Tara Leweling recently stepped down as chief sustainability officer at USAA. She is the founder and CEO of Sage71, a new strategic sustainability consultancy. She splits her time between Los Angeles and Monterey, California.
Give us the cross sectoral, transdisciplinary, intersectional elevator pitch description of your job.
Sage71 will focus on issues surrounding sustainability, social impact, corporate responsibility, and geopolitical risk. These issues are increasing in complexity, and the pace of change is increasing. What we're trying to do is empower organizations, including companies and not for profits that really want to continue to drive impact, but are challenged with navigating this complexity. Sage71 will provide great counsel to them, and help them build their strategies and think through what's next in this time of massive change, whether it's change because of the energy transition, change because of the regulatory environment, or change just because of consumer sentiment.
What's one persistent challenge you face in your work?
I'd say a persistent challenge is misperceptions around this work. There's so much opportunity when it comes to sustainability and all of the elements of having a strong, sustainable business. But we don't always know or even agree on the definition of sustainability and what it means for an organization. You don't walk into the room with everyone having a common understanding of what sustainability means – personally or to their organization. And so I think part of addressing this challenge is helping organizations understand what sustainability means to them, and to their organization.
How do sustainability initiatives align with their own values as well as their organization’s value proposition? They're delivering something for consumers, for students, for their members, for the communities they serve, and sustainability needs to be really connected to the core organizational mission.
The other thing is that there are always new opportunities. New business opportunities. New market opportunities. New community opportunities that exist that we're just beginning to envision. I wouldn't call it a challenge, but an opportunity to envision. What does that mean for me as an individual? Does that mean for me as a leader in this organization that that currently does X, and in the future could do X and Y or do X modified…
So it's less about solving this persistent challenge with one common core definition that everybody knows and agrees on and follows, but rather each organization has to define it for themselves. Maybe there are boundaries around the definition of sustainability. But there is some flexibility in what makes it meaningful for any given group.
Exactly. It really does have to be tailored to the organization. For example, I have a good friend who owns a family resort in Michigan, and she's very committed to sustainability. That looks very different for her than it does for my prior employer (USAA), a 42 billion dollar company. The two companies' values are very aligned and similar, but the business models are very different. Thinking through what sustainability means for each of those organizations requires a lot of strategic thinking, a lot of conversation, and frankly, a lot of alignment among the leaders of those organizations about how they want to move forward and integrate sustainability into the day to day of their operations.
What is something you hope for a sustainable future?
My hope always always comes from young people which is why I am excited about the National Sustainability Society. I had the opportunity a couple months ago to speak at a university business fraternity. Meeting those young people, and having them talk about their ideas about what sustainability could mean in their careers, what it could mean in the organizations they're interning at… Their energy is incredible. There are just so many young people who are committed to building sustainable futures. And I think it's up to us who have been in this for a while to help them on that journey, provide guidance but also embrace and encourage the new ideas that they're bringing forward. Our country has created the most educated and diverse generation that's ever existed. And so it's up to us to help encourage them in new ideas and thinking, in addition to helping guide their efforts and hopefully reduce some of the barriers to their success.
I love that. NSS wants to prioritize and center students and early career professionals in our support and offerings. Surprises come where new ideas are supported!
And inculcating that entrepreneurial mindset, that moves a great idea into action, delivers a product or service that people need or community needs… helping young people think through that process, that's what gives me hope. Young people and their passion around sustainability today.
If you could have lunch with a famous person, who would you choose and why, and what would you hope your conversation would be about?
Angela Merkel, former Chancellor of Germany. She guided Germany, and frankly, the whole of Europe through some really difficult times, from economic challenges in certain parts of Europe to challenges from a security perspective. I think she was willing to make some really hard decisions. But she also did it in a way that never quite got, you know, she didn't get too far in front of the German people except for the refugee situation. In that case, she looked at the German Constitution, and asked the very important question, how does Germany accept more refugees? Which, of course, has been challenging for German society… and we're seeing it play out in German politics today. I would want to talk to her more about that decisioning, decisioning throughout her Chancellorship, on how she balanced the different interests of the German people in Europe more broadly. How she thought about the German Constitution, and her own values that she brought to the Chancellorship, and how those both influenced her decision making. And then also, understand how she thinks about some of the long term impacts of those decisions. She also made the decision that Germany would no longer have nuclear power. There's a lot of debate around that so just understanding more deeply her thinking and her perspective on it, and at that level of leadership.
In your free time, when you're not setting up a new consulting firm and joining boards and doing interviews on, on your successes, what hobbies and interests do you have outside of these things?
Ceramics. I love creating pottery. I'm not very good at it, but it's fun! I'm about to join a kind of a collective here that has a kiln. Also, yoga, which I have found to be really transformative in my life, in terms of helping me think more about the stresses in my life, how am I managing those stresses, and what sort of tools am I putting in place to help me with that stress. I also seem to be very focused on my nonprofit work because I'm also working with a friend to start up a new nonprofit that focuses on the wellness of nonprofit leaders, because there's so much burnout in the space. We would help leaders enhance their resilience by giving them the opportunity to pause and focus on their wellness.
Last question and this is an interesting one for you, as a well-established and successful sustainability professional. How can the NSS support you and your career, as you go into this next chapter?
I think it's about creating a lifelong community of people who are able to help each other over decades of work. I'm still connected with interns who interned with me, you know, 20 years ago. That sense of community is really important to me. I think in our field, no matter how you define sustainability, there's a lot that's challenging in sustainability work, and sometimes it can be cyclical. But not everyone has been exposed to the cycles (yet). I think helping people appreciate that sometimes this work can be cyclical, and that having a community around for insights, support, opportunities, and to lift each other up is really valuable.