When Procter & Gamble adopted an ambitious new pulp and paper pledge in early 2021, it hired a forester to convince suppliers to get on board.

Officially, Chris Reeves is director of scientific communications for P&G’s family care business, which makes Charmin toilet paper, Bounty paper towels and Puffs facial tissues.

That title downplays his master’s degree in forestry and 12 years of experience managing Kentucky forests, but Reeves spends at least one-third of his time among the trees with land owners or in meetings with the Society of American Foresters and nonprofits with big forestry practices.

“Every day is different,” he said. “It’s making sure policies are adhered to. It’s offering education on the ground.”

P&G tries to make field visits to all pulp suppliers once every two years to offer technical advice and advocate for independent audits of their forest management practices. 

In particular, Reeves is responsible for helping suppliers see value in becoming certified by the Forest Stewardship Council (FSC), a nonprofit that promotes strict environmental and social standards for timber and paper. P&G has pledged to buy all of its wood pulp from FSC-recognized sources by 2030; so far, it’s at 86 percent.

Reeves also visits with employees and retail partners and fields questions from investors. One of his biggest challenges is translating sophisticated concepts into messaging that’s more appropriate for consumers and P&G’s vast marketing organization.

Uncommon role

P&G has hired environmental scientists for decades and some paper products companies, such as Domtar, employ foresters and forestry engineers to manage responsible harvesting and replanting practices. 

Reeves’ first corporate job was for IKEA, where he was responsible for wood purchasing processes. P&G rival Kimberly-Clark, which has pledged to be “natural forest free” after 2030, also employs foresters.

Still, it’s uncommon for consumer products companies to hire foresters who can work directly with suppliers and nudge them toward more sustainable forest management practices, sometimes with contract incentives or preferred supplier status. 

“This is a new thing in that world,” said Sarah Billig, president of FSC’s U.S. operation. “P&G is ahead of the curve, but as brands and retailers dive into nature-based goals they have to dive more into their supply chain. We are seeing more companies engage in this sort of expertise. They need to get folks that can get down to the ground level.” 

Foresters understand how to talk to local communities about both the economic and ecological value of forests, said Billig, who previously worked for a lumber company in Northern California. Many spend at least half of their time in community forums and cultivating knowledge of Indigenous forest management practices, she said.

“One of the most important things they do is push the value of better forest management,” Billig said.

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The dearth of corporate action on methane has been highlighted by a survey of 23 leading coffee and dairy companies. 

The report finds that while nine out of 10 companies recognize the link between livestock and climate change, just three of those surveyed — Danone, FrieslandCampina and General Mills — have set a target to reduce emissions of the gas by 2030.

The findings come amid a period of heightened interest in methane and other superpollutants. The gases are collectively responsible for around one-half of global warming to date and are heating the planet more rapidly than carbon dioxide. 

The nonprofit Changing Market Foundation, which launched its methane tracker last year, assessed the dairy and coffee companies on methane reporting, target setting, action plans and progress toward reduction goals. 

The leaders …

Highlights from the highest-scoring companies include:

• Danone is the only company in the group aligned with the Global Methane Pledge, an initiative backed by 150 countries that targets a 30 percent reduction in global levels of the gas by 2030. The French multinational also leads the pack in progress toward its target, having come close to hitting it five years ahead of schedule.
• General Mills and FrieslandCampina, a Dutch dairy cooperative, have set broader targets for dairy emissions that do not include a specific one for methane.
• Coffee chains are beginning to take action on methane, but progress is uneven. Starbucks stands out: The world’s largest coffee chain is the only one to disclose methane emissions and publish an action plan for reductions. Achieving cuts is proving challenging, however: Emissions from its dairy purchases haven’t budged since 2019.

… and the laggards

Farther down the rankings is a clutch of companies that the foundation said have not disclosed methane emissions, set targets or published action plans.

