When you engage thinkstep-anz to help you succeed sustainably, you benefit from the skills and experience of three members of our leadership team: Nicole Sullivan (our Impact Director), Jeff Vickers (our Technical Director) and Emily Townsend (our Services Director). In this thinkerview we ask them how they work together to connect our services and skills to help your organisation have the greatest impact.
How our three directors’ roles fit together
Nicole’s role explores ‘why’ we do our work. She has an external focus – working with our many clients and sustainability partners on both sides of the Tasman to inspire change and help clients and industries improve their sustainability quickly.
Jeff’s role is about ‘how’ we work. He sets the tone of our work technically. For example, he guides how we produce our thinkstep-anz technical reports.
Emily’s role looks at ‘what’ work we are doing. She supports the teams managing our projects. Both she and Jeff ensure best practice is shared across our teams.
Nicole Sullivan, Jeff Vickers and Emily Townsend
Q: How does your work help clients succeed sustainably?
Nicole – We connect projects. For example, if our client partners with their suppliers to reduce their Scope 3 emissions, this leads to greater impacts for both parties. That adds value.
Some of these projects benefit whole industries, like the Australian Steel Institute’s Steel Sustainability Australia (SSA) program. Projects where we work with local, state and national government agencies can even improve sustainability across a whole country.
Jeff – We work with many clients, from those just getting started in sustainability to those who are leading the way. Some of our projects are relatively standard and benefit a single client. For example, we might work with a client on a strategy to make sustainability part of how they do business or assess how sustainable their packaging is.
Other projects chart new courses beyond what is covered by standards. This could be developing an innovative tool to measure carbon emissions or a new rating tool. While we may not have previously done a particular project, we combine our experience and stakeholder engagement skills to get the best outcomes. Together we explore what’s possible.
Emily – Our roles join the dots across projects and make sure people (both at thinkstep-anz and our clients) know about other work we've done so we (and they) can build on that. Each project has an impact and together they add to become even greater.
Communicating these impacts is important too. Our communication and creative teams produce reports that help clients connect with their stakeholders and market their products and services using credible environmental data. No greenwashing!
Q: How does your work help clients and industries develop their skills and knowledge?
Jeff – One of our values is about sharing our knowledge to build clients’ and industries’ skills. We don't want to just do the same things again and again for clients. We want to help them grow their skills in-house so they can measure their carbon footprint themselves, perform their own Life Cycle Assessments (LCA), or include sustainability concepts in new product development. This helps industries make faster progress to become more sustainable.
Nicole – We help clients understand how sustainability is changing and what they need to do to stay current. For example, in building and construction, we show them what they need to do to respond to the new National Australian Built Environment Rating System’s (NABERS) rating tool for embodied carbon. We share the latest trends and changes in sustainability at webinars and conferences to inspire and encourage clients to step up.
Q: What are some projects that have connected different thinkstep-anz services?
Emily – We developed a sustainability strategy for a New Zealand food producer. Then we used circular economy thinking to assess their packaging. We also ran an LCA project and helped them set up a system to measure and report their corporate carbon emissions. All these projects built on the work we'd done with them.
Nicole – In 2022 we published the technical report that supported NABERS’ consultation paper. That involved our strategy and LCA teams. Then our designers provided graphics and our communications team reviewed the report so it was easy to understand.
Jeff – We've worked with a major Australasian steelmaker to report their corporate carbon emissions and do a lot of LCA work for them. This helps them understand the carbon in their supply chain and to communicate the impact of their products. The LCA results fed into the corporate carbon project.
Q: Why is it important to connect our thinkstep-anz services and skills?
Jeff – Sustainability has so many different parts - from climate change to basic human needs, biodiversity to innovation - that our team and our clients need to keep moving forward and keep learning on the way.
Nicole – We succeed when we collaborate and make the most of everyone’s talents. The more we learn and create links, the more impact we have.
Emily – Sustainability keeps growing and no one is an expert in everything. There are constantly new things to learn and thinkstep-anz has people who can help you understand. I learn so much from the projects our team works on.
10 October 2023