 Welcome everyone. I'm Caroline Woods and I'm thrilled you can join us for what's set to be an insightful session looking at the role of leadership in building a sustainable future. For leaders in both the private and public sectors, sustainability efforts are now an integral part of the job. But in what way do leaders that prioritize sustainable, inclusive, and equitable growth stand to benefit? Whether it be from the use of innovations to mitigate the effects of climate change or policies to support a more sustainable economy that works for everyone. I'm joined by industry experts and key decision makers who can share firsthand where the growing pressures for business leaders to become more sustainable are coming from, be it investors, consumers, regulators, or lobby groups. We'll discuss the tools and strategies executives can use to integrate sustainability and purpose into their business models and what traits make a successful and responsible leader of tomorrow. Let's bring in our expert panelists to help us unpack these themes and more. I'm delighted to welcome Amar Paul, president of North America Operations and a member of the executive committee at Schneider Electric. William Sisson, executive director, World Business Council for Sustainable Development North America. And then of course we have Cindy Ortega. She's founder and chief executive officer of Blue Heron Strategies. Amar, I'd love to kick start things with you really taking a top-level approach. I've heard you make the case that ours is the first generation to understand the climate crises and the last generation that has the capacity to do something about it, which I think is really compelling. So I guess the question is, what do we do about it? We have a three-step process that we've talked about over and over again. We encourage all leaders to think about it. Step one, digitize. Digitization allows you to understand your baseline. It makes the invisible visible. And it gives you a standard to which you can go back and measure all your actions. Once you have an understanding of that, we encourage you to decarbonize. And decarbonize, a lot of people talk about new and clean energy resources and that is absolutely important. But the most important part of decarbonization is reducing waste. We have so much waste in our system. So if we can just make our buildings more efficient, our processes more efficient, we decarbonize. And by the way, it pays for itself. So it's an efficiency measure. And the last one is engage. Engage your communities, engage your partners, engage your suppliers, engage your consumers. This is a systemic effort. So digitize, decarbonize, engage. That is a good roadmap to start with. So turning to the role of leadership, Cindy, as a former chief sustainability officer, what is the role of leadership in this push to a more sustainable future? Yeah, I'm the business girl on the panel. And if you look at a business, business does a lot of important things. And leaders in businesses have a lot of important things to do. Historically, corporate social responsibility initiatives are sort of viewed as an important thing for the business to do. And it's usually funded well, usually as talented people in it. But the shift that we're seeing right now is really moving in sustainability, ESG management and social improvement is moving into a priority. And a priority in a company is a lot different than in something that's important. And so when a leader has to lead through a priority, what that is, what changes is that first and foremost, it has to be clearly and simply communicated. Anything that gets lost in the muddle will never come to fruition and be successful. And if you think about the stakeholders, that's people like investors and people like customers. But more importantly, it's like people that are the employees and the fabric of the company. Secondly, it has to be funded. And when I say funded, I don't mean to go buy a solar array. That's not what I'm talking about. Sustainability and the practice of systemic implementation of sustainable practices is the long haul journey. And so for a CEO or other business leaders, they need to fund a system that's sustainable itself. And so that involves funding support around that system. You need to have communication support around it so that the objective and simple objective is actually continually communicated both internally and externally. So I think it's a shift. I think it changes from something that we're glad we're doing and we're proud of all of our accomplishments to something that we need to do this to make our company a better company for many years ahead. So Bill, Cindy talked about the difference between something being important and something being a priority. But where is this pressure coming from for business leaders to become more sustainable? Right. It's really an interesting time right now if you're in a sustainability profession. Sustainability is moved from what I call an informal kind of guided by principle, but not really being measured, not really being clear who your audience was that was picking up that information. It's moved from that from 20 years ago to this very interesting phase we're in right now where we've got three pressures essentially put on the leadership of many companies. First, we've heard it a bit already today. First is your employees. They want to work for a company that sees the direction the company is taking on these issues and moving it forward. Second to that, those employees, you're going to need to replace those employees, particularly in a very tight job market we have here now. Those employees can be very, future employees can be very, very critical of the choices they make for the companies. The second pressure is coming from the consumers, whether that's your supply chain or your end customers. They're demanding more from companies that want, that they want to do business with. And then last but not least, I