• One surprise is Unilever, which earned a reputation as a sustainability pioneer during the 2010s. The British consumer goods company has more recently made strong progress on eliminating deforestation from supply chains and pushed trade associations to speak up on climate. It’s also committed to cutting agriculture-related emissions by 30 percent, but does not break out reporting or goals for methane.
• In last place, with zero points across any of the metrics assessed by the foundation, is U.S. coffee and doughnut chain Dunkin.
• Retailers also perform poorly, the foundation determined in a separate analysis of 20 supermarkets in six countries: None had disclosed methane emissions or set reduction targets.

“Methane from agriculture, including from livestock production and feed, is addressed through our Sustainable Agriculture Principles,” a Unilever spokesperson said. “These principles set our standards and expectations with our suppliers, including guidance on methane capture and feed interventions targeting enteric methane.”

Risks and opportunities

Power generators, steel manufacturers and other heavy emitters are required by law to limit carbon dioxide emissions in a growing number of jurisdictions. But the same isn’t true for food companies and methane. That’s due to “agricultural exceptionalism,” said Nusa Urbancic, CEO at the Changing Markets Foundation. “Policymakers concede to influential farm lobbyists, providing exemptions and only focusing on incentives, rather than mandatory emissions regulations.”

That doesn’t change the science, of course. “Methane cuts are one of the fastest ways to slow near-term warming and are increasingly seen as a key test of credible climate action,” said Urbancic. “Companies acting can strengthen investor confidence and get ahead of growing regulatory and disclosure pressures.”

She cites the example of Norges Bank Investment Management, the Norwegian government’s pension fund, which is known for scrutinizing the climate bona fides of its portfolio companies. The bank includes agricultural methane in its climate policy and expects companies to commit to targets aligned with the Global Methane Pledge.

On the risk side, companies that fail to act face growing reputational and greenwashing risks, added Urbancic: “Delayed action increases the risk of more abrupt and costly transition pressures later, including from regulators and investors.”

Companies interested in tackling methane emissions can consider joining the Dairy Methane Action Alliance, an industry collaboration convened by the Environmental Defense Fund and Ceres, two climate non-profits. Alliance members commit to disclose methane emissions as a step toward creating an action plan for reducing them.

Updated on May 29, 2026, to include comment from Unilever.

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The opinions expressed here by Trellis expert contributors are their own, not those of Trellis.​

If there’s anything 2025 made clear and 2026 is already reinforcing in sustainability it’s this: tension and tradeoffs have always been at the heart of managing sustainability — and will be for the foreseeable future.

Sustainability has always ridden up and down cycles. However, the transition from its mainstream arrival in the early 2020s to the current, extreme political backlash has been unmooring.

Last year, we published How to Set Sustainability Strategy in 2025 to understand how companies could be strategic in a time unlike anything the field had experienced. Our research found that what we call sustainability tension management — the ability to make strategic choices regarding how to optimize the balance among profit, the planet and people — is essential. Leaders can follow a five-step process that helps them find sweet spots where profit, planet and people align to create mutually-reinforcing beneficial impact.

Since we debuted the report, we’ve spent a year helping global companies build sustainability strategies based on that strategy. Here’s a sampling of what we’ve learned, and how it can help inform us going forward.

Tensions are here to stay

Tension is an intrinsic part of sustainability for two reasons. First, sustainability is dynamic. New issues emerge and long neglected issues gain prominence. It’s always changing, and this means it’s often competing with a myriad of other new or neglected issues and investments.  

Second, the rationale for sustainability careens back and forth between the requirement for a business case versus justification on moral grounds. The ever-morphing nature of sustainability combined with profitability versus morality imperatives will never go away. Thus, sustainability leaders need to build a foundational core competence as expert tension managers. 

Emotions of sustainability matter

One of the most eye-opening findings of our research is how much emotions shape the sustainability-related decision-making of leaders. Our research identified six common archetypes that shape how enterprises, leaders, sustainability teams and departments logically and emotionally frame the rationale for sustainability.

As we’ve worked with companies to map their archetypes we’ve seen how powerfully these root into corporate cultures and decision-making. We’ve also learned that archetypes follow maturity models. For example, one leader with a brand and reputation archetype may view sustainability as a vital driver of reputation value. Another with a less sophisticated understanding may see sustainability as part of basic public relations.

