Adam Gromis, Public Policy Manager, Sustainability & Environment, Uber

Uber is perhaps best known for its peer-to-peer ridesharing service.  They’re also working to bring the future closer with self-driving technology and urban air transport, helping people order food quickly and affordably, removing barriers to healthcare, creating new freight-booking solutions, and helping companies provide a seamless employee travel experience.  Uber is headquartered in San Francisco, California and has operations in 633 cities worldwide.

What do you actually do all day?

I think a lot about how the use of our product matters to cities and governments with environmental goals.  Cities face the difficult challenge of meeting mobility demand, which is expected to increase 300% over the next three decades.  At the same time, climate mitigators say that our carbon emissions need to shrink by 60% in that same time period.  I believe that from a business perspective, in order to remain relevant and to add value to the future of cities we must enable more efficient, lower carbon mobility.

Tactically my role falls into four main buckets:

1. Measurement – Identifying what tools we have internally that can help us measure the impact of our product, what should we be measuring (carbon, energy use, fuel economy, etc.), what is the scope of the measurements we should be taking, and who should we partner with to ensure we’re being transparent and using best practices.
2. Messaging – How do we engage with external and internal stakeholders about what we’re measuring, how does our data matter to them, how do we engage with outside actors to talk about what we’re seeing and what we can do and what we need to improve performance
3. Magnifying – Magnifying what works – identifying lighthouse/pilot projects that show promise for improved impact while supporting profitability.  As with the first two buckets, the first step is taking an inventory of what’s going on now, determining if these programs are scalable, evaluating if there are some things that are improving the impact but hurting the business or vice versa.  The next step is starting to think about what we could incubate over and above what the business is working on naturally.
4. Managing –  Figuring out how to operationalize those first three buckets based on the business’ tools and needs.  Managing the relationships with the decision makers and stakeholders that touch those first three pieces – who has the data, who can broadcast information, who are the outside stakeholders and are those relationships contractual or informal, are there places we should avoid participating, etc.  Finally, figuring out where we can imbed processes, feedback loops and align incentives to make the pieces work automatically and scale impact.

What are some of the key skills for success in this role?

Stakeholder relationships are a huge part of this role, so tactical advocacy and related soft skills are important.  I came to the role with existing relationships with external stakeholders that are very helpful.  My past work in impact investing, mobility, and environment had connected me with industry trade associations, external experts, and nonprofits which have been key to my success here.

I focus a lot on the creation of shared value and tying multiple bottom lines together that go beyond just the profit line.  You really need to understand the metrics of what drives profitability so that you can reframe sustainability beyond just a corporate social responsibility (CSR) play and start to talk about how moving incremental impact forward can move profit forward as well.  Metrics are incredibly important when trying to convince stakeholders of the shared value potential, and I think there’s a huge shared value potential in our business model that we need to formally identify and project.

What is your favorite part of your job?

It’s so exciting to work with such a large, fast growing company.  For instance, our employee base has doubled in size since I’ve joined and the scope has gone beyond rides to eats, freight, autonomous, bikes, flying cars, and we’re adding more all the time.  It’s been such a great experience to build a corporate sustainability framework that can be flexible enough to grow and change with our company.

The fun (and challenging) part about sustainability in general is that you never have everything you need, you’re usually on a small team with only a handful of resources, you sometimes are thought of as cost center at first, but with persistent internal and external advocacy, you can start to really show that the sustainability team can help and can drive results.  That role of advocacy – both internally and externally –  is both exhausting and never ending but it’s so exciting and fun.  I love making relationships, talking to people, bringing together diverse perspectives and making something new.

What is the hardest part of your job?

It can sometimes be a lonely road.  Businesses starting out on this road to sustainability often have only a few people and a small budget and you’re met with a lot of external and internal skepticism, so you’ve got to do a lot of work to convince people that the things you want to create and start are worth their time and attention.

Sustainability is something I do because I’m very passionate about it.  At heart I’m both an advocate and an optimist, so I’ll say “yes” almost all of the time.  That makes it easy to get over extended and run the risk of overpromising and underdelivering.  It’s something I have to manage very carefully to make sure that doesn’t happen.

