The first few episodes of this season of Climate Rising focus on how companies are decarbonizing their products, operations, and supply chains.

Some terms we’ll be using throughout the season:

• Net zero: Balancing the amount of greenhouse gas emissions put into the atmosphere with the amount taken out
• Scope 1 emissions are direct emissions from owned or controlled sources, sometimes called “operational emissions”. This includes reducing emissions from facilities or vehicles owned by a company organization
• Scope 2 emissions are indirect emissions from electricity, heating, cooling, or steam purchased by a company or organization (For additional guidance on Scopes 1 and 2, see the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’ website)
• Scope 3 emissions are all indirect emissions (that are not included in Scope 2) in the value chain of a company or organization, sometimes called “supply chain emissions”. This includes both upstream (production processes) and downstream (consumer use of a certain product) emissions.

Between 2019 and 2020, the number of companies setting net zero carbon targets nearly doubled, and it continues to increase. There are countless paths to reach that target, as we’ll hear over several episodes.

One company that has led on climate action in the tech industry is HP. Based in Palo Alto, California, in the heart of Silicon Valley, HP is a Fortune 500 company that produces computers, printers, and printer supplies, and provides 3D printing services. HP is rooted in the Hewlett-Packard Company, which in 2013 was the first tech company to publicly disclose its carbon footprint.

HP’s climate goals include commitments to achieving net zero greenhouse gas emissions in its supply chain by 2030, and that by then, its supply chain would halve its absolute level of greenhouse gas emissions, compared to 2019 levels.

Resources

• HP Sustainable Impact Report
• United Airlines Eco-Skies Alliance
• Product-as-a-Service business model

Guests

Climate Rising Host: Professor Mike Toffel, Faculty Chair, Business & Environment Initiative

Guest: Ellen Jackowski, Chief Impact Officer, HP

Transcript

Ellen Jackowski:
The environmental risks continue to increase with climate change. It creates more of a sense of urgency for us to understand what is happening, where we have risk to the business, and continue to shift and take urgent action.

Mike Toffel:
This is Climate Rising, a podcast from Harvard Business School, and I’m your host, Mike Toffel, a professor here at HBS.

Today’s episode is the first of several where we’ll be examining how companies are decarbonizing their operations and supply chains to reduce their contributions to climate change. Many companies are engaging in efforts to decarbonize as part of a broader initiative to meet a net zero target they’ve set. Nearly a quarter of Fortune 500 companies have announced net zero targets, and more companies are joining this trend every day. In the simplest terms, net zero means balancing the amount of greenhouse gas emissions an organization produces with the same amount it removes from the atmosphere. As we’ll hear today, and in future episodes, there are many ways to get there.

One company that has led on climate action in the tech space is HP, a company based in Palo Alto, California, in the heart of Silicon Valley, just south of San Francisco. It’s a Fortune 500 company that produces PCs, printers, and printer supplies, and provides 3D printing services. HP is rooted in the Hewlett-Packard Company, which was the first tech company to publicly disclose its carbon footprint.

Within the past year, HP announced some ambitious climate goals. For example, HP committed its supply chain to net zero greenhouse gas emissions by 2030, and said that by then, its supply chain would also cut in half its absolute levels of greenhouse gas emissions, compared to its 2019 levels.

Today I’m joined by HP’s Chief Impact Officer, Ellen Jackowski. Ellen leads the company’s strategy on climate action, human rights, and digital equity. In our conversation, Ellen describes how HP’s approach to decarbonization includes setting specific goals for its operations, product design, product use, and supply chain. And she notes how HP is paying particular attention to its supply chain because that’s the largest portfolio of the company’s overall carbon footprint.

Ellen also shares some insights into her own career journey, and offers advice for those seeking to integrate a concern for climate change into their careers.
Here’s my interview with HP’s Ellen Jackowski.

Mike Toffel:
Ellen, thanks so much for being here and spending time with us here on Climate Rising.

Ellen Jackowski:
Thanks so much. I’m so excited to be here with you today.

Mike Toffel:
I wonder if we can begin by asking you to describe your title and your role.