Notably, we’ve seen how archetypes expose tensions and conflict. For example, one manufacturing company’s dominant archetypes were Innovation driven and Brand and Reputation driven. In a stable, prospering economy this meant the company said yes to almost every sustainability proposal. After all, sustainability supported the company’s vital innovation agenda and positioning with consumers. However, in a volatile and uncertain political and economic climate, the company had cut back on research and development and brand-related communications. Leaders instinctively deprioritized sustainability messaging and took a longer-term approach even though its customers, investors and competitors’ expectations hadn’t changed. Illuminating this tension helped the company reorient its sustainability strategy to keep momentum going.

Making the business case is a core part of the job

Finding “sweet spots” requires an understanding of how sustainability supports the business. So does effectively advocating for people and planet over short-term profit. The good news is findings from Project ROI show the business case for sustainability has never been stronger.

Yet this causes many sustainability professionals angst. In a recent meeting of CSOs, many advocated for the field to strengthen their ability to show financial returns from sustainability. But several admonished their colleagues to maintain focus on the moral imperative of sustainability.

Our findings are best summarized by the comments of two CSOs presented at Trellis Impact. “The field is on defense. We need to play offense,” one said. Another embellished, “It’s time for us to start speaking the language of business.”

CSOs who make progress, scale up commitments and deliver impact tend to be who’ve defined clear value propositions for sustainability and the means to measure them. This makes them trusted partners of the C-suite and business lines, and gets them access to larger budgets and resources. While we’ve found that the business case isn’t a holy grail, it’s absolutely necessary and always will be unless major shifts in laws and regulations occur.

Given these lessons over the last 12 months, we see a few core tensions that will likely become increasingly urgent in 2026:

Fight, flee or play dead

The murder of George Floyd in 2020 created a reckoning for the private sector. Stakeholders implored companies to lead while at the same time admonishing them (whether fairly or not) for perceived negligence that contributed to the conditions that led to Floyd’s death.

We’re seeing this happen again with the rise of U.S. Immigrations and Customs Enforcement, the deaths of Renee Good and Alex Pretti, and the anxiety of saber-rattling over Greenland. Companies such as Ford, Hilton, McDonalds, Target and a range of small and medium businesses have found themselves in the crosshairs — despite most companies doing everything possible to stay on the sidelines since the 2024 election.

But prominent voices are calling for action and companies will need to dust off and upgrade their decision-trees on when and how to fight, flee or play dead across a wide range of volatile, complex and ambiguous political, economic, environmental and social topics. As one executive told us, “Sitting on the fence will just give you splinters in your ass.”

Climate politics vs. climate economy

Headlines that blare how Wall Street has turned its back on climate change miss the real trend. Financial institutions across the world are doubling down on climate as a material financial risk. But, that’s just half the story. The sustainable energy transition is also seen as a material financial opportunity. Companies will increasingly need to enact strategies that dodge climate politics while leaning into the climate economy. ESG is still material to investors, but they just aren’t talking about it as much. And in this such a fractious climate, who can blame them?

Timing and pace are everything

In the early 2020s, managing sustainability was about everything, everywhere, all at once. Today, sustainability leaders need to make tough choices on when to sprint, go slow and steady, or take baby steps.

Sprint: to make bold commitments tied to aggressive timelines by persuasively aligning sustainability to material business risks and/or opportunities.

Slow down: The CSO of a large brand recently told us that the sustainability team had agreed, begrudgingly, to back off from several 2030 commitments. But by replacing these commitments with more incremental, achievable and near-term targets, the company discovered it was rebuilding the enthusiasm and support of leaders that have now signaled renewed interest in the effort. By going slow, the team may achieve a larger impact than it could have under the previous, big target.

Baby steps: For issues that aren’t ready for substantial attention and resources, the sustainability team can take holding actions such as studies, meetings, feasibility, monitoring and investing in the chronically under-resourced area of data collection.

The lesson from our research and its application shows that a time when anxiety is high, sustainability tension management introduces a sense of rationality that helps turn illogical decisions, disputes and resistance, into sane and prudent business discussions.

