Judy Sandford, Managing Director, Sustainability and CSR at Addison
Addison is a creative agency with over 100 award-winning thinkers, designers, content creators, digital storytellers, and developers all under one roof. Their strength is strategic communication brilliantly executed across all channels and they are considered by many to be the preeminent boutique design firm for annual reports. Their integrated strategic and creative services include branding, content creation, CSR and Sustainability, financial marketing, and stakeholder engagement.
Addison’s CSR and Sustainability practice is in its second decade of offering some of the most comprehensive capabilities in the industry. Led by their GRI-certified team, they have produced more than 100 sustainability reports for Fortune 500 clients and sector leaders. In addition, the CSR and Sustainability practice performs materiality analyses, gap analyses and web development. They also assist clients with stakeholder engagement, collateral development, responding to ratings agencies, and managing social media strategy.
What do you actually do all day?
My primary responsibility is traditional business development. I’m in charge of marketing our practice and its capabilities, doing outreach, and leading the pitch and proposal process. I’m constantly responding to RFPs, networking, blogging, and arranging sponsorships. I’m always trying to get our name out there to the people managing sustainability strategy and reporting at each company.
My second responsibility is overseeing our CSR and sustainability communications projects – setting up teams, coaching team members, and providing supervision. Most of my work is at the strategic advisory level, but occasionally I get hands-on.
The third area of responsibility is client relationships. I cross-sell different services, and make sure our clients are happy and troubleshoot if projects go off plan.
What’s really exciting is that many of our clients are expecting us to push them to be more sustainable. They’re looking to us to help them identify ways that they can set more aggressive goals and gain more recognition for their accomplishments. Of course, some of our clients are always on the cutting edge and don’t need us to push, but many of our clients are looking for guidance to help them prioritize their opportunities so they can either be on par with the rest of their industry or go even further to improve their ratings and rankings. Ratings continue to be a huge influence for many – if a company sees that they’re the only one in their sector not setting science-based targets, they are more likely to step up and set one too.
A big part of what we do is helping clients identify their most material issues and select what should be covered in their reports. Often, we’ll begin by evaluating the entire Global Reporting Initiative (GRI) framework and then we’ll pare it down to what’s most relevant for the client. We also make sure to consider the Sustainability Accounting Standards Board (SASB) guidance for the client’s sector; investors are an increasingly important reader of these reports and we want to make sure we’re including the information that’s important to them. The UN’s Sustainable Development Goals are also gaining a lot of momentum, most clients want to at least map their initiatives to the goals and the more advanced clients are looking to dedicate resources to promoting progress in support of those goals. We’re also starting to see more interest in the International Integrated Reporting Council (IIRC) which is focused on more formally linking the value of sustainability and social responsibility initiatives to the bottom line. We also continue to see strong interest in responding to CDP (formerly the Carbon Disclosure Project) and we often help our clients craft their response to that.
In addition to the above frameworks available to the public, we also help our clients look at Morgan Stanley Capital International (MSCI), Institutional Shareholder Services Inc. (ISS) and the Dow Jones Sustainability Indices (DJSI) which are the most common ratings companies care about, they’re the things that get the most attention in investor circles. There are many more rankings and ratings we help clients evaluate and respond to based on their agendas.
Another big trend we’re seeing is that a lot of our clients are asking for help with blending their sustainability and social responsibility data into their financial reports and demonstrating how the bottom line is being impacted by their social and environmental initiatives. It’s exciting because I’ve always been disappointed with the fact that sustainability was considered a separate thing, or a “non-financial” issue. Now, thanks in large part to the investor community, companies are feeling the pressure to tell the story about the value created by sustainability initiatives and how the long-term investments in these programs are a source of competitive advantage.
What are some of the key skills for success in this role?
Project management is definitely number one, I’m often overseeing projects for up to 15 clients at a time that each have multiple sub-projects. You also need to be good at people management and have a keen understanding of people’s strengths and weaknesses so you can put them in a position where they can shine, and also coach them around how to advance. Often my coaching work is on presentation skills and effective communication with the client—for instance, how to make a persuasive argument and what approaches are the most effective.
Written and verbal communication skills are also important. You need to be able to work with creatives effectively – understand how a designer’s mind works and how to give them the information they need to do good work without design directing them. It’s also helpful to have a broad understanding of all the different communications vehicles and how they work. For example, how writing for print is different from digital, and different from social. You also have to be able to explain complex environmental ESG topics in a way that the average person can understand and remember, and to present information in a way that’s engaging and fun. You’ll also need to use visual techniques, graphics, and data visualization to help people understand concepts quickly and make them want to engage with material.
My role also requires budget management. I need to know if projects are on budget, and if not why not. We look back to see how we can budget more effectively next time so we can be as effective as can be.
Basic consulting skills are important too, things like building client rapport, the ability to speak to any type of person, being able to really hear a person’s needs and respond in an effective way, and to push back if a client makes a request that’s not reasonable.
You don’t need to be a deep expert in all aspects of media, but it helps to know a little about each media type and the technical aspects of design, search engine optimization, and publicity.
What is your favorite part of your job?
I love coming up with creative ways to get a company’s sustainability message across, and it’s fun to partner with the creative team to develop those ideas. So many of the reports out there are really cookie cutter and they don’t make their company’s efforts stand out. It’s great being able to effectively communicate that a company is really leading and doing that in an entertaining way through video, interactive graphics and data visualization.
It’s also wonderful to see my clients be recognized for taking a leadership position weather it’s in pay equity or GHG reduction goals. I love knowing that I was able to help that company form that goal and be aggressive about sharing it. It makes me feel like I’m creating real progress in the world.
