Sustainability LIVE Q+A: Kyndryl’s Faith Taylor
Faith Taylor is the Global Sustainability & ESG Officer for Kyndryl, an IT infrastructure services company with 230 data centres in over 60 countries and thousands of global customers.
She is responsible for building and overseeing its sustainability and ESG programmes to meet their goals and strategic priorities.
In Kyndryl’s first 18 months, it announced its goal to reach net zero greenhouse gas emissions by 2040 aligned with the Science Based Target initiative and achieved Silver Certification from EcoVadis for its ESG performance placing them in the top 25%.
Faith took part in the AI in Sustainability panel at Sustainability LIVE London 2024 before being interviewed by Sustainability Magazine.
Q – Could you give us an overview of the innovations and trends you've seen in sustainability across your career?
Faith:
“Today we see hundreds of software solutions that track, measure and report. That was an innovation.
“When I was at Wyndham, we were in 120 countries, but we didn't have a way to say what our carbon footprint was globally with 100,000 hotel timeshares.
“We had to use software. It didn't exist, so we had to create it.
“I worked with other hoteliers and timeshares to start to develop this industry’s standards because it is unique by industry.
“Working in manufacturing and now technology, those standards are customised by industry, but didn't exist. So that's an innovation.”
Q – Is there anything that you think is your best takeaway so far from Sustainability LIVE?
“My best takeaway is that the collaboration and the number of new vendors and innovation that we're talking about here is great because 10 years ago this was not the conversation.
“Did you talk about sustainability and innovation in the same breadth today? That is absolutely what you hear.
“We are not going to get to using less resources and developing global solutions without innovation.
“I'm listening to the companies and I'm seeing the new vendors and we're talking about the challenges: I’m seeing that people are really trying to innovate and that's the only way we're going to get to this.
“So to me, Sustainability LIVE is a great platform for that because we need hope.”
Q – What is your take on AI in sustainability?
Faith:
“I was just on the AI panel and we were talking about where we are with AI. I said we're still developing AI.
“AI is built on the data that we provide. If we put in good data, we'll get good output. We put in bad data, we're going to get bad output. But at the end of the day, we're developing it.
“So how do we develop it in a responsible way, in a sustainable way, in a way that's inclusive? And if you have that intent, you will build with the end in mind, you will get there.”
Q – How do you see events such as these contributing to the broader sustainability movement?
Faith:
“These events are where collaboration and networking happen. They are where you learn.
“I'm here talking with other people on a panel and I'm like, ‘oh, that's an interesting idea, maybe I can apply that’.
“So that learning, collaboration and networking are critical to accelerating change.”
Q – How do you anticipate your sustainability practices changing over the next five years?
Faith:
“We've had to walk the talk and we continue to need to demonstrate through our own portfolio footprint ecosystem that we are doing the things that we're recommending to our customers.
“What I see changing in the next five years is accelerating change. And the other piece that I see that's going to happen is that we're going to have to adapt and we're going to have to mitigate.
“And the reason why I'm saying that is we are all focused on net zero, getting to that reduction, being responsible, but at the same time, climate change is accelerating.
“So we're going to have to do more adapting of the portfolio of our customers to the risks in terms of climate change, impacts to your assets, impacts to your people.”
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