The authors will be diving more into these topics at GreenBiz26.

The post How to set sustainability strategy in 2026 appeared first on Trellis.

One of the first things Cassandra Garber saw when she arrived for her first day at General Motors last spring was a 10-foot-tall lobby-wall sign proclaiming the company’s commitment to zero emissions.

Garber had been asking herself if she had made the right move in swapping the chief sustainability officer role at Dell for the same position at GM. “And then you walk in and you see the very thing that you want to do with your entire career on a big panel on the wall,” she recalled. “You’re like, that’s mine.”

That commitment is, however, a complicated thing to inherit. 

Concerns about high prices and low ranges deterred consumers from adopting EVs as quickly as the company expected when it set targets in 2021. Tailpipe emissions from new light-duty GM vehicles in the U.S. have fallen just 7 percent, likely rendering unobtainable the company’s goal of eliminating tailpipe emissions by 2035. And the Trump administration has dismantled critical regulatory support for EVs, which will further slow the transition. 

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All of which leaves Garber with some tough decisions. Should she push back the target date? Dial back the scale of commitment? Or declare the goal itself — which depends on factors such as charging infrastructure, which GM does not control — a distraction from more impactful work? 

In this latest installment of Chasing Net Zero, our series of deep-dive profiles on sustainability strategies at Salesforce, Nestlé, GSK and other large companies, we draw on interviews with Garber and outside experts to assess GM’s options. 

The conversations reveal the depth of the challenge facing the new CSO, and others in similar roles. Garber has to reorient the company’s sustainability strategy amid a time of regulatory and economic upheaval, while simultaneously deciding whether to downgrade or drop what remains one of the highest-profile climate commitments from a legacy automaker.

“It’s incredibly hard for these companies to meet their climate goals, which were ambitious to say the least, in a political context that presents not just headwinds, but hurricane-level headwinds,” said Jeff Senne, a Trellis contributor and CEO of Sandbar Solutions, a corporate sustainability consultancy.

What GM committed to

Four years before Garber arrived at GM, CEO Mary Barra had unveiled a stunning aspiration: America’s largest automaker by sales, the maker of iconic brands such as Chevrolet and Cadillac, would eliminate tailpipe emissions from new vehicles by 2035. Half a decade after that, it would be carbon-neutral. The Environmental Defense Fund, which worked with the Detroit company on its vision for an all-electric future, described the move as an “extraordinary step forward.”

Those targets were extended a few months later when the Science Based Targets initiative validated GM’s goal of cutting Scope 1 and 2 emissions 72 percent by 2035. The initiative also rubber-stamped the company’s Scope 3 target: a 51 percent reduction in per-kilometer emissions from new light-duty vehicles by the same date.

Hitting those goals required a rapid transition to an all-electric future — one that then seemed more realistic. Around the time GM got SBTi approval, for example, new President Joe Biden committed to spending $170 billion on installing 500,000 EV chargers, strengthening rebates for EV purchases and other efforts to speed the transition. 

Adding to the excitement around EVs was Tesla’s extraordinary rise — its stock price rose sevenfold in the 12 months preceding Barra’s January 2021 reveal, putting Elon Musk on track to become the world’s richest man — and its impact on investor expectations. Tesla’s sales growth made it the “bright shiny object,” recalls Stephanie Brinley, an auto-sector analyst at S&P Global. “If you weren’t investing in EVs and making these kind of really bold predictions, Wall Street was getting frustrated.”

What happened next

GM has since made significant achievements; its most recent sustainability disclosures, published in October 2025, note a 46 percent reduction in Scope 1 and 2 emissions since 2018, putting the company on track to hit its 2035 goal for those sources. That’s been achieved through on-site electricity generation, power purchase agreements and other mechanisms — but not by buying unbundled renewable energy certificates, a strategy that’s often criticized as having limited impact on the growth of clean power.

