Scott Breen, Associate Manager, Sustainability and Circular Economy Program, U.S. Chamber of Commerce Foundation & Co-host of the Sustainability Defined Podcast

The US Chamber of Commerce Foundation is dedicated to strengthening America’s long-term competitiveness.  It educates the public on the conditions necessary for business and communities to thrive, how business positively impacts communities, and emerging issues and creative solutions that will shape the future.  Based in Washington, DC, the Foundation partners with companies around the country such as Coca-Cola, Dow, DSM, and Republic Services.

The Foundation’s Corporate Citizenship Center is comprised of multiple issues networks including Health & Wellness, Women’s Economic Empowerment, Financial Inclusion & Wellness, Education & Workforce Development, Disaster Preparedness & Response, and Sustainability & Circular Economy.  The foundation also maintains connections with local chambers nationwide that allow it to pursue local place-based initiatives.  Each issue network provides programming in the following three areas:

• Voices: blogs, newsletters
• Connections: events, membership outreach
• Insights: original research

In addition to these areas, the Sustainability & Circular Economy issue network leads Beyond 34, an initiative focused on engaging the entire recycling supply chain (residents, businesses, municipalities, haulers, funders) to get everyone working together to increase the U.S. recycling rate beyond its current 34% rate. As the Associate Manager of the Sustainability & Circular Economy issue network, Scott helps execute on Beyond 34 as well as develop and deliver programming that helps corporate sustainability professionals overcome their challenges and advance their priorities.

Scott presenting on Beyond 34 at the Indiana Recycling Coalition annual conference

Scott is also the co-founder and co-host of the Sustainability Defined podcast.  Scott and his co-host Jay Siegel believe that sustainability is too ambiguous, and their podcast aims to fix that.  Each episode focuses on a single topic that pushes sustainability forward.  They explain each topic with the help of an experienced pro, place it within their organizational tree, and help their listeners define what exactly sustainability is, episode by episode.

It’s both hilarious and informative.  If you’re interested in learning more about sustainability in a super fun and easy to listen to format, go check them out at https://sustainabilitydefined.com/.

What do you actually do all day?

My day to day can vary quite a bit.  A big part of my role is planning events that provide our members with key insights while also having a lot of fun.  Our signature event is the annual Sustainability and Circular Economy Summit, but we also do stand-alone events like the recent Circular Economy Business Delegation Tour that my sustainability colleague Stephanie Potter and I organized.  We put about 25 sustainability and waste management professionals on a bus and took them to several different companies that are leaders in circular economy practices.  They had the opportunity to ask detailed questions and get a good idea of how these practices could work at their companies.

The Circular Economy Business Delegation Tour Group

I’m also responsible for stakeholder engagement.  I’m often on the phone with existing supporters, potential supporters and collaborators, and participants in our Beyond 34 recycling project.  With the Beyond 34 project we’re trying to connect with people from throughout the entire recycling supply chain, so that takes a lot of coordination.  We’re in the process of expanding a Beyond 34 pilot that we did in Orlando to a new region, so I’ve been writing a lot of strategic plans and grants for that lately.

I attend a lot of events as well.  Earlier today I was at the Canadian embassy learning about zero waste practices in commercial kitchens, and I’ve had some great opportunities to speak at conferences like GreenBiz VERGE, USGBC GreenCon, and the Indiana Recycling Coalition’s Annual Conference.  All of these activities give me great perspective and insights that I incorporate into our Sustainability & Circular Economy offerings.

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

1. It helps to have a strategic mindset; I talk with so many people that it’s important to be able to take all that information and channel it into something useful that will push the field forward and provide value to the business community.
2. Project management is important; the money we spend comes from fundraising efforts, so we’ve got to use it in a way that makes the most impact. It’s also important to communicate out our plans to our stakeholders and make sure that everyone understands their role during implementation.
3. You’ve got to be a people person. I get energized from attending conferences and talking with so many stakeholders.
4. You need to have a fairly significant breadth and depth of sustainability knowledge. Many of our member companies come to me with questions about a variety of topics, and I need to know what’s going on in the field and how those developments can be helpful to them.

Scott on an alternative transit panel

What is your favorite part of your job?

Figuring out new programming and initiatives we can produce to advance the field and help our supporters to meet their sustainability challenges and priorities.  I get to ask a lot of people what they are focusing on and what they struggle with, and it’s fun to find the patterns and figure out a way to channel that feedback into something tangible.  For example, if several of our supporters are setting circular water goals, but I don’t see a lot of resources available to them for achieving these goals, I think about how we can develop something to help.  Should we conduct research?  Should we bring in a non-profit with subject matter expertise?  Do we need to set up some discussions or events?  It’s fun to problem solve and be creative.

What is the hardest part of your job?

I enjoy coming up with new things, but it’s hard to stay creative when you’ve got other tasks and priorities such as setting up webinars and events and managing existing projects.  It can be tough to make the space for creativity and the big ideas, but it’s important to do that if we’re going to help people overcome their challenges.  Fortunately, our organization recognizes this and has set up experiences like our annual Leadership Circle Retreat at the beginning of each year that gives us the chance to step back, share plans for the year, and present big ideas and get feedback from our closest supporters.

What is your proudest professional achievement?

