Since 2023, Rukaiyah Adams has served as CEO of the 1803 Fund, an innovative firm that seeks to grow shared prosperity through the alignment of financial investments and investments in community-based organizations. It is not a conventional investment firm, and it is not traditional philanthropy—its work includes aspects of both and is ultimately about ‘investing for the people’. Rukaiyah has been a pioneer in socially responsible investing, establishing key frameworks in the field. Previously s...
Dec 06, 2023•1 hr 4 min
Mary Harvey is an accomplished sports governance and sustainability executive with 15+ years of leading worldwide initiatives to achieve societal change and gender equity through sports. As Chief Executive of the Centre for Sport and Human Rights, Mary oversees the Centre’s vision, including facilitating the deliberations of the Centre’s multi-stakeholder Advisory Council, operational and financial management, stakeholder engagement, and good governance. Prior to leading the Centre of Sport and ...
Nov 22, 2023•1 hr 7 min
Maximilian Winter is the Founder and General Partner at Harmonix Fund as well as a fourth-generation entrepreneur. Having successfully deployed two funds, Maximilian has invested in over 40 early-stage companies, resulting in an enterprise valuation of $5 billion. Maximilian invests in scalable technological breakthroughs to advance human health and scientific progress. This includes improving healthcare, accelerating life sciences, and helping create deep tech infrastructures—the building block...
Nov 08, 2023•53 min
Walden Lam is the co-founder and CEO of unspun, whose mission is to reduce global human carbon emissions by 1%. To get there, unspun is focused on zero-waste production and circular reuse for clothing. In their aim to remake the fashion industry, unspun had to remake how clothes are made. They started with digital fit jeans, and then created VEGA, a 3D weaving technology that changes how clothes are made to reduce waste, increase efficiency, and make clothes easier to recycle back into raw mater...
Oct 25, 2023•52 min
Nick Stone is a Lead Director and Board Member for Wilderness. Known for its once-in-a-lifetime safari experiences, Wilderness was founded in Botswana in 1983 with the goal of introducing visitors to the country’s natural beauty while protecting the environment and providing local jobs. Today, the company has more than six million acres of land under its stewardship and provides an economic support system for the communities where it operates, creating durable, well-paying jobs for roughly 2,600...
Oct 11, 2023•1 hr 8 min
Fawn Bergen leads Intel Corporation’s Corporate Sustainability Group. In her role, Fawn directs the implementation of Intel’s sustainability goals across their manufacturing operations and office facilities around the world, including Intel’s commitments to reach net zero GHG emissions by 2040, 100% renewable electricity by 2030, net positive water by 2030, and zero waste to landfill by 2030. Fawn’s 24+ years of experience in the environmental field has spanned multiple industries and specialtie...
Sep 27, 2023•1 hr 2 min
Lata Reddy is Senior Vice President of Inclusive Solutions at Prudential, and chair of The Prudential Foundation. In these roles, Lata harnesses the power of capital markets to drive financial and social mobility. By combining diversity strategies, impact investments, philanthropy, corporate contributions, and employee engagement with Prudential’s full business capabilities, she helps position the company to promote inclusive economic opportunity and sustainable growth. Under Lata’s leadership, ...
Sep 13, 2023•44 min
Amy Terpeluk leads the CSR & Social Impact Practice at FINN Partners, a values-based marketing and communications agency. FINN Partners helps brands share their stories in ways that drive business value and make a positive impact in the world. Amy has created initiatives in education, DEI, public health, economic inequality, sustainability, climate change, and veterans’ well-being. Amy also helped launch the NO MORE Foundation, a global campaign galvanizing greater awareness to end domestic ...
Aug 30, 2023•52 min
Chuck Templeton is a Senior Managing Director at S2G Ventures, the direct investment team at Builders Vision—an impact platform providing philanthropy, investment, and advocacy tools to organizations that are building a more humane and healthy planet. S2G Ventures has 4 focus areas for investment: Clean Energy, Food & Agriculture, Oceans & Seafood, and Special Opportunities. Once an entrepreneur himself, Chuck founded OpenTable. He is many things: an ultra-runner, a former Army Ranger, a...
Aug 16, 2023•53 min
Stephanie Benedetto is the Co-Founder and CEO of Queen of Raw. This award-winning company is turning deadstock pollution into profit through two major channels: 1) its proprietary inventory management software Materia MX, and 2) an integrated deadstock marketplace. Queen of Raw enables fashion companies to sell their excess inventory, while at the same time supporting sustainability compliance measurement and reporting. Stephanie is a member of Pledge 1% and a founding member of the New York Cir...