Yet for large automakers, the path to net zero is all about sunsetting internal-combustion cars and selling EVs. Close to two-thirds of GM’s 2024 footprint of roughly 390 million metric tons of carbon dioxide equivalent emissions come from the engines that power the large majority of the vehicles it sells. To hit its 2035 goals, Barra and her sustainability team needed to turbocharge uptake of the Chevrolet Bolt, all-electric Hummer and other zero-emission offerings.

Where GM’s emissions come from

Companies that aim high on sustainability are sometimes accused of prioritizing splashy commitments over detailed implementation plans. But GM’s early commitment was genuine, said a former employee involved in the target-setting process who asked not to be named because the person is not authorized to speak about their time at the company. “At GM, if you set a target, our legal staff, our controllership, everyone’s there. You can’t just set a target without a clear path of how you’re going to get there.”

Over the following five years, the company spent billions expanding its EV line-up — it now offers 12 all-electric models, more than any other major U.S. automaker — and investing heavily in new EV production facilities and battery technology. 

This money was still being spent when the transition spluttered. After booming in 2022 and 2023, EV sales plateaued in 2024. Cost was a major issue, said Nathan Niese, Boston Consulting Group’s global lead for electric vehicles. Sticker prices in the $30,000 to $35,000 range were mentioned, but when EVs arrived dealers asked $10,000 to $20,000 more. That ruled out mass-market buyers. Concerns about unreliable public chargers and slow charge times further hampered sales. “EV-curious people are continuing to be curious, versus actually being ready to buy,” said Niese.

Growth in U.S. EV sales has plateaued

Then, in 2025, Donald Trump’s administration cut the federal $7,500 tax rebate on EV purchases, a key pillar of the all-electric transition, helping send the market into reverse. Niese said that BCG’s latest forecasts put EV adoption in the 30-40 percent range by 2035, far short of the 100 percent GM is targeting for that date. (It’s worth noting that critics say GM’s lobbying helped kill other regulation critical to the EV transition, such as federal limits on vehicle emissions. GM says the regulations were impossible to comply with.)

All of that sapped GM leaders’ confidence in their EV roadmap. By last fall, with the rebate gone, the company was in retreat. One EV plant was retooled to produce conventional vehicles, and more than 1,700 jobs cut at EV and battery facilities. Unwinding its EV investments and contractual commitments will cost GM more than $7 billion, the company has said.

In 2025, GM sold 170,000 EVs in the U.S., just 6 percent of its total. Meanwhile, U.S. drivers have continued their love affair with gas-hungry pickups and other large vehicles. As a result, GM’s Scope 3 target is actually further away than it was in 2021: per-kilometer 2024 emissions were up 3 percent since the baseline year of 2018. The company’s 2035 deadline is still a way off, but, right now, the target Garber is tasked with hitting looks out of reach.

What should the CSO do?

Garber’s desk at GM’s offices in Warren, Michigan, is in the product department — a change for the company and one reason she took the role. “I get to sit where the emissions are,” she said during one of two phone interviews with Trellis in December and January.

In the roughly nine months since she joined, Garber has begun implementing what she calls an “enterprise approach” to sustainability. Every relevant function in the company is asked to take on a sustainability-related key performance indicator (KPI), which is developed with two key partners: a senior executive and a leader from the function who is responsible for operationalizing the KPI. 

“Having KPIs and holding executives accountable across the company is game-changing when you’re trying to move the needle on sustainability,” she said. 

For 2026, the product function’s KPI focuses on integrating sustainability considerations into designs for new vehicles. That could mean introducing AI features that make charging more convenient, increasing engine efficiency or reducing the number of vehicle parts to cut logistics emissions. 

Elsewhere in the organization, Garber is collaborating with manufacturing on further cuts to energy use and working to add more sustainable materials to GM’s supply chain. GM is also part of the Transform: Auto program, a project with Ford, Toyota and others that helps suppliers access renewable energy.

On our calls, Garber was keen to discuss these cross-company efforts, but more guarded when the conversation turned to the status of the company’s commitments. At one point she expressed frustrations with target-setting more generally, which she described as secondary to the more meaningful work of creating lower-emission products. When pushed, she noted that the emissions goals are being reevaluated, but said there were no immediate plans to change them. What, then, are her options? Here are answers from sustainability experts who spoke with Trellis. 