Ellen Jackowski:
I'm Ellen Jackowski, I'm the Chief Impact Officer at HP. And what that means is I'm responsible for our strategy across three pillars of work: climate action, human rights, and digital equity, so a focus both on the environmental as well as the social impact that we create as a company.

Mike Toffel:
Great. This episode is sort of about net zero, and so if you can tell us at a high level, the journey that HP's been on to its current net zero targets and what those targets are all about?

Ellen Jackowski:
First and foremost, HP understands climate science and believes what the latest research says, that we must all reach net zero at the latest date by 2050 and reduce absolute emissions by 50% by 2030. We've set some very ambitious and comprehensive goals to that effort. In fact, our net zero goal is to be net zero by 2040, a decade ahead of the science. And this is a path that we've been on for quite some time. HP, in fact, was the first company in the IT industry to publish its carbon footprint as well as to set comprehensive carbon reduction goals, very important area for us, a lot of focus and a lot of heavy lifting. Our footprint is significant and we have a lot of work to reduce that to net zero by 2040.

So in addition to our net zero goals, we've also set, for example, a 75% product and packaging circularity goal. And what that means is 75% of the material used in our products is either going to be reused, recycled or renewable by 2030, and that is a very tough goal. We're at about 41% today, getting from zero to 41 was certainly very difficult, involved a lot of innovation, new resin materials, for example, to ensure that they had the same quality and structure and performance as virgin materials.

But going from 41 to 75 by 2030 is going to be incredibly hard. We don't know, for example, all of the ways that we will reach that goal, but our learnings from going from zero to 41 have helped pave that pathway to the success that we know we will have getting to 75. Now, of course, ultimately people will ask why not a hundred percent? And of course the intention is, we need to get there. But in terms of what we felt was incredibly bold, ambitious, and leading in our industry, we settled on 75 as our externally-announced goal.

Mike Toffel:
I noticed that HP is engaged in the Climate Pledge, some broader programs. Can you say a little bit about what those programs are and why HP has joined them?

Ellen Jackowski:
We can't solve climate change alone as HP. We definitely need the help of others within our industry, across our value chain, and we're looking for innovations to share across other industries as well. Groups like the Climate Pledge really help us do that. We can share our learnings, we can agree to the same types of ambitions. Everyone who signs up for the Climate Pledge signs up to be net zero by 2040. And that helps send demand signals to renewable energy providers, for example, that they will have buyers for their renewable energy offerings, it's really a great forum for us to send signals to the marketplace, to take lessons and learnings from each other, as we all work on the journey to get to net zero.

Mike Toffel:
Many of our listeners will know HP produces printers either at workplaces or at home. Is that the main activities that HP is involved with or is there a whole other side of HP that most folks won't be familiar with?

Ellen Jackowski:
Several years ago, HP split from the Hewlett-Packard company. So the company that I represent, HP Inc, we sell printers, PCs, gaming equipment, 3D printing, and so many services that are a part of each of those ecosystems. So printing is a service, computing is a service. So that's the scope of our company as it stands today.

Mike Toffel:
Great. So, your approach is to create a bold goal with escalating targets along the way?

Ellen Jackowski:
It's a stair step of actions to get us to those ultimate bigger goals like net zero by 2040. And we felt that that one lays that roadmap for us internally, so we know how we're going to achieve it. So, for example, one of the sub goals is to use 30% recycled content plastic in our products by 2025. Again, that's part of that stair step pathway to get to 75% product circularity by 2030. By setting these sub milestone goals for 2025 and then to 2030 and 2040, we can demonstrate internally to ourselves and hold ourselves accountable, and then also show to the external world the pathway of how we aim to achieve that. So again, it's not just some big goal without structure and a very serious commitment behind it.

Mike Toffel:
Let's talk a little bit about operations. one of your goals is to reduce your scope 1 and scope 2 emissions, which are the emissions that you produce on site from any energy that's created and also from the electricity that you purchase. So you're looking to reduce the emissions from that set of activities in your global operations by 60% by 2025. You're making lots of progress in that area. What are the ways in which you've made some serious progress?

