Cassandra Garber

Q. PLEASE TELL US ABOUT YOURSELF AND YOUR CAREER PATH

I am a very proud mum and wife to my best friend. I have three amazing humans who I get to call my children and one dog who they require me to also call one of my children.

I am mother to three baby chickens, who are residing in our living room until they move to their forever home.

I love watercolour painting and I love pickleball – I've joined that fad. I have an earring problem, meaning I collect all of them everywhere.

And I absolutely love my job.

I’m a small town girl who happened to get stuck in the corporate world, so it’s an unexpected ride.

I grew up in a really small town of about 5,000 people in southern Indiana. I currently live in Texas, but we just moved here about a year and a half ago, so I don't feel fully Texan yet. 

I took the only paid internship that was near my school and so I drove about 30 minutes away to General Electric, which had a plastics manufacturing plant. I took it for the pay, but it was incredible.

After I completed that internship and when I graduated they let me go into a leadership development programme that was highly competitive.

When I went to the interview I was absolutely terrified. But somehow I got the gig. And then, the next thing I knew, I was moving every six months and getting a different opportunity. It was wonderful, which is why I spent about a decade with GE.

I worked for Coca-Cola, 3M and McKesson and now for Dell Technologies.

I've been able to work and lead teams sitting in R&D and supply chain, in legal and corporate affairs and marketing – you name it, I've probably worked and or had a team in that function.

Q. WHAT DO YOU LOVE ABOUT YOUR JOB?

I get to work with people who are about something bigger than business and bigger than themselves.

That is amazing, because we have very different conversations, and we have very different reasons for working in the space that we're working in.

Second, we get the challenge of working on something that's super meaningful to you, but with the business challenge.

You have that really complex situation where you're trying to do good for the world, but make it sustainable and good for business. That is really really challenging to me. I get bored easily and if I didn't have that constant challenge I would probably be in different spaces all of the time.

This one is so not solved yet. So I don't foresee being less challenged for the foreseeable future.

And lastly, the whole reason I'm in this is because I do think that solving some of these challenges at the core comes back to business making this sustainable.

I firmly believe that when businesses are expected to have both financial and societal value, it's going to change the game for everything, everywhere.

Q. CAN YOU TELL ME ABOUT DELL’S SUSTAINABILITY STRATEGY?

Yeah, this is going to sound like corporate speak, but integration, integration, integration, integration everywhere is what we're doing.

These are systemic issues that require systemic change and corporate speak for systemic change is integration.

So internally, we have set up systems, processes, accountability, mechanisms, governance and an operating model. All of those things are about integrating environmental and social considerations into absolutely everything that we do.

Externally, we talk about sustainability and ESG being end to end in how we work.

So we talk about the back end meaning the governance, the reporting, the processes, the supply chain, the R&D integration in terms of how we make our products. That's our back end.

Our front end is what we bring to our customers. So what does that actually look like and what can we offer to them?

That's everything from more energy-efficient products, more circular design in our products, take-back programmes. Because recycling is definitely a tremendous issue in the e- waste world.

But it's also digital inclusion – bridging the digital divide. 

Q. HOW IS AI GOING TO IMPACT SUSTAINABILITY IN THE TECHNOLOGY INDUSTRY?

AI is going to dramatically increase power consumption. These large language models are just hugely energy intensive, so that is all the more reason for climate action.

It's also an opportunity. Because, from a climate standpoint, we have software and solutions that manage your energy and energy consumption, your emissions. So you can use AI from a software standpoint and from a management standpoint to manage all of your data.

There's opportunities there from a circularity perspective. When it comes to circular design, AI is going to drive a tech refresh because everyone wants the latest and greatest, and laptops are looking different, servers are looking different.

There's going to be a ton of e-waste associated with that. And what do you do with the stuff that is obsolete because it doesn't have AI?

We have to think very thoughtfully about our take-back. So how are we being circular both in the design and the front end? How are we being circular in taking back and reusing and repurposing?

And then that third one I mentioned still applies because of AI, which is digital inclusion. So there's the digital divide that exists and is going to be exacerbated by AI.

If we don't do this the right way, there will continue to be have-nots in the future, because they won't have access to that AI-enabled technology. They won't have the skills to use it.

Q. HOW IS DELL BUILDING SUSTAINABILITY INTO ITS MANUFACTURING?

it really does come back to that integration point.

Every single business unit and function in our company now has a dedicated person, a point of contact, a lead who is responsible for sustainability and ESG for their business unit.

They're not only responsible for it, they have to put together their targets, their plans, their priorities in alignment with our umbrella.

So, when we're talking about manufacturing – a client device, whether it's a laptop or a monitor or a server – we're having the same conversation.

We all know that we're supposed to be working on circular design. We know we're supposed to be working on energy efficiency. We know we're supposed to be working on take-back and circularity.

When they're thinking about that, they have a person in finance who knows and can help with the financial implications, the offerings, the take-back discounts. And then my team can stay out of the way and it becomes a holistic, systemic solution. So then, in manufacturing, all the different pieces can come together because we've got ownership across all areas of the company.

If you focus just on the products, then you're probably missing connections that can be made in a large matrix organisation like ours.

Q. HOW CAN DELL INFLUENCE ITS CUSTOMERS TO BE MORE SUSTAINABLE?

What we can do is make it easier to recycle. So we've done things like when you get your device shipped to you, keep that box, which is made of recycled content. 96.4% of our products have recycled content in the packaging, so put it back in that box to ship it back.

We also have drop-offs. In the US, we have partnered with Goodwill. There's a place to go and return your devices, so there's dollar value associated with returning.

We also have Concept Luna, which is like a concept car for a laptop.

It was intended to be the most circular, most sustainable laptop, and we started from scratch. It is completely modular and can be taken apart in four minutes. The team who actually did it can take the entire laptop apart in less than a minute.

The learnings from that are phenomenal. What if someone was to buy a laptop for life?

To see the full interview in the magazine, READ HERE

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