Option 1: Adjust the target

Several told Trellis that GM could work with SBTi to restate GM’s Scope 3 goals in a way that makes the targets easier to hit, perhaps by pushing back the target year or lowering the emissions reduction required to meet it. 

Companies known for setting ambitious sustainability targets, including PepsiCo and Salesforce, have recently diluted their commitments in response to changing commercial realities. Such moves should be seen as a normal part of business, say sustainability leaders. In both cases, the restated targets retained SBTi validation and remain in line with the goal of limiting global temperature increases to 1.5 degrees Celsius of warming.

“Companies get some negative headlines, some ‘tsks’ and a little bit of scolding,” said Steve Rochlin, a Trellis contributor and CEO of Impact ROI, a corporate sustainability consultancy. “However, companies can manage it by saying we’re not moving away from our long-term goals.” One critical factor, he added, would be whether the company’s long-term goal remains intact. In GM’s case, Barra has said that while the company’s path will change, the destination is still zero emissions. 

The cost of downgrading goals is also lower now due to the weak job market, added one leader with decades of sustainability experience, who requested anonymity because the consultancy they work for has a relationship with GM. The biggest audience for annual sustainability reports is often prospective employees, the consultant noted. With bigger pools of applicants to choose from, the pressure for a company to advertise its climate bona fides has lessened.

Option 2: Stay quiet

The argument for restating would likely be conventional wisdom in a normal business environment — but we’re not in one. Companies are operating in a world where one Republican state attorney general has accused the SBTi and CDP of being part of a “climate cartel,” and others have banded together to attack the use of renewable energy certificates by Google and other tech giants. One consequence of these attacks — in fact, perhaps one goal of them — is to deter companies from making any kind of announcement about sustainability.

With that in mind, Garber could conceivably decide to say nothing about GM’s targets, at least until the political climate shifts. “Some companies know they’re not going to meet their target, but they’re like, “Yeah, we’re not even going to go change it, because we don’t even want to generate a conversation about it, we’re just going to keep doing what we’re doing,” said the consultant. 

Option 3: Break ties with SBTi

A third option would be to set a new target outside of the SBTi process. Garber did not suggest doing so, and parting ways with one of the most influential standard-setters would risk undermining ambition across the autosector. But there’s no doubt it would provide GM with flexibility on several issues, including one that concerns Garber: the sync between targets and business planning. 

“You should create your goals against the same timelines as your business,” she said. “Because that’s how sustainability gets integrated.” The deadline for GM’s SBTi goal was 14 years in the future when it was set; automotive planning, noted Garber, tends to look five years ahead. 

Opting out of the SBTi process would also allow GM to leverage other strategies, including the use of carbon credits. Take Microsoft, for example. The company left the SBTi’s net-zero process in 2024. Its headline climate goal — going carbon negative by 2030 — now relies on plowing billions of dollars into carbon credit projects.

The year ahead

Garber did not appear to be in a rush to decide between these options, but she will have to say something soon. SBTi rules require companies to review their targets every five years. After the end of April, GM will have six months to submit its review to the organization. If an update is required, the company will have an additional six months to finalize changes. 

SBTi rules are not the only reason why GM might clarify its intentions. GM’s record on climate is viewed as mixed by some environmental groups, in part because the company has lobbied against pro-climate legislation. But even though the 2035 deadline for CEO Barra’s pioneering commitment will likely be missed, she is praised for introducing a goal that served as a north star for the company’s sustainability efforts. “In some respects that was more important than the year,” said S&P’s Brinley. 

Looked at from that perspective, Garber’s best course may be to choose the least bad of the options available — and to do so quickly. Then she can get to what sustainability professionals would say is the real and more daunting challenge: uniting the company — which employs 155,000 people around the world — in an effort to hit those new targets.

Cassandra Garber will speak on the mainstage at GreenBiz 26 later this month. GM is also a sponsor of the event.

The post GM’s pioneering emissions goal looks out of reach. What can it do? appeared first on Trellis.