Ellen Jackowski:
For us, it's really about aggressively reducing our energy consumption, and the way that we're doing that is optimizing and being much more efficient in our onsite projects, and that includes things like onsite generation of renewable power. We're also procuring offsite renewable power, and that includes renewable energy credits, also includes things like utility supplier green power options and power purchase agreements. In 2020, looking at the as last year due to COVID, we didn't really implement any significant capital energy efficiency projects, but we still were able to achieve substantial greenhouse gas emissions reductions, because we were adjusting the temperature and the lighting settings and all of those things within our buildings since people were not coming to the office, and that has allowed us to make some progress as well.

Mike Toffel:
Yeah, so during COVID a big transition to work from home, or work from anywhere, occurred, and I think a lot of people are predicting that for a lot of jobs that people will continue to work from home, maybe not full-time, but at least part-time. How does that affect an operations goal where before you could look at the electricity bills of a set number of establishments that you operated and now people are spending some of that time at home, how does that affect the math?

Ellen Jackowski:
Well, that's a big debate across this space, is how do you compare the carbon footprint of employees using their own home air conditioning and heating and lighting and electricity versus the office. Because again, we know the source of what we're buying we know is that source from windmills or solar or purchase power agreements or whatever, and then now with employees at home, that can be very different. we're still working to calculate something that we feel is a reliable calculation. So at this point in time, we're waiting until we feel much more confident in that calculation to talk about: Do we feel the footprint is lower with employees working from home versus in the office? We certainly know the transportation of employees getting to and from the office is lower, but then comes the matter of how do you honestly calculate the energy consumption of employees working from home versus in the office. So stay tuned, we're working on it.

Mike Toffel:
That does seem like a really interesting problem that lots of companies are going to face when they're trying to figure out: how do we measure our operational footprint when the geography changes?

Ellen Jackowski:
Yeah, and that's a big area I think in this space is the measurement. Years ago, when, again, we were the first in the IT industry to publish our carbon footprint, we also published a companion carbon accounting manual because nobody had done that yet. And as we were calculating it, we had to make a lot of assumptions because the math didn't really exist. The standards for calculating didn't exist. So we felt the most transparent and open way to kind of get started was publish that accounting manual, one so others could also leverage it, leverage some of the assumptions and the math that we calculated. But then it was also out there publicly so we could get feedback on how to do it better. And year over year, we continue to refine our calculations to get much more precise. This is an ongoing journey in this space since it's evolving so dramatically year over year.

Mike Toffel:
So let's talk a bit about products. You mentioned earlier about the resins, but I know that you're doing other things when you're thinking about creating products that have a lower carbon footprint, perhaps it's the amount of power they use or the toner they use or even paper that your consumers use for it. Can you talk a little bit about the actions that HP's working on in this domain?

Ellen Jackowski:
As we look at our products, we look at the entire life cycle and its full carbon footprint, and there are areas that each step in the process for us to reduce its carbon emissions. For example, on the manufacturing side, mining for metals and drilling for oil to make plastic, that's one of the most significant parts of our carbon footprint, so that's why we are moving towards a circular economy. So as we shift away from virgin materials to more recycled, that will help us reduce our carbon footprint. When we think about things like printers, it's not just about using recycled content, but we also, of course, have to think about the paper that goes through our printers.

And today, if you buy HP branded paper, that already is zero deforestation paper, meaning it is sourced from a certified source like FSC or it's made from recycled content. There's no deforestation happening when you buy HP branded paper. We recognize that only about 1% of the paper our customers use in HP printers is HP branded, so we ask ourselves this question, what do we do about the other 99% of paper our customers are buying? How do we take responsibility for that? And of course that isn't something that's within our control, so what we decided to do was partner with important experts in this space like World Wildlife Fund. And we just announced recently an expanded $80 million partnership, and that's to counteract deforestation for all non-HP branded paper that goes through our printers. So in that sense, you can know that whatever kind of paper you are putting through our printers, HP is accounting for that and we are restoring and protecting forests in the amount that you're using through the printers. And we have an algorithm that we publish about how we've calculated the estimate of how much non HP branded paper's going through the printers.

