PepsiCo, AWS & NetApp CSOs on the Future of Sustainability

On 22 September, hundreds of leading sustainability executives gathered for Sustainability LIVE: Climate Week NYC.

The event, positioned at the start of Climate Week NYC, featured challenging keynotes and panels that dug deep into the issues faced by sustainability leaders.

After they came off stage, we chatted with PepsiCo CSO Jim Andrew and NetApp CSO Nicola Acutt – both keynote speakers – and AWS Director, Sustainability, Chris Walker, who was fresh from the Route to Net Zero panel.

What are the key messages from your keynote/panel?

JIM

There were really three key messages and the first was the importance of system change. I think everybody who's here at Climate Week needs to be focused not on their individual organisation, but on how we are going to change systems.

I talked about the food system, which is very important to PepsiCo.

The second is that sustainability is a team sport. No one person or organisation can make the progress that we collectively need to if we're acting in isolation. So how do we, like a football team, work together, help each other to go towards a common objective, put the ball in the goal, win the game?

We need to do all these things to change systems with much greater levels of acceleration. So speed is fine, but we need to actually accelerate. What is each organisation actually trying to do and how does it support the overall objective?

And then the third was alignment. You have to work not only in your own little area, but work to support and help all the other people and organisations that are trying to do the same thing. At the end of the day in football, the goal is not to score a goal. The goal is to win the match, to win the game. And we don't always have everybody with the same level of acceleration and intention, working together with alignment towards the same goal.

NICOLA

My keynote was a little bit provocative in that my thesis is that we as sustainability professionals are missing a key stakeholder that can help us unlock great potential for our goals and ambitions. And that is the CIO, the Chief Information Officer.

So I talked about why and the reason behind that boils down to one single word – data. Because right now we are experiencing an explosion in data with the advent of AI and the business drivers and the business possibilities that can be unlocked by the power of AI is driving this explosion of data. And so I talked about how the CIO is at the centre of that in every single company today, making decisions about how best to deploy AI use cases to drive value, drive business results. And together with the chief sustainability officer, those two stakeholders can be very powerful.

But today they're not because they're not necessarily in the same room. And so I offered the audience a couple of insights based on my experience at NetApp working with our CIO around challenges that they are dealing with today, whether that is modernising their infrastructure or cloud or data resilience and ai. So I gave the audience an idea of what's keeping the CIO up at night and then also what are some opportunities for collaboration.

CHRIS

I just finished up the Route to Net Zero panel with a handful of other folks: Alice from the Mercedes-AMG Petronas team, Jess Hyman from Atlassian, as well as Maurice from Signify.

We talked from four very different industries about how we are approaching decarbonisation within our own industry and company, but also how there's a lot of shared models.

Some of the things that came out of that were to start thinking about it as a data problem and presenting solutions to your companies using data. But then also use the voice of the customer to really bring some of that pressure back to your company to start driving real progress.

Are you seeing a growing trend of sustainability professionals working across sectors?

CHRIS
I think whether it's a peer or a customer or a competitor, sustainability kind of bridges all of those different verticals. And whether you're talking about working with suppliers, about working with your own procurement teams, about finding different ways of procuring renewable energy, there's a bunch of different lessons that we can all learn from each other.

And I think at the end of the day, not one company is going to solve this, right? Not one company is going to solve it for the planet and not one company is going to solve it for the industry. It's going to take the collection of peers and companies to really do it together.

How important are events such as this in furthering the cause of sustainability?

NICOLA

I can't underscore enough how fantastic these events are for professionals in our space because it is an opportunity for us to connect as a professional community and to share insights with each other around the most top of mind topics and issues. They're also an opportunity for us to make connections on a grand scale because everyone's here in New York during climate week. So again, kudos to the team for putting this rich agenda together that brings us into the room and hence a loud room like we're in right now where people are having conversation, catching up, getting a bite to eat, and we're doing business together with the purpose of our shared thoughts.

CHRIS

I think it's really easy to pick up a phone and talk to somebody one-on-one. It's much harder to do that in a bigger group setting. With events like this, not only are you bringing together different experts from different industries and different companies, but you're also fostering conversations.

And I think that's what can get a bit more tactical and honestly open up doors where random conversations on a weekly basis, whether it was a business review or a customer check-in, may not be able to do that. I think events like this really foster the collaboration that we're trying to create in this space.

JIM

I think events like this are very important to further the cause of sustainability because they bring people together: a curated group with a curated agenda on things that the organisers, who are in touch with their audience, think are important and are going to be helpful.

And so I think they serve a very valuable purpose. New York Climate Week, for example, is a massive, chaotic event. An event like Sustainability LIVE or any of the others really helps bring it down to a more manageable size with high quality programming so that people can really sink their teeth into a set of topics.

What would you like to see achieved from Climate Week NYC?

CHRIS

I want to see continued momentum. And I think what's exciting about this week and about things that we see happening during climate week is that everybody leaves the week excited because of the conversations, the events or the networking connections that they've made.

That has to continue: that momentum of keeping the connections, keeping the conversations going, checking in with each other, having data-driven conversations about the progress you're making or about the hurdles you're facing. That needs to be something that's fostered and continued outside of these weeks. And so I think that, if we can capitalise on that momentum and keep it going throughout the rest of the year, that's going to be a big win.

JIM

Action. What I want to see achieved coming out of Climate Week is not talking, but action. PepsiCo is looking for where we find more partnerships. Where do we find different kinds of partnerships?

I'm always looking for the people that I don't partner with, but I certainly talk with those that we do partner with. How do we deepen, how do we broaden?

And then also to learn. We're here sharing things that work and things that haven't worked, lessons that we've learned so that others can learn from us. And I'm certainly looking for the same thing from others at various events.