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Creating An Effective ESG Strategy: From Zero To Execution
Kathy Varol
Purpose Strategy Expert, Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) & ESG Consultant
- Created the Global Purpose Strategy for adidas, a $22 billion company, encompassing everything adidas does to positively impact People and Planet
- Host of the Purpose and Profit Podcast
- On a mission to transform business as we know it
- Developed a repeatable 4-step process to become a purpose-led brand: The Brand Purpose Model
- A sought-after speaker, consultant, and workshop facilitator on Purpose, ESG (Environmental, Social, Governance), Culture, and DE&I (Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion)
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Kathy helps her clients use purpose and ESG to stand out in a competitive environment, attract the best talent, gain consumer loyalty, and fully harness the innovative brain power of their employees (innovation that keeps them miles ahead of the competition). She shares her deep knowledge and “how to” with clients, so they can skip the hard lessons and go straight to strategies that work.
Kathy has 20 years of experience across brand marketing, strategy and impact, working at established brands like adidas, MillerCoors and Microsoft.
Through her experience, Kathy has developed a repeatable 4-step process to become a purpose-led brand: The Brand Purpose Model. When businesses embed purpose into the heart of their strategy, they don’t just disrupt their industry. They also bring humanity into the workplace, shape the future, and impact the world.
Kathy created the Global Purpose strategy for adidas, a 22 billion dollar global company, encompassing everything adidas does to positively impact People and Planet. Kathy’s hands-on experience creating purposeful change includes crafting the Diversity and Inclusion (D&I) strategy for adidas. Through this experience, Kathy has learned the unintentional barriers that get in the way of a thriving culture, as well as how to foster a culture of inclusion, collaboration and continuous improvement.
At adidas, Kathy also created a holistic sustainability strategy and developed social equality platforms. These initiatives included creating an army of loyal brand advocates by inviting consumers to join a movement to end plastic waste, increasing access to sport for girls around the globe, developing new products, and initiating bold corporate actions to stand against inequality.
Kathy left adidas to help other companies on their journey to become purpose-led. She brings her wealth of expertise to move companies beyond outdated Corporate Social Responsibility approaches and into the new era of business integrated conscious capitalism.
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Speaker Reel: Purpose Drives Profit
How To Harness The Superpower Of Diversity To Create An Innovative Culture
Creating an Effective ESG Strategy: from Zero to Execution
Will your company be able to survive images of your product prominently floating in the Great Pacific Garbage Patch on news segments highlighting environmental devastation? Will your company be able to stay rooted in fossil fuels when the world has moved on to renewable energy?Will anyone still choose you when your competitor innovates a zero-waste approach that employees are rallied around and consumers feel good about?
An effective ESG strategy future-proofs the business strategy.
From 2011 to 2018, the proportion of S&P 500 companies reporting on their sustainability efforts, corporate social responsibility activities, and ESG performance increased from just under 20% to 86%.
ESG has become an expected way of operating, and YOU don't want to get left behind. But most business leaders don’t know where to start and lack a clear approach to help guide them.
This is understandable. The ESG ecosystem is complex. Currently, there are over 600 ESG ratings and rankings systems globally. It’s no surprise ESG can feel overwhelming.
In this keynote, Kathy will shares her 4-step process that will enable you to create an effective ESG strategy, establish a continuous improvement process, and set-up transparent reporting.
You Will learn:
- Why an effective ESG strategy can help your company become a trusted leader in your industry
- How to determine which ESG topics (and metrics) are the right ones for your business
- How to establish a symbiotic relationship between your ESG strategy and a business-integrated purpose
- The secret to achieving seemingly impossible ESG moonshots
Drive Profit With Purpose. Become Remarkable. Accelerate Growth.
How do you stand out in an increasingly competitive marketplace? How do you attract top talent? How do you increase profitability? You do something remarkable. Purpose makes brands remarkable.