So we're really doing some pretty aggressive, innovative things like going beyond our own footprint, our own products to take responsibility for the other brands. That's kind of a short term way to think about it. The big play we have there is to really help shift the industry to more sustainable sources of paper production. So again, we've already done it for HP branded paper. We also started something called the HP Forests Collaborative. In that collaborative, we've invited the largest paper manufacturers in the world like Mondi or International Paper and others, and also experts like WWF. And so together we can share our learnings and create more of an incentive for the largest paper companies to help shift as well so that we tackle this for the long term and not just the short term. So that's just one example of some of the things that we're doing in the printer space, but we have so many across our entire product portfolio.

Mike Toffel:
Some of these seem like, you know, this 80 million dollars as an investment. While it's a cost or an expense, but I think you're viewing it as an investment. How do you think about the payback on that?

Ellen Jackowski:
Well, I think number one, the message that we can then tell our customers, and the confidence that they can have when they choose HP versus choosing another brand, we think that's a differentiator. We are going beyond our own responsibility. We're thinking more broadly about society and the role that we can play as a leader in this space to help change industries and change our entire value chain. And we hope customers recognize and share our values in this space and choose HP because we are doing these things.

Mike Toffel:
We've talked a bit about operations and products. Let's talk about some of the activities you're doing in your supply chain, where I know you have one goal to cut in half greenhouse gas emissions by 2030. Can you talk about some of your projects in that arena?

Ellen Jackowski:
Decarbonizing our supply chain is a big deal. When you look at our carbon footprint, over 60% of our carbon footprint comes from our supply chain. So the manufacturing of our products, like I mentioned, drilling for oil, mining for metals, transporting all of our products. Reducing the emissions and decarbonizing our supply chain by 50% by 2030, again, a very heavy lift. And some of that is within our control, but a lot of that is in the control of our suppliers. We've created lots of deep partnership programs with our key suppliers in our supply chain to start tackling that, giving them learnings that we've had and where we've been successful to decarbonize our own operations and how they can leverage that as well.

One of the key pieces of that is ensuring that renewable energy is available for all of our suppliers to purchase. That is one of the fastest ways that we'll all be able to decarbonize is by shifting away from coal and other fossil fuels and moving towards renewable energy. So, from a policy advocacy point of view, HP has taken a pretty strong stance in that sense, and that is intended to also help our suppliers.

Mike Toffel:
Another important component of supply chain emissions is transportation and shipping. What’s HP doing on that front?

Ellen Jackowski:
A lot of our customers want fast delivery, and what that means is putting PCs and printers on planes. Well, planes are more carbon intensive than trucking or ocean transport. What we've done in this space is one start having more open conversations with our customers about you have a choice. Do you want us to deliver this via air or can you wait a couple extra days and choose a lower carbon option?

Bringing that to the forefront and having our customers be part of the decision and part of what ultimately their carbon footprint is, is one aspect. But we've also then joined some really innovative partnerships with some of our transportation partners, one of which is Embark and they're focused on electric trucks and autonomous driving as well. And in that pilot, they're hoping to eliminate smog and diesel emitting emissions from the urban center when trucks are moving around. So with autonomous trucking, we think they'll be probably a 10% increase in fuel efficiency, which means, of course, less emissions. Then we're also doing other pilots with Maersk, for example, which is focusing on alternative fuel solutions for oceans shipments and moving to biofuels.

Across each of the sectors, we're really thinking about how to shift not just our own decisions but helping educate our customers. And then finally, to air travel, we talked a little bit about trucking and ocean transport, but we also joined United Airlines' Eco-Skies Alliance program where they're investing in sustainable airline fuels. And, in fact, the very first, I think 100% carbon-neutral flight took off yesterday and our chief commercial officer was on that flight. So pretty exciting to see that with the support of HP. So a lot more work to do, but there's a lot of innovation going, and again, we can't do it alone. We need our supply chain partners to make it happen.

Mike Toffel:
Yeah, it sounds like you're involved in so many different partnerships. When I talk to other corporate sustainability leaders, one of the challenges that they face, and I think we face it as well at Harvard University, is how do you choose among the million potential partnership opportunities you can engage in, so can you talk a little bit about that?

