sustainability
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Sarah Slaughter and the art of the dress rehearsal
Before a building goes up, Sarah Slaughter wants to know what could go wrong. The founder and original CEO of MOCA Systems has spent her career bringing construction, research, and community resilience into the same conversation.
Michael Law and the value of a very long introduction
At his first client meeting, Michael Law met someone he would hire more than 30 years later. The founder of Summit Strategy Group has built a career around knowing which people belong in the room.
Ecolab makes every drop work
A carpet cleaner with a small market became a business built around a bigger question: what does it really cost to keep the world running clean? Now Ecolab is taking that question inside the AI data center.
Birgit Liodden keeps making room aboard
She left school at 16 and found her way into shipping through an assistant’s job. From YoungShip to an Oslo ferry full of founders, Birgit M. Liodden has spent her career getting different people into the same room.
Martin Garratt and the value of the right introduction
Before a clean technology can change anything, somebody has to buy it. Martin Garratt built Cambridge Cleantech around the often overlooked business of getting the right people into the same room.
John Cheng and the unexpected afterlife of a sugar factory
He joined the family business to learn how the sugar was made. At Innovate360, John Cheng has turned a manufacturer’s facilities and relationships into a starting point for other food founders.
Shailesh Jejurikar and the education of an ordinary chore
Before he led Procter & Gamble, Shailesh Jejurikar learned to look closely at the laundry. From a small operation in Kenya to the CEO’s office in Cincinnati, his career follows the distance between what a company assumes and what a consumer actually does.
Noel Wallace and the art of staying curious
He joined Colgate-Palmolive in 1987 and became its CEO in 2019. Across countries, factories and boardrooms, Noel Wallace has made a long career out of learning another part of the business.
Padraig McDonnell and the value of showing up
Before he became Agilent’s CEO, Padraig McDonnell spent evenings on the roads of Ireland helping customers. His next assignment is to make a global company work with that same sense of proximity.
Christophe Beck and the water inside the cloud
An engineering graduate who once worked on a space-shuttle project now runs Ecolab. Christophe Beck’s next assignment is down to earth: helping the AI economy live within its water supply.
Lilach Geva Harel and the things that have to work
From the arguments inside a boardroom to the shipping lanes that feed farms, ICL’s deputy CEO has built a career around obligations, decisions and their consequences.
Deon Stander and the secret life of ordinary things
A career that ran through beer, apparel and three continents brought Deon Stander to the top of Avery Dennison. Now he wants the things we buy to carry a digital life of their own.
Jim Fish and the education of a 2 a.m. executive
An accountant learned the waste business by showing up before dawn. As Jim Fish prepares to leave WM, his career asks a practical question: what does putting people first look like when the machines arrive?
3E makes the fine print work.
A wind turbine can travel halfway around the world. Its chemical safety paperwork has to keep up. Inside 3E, the company turning a mountain of regulatory detail into decisions people can use.
Christopher Gavigan and the business of picking up the phone
He helped build The Honest Company, started Prima, and kept calling customers himself. Christopher Gavigan’s next chapter asks what a practiced company builder can learn by slowing down.
The business of getting into the room
Marjella Lecourt-Alma spent years asking companies to take sustainability seriously. With Datamaran, she built a business around a more pointed question: what would make the people in charge act?
Laurel Angelica Myers and the Art of Making a Promise Hold
At Prima, Laurel Angelica Myers helped turn a new ingredient into a consumer brand with rules, routines and a national retail presence. Her story follows the less photographed work of entrepreneurship, from product development to a supply-chain bet that came undone.
ESS made the invisible count.
A refrigerant-tracking business became a $59 million acquisition by helping companies see what their scattered records concealed. The surprise: better safety reporting could make the numbers look worse.
Haber Wants Factories to Stop Guessing
A hospital cooling tower. A paper mill’s chemical bill. Haber finds its opening wherever a slow decision wastes something expensive.
Paul Marushka and the price of a promise
A corporate pledge is easy to announce and harder to count. Sphera’s founding CEO has built a career around the distance between the two.
Donal Daly and the question that outlasted the sales forecast
He built Altify to help people make better sales decisions. A question from his teenage son led Donal Daly to apply decades of software experience to the decisions businesses make about the planet.
Matthew Wright and the trouble with a perfectly ordinary box
After more than 25 years in packaging, Matthew Wright built Specright around the details that factories cannot afford to get wrong. His next act follows the same instinct: help an industry find what it already knows.
Tim Albinson and the business hiding beneath the business
He left Goldman Sachs to build an online marketplace. A market collapse, a mountain of supplier data, and a long interest in conservation helped turn that plan into Aravo.
Rian McDonnell and the money left on the bone
An Irish engineering student started with cameras over food waste. At FloVision Solutions, Rian McDonnell has moved upstream, asking what a factory could save if it could see every cut.
Andy Ruben and the trouble with a perfectly good jacket
He helped Walmart think about waste, then nearly lost his own company trying to keep useful things in circulation. Andy Ruben’s route from Yerdle to Trove reveals how much has to change before a jacket can be sold twice.
Murat Sonmez and the Education of a Systems Thinker
A student selling Turkish carpets became a software founder, then a technology-policy convener. At Pulsora, Murat Sonmez is bringing those experiences to the unglamorous work behind corporate sustainability.
Harry Lamberton and the things we leave behind
From fly ash to commercial landscapes, Harry Lamberton has built a career around the work that keeps places running. A childhood among Washington’s waterways gives that practical record a more personal dimension.
Sara Greenstein and the education of a decision-maker
An Illinois farm taught Sara Greenstein how much lies beyond your control. A career in consulting, steel and specialty materials taught her what to do with the part that remains.
Daniel Martínez-Valle and the question that follows him from company to company
From Mexichem’s reinvention as Orbia to the leadership of Grupo Proeza, Daniel Martínez-Valle keeps returning to a deceptively difficult question: what should a business make possible for other people?
Amy Schumacher and the value of a longer clock
Before she led The Heritage Group, Amy Schumacher built a chemical business. Now the fourth-generation CEO is putting industrial experience to work on a question with a long deadline: what should the next generation inherit?