Joel Makower
GreenBiz
December 1, 2014
Two months ago, Sheila Bonini became the third chief executive of The Sustainability Consortium, a 5-year-old membership group comprising consumer packaged goods companies, their suppliers and a few retailers, notably Walmart, one of the organization’s original conveners.
It’s a challenging job, what with TSC’s ambitious agenda to create metrics and tools to assess the environmental and social impacts of a breathtakingly broad range of products, from televisions to toothpaste. Its research agenda and partnerships cover the globe.
Bonini, who previously spent 15 years with McKinsey & Co., including 10 working on sustainability issues, brings some pretty good research chops. At McKinsey, she co-led the company’s Sustainability Transformation Service, and her work focused on the link between social and environmental impact and financial value creation. In recent years Bonini served TSC in a leadership capacity as a consultant and as lead on collaborative research work. Independently, she has led research collaborations with the World Wildlife Fund, the Carbon Disclosure Project and other TSC member organizations.
I recently spoke with Bonini to learn more about why she took the job and how she sees TSC’s work unfolding in the coming years. (The conversation has been edited for clarity and length.) I’ll continue the conversation with Bonini on stage in February at the 2015 GreenBiz Forum, which is produced in partnership with TSC.