Ellen Jackowski:
Well, I think being focused on where do you need to create the biggest impact, manage what you measure. Measure so you know where you need to focus. When we think about our supply chain, that is 60% of our footprint. We need to focus there, and that means creating partnerships with our suppliers. So focusing where you can have the biggest impact. And another thing that we've been working on is thinking about some of the quick wins, the innovations that are available today that we can switch to to become much more efficient and reduce our emissions while we're investing in some of the longer term solutions to get us to our goals. So I think it's a mix of those things.

Mike Toffel:
A lot of what we've been talking about has been about reducing the impacts of the current products and services that you offer, but I also know that HP is involved in some efforts to transition its business model, Instant Ink, for example, the product it offers. Can you talk a little bit about some new business models that are emerging from these activities?

Ellen Jackowski:
When we came out with our net zero goal across our whole value chain by 2040, when we were preparing to go in front of our executive team to propose that goal, we obviously knew we had to go in with a bit of a roadmap of how are we actually going to do that? And the number one way is shifting our business model, so moving away from selling computers and printers to selling computing and printing. And so when you have a service based model, the incentives are so much more aligned with sustainable production and life cycle that the customer wins, HP wins, and the planet wins. An example of that, as you mentioned, is HP Instant Ink. So for those of you that have an HP printer at home, hopefully you've already subscribed, but if you haven't, and if you're still going down to your local store, Office Depot, Best Buy, whatever it may be, to pick up your HP ink cartridge, know that you can now shift that and subscribe to Instant Ink.

And when you do, a couple things change, one, that means HP knows who you are. So as opposed to the larger security packaging you might see in the store, we can reduce the amount of packaging around the product and ship it to you in a much more environmentally friendly way. We also then can include an empty bag that is a prepaid envelope. You can take the empty ones, put it in that envelope that's prepaid, put it in the mail. It goes direct to our recycling center where we can then take it apart, the metals come off and we resell that metal on the metal market, the plastic is then crushed and recycled with other material plastic to create a new ink cartridge, refill it, and then put it back on the market.

So we have a closed loop recycling effort that ensures when you subscribe to Instant Ink, we get those materials back that we so desperately need to hit our 30% recycled plastic goal by 2025 and our 75% product circularity goal by 2030. Those incentives of Instant Ink and moving to services really, again, are a win for everyone. It's lower cost for the customer, HP is still making good margin and being profitable and sustainably financially, and again, the planet is winning with the environmental benefits.

Mike Toffel:
And HP's getting a window on its consumers who may otherwise be purchasing through distributors, so you're getting some data on who actually is purchasing your products and a direct relationship.

Ellen Jackowski:
Yes.

Mike Toffel:
I want to pivot a little bit. We've been talking on the mitigation side. Let's talk a little bit on the adaptation side. I know that HP recently engaged in a climate risk assessment process; I wonder if you can talk a little bit about that?

Ellen Jackowski:
Several years ago, there were typhoons in Southeast Asia that hit part of the whole tech industry and created supply chain issues. We were seeing more and more of that. We used to have our offices in Houston, where they repeatedly were flooding. We've since moved locations of those offices, but the environmental risks continue to increase with climate change. It creates more of a sense of urgency for us to understand what is happening, where we have risk to the business, and continue to shift and take urgent action. Not only do we then need to do things like think about resilience and redundancy in our processes and in our supply chain, but as well how to continue to just aggressively reduce our carbon footprint and our impacts on the planet.

Mike Toffel:
I wonder if you can share with us, Ellen, how climate efforts are governed at HP. So the way I think about this is when you walk down the hall and speak to folks. Are they excited to see you? Are they running the other way? Are they like, "Oh, another climate project"? And how do you partner with the various business lines and geographies in which you operate?

Ellen Jackowski:
Well, it's probably a bit of both, but I think in general, most of the employees at HP are incredibly excited and proud about our work in this space. In fact, today we were just named the number one most responsible company in America by Newsweek for the third year in a row. People are cheering, maybe not in the hallways because we're not all going into the office today, but from home and from wherever the messages flowing through are awesome. So the pride that that creates across the company, it's pretty amazing. In terms of how it's governed, it really starts with our board and our CEO. They are just incredibly committed to all of the big, bold goals that we've set in ensuring that we stay on track year after year, and ahead of all the trends.

