Meghan Weinman - Vice President of Sustainability at SSA Marine

Meghan Weinman joined Carrix and SSA Marine in 2024 as Vice President of Sustainability. She is an industry leader across the sustainability, transportation, and environment sectors and has worked throughout North America and internationally, including Latin America, Asia, the Middle East, and Africa. 

Prior to joining Carrix and SSA Marine, Ms. Weinman was a Managing Director at Edison Energy, leading the Transportation Electrification and Clean Energy Practice. She has also served in roles in management, engineering, and consulting across sustainability and built infrastructure.

Ms. Weinman has served as a mentor for the Clean Tech Alliance, an industry advisor at Kellogg School of Management, and is also a frequent speaker on topics relating to sustainability, transportation, clean energy transition, climate, and women in leadership.

Meghan Joins Sustainable Nation to Discuss:

• The scope of sustainability at SSA Marine and 2030 targets
• Decarbonization strategies including renewable energy sourcing
• Renewable diesel and hydrogen fuel options
• Advice and recommendations for sustainability professionals

Meghan’s Final Five Questions Responses:

What is one piece of advice you would give to other sustainability professionals that might help them in their careers?

Taking on different roles that strengthen understanding of the overall business is always something that would benefit sustainability. I started out in engineering, I went to business school, I'm now in my role today. That has been hugely helpful to understand different parts and wearing different hats and really being able to think cross functionally. With that, networking with other professionals not only in your industry, but adjacent industries. I always learn things when I talk to others in their roles. I had lunch with one of my colleagues who's at Alaska Airlines and we got to swap stories about how they're handling waste management. That was really helpful. Lastly, being a collaborative partner and really looking at how you can solve problems for stakeholders internally always is a way that can benefit not only sustainability, but the business overall. 

What are you most excited about right now in the world of sustainability? 

I'll go back to the answer that I gave around doing things that are really good for the business, but that can be sustainability initiatives. I get really excited about doing things that can be mutual wins across an organization. I've been working in electric vehicles now for almost 10 years through a couple of different roles, and there's been so much progress that's been made in terms of technological advancement. The commitment from automakers and equipment makers and increasingly the technology is becoming more and more of a mainstay, and that makes it easier and easier to incorporate into operations. It also brings about cost parity. Those are the things that I'm really getting excited about because it really is at a tipping point. 

What is one book you'd recommend sustainability leaders read? 

I’ll give one book in two different categories. One that jump started my interest in sustainability over 20 years ago, and I'm sure this is probably known to most readers, was Natural Capitalism. That really helped me think about sustainability in a different way and really put into perspective the work that we're doing. But more recently I'm enjoying books that are at the intersection of business and can really help in a sustainability role, and so they're actually negotiation books, and you might wonder why negotiation. It's about coming up with solutions that may benefit many stakeholders across an organization and finding solutions that benefit potentially both sides. If you're thinking about how to convince your CFO or your commercial team, really think about it from a perspective of: how do I get what I want in sustainability, and also the finance team gets what they want. I’m going to give two books here, but one of them is Negotiate Without Fear by Victoria Medvec, and the other one is Getting to Yes, which is a classic by Roger Fisher and William Ury. Those are two that I would recommend any sustainability professional think about in terms of their own organization. 

What are some of your favorite resources or tools that really help you in your work? 

I really do like getting newsletters. I love reading and finding out what's happening across the industry. A couple that I like is ESG Dive from Industry Dive. That one I find to be really great information about what's happening across different companies, a blend of news and initiatives. I also really like Fortune's newsletters. Fortune has a number of newsletters, but one that has a lot of sustainability topics in there is the Trust Factor. They talk a lot about how sustainability and ESG is really paramount to businesses. But they also have other great newsletters too, like CEO Daily and CFO Daily, and they dabble into sustainability in those newsletters, too. 

Where can our listeners go to learn more about you and the work being done at SSA Marine? 

You can connect with me on my LinkedIn, Megan Weinman. You can also go to SSA Marine's LinkedIn page or visit our website, ssamarine.com to learn more about our work. Our sustainability report is on there. You can read more stories about things that we've been doing across the company, and our 2024 report will be in there too later on in 2025.