What is your proudest professional achievement?

Within the first two months of working at Uber I had an individual audience with the then CEO Travis Kalanick, and to be engaged with him and getting feedback on these ideas  from such a high level of management so quickly was a thrill.  Within my first seven months here I spoke during an all hands meeting, in front of the entire company,  to talk about the need for a sustainability program and what we’re going to build.  Getting in front of the entire organization and using my personal strengths to drive inspiration and get in front of people with this message was huge.  People have been reaching out to me ever since.  They say “I heard your speech, I’m in an unrelated role but I would love to help if I can.”  People are talking about it and excited about it and it helps me to learn about the different parts of the business, improve my argument, and recruit help.

What are the game changers in your world?

In the world of mobility, it’s always a question of who is impacted by externalities.  It’s very inexpensive to drive by yourself in a combustion car, and it will probably remain that way for a while longer.  In OECD countries (the so-called 34 most-developed economies in the world) we all travel about eleven trillion miles a year, and 80% of that is in private cars.  The overwhelming majority of externalities from driving a private car are not internalized to you the driver; for instance, we don’t pay for all the  space a larger SUV might take up on the road, nor for the tailpipe emissions, or congestion we cause etc.  A huge game changer that would shift the whole equation towards efficiency would be pricing the roads or finding other ways to internalize the externalities of driving alone.  That would create a new playing field where efficient actors are rewarded in mobility, and inefficient actors are penalized.  In a world like that we can really move towards huge impact, when players are rewarded for driving electric mobility, route optimization, etc.  There are already some examples of this in places like London and Singapore which have congestion charges.

What was your path to this role?

I started out doing some general research on the so-called “new mobility” space. A number of research and white papers kept talking about the shared, electric and automated future of mobility. I said to myself, “how can I help drive this?”

Soon it became apparent that many of the tech companies bringing new tools to mobility where in a unique position to disrupt and add value to mobility.  I went on to LinkedIn and started looking for 2nd and third connections to tech companies playing in the mobility space.

After several months of networking I was doing informational interviews with a few folks at Uber and they highlighted the opening for this role for me.

Uber originally thought they were looking for a more policy focused role when they started hiring for this position.  As I progressed through the interviews, I was able to pitch this larger sustainability framework that I had created and now I’m here building out my capacity to execute on that.

What’s your advice to someone interested in a role like this?

Sustainability professionals working in business have to do two hard things at once:  drive impact and profitability.  A common denominator between the two is quantitative analysis.  You have to have and know the numbers to understand both.  So quantitative skills, understanding metrics, and – more importantly – understanding how different audiences consume and view metrics, is essential.

Developing your soft skills such as stakeholder networking, collaboration and public speaking are also incredibly helpful.  You’ll never have all the resources you want or need, so you have to influence and leverage soft power to earn help.  Learn how to be an advocate and how to effectively grow, manage and maintain a network.

Finally identifying the underlying trends and drivers on both the business and policy fronts is very important. As a former boss of mine always said, quoting Wayne Gretzky I believe, you have to “skate to where the puck is going to be”.

What are your favorite resources?

NGOs, like The International Council on Clean Transportation (ICCT) or Shared Use Mobility Center, produce great content related to sustainable mobility.  Consultants and banks are also doing a lot of nice summary and analysis pieces on new mobility.  For instance, McKinsey, Morgan Stanley, and Goldman Sachs have put out informative stuff.

TPG is one of the largest private equity shops in the world, and they’re also one of Uber’s investors.  They have an entire Environmental, Social, Governance (ESG) group that works with portfolio companies by providing workshops on how to align an organization with sustainability goals.

I’m also very excited to have an Environmental Defense Fund (EDF) Climate Corps fellow joining us this summer.  We should get a lot of great projects done.

Who (or what) is your sustainability hero(s)?

The City of Copenhagen.  Christiana Figueres, who led the negotiations for the Paris Climate accord.  Lisa Jackson, Chief Sustainability Officer at Apple and former EPA head.