As consumers, we're putting our dollars toward companies with aligned values. 85% of millennials in the United States would switch brands for a good cause, and 50% of growth in consumer goods went to sustainability marketed products between 2013 and 2018.
As employees we’re looking for meaning in our careers, and the best talent is choosing to work for organizations that feed their heart as well as their bank account. 92% of millennials believe that working for an environmentally and socially responsible company is important.
In the modern world, companies without a purpose beyond profit will be left behind. You can either be a pioneering force for good in your industry, or the disrupted.
Varol built the global purpose strategy for adidas, a 22 billion dollar company, encompassing everything adidas does to positively impact people and planet. Through trial and error, she learned what works, and what doesn't.
Through her work, a model emerged. A way to successfully use purpose to drive profit.
In the Drive Profit with Purpose keynote, she reveals her 4-step Brand Purpose Model to engage your organization, inspire innovation, and win the hearts of your consumers.
You Will Learn:
- 7 common mistakes in creating a purpose-led organization
- Why a corporate social responsibility department won't get you the impact - or the credit - you want
- How to get the best talent knocking on your door and have the most engaged employees
- Why doing good is the magic bullet to get the most powerful form of advertising (for free!)
This Keynote Is Perfect For Leaders And Companies:
- Competing in a crowded market
- Creating differentiation through marketing, ingredients and/or process
- Struggling with a talent shortage, high turnover, and/or high employee disengagement
- Looking to accelerate growth and increase ROI (in a sustainable way)
- Ready to unlock the innovative brain power of their employees
How to Harness The Superpower of Diversity to Create An Innovative Culture
Diversity is one of the most vital qualities for organizations that want to lead their industries.
Research shows that diversity can promote problem-solving and innovation. Culturally and ethnically diverse companies are more likely to outperform their competitors by 33%; highly diverse teams are 13 times more likely to have engaged employees; and companies with above-average diversity have 19% higher innovation revenues.
Unfortunately, most businesses unintentionally create barriers to collaboration and stifle the innovation potential they have waiting to be unleashed across their workforce. They incentivize groupthink, and constrain the power of diversity - the superpower of their workforce.
In this keynote, Kathy will reveal how business leaders can harness the superpower of their diverse workforce to create an innovative culture.
You Will Learn:
- How adidas leveraged the entire North American team to innovate a turnaround for their running business
- The most common unintentional barriers to collaboration and creativity (and how you can remove them)
- How most modern workplaces stifle cognitive diversity and undermine creativity
- How to promote sharing of unique viewpoints and avoid groupthink
- Why the trickiest problems are often solved by outsiders to the field
This Keynote Is Perfect For Leaders And Companies:
- Struggling to foster collaboration across company silos and departments
- Running into groupthink and “yes men” cultural conformity
- Using the old playbook year after year, and no longer getting the same ROI
- Know they could do more to cultivate a culture where their talented and diverse employees can shine
Unlock Exponential Results by Nurturing Purpose, People and Culture
Data clearly shows that businesses that nurture their purpose, people, and culture unlock exponential results: engaged employees, loyal consumers, increased innovation, and accelerated growth.
In this keynote through captivating business stories, Kathy shares why shifting the focus from your output (revenue) to your inputs (purpose, people and culture) will drive better results. She also provides concrete strategies you use right away to nurture each of these business inputs.
In the keynote you will learn:
- An important lesson business can learn from the best performing athletes
- The toxic beliefs that have infected workplace cultures (and how to shift them)
- How the world’s most loved companies use purpose to cultivate enviable consumer loyalty (and how you can too)
- Unconventional ways to innovate your talent pipeline and increase diversity
- The secret to creating a culture of collaboration, innovation, and continuous improvement
This Keynote Is Perfect For Leaders And Companies:
- Competing in an increasingly crowded market and struggling to stand out
- Experiencing high turnover, and/or high employee disengagement
- Struggling to foster collaboration across company silos and departments
- Running into groupthink and “yes men” cultural conformity
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