Bridgette McAdoo -Global Sustainability Officer at Genesys

Sustainable Nation

Bridgette McAdoo leads the Global Sustainability practice at Genesys. She is responsible for sustainability as a management approach that holistically optimizes our economic, social, and environmental impact. In her role leading sustainability at Genesys, Bridgette drives our stakeholder engagement, education, and the evolution of the sustainable strategy and programs across Genesys. She also leverages sustainability metrics to track our non-financial performance and deliver integrated reports to our stakeholders

Bridgette has over 20 years of experience in sustainability leadership roles across multiple sectors, including the World Wildlife Fund (WWF), where she most recently led corporate strategy and engagement for WWF’s Freshwater and Food goals, Global Director of Sustainability for KFC, where she headed all sustainability issues for the brand, internally within Yum! Brands and externally with various sustainability stakeholders, and operations roles that were part of NASA’s Space Shuttle and Mars Rover programs.

She holds a bachelor’s degree in industrial engineering from the Florida Agricultural and Mechanical University and an MBA in Strategy from the Drucker School of Management.

Bridgette Joins Sustainable Nation to Discuss:

• Creating the foundation of sustainability at Genesys

• Advice for finding and hiring good sustainability talent

• Quantifying product use emissions

• Strategies to align sustainability with work from home

• Advice and recommendations for sustainability professionals

Bridgette's Final Five Questions Responses:

What is one piece of advice you would give other sustainability professionals that might help them in their careers?

Don't underestimate the power of two words: value and differentiation. Value, because one, it's usually not a group that has P&L responsibility, but you need to show that you can drive pipeline, help with attrition and retention. You have to show all the value that sustainability brings to the business so that it's a value proposition, not just a buzzword. Differentiation is how do you use it to set you apart from your competitors? Use it as a way to help put the company in a different lens than it usually would, and show that value. Show all the intangible values of sustainability, not just the tangible ones, all the qualifiable values, not just the quantifiable ones. That will help you to really get it elevated versus it sitting in the middle of the organizations as some people struggle with.

What are you most excited about right now in the world of sustainability?

I'm excited that I'm starting to see a lot of emphasis on intersectionality. For so long I felt that people felt like they could only talk about one pillar at a time. It's either an environmental conversation or a diversity conversation or a governance conversation. But those should be integrated. There should be an integrated, holistic approach to how we look at sustainability, because when those things are looked at in tandem, when we integrate it, we get the real wins. I'm glad to see that even organizations are starting to restructure to be that way and not silo out the work. When that happens I just feel like the work is really not as impactful as it should be.

What is one book you would recommend sustainability professionals read?

Because of all the time reading all these white papers and case studies, I like to read things that are way more inspiring and motivating and so far away from sustainability. However, I just started reading Net Positive by Paul Polman and Andrew Winston. I'm enjoying that book. It highlights the way we look at traditional CSR or philanthropy or impact, however your organization refers to it, is just not adequate for where we are today. That we, as leaders in this space, really need to rethink about how we drive the business differently and how we can be the change that we want to see. Another book that has been extremely impactful is Stamped From the Beginning by Ibram X Kendi. It talks about and it details how racist ideas were created, spread and deeply rooted in society. It's thought-provoking and intense, but it's a fantastic read.

What are some of your favorite resources or tools that really help you in your work?

I have a few different distribution lists that I'm on like GreebBiz Weekly. I get a lot of things where I can see a lot of articles. Our marketing team also does a fantastic job of scouring the industry or all the latest sustainability news to make sure that we can have a pulse on what's happening. So that's been extremely useful for me as having that inside outlook and then getting it from different shareholders or key stakeholders across sustainability when I get to see different articles. The climate pledge also being a part of that; you get to see what's happening across different signatories. It's always good to be able to benchmark and look how you're trending against all the different other companies that have the same commitments.

Where can our listeners go to learn more about you and the work being done at Genesys?

You can always go to our website and you can visit genesys.com/sustainability to learn more about our sustainability initiatives, read our latest report, and stay up to date on our progress.