How She Leads: Leilani Latimer of Sabre Holdings
How She Leads: Leilani Latimer of Sabre Holdings
This is the inaugural post for How She Leads, a column created by Maya Albanese for GreenBiz.com to spotlight women leaders in sustainability.
Through her column, Albanese will explore the career paths of women who have moved into influential roles in sustainable development. She’ll ask participants to share how they acquired their roles and discuss the opportunities and challenges they face. Her goal for How She Leads is to inspire and encourage more women to attain executive positions in sustainable business. Albanese's first interview is with Leilani Latimer, the director of Sustainability Initiatives at Sabre Holdings, a board member of the Global Sustainable Tourism Council, and a member and former co-chair of the Corporate Social Responsibility Committee for the National Business Travel Association.
Latimer’s experiences illustrate what it’s like to be a high-level sustainability professional in a global company. She provides her insights on the past, present and future of this relatively new discipline. Sabre Holding's mission is to connect people with the world's greatest travel possibilities. Sabre merchandises and retails travel products and offers distribution and technology solutions for the travel industry. The company's businesses include Sabre Travel Network, Airline Solutions and Hospitality Solutions, as well as Travelocity. Maya Albanese: How exactly did you rise to this role? Did you create the position or were you hired into an existing role?
MA: This field is relatively new and each company is integrating it differently into its organizational structure. Do you work in a department dedicated to sustainability? Do you have staff or a team?
LL: I report to the office of the CEO where we manage sustainability, and then we also have a Corporate Responsibility Department where community and philanthropic engagement are managed, but we work very closely together. We have a Sustainability Advisory Council and point people across all departments of the company, who work with me to coordinate the sustainable business plan every year. There are also 16 global eco teams made up of passionate volunteers. I encourage the leaders to include this role as part of their career development so that when they are reviewed on their annual performance, this role can be seen as something that establishes their leadership above and beyond their day job.MA: So you are managing a significant amount of people without actually having any direct reports? I imagine there are lots of answers to this next question: What are your biggest challenges in this role? LL: Getting people to understand that sustainability will help them meet their business objectives rather than this is "just another thing I have to do on top of all my other work." One of the most important parts of my job is inspiring people to integrate sustainability into their jobs. In order to make the connection I like to stress the importance of internal and external public health that connects them personally to the issue of environmental responsibility. I ask them questions like: "How many people here have children with respiratory problems? How many people like being outdoors and hunting and fishing? How many like animals?" Anyone who answers yes to any of these questions has a natural link to improving the environment. MA: How would you highlight the importance of women specifically in the acceleration of sustainability as a profession? LL: Market data shows that women make most consumer purchases and that women are greener consumers than men. The caretaker consumer role is something that all companies should be paying attention to. MA: Top-down support is crucial to the success of new initiatives in large enterprises. Are you seeing an increase in interest from the C-suite level? Which high-level stakeholders are the most engaged in these efforts? LL: I believe there is interest in the C-suite, but that real change will take place when Wall Street really begins including sustainability issues in its ratings of companies. It would be great to see companies being required to report on the SRI, the sustainability index of the Dow Jones. Only a few major companies are participating voluntarily right now. When SRI influences the value of stocks, then investors and companies will care more about sustainability. MA: Where do you see the future of this discipline going in the next 20 years? LL: The hope is that there will be no need for sustainability directors in the future, because every function within the company has sustainability integrated into it. There may always be a need for an ambassador to bring stakeholders together. MA: What do you see as the “next big thing” in sustainability? LL: Integrative reporting. There’s been a whole world of metrics related to bulky CSR reports. The separate CSR report should go away and become completely integrated into the main business report. We need to find that happy place where the silo-ed functions that work toward wellness are integrated. This holistic incorporation is the next generation of sustainability -- that happy place.
Leilani Latimer was a speaker at the GreenBiz Group's 2011 State of Green Business Forum in San Francisco. A summary of her presentation is available at GreenBiz.com.
Read more: http://www.greenbiz.com/blog/2011/05/09/how-she-leads-leilani-latimer-sabre-holdings#ixzz1LyClcR5o