think this is probably the most interesting dynamic in the last three years is the financial markets. They weren't on the scene 20 years ago, now they are. And I think that's putting real pressure on leadership. It's moved from that sustainability professional, if you will, to the C-suites, getting calls through their investor relations teams, having to address real, credible questions about the sustainability direction of their companies. So that's where we see those pressures really being put on leadership. And a company like Schneider, just to say, gets it. They really do. But there's many companies out there that haven't even begun the process. And Bill, we'll talk about a progress report in just a second. But first, Amar, I want to ask you because from a business reporter's perspective, we talk a lot about things from the investor side when it comes to ESG. And the big question always is, can profitable and sustainable growth coexist? The alternative cannot. So the way to think about this is companies that are sustainable will create ecosystems of other companies they work with that are sustainable. Investors want to invest in those companies. Consumers want to buy from those companies. Employees want to work at those companies. Those ecosystems will become stronger. And if you do not invest to be part of it, if you do not invest in capability, then you will die. And look, this is not a new idea, right? In the late 90s, there was all these white papers and Harvard Business Review articles about, is IT really necessary? Are we spending too much on information technology? Are we really going to digitize everything? Joe over there is doing this with a punch card. Why is that a problem? Joe's not doing it anymore, and those companies are dead. So this is not a complicated question. You become sustainable, you become efficient, you create self-reinforcing ecosystems that build on themselves. It becomes the most important sustainable advantage in competition that we have seen in the last two decades. And it will happen faster than information technology because it has to. So actually we're not confused about that question at all. To do good, you have to be good. And to be successful, you have to be sustainable. Cindy, building on that, and what way can sustainable strategies drive long-term value and competitive advantage? I think that it's interesting. I mean, I was just thinking about what Amar was saying and the shift in the way that leadership has to look at becoming sustainable over the long haul. And the strategies that support that. In the past, really, almost everybody relied on this sort of initiative by initiative thing. So let's go find something to do that's really cool and saves a lot of money. Saves a lot of money being the number one part of that. Or something that's sustainable like a recycling program or something. And we're going to put all of our effort toward that. And we're going to do a really good job of it. And then we're going to tell everybody that cares about us and our employees about it. And then we're going to reap the financial rewards of doing that. And what's really shifted here in terms of strategies is that the idea of becoming a sustainable company is a long haul journey. It's actually incremental things that you do. And the reality is that incrementally they get more difficult and more difficult to justify from a financial standpoint. And so where I see that the talent and the real leadership expertise comes is when the leader communicates those things with stakeholders, funds it early, not funding what's going to happen later, but sets the expectations with the board of directors and others, the CFO and others in the company, that this is going to be something that sometimes is great and we have the party and we turned on the solar array. And other times it's investing in a system in a new development in another country that actually cost quite a bit more, but in the long term made us a more sustainable company, which made us a more valuable company and also drove employee engagement. And Bill, in terms of progress, you've already given Schneider Electric and A plus in terms of the work that they're doing. And I know you work with a lot of companies who want to be part of the solution. But overall, how are companies doing not just in terms of setting targets, but actually meeting some of those goals? I think the scorecard is actually a bit mixed right now. You know, we have just a little less than a third of publicly traded companies putting out net zero commitments. And I used the word commitment because there's the commitment part and there's actually the goals to achieve it, but less than a third. And then when you look at the Russell 1000, more than 50% haven't even started to disclose data yet. And so we're in this real, I call this this sort of real contradictory state right now. I think companies are starting to understand in their leadership are starting to understand that this is a real issue and they need to address it, but they haven't yet started the journey. So that's on the macro scale. I think on the micro scale, you take companies like Schneider, who are members of our organization and all our members at WBCSD, we evaluate them. We help them understand where they're seen in the marketplace on these cross issues, whether it's a net zero agenda, the nature agenda, which is arriving on the scene, or the social agenda, which is a little bit of a laggard right now in terms of how we're assessing that. And then the degree to which they're being transparent on those issues. And we help them understand how they're currently positioned and will then give them some guidance on getting there. So it's a mixed record at the moment, but I think we see the momentum in the business sector. And back to Amir's point, you know, when companies like Schneider ask their supply chain, not we'll help you, but we want you. We demand you to do these things. I