The opinions expressed here by Trellis expert contributors are their own, not those of Trellis.​

When I sit down with a candidate, I’m not necessarily looking for an environmentalist. I’m looking for leaders who’re comfortable handling data, communicating complexity across business functions, and helping embed sustainability as the foundation of long-term growth.

To understand if candidates have those skills, I use the following questions, which are meant to reveal which candidates are the most determined to go beyond “checking the box” and instead use our mission to minimize risk and maximize competitive edge.

What do you think sustainability should mean to an organization?

This may sound simple, but I’m looking for a very specific response. Sustainability work extends across the public, private and nonprofit sectors, so it’s common for job candidates in this space to have varied experiences.

With this question I’m looking to see if candidates proactively connect sustainability to business value. Depending on a business, that might involve energy costs, insurability, bond ratings or supply chain resilience. What’s important is that the candidate is prepared to discuss sustainability not just with like-minded advocates, but with finance-driven CFOs and deadline-driven product managers. I applaud all types of sustainability professionals, but naturally I’m looking for those primed to thrive in a private, growth-minded technology company.

What technology are you most excited about and why?  

It should go without saying that at a technology company the sustainability team isn’t just focused on the rules or regulations of today—we’re on the frontlines of what’s next.

I want to see candidates show that they’re reading and thinking about the future, whether that concerns AI, quantum or innovative applications of technology. Electric grids have been around for more than a century, but modern electrification of vehicles (even industrial ones), HVAC and more is poised to change our world — and the business of sustainability. Similarly, the proliferation of sensors and high-fidelity data are allowing industry efficiencies at an unprecedented level.

How do you think about the intersection of AI and sustainability?

This may be among the most important questions for today’s sustainability professionals. Anyone applying to IBM should have a point of view, and I’m confident that’s true in most other sectors.

A good response should consider both the “top” and “bottom” lines — what can be done to minimize AI’s energy needs, but also how can AI help improve sustainability outcomes? The IEA has estimated that by 2035 AI will be enabling energy reductions almost 3 times as much as its own energy consumption, so a well-rounded candidate should have some ideas for applying AI, as well as limiting its environmental footprint. Increasingly, smart use of AI is also simply a day-to-day part of the job, so I love to hear candidates’ personal experiences, too.

What aspects of the job are you most excited or challenged by?

I ask this to get a genuine sense of whether the candidate’s passions and perspectives align with our needs, but I also want to hear about creative and surprising opportunities or new ideas for supposedly intractable challenges.

In terms of opportunities, I’m quite excited by advances in geospatial AI, which isn’t discussed nearly as often as large language models. There’s a huge amount of geospatial data available, and AI provides a new opportunity to unlock insights at scale, helping scientists and others better understand our earth. Materials science is another exciting area, and I’ve written here previously about emerging capabilities to detect and develop substitutes for concerning materials.

There are also plenty of challenges to pick from, but I like to hear which one a candidate gravitates to and why. If a candidate is focused on external factors like policy, they’re likely missing opportunities to make change in places where we have more control. One excellent response I received was about getting buy-in from the business; that can indeed be a challenge, but it’s great to approach it with enthusiasm and fresh ideas.

Be creative and walk me through how a sustainability initiative could open up a new revenue stream.

I admit this is a hard one, but it gets to the very core of what I’m looking for. Effective corporate sustainability teams today aren’t just focused on reducing waste; they’re part of the same mission to drive business value as their colleagues. Their jobs can even be harder, requiring that they push the boundaries of how we measure, understand and communicate that value.

Most candidates can respond to this question by connecting sustainability to reduced risk and lower costs, but it takes an additional level of thinking to get to revenue and growth. One in-house example we’ve had is with an AI assistant that doesn’t just help my team, but enables our sales colleagues to do their job better as well. I expect many candidates have their own examples, or hope that with this nudge they can begin envisioning the possibility.

For me, these five questions give candidates the chance to show they understand both the issues and — crucially — how to get things done. The sustainability field is an ever-changing one, but there is no question that its future involves more data, technology, and clearly crafted business cases.

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