in the company. So you have to be patient and pragmatic and keep pushing it like it's actually what it is, a way to be more efficient and to last longer as a company.
What are you most excited about right now in the world of sustainability?
It's almost like a rising movement around the recognition of the contributions of certain companies like us to the fight against climate change. The recognition of scope four to avoid emissions like we mentioned a bit earlier today. There is more and more investor interest in it, saying that the value of the company is not only about money, but it's also about the impact it's actually generating. So I am very excited to see what is going to happen in the next month and years about that.
What is one book you would recommend sustainability leaders read?
I would say Grow the Pie from Alex Edmond. The idea of the book is to say that creating value is not only about choosing between financial value and the planet and the people, and that a successful company is the one that actually manages to grow the pie for all its stakeholders. A responsible business is actually one that innovates to last longer. I really liked this idea about this book.
What are some of your favorite resources or tools that really help you in your work?
A tool that has helped me a lot and I wish I had known about it when I started at Back Market it's a B Corp self-assessment. It's not a resource per se, but it's a really good tool to run a diagnosis of where you are at in terms of sustainability in your company. What are your strengths? What are your actual weaknesses and what are your progress margins? I would recommend to anyone that wants to start a sustainability approach in their company to run a self-assessment on B Corp. I would say as well, I read a lot of the strategy from the French Agency for Environment that I was mentioning before, because recently they had made a really good one about carbon neutrality that was super interesting. And I look very closely as well as a UN report on waste because of course it's very close to our topic, but I would say mostly the better source of information and good practices for me is to talk with my peers in other companies. Sustainability teams are never huge teams. So it's always very interesting to talk about what you are doing, what are the best practices with people doing your job, but in other companies. So you can actually grab a lot of information and it's super interesting.
Where can our listeners go to learn more about you and the work being done at Back Market?
We are about to launch our corporate website which we are going to feed with a lot of information, but it's not online yet. So I would recommend to follow me on LinkedIn. I'm trying to post regularly. And you can go on our website backmarket.com where we have some information about the company as well.