The ardent supporters of ESG

It doesn’t come naturally to everyone. The stereotypical agent of change, the white knight of ESG, is an idealistic young executive raised on ecology and the slogan “There is no planet B”. But in the field, the architects of corporate metamorphosis have many other profiles. These men and women are realistic and experienced, and their motto is “what can be measured can be improved”.

Arnaud Rolland didn’t learn about sustainability at school. Lagardère Travel Retail’s current CSR Vice President educated himself on ESG: he would “go and visit factories.” “We learn from the experts in every area. If you’re interested in recycling processes, go and see the people who work in this field; go and look at the processes used for glass, plastic, cardboard and so on,” says the man who spent over 20 years at Coca-Cola. “You get a much clearer picture of the issues by talking to people in your ecosystem.”

His counterpart Sandrine Sommer has been with the LVMH group for 25 years. “It’s my sustainable side,” jokes Moët-Hennessy’s CSO. “These issues are not new to me. When I was with Guerlain, I worked for 13 years on implementing an ESG strategy. The president, Laurent Boillot, was quick to see the strategic importance of this project. This was truly pioneering in 2007.”

It’s not always people who take on ESG; sometimes ESG takes over people. Agathe Ruckebusch began her career working on “image and brand preference issues; what creates difference and singularity.” So it was a natural step for her to join Leroy Merlin’s “positive impact team”: “I really believe in the world ahead of us. These are the areas where we can make a difference. That’s where our singularity lies. You can’t create a difference in terms of price or delivery conditions when faced with pure players like Amazon.”

“At around the age of 40,” Agathe Ruckebusch needed to find meaning. This meaning is palpable in what everyone says. All of them use militant language. Sandrine Sommer is “convinced” that companies “have the power to make things change faster”; the Dutchman Tjeerd Krumpelman, Global Head of Reporting, Regulations & Stakeholder Management at ABN AMRO, speaks of the future with the same fervour as the Venezuelan Rafael Segrera, Schneider Electric’s South America Zone President.

There is only one limit to their enthusiasm: they all feel “there’s still more to do”, and that we’re not going fast enough yet. To remedy this, Rafael Segrera wants to bring business and academia closer together: “we haven’t made sufficient use of research results.” For ESG accelerators, it’s a question of making haste slowly.

You get a clearer picture of the issues by talking to people in your ecosystem.

Arnaud Rolland, Lagardère Travel Retail