I co-host a podcast called Sustainability Defined with my friend Jay Siegel.  Jay and I met at a Net Impact networking event and came up with the idea together.  It was really cool to start something from the ground up and get experience with building a brand and being in charge of all the big decisions from how regularly to publish to what questions to ask or guests to invite.

Jay Siegel (left) with Scott recording an episode of Sustainability Defined at GreenBiz

I’m really proud of it because it’s something that wouldn’t exist without my efforts and it’s really cool to see the impact it has had on others.  There were some people in Mongolia who heard the podcast and decided to start their own version of it in Mongolian.  It’s the only sustainability podcast in Mongolian, and it exists because they heard our show!

Another example of the show’s impact is a woman who reached out to a fantastic plastics organization that she heard about on our show. This woman had experience in marketing was wondering what the next step in her career should be.  She heard our episode on plastics featuring an interview with the founder of an organization called Plastics for Change working in Bangalore. She decided to email our guest and ask if she could do marketing for him.  He said yes, and now she’s in India supporting that company’s mission.

There was another woman at Penn State who had just started teaching a course on sustainability.  She heard our podcast and loved it so much that she made 10 of our episodes part of the core materials for her class.  She’ll be joining us for an upcoming episode to talk university sustainability and how to best incorporate our podcast episodes into the classroom.  It’s really exciting to be a part of people’s stories like that.

What are the game changers in your world?

It’s a game-changer for us when companies make commitments that they can’t achieve on their own, like something they need to build coalitions in order to achieve.  For example, McDonalds has made a commitment to 100% front-of-house recycling by 2025.  There’s no way they can achieve that in a vacuum; they need to partner with people from all over the world in order to set up the recovery and processing facilities they would need to do that.  It’s inspiring, and it’s a game changer for us because the Foundation can help create the connections and convenings necessary to achieve these kinds of goals.

Another game-changer is when there are increased consumer movements around a certain issue.  Companies tend to respond when there’s a big consumer outcry.  Have you noticed how many companies are publicizing new packaging goals or banning plastic straws?  They’re responding to an increased sentiment among consumers that these are important issues to be addressed.  The Foundation can help companies tell their story on these sorts of issues and also offer programming to address them.

What was your path to this role?

When I was thirteen, I did a twelve-day canoe trip in Canada and fell in love with the outdoors.  I loved the personal challenge and the intimate connections formed with others while immersed in nature, but it left me wondering how the wilderness like this gets protected, what the rules are for managing these lands, etc.

At Georgetown I majored in Political Economy and did an Environmental Studies minor.  I went on to do a law degree and got my masters in public affairs so that I could delve more into environmental law and issues.

I started out as an attorney at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Association (NOAA) in September of 2015, and we started the podcast in April 2016.  As we did more and more podcasts, I started to learn that my interests were much broader than the fisheries and coastal management issues I was working on at NOAA.  We did a podcast on the circular economy and our guest was the hiring manager for a position that had opened up at the US Chamber of Commerce Foundation.  When reaching out about the podcast interview, I told her I was also submitting a resume for the position. Three days after I interviewed her for the podcast, she interviewed me for the position.  It was a great fit since it allowed me to delve into many sustainability issues in my day job and to pick up skills I wasn’t developing much as a lawyer such as project management, fundraising, and strategic planning.

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

Generate content.  It shows you love learning about the field, you have something to say, it gets people noticing you, and it’s fun!  It forces you to form your own opinions.  One strategy I’ve started recently to force myself to publish content and get in front of my professional contacts is to go on LinkedIn every week and post something about sustainability on Mondays, post about anything of interest to me on Wednesdays, and post my professional developments on Fridays.

If you can find an opportunity to do so, get on a project that gives you experience with engaging multiple stakeholders working towards the same goal.  So much of sustainability leadership is about getting people to understand how they can contribute to a goal.  Show that you can get everyone on the same page and manage different personalities and interests effectively.

What are your favorite resources?

GrenBiz of course

The Corporate Eco Forum has a weekly briefing that is the most helpful thing I get by email.  It includes links to the most recently published sustainability reports and other news.  It’s free to sign up.

City Lab from the Atlantic has amazing article on the many ways our cities are leading the way on sustainability and on the issues they face.

Resource Recycling is great for waste management and recycling news.

LinkedIn is also amazing.  If you invest the time in building your network, you’ll have a lot of people in your feed posting great things.  It’s like your own personal curated list of articles in the field and also job postings.

Who (or what) is your sustainability hero?

Solitaire Townsend.  We were fortunate to have her as a guest on Sustainability Defined for the green marketing episode.  She started her own sustainability communications firm called Futerra in 2001.  That was before companies were taking sustainability seriously in their communications, goals, and reports.  She had this amazing vision that was way ahead of her time, and she was able to build a successful company out of that.

She recently wrote a book called The Happy Hero that is about how to live a positive+action life. It provides the principles and guidance so anyone can feel good by doing good. She details the latest evidence that heroism leads to happiness and provides practical steps on how to get started.  She also worked with the UN to develop #GoodLifeGoals, which gives people around the world every day specific actions they can perform to further the UN Sustainable Development Goals.

I love that she walks the walk and is a very warm, positive person. When I see her at conferences, she always makes time in her busy schedule to say hello, have an extended conversation with me, and check in with how things are going in my life journey. I’m doing my best to emulate her productivity and positive approach to life.