Aug 02, 2023•49 min
Lindsey Hoell is co-founder and CEO of Dispatch Goods, a women-founded reverse logistics company building the infrastructure for circular packaging. Dispatch Goods enables direct-to-consumer brands to offer their customers’ meals and groceries in completely reusable packaging, again and again. Their mission is to make single-use waste a thing of the past, with the motto of “better, cheaper, greener”. Since 2020, Dispatch Goods has kept over 2 million single-use items from entering waste streams....
Jul 19, 2023•56 min
Buddy is President & CEO at Soles4Souls, a not-for-profit social enterprise creating opportunity through the collection and distribution of shoes and clothing around the world. Teaster’s experience at Soles4Souls, along with the organization’s global economic impact, is chronicled in his book, shoestrings: how your donated shoes and clothes help people pull themselves out of poverty. Previously, Buddy was President of StarKart and the National Association of Local Advertisers, and served as ...
Jul 05, 2023•58 min
Neda Nia is the Chief Product Officer at Stibo Systems, a master data management company whose purpose is to deliver better data, better business, and a better world. As part of their data management suite of solutions, Stibo Systems has innovated tools that help clients track and achieve their sustainability and ESG goals. These tools enable clients to evidence their ESG performance, create supply chain transparency, and share reliable sustainability data with stakeholders. Neda and I met last ...
Jun 21, 2023•45 min
Carbon Market Watch works to ensure that carbon pricing and other climate policies cut pollution and drive a just transition towards zero-carbon societies. The NGO utilizes evidence-based advocacy to improve climate action through market-based solutions working in concert with sound regulatory policy. Gilles Dufrasne leads Carbon Market Watch's work on global carbon markets. He has been following carbon market negotiations at the UN climate and aviation agencies, as well as developments on the v...
Jun 07, 2023•50 min
Melissa C. Potter honed her expertise in the topics of Race, Identity, Culture, and Equity working in both the social justice and entertainment worlds. Today she is the Vice President of Strategy and Impact at Paramount, upholding the company’s commitment to the long-term social impact of cultural shifts in society as driven across a diverse collection of brands including CBS, SHOWTIME, MTV, BET, and Nickelodeon. Melissa is also responsible for the MTV Entertainment Group’s Culture Orientation p...
May 24, 2023•56 min
Mike Salguero is the founder of ButcherBox, the leading high-quality, direct-to-consumer meats brand. Since its launch in 2015, the company has grown to become a $600 million business, all while putting an emphasis on animal welfare, the environment, and supporting farmers and fishermen. ButcherBox is a certified B Corporation, signaling the brand’s commitment to using its business as a force for good. In 2020, Mike was named an Entrepreneur Of The Year® National Award winner by Ernst & Youn...
May 10, 2023•57 min
Andrew Winston is one of the most widely read and respected writers on sustainability. The author of four books and hundreds of articles, his work has been published in many outlets including the Harvard Business Review and the MIT Sloan Management Review . In 2021 Andrew was named a top 50 management thinker in the Thinkers50 list. Andrew's latest book is, Net Positive: How Courageous Companies Thrive by Giving More Than They Take . It was co-authored with Paul Polman, the legendary ex-CEO of U...
Apr 26, 2023•53 min
Today’s episode is extra special. On the Purpose and Profit podcast, I interview business leaders that are innovating new approaches to business. These changemakers are marching to the beat of their own drum, paving new paths that others will follow. To be a changemaker requires having the courage to do things differently. Yesterday, my husband Ozan Varol released a new book called Awaken Your Genius: Escape Conformity, Ignite Creativity, and Become Extraordinary . This is a practical guidebook ...
Apr 12, 2023•17 min
Brad Liski is a social entrepreneur and the CEO of British Columbia-based Tru Earth, a global household cleaning product company focused on biodegradability and the elimination of single-use plastic waste. In 2022, Tru Earth partnered with Ocean Wise to launch the American Shoreline Clean-up Program. Brad was recently named a Sustainability Leader by Canada’s Clean50 for 2022. Other awards Brad and Tru Earth have received include B.C.’s CEO of the year, B.C.’s Top Exporter of the Year, and Best ...
Mar 29, 2023•51 min
After 2 years of speaking with some of the most innovative leaders in the ESG space today, this week’s Purpose and Profit is extra special. It’s my very first solocast! In this episode I take you behind the scenes, sharing part of my journey in creating the global purpose strategy for adidas, a $22 billion company. My experiences shaping how adidas positively impacts people and planet catapulted me on my mission to re-purpose business into a force for good. I also let you in on why purpose is es...
