Alyson Genovese, Director: North America, Global Reporting Initiative

The Global Reporting Initiative (GRI) is a nonprofit organization that provides global reporting standards that organizations use to disclose their impacts on economic, environmental, and social issues.  GRI is the most widely used sustainability reporting standard in the world, around 10,000 reporting organizations use or reference the GRI Standards.  GRI’s core belief is that greater disclosure and transparency will lead to better decision making, accountability, management and business performance. 

The GRI Standards are purposefully designed to meet the needs of many different stakeholders, and the Standards are freely available to all organizations no matter their size, type, or location.  While the majority of the organizations that use the GRI standards are companies, they are also used by nonprofits, cities, and entities such as the US Postal Service and the Rio Olympics Committee. 

The GRI Standards are regularly updated as our understanding of the issues evolve.  For example, the original Waste Standard (GRI 306) was developed in 2008 but a newly updated version will launch in May 2020 that includes circularity metrics and a deeper understanding of the impacts of waste on communities. 

What do you actually do all day?

I oversee the North American market for GRI; my primary focus is on relationship management.  I work with new reporters that are being introduced to the Standards for the first time, I partner with existing reporters that need help with improving their disclosures and connecting with resources, and I oversee all of our training and support.  That means throughout the day I could be doing anything from answering questions from a company, running conferences and workshops, or delivering user training.  I also work closely with our nonprofit partners, the media, and others. 

I spend a lot of time working with investors to help them understand how to interpret these reports, how to create efficiencies, and better understand what good disclosure looks like.  For example, a company’s sustainability report may include data on how much water a supplier used in a year, but without any context that’s not very useful information.  We help people to understand that better then reporting would include details such as the water’s source, if it was recycled, and trends in water use over time or in relationship to what is produced. If you’re sourcing water from a water stressed region, that’s a much bigger risk than if you’re using recycled rainwater or drawing from a secure source.  That’s all valuable data for the investor. 

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

Relationship management skills are very important, because you need to make sure that everyone is included in the conversation.  GRI takes our dedication to multi-stakeholder engagement very seriously.  Everyone belongs at the table if we’re going to solve these challenges.  There are often barriers between business, civil society, academia, and the public.  You need to be able to meet people where they’re at in a respectful way and to make sure that their voice is included.

You need to be able to see where the puck is going.  It’s important to analyze the current state to design for the future.  We need to create trainings, tools, and guidance that go beyond just today’s needs.

You also need to have natural inquisitiveness, curiosity, and tenacity.  You’ll be told ‘no, this isn’t possible’ by a lot of people in powerful positions.  They might say no today, but maybe not tomorrow.  If someone comes to the table who has been resistant to doing so in the past, you can’t say ‘I told you so’, you have to continue respectfully working with them and be glad that they’re showing up.  

What is your favorite part of your job?

I love helping someone to be better at what they love to do.  It’s wonderful to work with a Director of Sustainability or a Sustainability Officer and provide them with the resources and insights they need to be even more effective at their job.  It’s incredibly rewarding. 

This is also a really exciting time to be working in the ESG/Sustainability space, things are happening really rapidly and I’m proud to be part of the conversation, it’s inspiring.  We’re moving into a very nuanced and sophisticated understanding of systems and reporting.  For example, GRI just introduced our first global standard on tax transparency (GRI 207).  Five or ten years ago, taxes wouldn’t have come up in a discussion of sustainability issues, but now we understand that where and how companies pay taxes have direct implications for both management of risk for investors and for sustainable development.  Taxes help countries fund things like infrastructure and transportation, and how much a company contributes to that development is important to understand. 

What is the hardest part of your job?

Definitely scale, there’s just so much to do!  We’re a nonprofit and we provide the GRI Standards for free, so finding ways to expand our reach while ensuring our standards are best in class is challenging. 

What is your proudest professional achievement?

