Leadership moves

A chemist, a lawyer, a consultant and a climate strategist all walked into the same job this month.

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Four senior sustainability appointments landed in June, at Deloitte EMEA, Rabobank, Dow and Cushman & Wakefield. We read the news so you don't have to. What stood out was where each of these roles now sits inside the business.

Start with Stephanie Greene, the new Chief Sustainability Officer at Cushman & Wakefield, who also runs the firm's sustainability services. Cushman poached her from CBRE, a direct rival, where she ran sustainability advisory.

Two of the largest property services firms in the world are now competing for the same sustainability talent. Her title says why. The work is run internally and sold to clients across roughly 6.5 billion square feet of real estate.

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Smruti Naik-Jones becomes CSO of Deloitte EMEA, the new regional business that launched on 1 June across more than 80 countries. She spent 20 years at Deloitte and led its WorldClimate programme.

Her appointment sits inside a €1.5 billion investment plan that also covers generative AI and cloud. Sustainability is being funded as part of that technology bet.

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Andre Argenton is now Dow's Chief Technology and Sustainability Officer. He joined Dow in 1999 and holds a PhD in physical chemistry. His remit runs across research, new product commercialisation and environmental performance, all under one person. At a materials company that is the honest structure.

You decarbonise by redesigning the molecule, so the chemist and the sustainability lead end up being the same person.

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Dries Lagerberg takes the CSO role at Rabobank, reporting straight to the chief executive. He has been at the bank for more than 20 years and started there as a lawyer. Most recently he ran sustainability regulations and commitments.

A bank putting a regulation specialist in the top sustainability seat, reporting to the CEO, tells you where it thinks the pressure is coming from.

The direction is the same across all four. Sustainability is climbing towards the chief executive and merging with the functions that buy, build and decide.

That is the part most teams are not ready for. The number is about to land in front of people paid to be sceptical, a CEO, a CPO, a CTO. The org chart is moving faster than the data underneath it.

We built DitchCarbon for the moment that number gets scrutinised. If your Scope 3 number couldn't survive that meeting today, let's talk.

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