That then trickles down to all of the direct reports of our CEO. So we've set up a structure where every single part of the HP organization has a leader that is responsible for sustainability in that organization. A leader in finance, a leader in our PC business, in our print business, in marketing, in communications, in legal, so you name it, every single part of the company has a leader that is tasked with driving the sustainability strategy in that part of the organization. And that all then ladders up to the aligned strategy we have at the corporate level. But we've gone beyond that this past year. In early 2021, we actually changed our performance management system for all 53,000 HP employees, and we created the opportunity for all of them to set a sustainable impact goal in Workday, which is our performance management system.

The concept is: sustainability is not the responsibility of the sustainability team. We are way too small. We will never hit those goals if it's just this tiny team. We really need the full power of the whole company, and that tone has been set from the top, from the board and our CEO all the way down where there is this expectation and an opportunity for every employee to be part of this change. And we need them. Kind of like HP as a company, can't do it alone, I certainly can't change HP alone. We really need everybody working together towards these big goals.

Mike Toffel:
I wonder if you could share with us a couple of examples of how individuals in the various areas of marketing or procurement have set their own performance management goals around climate impact?

Ellen Jackowski:
When we came up with this concept and we were rolling it out, what we did was brainstorm possible goals for different job roles. So, for example, if you're in marketing, are you communicating the sustainability features and benefits of our products to our customers? You know, we have three key selling points typically that we're trying to communicate, and is sustainability making it into one of those top three? Can you find those features on the website when you go to hp.com and the look at the Dragonfly, which is HP's–and the world's–first notebook that uses ocean-bound plastic? Is the messaging there? If you're in procurement, are you inserting clauses into contracts for sustainability and diversity goals to make sure that our vendors and suppliers are accountable and will help us meet our goals?

Because again, our goals cover our whole value chain, not just our company itself. And of course, if you're in other roles like engineering and product design, those are the team members who are at the levers of deciding. Are we using virgin content or are we moving to recycled content? Are we reusing the parts that we're getting back or are we scrapping those, recycling them and using them in some other way? Those roles, of course, are also key to ensuring that our products continue to become more sustainable and help us meet the big goals we've set.

Mike Toffel:
I want to shift a little bit and talk about public policy. Since climate change is such a massive-scale problem that no matter what individual companies do, even very progressive companies, the problem is way bigger than they can solve. Increasingly what climate leadership is looking like is not just operational improvements and even supply chain improvements, but also what tactics are they taking to promote, or at least get out of the way of, public policy to actually address climate change, whether it be through better disclosures at the SEC or through cap and trade or other ways to price or constrain carbon. I wonder if you can talk a little bit about how HP is taking on that challenge?

Ellen Jackowski:
The big picture there is all of our stakeholders, whether it's customers, employees, investors, or governments, they all have a clear role to play on this journey towards a sustainable circular future. We definitely know we have a responsibility to have a very clear, loud voice to advocate for bold climate policies. What that means for us is things like ensuring that there's a transparent and consistent price on carbon. That's something that will help level the playing field, help us all then measure and manage according to the big targets that not just HP, but our competitors, others within the industry and across the industry can hit.

We also are advocating for elimination of fossil fuel subsidies. That price on carbon is going to help us achieve the deep emissions reductions, those elimination of the fossil fuel subsidies will help us transition globally to renewable energy. Kind of like I mentioned, we need our suppliers to transition, but they can't transition if it's not available, so we need to put all of the right incentives in place, including public policy, to make that happen. We also need incentives and investments for clean tech innovations, and we also support and are waiting eagerly for the SEC's announcement around mandatory externally validated disclosures of scope 1, 2 and 3 greenhouse gas emissions that are in line with climate science. Lots that we are looking towards governments to do to help us achieve our goals and do what we all know we need to do to combat climate change.

Mike Toffel:
Now you came back recently from the Glasgow UN Climate Conference of the Parties, or COP. What was your experience there?