I can’t say that I have one single moment. Though I am quite proud of creating an educational platform to help support the development of sustainability reporting professionals, which is a career track that did not exist even 10 years ago. Those responsible for sustainability reporting internally at companies are learning real-time and have to be well versed in key thematic issues and highly technical details – a lot is asked of them. They also are often quite isolated in that a Fortune 500 company may have one or two people working on sustainability data tracking and disclosure. So designing programs like the GRI Summit helps recognize, support and connect these amazing professionals with each other, which hopefully in turn leads to better reporting and better decision-making.

What are the game changers in your world?

There’s a generational shift happening that is really helping to move things forward.  There’s this new expectation that organizations will disclose sustainability issues as part of standard business practice.  Investors and other stakeholders are starting to expect to see this kind of information from the people they work for and do business with.  A great example of this is the Amazon employees who were walking out because they wanted the company to disclose information about climate impacts and the company’s plan for climate mitigation. 

Many companies are also realizing that a huge part of their impact (and risk) is in their supply chain and that they don’t have enough visibility.  The GRI Standards are really relevant as they make it as easy as possible for suppliers to provide their customers with the relevant information in a standardized way.  Many businesses require suppliers to provide them with GRI reports in order to be considered for tier 1 or preferred status.  

What was your path to this role?

I began my career working in nonprofit organizations implementing corporate grants.  I then worked with Cone Communications, which did a lot of work helping companies to align their brands to social issues. I then worked for Comcast in community relations and government affairs. While I enjoyed the results, I was feeling like we weren’t asking enough of companies. I wanted to examine less what companies did with a small percentage of their profits, but rather how businesses are accountable for earning those profits. 

That led me to start my own consulting company focused on helping my clients on strategic grantmaking, stakeholder engagement, understanding materiality and cause communications. After working independently for a number of years, I wanted to be part of a team again.  I found the job description for this GRI position on the Boston College Center for Corporate Citizenship website and got excited.  I had never written a sustainability report and didn’t have a background in reporting, but I was an excellent relationship manager with sales experience, and that was what they were looking for.  GRI understood that I had all the skills they needed and could pick up the content given the chance.   

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

Many young professionals ask me how they can “get into” the sustainability field and I really try to encourage people to think about how they can incorporate the sustainability mindset into the more traditional functional areas of a business. When you can bring that sustainability ethos into finance, or procurement, or operations, that’s where you’ll really start to see change and innovation at scale. 

What are your favorite resources?

The GRI Standards are publicly available for anyone who would like to use them.

We have third party trainers around the world who provide two-day bootcamp sessions on how to report using the GRI Standards. 

Company representatives can attend our annual GRI Reporters’ Summit to learn about trends in regulatory changes and updates to the standards.  Our 2020 summit will be in June and will be virtual due to COVID-19. 

GRI also has a monthly newsletter that’s a great way to stay on top of changes in regulatory policy around the world and any updates we make to our standards. 

I enjoy the Corporate Knights newsletter out of Canada, and Bloomberg Good Business is a great weekly guide to sustainable finance.

3BL media has a number of great newsletters on several different topics.

The Sustainable Brands New Metrics conference is held annually in November and is great for learning more about the measurement side of sustainability. 

Sustainable Finance Week in New York is also in November and has lots of great events.  It’s amazing to see how quickly Wall Street is wrapping its arms around ESG risks and opportunities. 

I’d also reach out to your industry associations to find out what they’re doing to educate your industry on sustainability and ESG issues. 

Who (or what) is your sustainability hero?

I really respect Mindy Lubber at Ceres.  She’s spent many years working on transparency and helping companies to understand their role in environmental degradation and protection.  She’s not afraid to speak truth, and she can speak to business leaders in a language that they understand – a risk is a risk, is a risk. 

I’m also the parent of teenagers, and it’s inspiring to see the level of this generation’s sophistication around these issues and the urgency they’re placing on them.  They seem to have no problem calling into question what adults would see as normal. 

I also admire Mari Copeny, the sixth grader from Flint, MI who was one of the key drivers in drawing attention to the water crisis in Flint.  Kids like Mari, Greta Thunberg, and the Parkland kids are reimagining what their future looks like because we’ve failed them.  The role of business in the future will be very different because of their expectations.