think you're going to start to see a title shift in terms of how companies step up to the plate on these issues. Amir, you talked about the importance of digitizing, decarbonizing, and engaging as your three key points. But can you be a little bit more specific about where leaders should be focusing their sustainability efforts? Yeah, you know, I want to build on points both Cindy and Bill made. So Cindy talked about this notion of how do we make sure that we understand the economics of the return and there's this long, short paradox in any innovation, right? What do I need for the next 13 weeks? How do I prepare for the next decade? That's part of what leaders do in everything. But in this case, you can also have the right programs because there's certain programs that have much faster payback, as you know, and we did some of that work with you, and then certain programs that are more systemic. So I think building that right balance of investments that allow you to pay back, learn, and then expand your ambition is super important. We really encourage people that look, you don't have to just throw everything at it, but begin. Take the first step, learn by doing. So that's one thing they can do practically. Second, you know, Annette always tells us that you have to have clarity in terms of your goals. We have a process where we have a hotion, we define it. And then if it's not on the hotion, we shouldn't be working on it. So I think how do leaders lead? How do leader leads on anything? They invest their time, they invest their resources, they talk about it, they make it part of the mission. And then, as Yonba Scal said, when it gets to a point where the people are ready to run with it, you get out of the way. And I think like in any transformation, those things have to be important. So this will start in companies when leaders catalyze it, and it will scale in companies when leaders let go. Cindy, can you talk about the importance of company culture and what role that plays in this? You know, if you look at the long term value of a company, not the financial value, but how valuable is that company over the long term, I think you can measure that by the collective strength of all the employees that ever worked there. And so one of the most, if not the most important imperative of a company is to retain and attract talent. And so, you know, you see some places where there's big slick campaigns around about the initiatives that we've done. But that needs to translate into authentic commitment and authentic actions. That's what builds company culture. What builds company culture almost as a top builder of company culture is loyalty and engagement and being proud of what your company does. So the companies that get this right, one of the primary values they will find in being a sustainable company and in taking these difficult actions, and they are difficult, by the way, is that they will have a better workforce and they will have better brain power coming out of their company. And they will have had people that love their company. And so that's where I think the competitive advantage is in being a company that cares about mitigating environmental impacts and cares about building social justice throughout our communities and throughout our society. And Bill, I know you work with hundreds of companies, so countless leaders. Can you talk about some of the traits that leaders of the future should possess? Because I think it's an important point to note that some of these targets aren't until 2030, 40, 50, so decades away. So there's going to be multiple leaders at the helm between now and then. The reality of today's leader is they're not just setting a goal for themselves. They're setting a goal for the company to achieve 20, 30 years from now. And that takes a lot of courage. So I would use that as sort of my number one criteria for today's leaders. Being able to get above the noise, being able to get above the challenge and make those long term commitments that they no need to be sustained by not just them, but then as the transitions go on. I would say the second is resilience. I mean, I think, you know, let's put it on the table. We're in a world in crisis right now. And the the situations that leaders are having to deal with are challenging their notions in terms of how they need to think about some of these topics, like environmental, social governance going forward. But I really appreciate the fact that how do we use the crisis as an opportunity and learn from the situations that we're dealing with now. Find those those levels of resilience that leadership needs to take. Adapt that into the to the decision making for the now so that what we have down the road is is the better place. I think the momentum is really there to continue this forward. So I'm encouraged that we're a learning society and we'll get there. Omar, we're almost out of time, but I want to leave you with the final word. What's the key point you really want the audience to walk away with today? You know, we just said 2030 is a long time away. It's 30 quarters. We've been in the pandemic for 10. So our perspective on the amount of change we can we can make it has to be something we think about and, you know, have have a thought for our colleagues in Europe, right? They were not talking about an energy transition until all of a sudden it was existential to their economies to people actually getting through winter in good shape to their health care systems. So let's not wait for the crisis to be obvious. We have a responsibility. And I think at a personal level, I would just say that every leader, your kids, the next generation you care about will ask you, what did you do? When you had the opportunity, what did you do? And I think we all have a personal responsibility to answer that question as best we can. I think that's a great point to leave us with. Omar, thank you so much. Cindy, Bill, really appreciate all of your insights.