Ellen Jackowski:
I've been to, I don't know, maybe four or five or six COPs. This year was dramatically different than the others that I've participated in. Not just because, of course, it was happening during the pandemic, but that the tension was more palpable between developed countries and others. The youth voice of course was louder than ever before, and, I think, taken more seriously than ever before. Private sector showed up in strength, which was awesome to see. My colleagues in the business community were more vocal than I've seen and present, encouraging some of the policy transitions that we just discussed. And then the indigenous communities, of course also play a key role, and I think there's a lot of coverage of that as well, saying that while yes, they're at the COP, they still don't have a strong enough voice and aren't fully at the table as they need to be because they are likely the first to feel the effects of climate change and are at a disadvantage compared to some of the other decision makers.

So I think that tension, that sense of increased urgency like never before, I mean, that's what I absorbed and have done to try to bring back with me inside HP. How do we accelerate our work? We're already looking at these big targets that are going to be difficult to achieve, but we need to act right now, and COP26 just continued to reinforce that sense of urgency.

Mike Toffel:
In a way, both sad to know that those voices need to keep getting louder, but also maybe there's some optimism that actually some of the forces are aligning around enthusiasm for more aggressive policy.

Ellen Jackowski:
Yeah, you know, that pressure, I think, is a good thing. We need it to change, right? Kind of like the signals that our customers are giving us. Bring it on. If you're thinking about buying an HP, tell us what sustainability features and benefits you want and you expect from us. It will help us change faster. We already have plans to do it, but your voice contributing in is going to help. If you are an investor, and are seeking changes in our company, all of that is I view positive pressure to help accelerate the work and help us justify why we are making such big investments in this space. We know, again, the science is clear, but there are costs to all of this and so we have to figure out how we transition in a way that again, is financially sustainable for the company as we go through this very significant transition. We think we've found a really good path to do that, but again, this pressure will only help us do it faster.

Mike Toffel:
I wonder if we can talk a little bit more individually and if you could share your journey, how you ended up in the role you are? I believe you started in consulting, which is an industry that many of our students here at HBS begin their post MBA careers with. A lot of our students are also thinking about how can I engage in business and climate change in some manner in my career. If you could share your path and any advice you have for folks who are considering that journey themselves?

Ellen Jackowski:
Coming out of college, I joined a management consulting firm, and it was a pretty unusual firm. It had concepts like open compensation where you knew what everyone from the partner of the firm, all the way down to the administrative assistant made, and when it was bonus and raise time, all of that was very open.

So, Transparency was another key value that I learned very young in life, and that I think has only become more important and how I think it's helpful to shine a light on where there are issues and make sure that we are creating the right change. While I was consulting, HP was one of our customers and I was asked to come in and help bring a strategic mindset to the sustainability programs, and have been at HP and sustainability ever since. But my take and my advice to anyone who's looking to get into the sustainability space, it's similar to what I tell every single employee at HP, your job can already include sustainability. We went through some of those examples about marketing and procurement, but that goes for again, design, and if you're in legal or if you are in any profession, you have a way to integrate sustainability into your job role. Find your passion, find the area that you want to work in, whatever that is, and then add sustainability into your job description. There can't be sustainability teams that are physically big enough. They have to include everybody on this planet working together to address the issues that we're facing.

Mike Toffel:
What did I forget to ask that you'd like to share with our listeners?

Ellen Jackowski:
What I'm feeling most is just this huge sense of urgency. So in your personal life, in your professional life, as an influencer in your community and among your friends and family, think about the ways where you can make a difference and start doing it right now. Because again, we don't have time to lose. That’s really my key message.

Mike Toffel:
Ellen, thanks so much for spending time with us here on Climate Rising. Really appreciate you being with us.

Ellen Jackowski:
Thanks so much. It was a fun discussion.

Mike Toffel:
That was Ellen Jackowski, Chief Impact Officer at HP.

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You’ve been listening to Climate Rising. I’m your host, Mike Toffel. Kate Zerrenner is our producer, and Craig McDonald is our audio engineer.

We’ll be back in two weeks with another episode of Climate Rising. See you then.