When Chuck - mentor and role model to bloggers throughout EMC and beyond - first suggested I consider blogging about my journey in Corporate Sustainability, we discussed potential topics. One of his many pieces of useful advice was to avoid too many "book reports". After all, they are impersonal, often boring, and readily available in quantity from Amazon.
To date, I've managed to follow his advice. But it's been a struggle, because I read a fair amount and often what is foremost on my mind is a thought, question, or revelation that was planted by my latest read. Or not "planted" so much as "stuck" - something that has adhered to my thoughts like one of those little burrs that sticks to your socks when you wander through a field.
I so wanted the plural of "nexus" to be "nexes". But it turns out it's either "nexuses", which is awkward, or "nexus", which is ambiguous. I can't bring myself to use the former, so let me disambiguate the latter - I want to talk about more than one nexus between Sustainability and Innovation.
It used to be whenever a group of sustainability professionals got together, we'd debate for a few minutes about whether our job was to work ourselves out of a job. Now, it's a question I get asked whenever I'm interviewed about my role. And I admit, my view has changed in the last 3+ years.
For a short while, I thought that's exactly what I was supposed to do. After all, my mission is to embed principles of sustainability into our strategy, our operations, and our culture. That would imply that at some point I'll be "done".
But I know better now. If "sustainability" is about deliberate decision-making to shape our future, then the only thing that would end the job would be to stop having a future. And let's not go there…
Kathrin ("Kate") Winkler is Vice President and Chief Sustainability Officer at EMC Corporation, where she has a history of taking on entirely new roles in which she has to fill in the interstices between more traditional functions. She and her husband Angus live in Massachusetts, though they prefer to be 50 feet below the surface of tropical waters.
I took on the full-time sustainability position in July of 2008, and am using this blog to document my personal and professional journey. Needless to say (but I'll say it anyway), these views are my own and do not necessarily represent those of my employer. Content published here is not read or approved in advance by EMC and does not necessarily reflect the opinions of EMC or any other employees of EMC.