Mar 15, 2023•19 min
Sarah Bratton Hughes is the Head of ESG & Sustainable Investing for American Century Investments. American Century is not your standard investment firm. They have embedded purpose into their core, with a focus on supporting breakthrough medical research. In the 1990s, the founder of American Century and his wife, Jim and Virginia Stowers, established and endowed the Stowers Institute for Medical Research from their personal fortune. This world-class biomedical research organization owns a co...
Mar 01, 2023•43 min
Alex Budak is a social entrepreneur, author, and faculty member at UC Berkeley Haas School of Business. His new book is called Becoming a Changemaker: An Actionable, Inclusive Guide to Leading Positive Change at Any Level, and is based on the transformative course (of the same name) Alex created and teaches. Previously, Alex co-founded the social impact platform StartSomeGood, ran Sweden’s leading social innovation incubator, Reach for Change, and worked at Change.org. Alex teaches, speaks, cons...
Feb 15, 2023•50 min
Steve Preston is the President and CEO at Goodwill Industries International. Many people are familiar with Goodwill as a place to donate clothing and home goods or go thrift shopping. But most people don’t realize that a significant part of what Goodwill does is help people overcome challenges to find jobs and grow their careers. Goodwill transforms donations into job opportunities by using the revenue from their stores to provide free career counseling, skills training, and résumé prep services...
Feb 01, 2023•1 hr 6 min
David Reynolds is the Chief Executive of the Department for Trade and Investment for South Australia (an Australian state twice the size of France). The Department enables economic growth in South Australia by attracting investment, increasing exports, and removing barriers to business. South Australia has built a global reputation as a leader in sustainability. The state, a leader in renewable energy, replaced coal with wind and solar. Today, 70% of the state's energy use is from renewables, wh...
Jan 18, 2023•1 hr 7 min
Simon Mulcahy is the founder and lead of C02, a company created to help businesses of all sizes become net-zero—the point at which the greenhouse gasses we put into the atmosphere are equal to the amount we remove from it—and nature-positive. CO2 offers climate-action portfolios that support high-quality carbon dioxide removal and reduction, as well as the protection of important carbon sinks, all while benefiting nature and communities. CO2 will also include a learning hub to provide guidance o...
Jan 04, 2023•57 min
Rania Hoteit is a multi-award-winning serial entrepreneur and global impact leader. As Founder and former CEO of ID4A Technologies, Rania built a global company that is committed to the UN Sustainable Development Goals. ID4A Technologies has been revolutionizing the manufacturing processes while creating significant environmental, economic and social impact. Under Rania’s leadership, ID4A was recognized by the White House Office of Science and Technology for “Fostering The Development of Advance...
Dec 21, 2022•58 min
Lisa Gevelber is the founder and head of Grow with Google, Google’s tech-skilling workforce development initiative. Grow with Google is the company's $1 Billion initiative to drive economic opportunity for all. Grow with Google offers certification programs that provide job training for in-demand, high-paying careers for people without college degrees; and free digital skills training to middle and high school students and adult job seekers. Grow with Google also provides free help to small and ...
Dec 07, 2022•42 min
Ruth Hartnoll is the CEO and Co-Founder of Matchstick Creative, a purpose-driven creative agency based in Liverpool, England. Matchstick Creative is a certified B-Corp. Since its founding in 2018, the company exists to create a more equal world through well-told stories and shared experiences. Matchstick Creative only partners with businesses that are trying to do good in the world. The Matchstick Creative name is summed up with the phrase: “Ignite an idea, spark a conversation”. Ruth is also a ...
Nov 23, 2022•57 min
Orlando Ferreira is the Chief Finance and Administration Officer of IDB Invest, a multilateral development finance institution owned by 47 member countries. 26 members are in the Latin American and Caribbean region where IDB Invest finances projects to advance clean energy, modernize agriculture, strengthen transportation systems, and expand access to financing. In 2021 the multilateral bank issued $1.6 billion in sustainable debt, including a $50 million blue bond for a remediation and preserva...
Nov 09, 2022•1 hr 9 min
Ken Banks is the Head of Social Purpose at the digital identity startup Yoti. The Yoti app was built with security and privacy as a priority, ensuring a safer way for people to prove who they are, both online and off. The company believes in using tech for good, and is a certified B Corp. Ken is an award-winning founder, technologist, anthropologist, and author committed to supporting positive social and environmental change around the world. Before joining Yoti he worked for more than two decad...
Oct 26, 2022•1 hr 9 min