What is the hardest part of your job?
It’s frustrating when we get pushback from companies or lawyers who don’t see the importance of what we’re trying to do and just want to put out a basic report. They’re sometimes not interested in using the communication as a tool to challenge themselves and be more aggressive in demonstrating progress year over year. Some of our clients share in that frustration when it’s another member of their leadership or legal team that’s preventing them from doing more. In those cases, we try to move the company along in smaller steps each year.
What is your proudest professional achievement?
I’m proud of many of the projects I’ve worked on here at Addison, but on a personal level I’m most excited to have been selected to create and present a course at the Columbia Earth Institute for their Masters in Sustainability Management. The course was called “Sustainability Communications, Strategy and Reporting” and it was really nice to be recognized as an expert in this field and it was satisfying to pull together all the knowledge I’ve accumulated over the years.
I taught the course for two years before handing it off to another professor after I moved away from New York City. It was refreshing to engage with the students and field their questions. I liked having the chance to focus on research, pull best practices together and help others to do the same thing. It was also fun to see what the students came up with; as part of the class I had them produce a sustainability report for a small business or nonprofit and practice developing communications on topics such as climate change, greenwashing, and stakeholder engagement. It was a nice mix of trends in the field and it gave the students a good understanding of the challenges and best practices out there which really prepared them for their interviews. Many of my students have gone on to do great things in the field of sustainability.
Right now, I’m excited to prepare for a course on sustainability communications that I’ll be co-leading at the GRI Summit in February.
What are the game changers in your world?
At the federal level, it would be really impactful if the government required companies to file CSR reports and have specific deadlines as the SEC does for financial reporting. It would give CSR and sustainability reporting a formalized structure that doesn’t exist right now. CSR reporting is still voluntary, so companies aren’t limited in any way in terms of what to include or exclude. Strict requirements and deadlines would help our clients spend less time on building the internal business case for this type of reporting and more time on supporting impactful program work. It would also increase competition among companies to do well on the regulated aspects.
Even without federal support, there is a lot of movement at the city and state level, at stock exchanges, through large investors like BlackRock, and in other countries that affects any global company based in the US. There are some requirements out there such as the EU Directive on Non-Financial and Diversity reporting that are mandatory for companies with more than 500 employees working in the EU. The SEC also requires some level of discussion about climate change and conflict minerals in 10-K reports, but that’s more general guidance instead of specific metrics that need to be reported on. I’d love to see more regulatory rigor around energy use and GHG emissions, especially for extractive companies that make the lion’s share of the impact. It would at least help level the playing field.
We really should be requiring reporting around diversity, equality, pay issues, human rights, and GHG emissions. These are issues that apply to every business. The Sustainability Accounting Standards Board (SASB) has taken a good first pass at developing common areas for reporting with sector-specific expectations.
What was your path to this role?
Almost 14 years ago, I had just finished my MBA at NYU Stern and was looking for a way to combine my interest in sustainability with my expertise in marketing, communications, and branding. I saw that Addison had developed a CSR report for Time Warner, I called Addison and asked to speak with their head of CSR. The person I spoke to said they didn’t have a head of CSR, but they’d be interested in bringing me in to talk about it.
CSR reporting was really new at the time, so I took a role at American Express in order to pay my student loans and kept in touch with Addison. Eventually Addison hired me full time and I spent 20% of my time on building up the CSR practice and the remainder on Addison’s other service areas. After two years I had built enough of a pipeline that I was working 100% on CSR clients and was able to start hiring staff. Our team is a mix of strategists and client service specialists. The majority of our work focuses on writing sustainability, strategy and CSR reports, and we perform all the related services.
What’s your advice to someone interested in a role like this?
From a practical standpoint, it’s great to come with experience from an agency or consulting firm so that you understand what it’s like to work with clients. That combined with project management experience and a broad knowledge of sustainability issues is key. The more specific reporting knowledge is very learnable in about six months to a year. You can also begin to understand the various creative and technical aspects of the job in that time as well.
I’ve hired people from many different backgrounds. Most usually have a master’s degree either in business, sustainability, or international relations. It’s useful to have an MBA with a focus on sustainability from rigorous programs such as Stern, Columbia or Wharton as it’s a good indicator of your ability to apply yourself. The MBA also gives you great experience with working on teams and making presentations. We’ve also hired people from nonprofits such as the Nature Conservancy and CDP. Experience in nonprofit stakeholder engagement, company coalition building, and advising is a great proxy for client service.
What are your favorite resources?
It’s an important part of my role to be constantly keeping up with what’s going on in the sustainability world. Here are a few sites I follow:
Sustainable Brands has a good news update
The Guardian and New York Times have good newsletters
TreeHugger is good on the consumer level
Bard College puts out some great think pieces and free lectures for students
Two big conferences I attended regularly when I had more time were Ceres and BSR. They’re big thought leaders and really understand what investors want. Sustainable Brands also runs a strong conference focused on the consumer view for sustainable innovations as well as a sub conferences on metrics.
Who (or what) is your sustainability hero?
Patagonia has taken a really bold stance and truly stands behind what they say. Most recently they took the extra money from their tax break and put it towards funding environmental nonprofits. They also do a lot of marketing to encourage people to repair items instead of replacing or recycling them. They’re really innovative and very serious about what they’re doing and they produce sustainable products. I often think of their CEO, Yvon Chouinard, as a top example of a bold leader in this space.
Al Gore is also someone who has stuck by his policy for a long time. He was really clever with his presentation for An Inconvenient Truth and then leveraging that material to get people to present it around the country. I’ve been impressed with how much progress he’s been able to make outside of politics on sustainability issues.
