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John: Welcome to another edition of the Impact Podcast. I’m John Shegerian, and I’m so excited to have with us today Robyn Luhning. She’s the Chief Sustainability Officer for Wells Fargo. Welcome, Robyn, to the Impact Podcast.

Robyn Luhning: Thanks so much for having me here today.

John: So happy to have you, this is such an important subject and we’ve never had you on before, we’ve never covered the banking industry before, so we’re so happy you’re on with us to share the story of Wells Fargo, but before we get into all the great work in sustainability you and your colleagues are doing at Wells Fargo, I’d love for you to share with our listeners and our viewers the Robyn Luhning story, how did you get Robyn interested in sustainability, environmental studies and things of that such where’d you grow up to start with?

Robyn: Yeah, that’s a good question. I grew up in Madison, Wisconsin. I am one of five kids, and I will say there are kind of two things that I think about when I think about being one of five kids that have really influenced me, one is that I will say some of my siblings may have called me bossy as a young girl, which we now know means I had early leadership skills. So, I’ll put that out there.

John: Right.

Robyn: At the same time– so I was the middle child of five.

John: Okay.

Robyn: I think what I learned in that life was to really see multiple perspectives on issues and also how to influence outcomes, sometimes through subtle ways, like where I wouldn’t necessarily outwardly say what I wanted to have happen, but I could influence it among the five of us and I do think both of those things, the leadership aspect, as well as the sort of subtle influence and understanding different perspectives and maybe finding win win solutions that aren’t either on either side of one of the issues. I think that’s something that I’m carrying forward in my career.

John: Those are called transferable skills and you’ve transferred it from your childhood to your professional career, so that’s wonderful. I love it.

Robyn: Yeah. I would say also growing up, when I heard about inequities or unfairness or things that to me didn’t make sense, I wasn’t a person who sort of admired the problem or just looked at the problem and passed it by, I think I’ve always been someone who thought that I could actually be part of solving problems. I felt like I could be part of the solution, again, if I use those influence skills and my leadership skills and so as I got older and grew up, I focused really on the environment that was an area of interest for me in an area where I saw things changing and where I thought I could make an impact. I did get an environmental studies degree, and my first job out of undergrad was actually at the Aldo Leopold Nature Center in Wisconsin. This is a nonprofit focused on environmental education for school children and frankly, at that point, I kind of imagined that I would work in environmental nonprofits for my career.

John: Interesting.

Robyn: So, that’s where I thought I was heading and then in 1998, I had always wanted to serve in the Peace Corps, the US. Peace Corps and so in 1998, I was assigned to work as a Peace Corps volunteer in Madagascar, and my mandate there was to focus on ecotourism development. I knew about the environmental side, but I hadn’t really thought about the business side of things and so I think going to Madagascar was really a turning point for me, and it was also a place where I could use my values of community and impact while actually using business as a force for good.

As I was there, I collaborated with a group of local women, and we created a women’s cooperative where artisans could sell sustainably made goods, so instead of selling goods that are made from high value hardwoods that required slash and burn to actually harvest the hardwoods, we were marketing goods that were made from grasses and fast growing things. We also worked with community members to find other ways to transition the local economy away from this slash and burn subsistence farming into economic opportunity that was both economically sustainable, but also environmentally and socially sustainable. It was all around this national park called Ranomafana National Park.

So, all in all, going there was really a turning point for me to think about, okay, I do want to have an impact, but maybe my best impact isn’t actually in the nonprofit sector, where, frankly, in my first role there, I was spending a lot of time writing grant applications and processing things and I thought to myself, okay, what if I could actually work within business and find these win win solutions when I came back. I did that. I drew from my experiences in Madagascar, I went back to grad school, and I got a master’s in environmental management in what was then called industrial environmental management and I think now we would call it sustainability, but at that point in time, that was the nomenclature that was used. I did that degree at Yale, and then that brought me to environmental and sustainability work with major corporations and I started off in New York at Colgate, Palm Olive, so totally different industry from financial services.

John: Right.

Robyn: I loved working there and I will know, if you think about sort of the scope of a consumer products company versus the scope of a global financial institution, it was a lot simple, it was like, here are some ingredients and I’m not belittling it, I’m just saying it was one industry versus an economy.

John: That’s right.

Robyn: But in any case, when I was there, I was a corporate social responsibility manager, and that’s what that role was called at that point in time, but again, sort of applied those principles to have an impact and that sort of thing and eventually my career path led me to Wells Fargo. I was in San Francisco and Wells Fargo’s headquarters in San Francisco, and I looked at Wells Fargo as a real leader in building sustained economic opportunity within local communities and I was also interested because the role that I started in Wells Fargo in was at environmental and social risk management, and it was focused on helping our relationship managers and our bankers understand the environmental and social impacts associated with our clients, and then understanding how are our clients managing those risks and then, what kind of risks does that bring to Wells Fargo.

So, really integrating it into the business decisions and in that role, I collaborated with both internal stakeholders, relationship managers, bankers and risk managers, as well as external stakeholders. So, nonprofit organizations who had interest in how we were managing these matters and now, today, I’m Wells Fargo’s, first Chief Sustainability Officer.

John: That’s huge. That’s exciting. We’re going to get to that. I wanted to step back for a second. Let’s go back to Yale. When you went to Yale and got your degree and Master’s in Environmental Management from Yale, first of all, Yale is one of the greatest educational institutions in the world, my understanding is they were very early in terms of environmental studies and environmental management, so let’s do two things, let’s talk about since you are truly a sustainability OG, you’ve been doing this–

Robyn: That’s my resume.

John: But it’s true. It’s great, but you then have an important and unique perspective two ways; one, let’s go back to the education side, when you were doing that, there weren’t 100 programs in America in all sorts of subsectors of impact and ESG and environmental studies, Yale then, was one of the great places that started this whole trend of educational institutions now teaching sustainability and I’d like you to speak a little bit about that evolution and what you’ve seen as the next generation has come up underneath you.

Similarly, sustainability, given that you’re an OG, has massively changed since the days at Yale and even back to Madagascar, comparatively speaking, to where we are today and the politicization of a little bit of the alphabet soup of acronyms that we now have in and around sustainability and even the politicization of some of these acronyms share a little bit about both. Let’s talk about the education side first and how limited it was then, but you ended up at one of the great, great places anyway, which is all credit to you and how that evolution in education is seen because you have seen a whole new generation underneath you applying for jobs with all sorts of now educational opportunities that you didn’t have, I didn’t have, and others didn’t have back when.

Robyn: Yeah, okay, that’s a great question. I’ll start with the Yale piece, as you said when I attended Yale it was called the Yale School of Forestry.

John: That’s wild. I didn’t know that.

Robyn: Now it’s called the Yale School of the Environment, but of course Yale is on the leading edge of innovation in this space and the degree that I got and the courses that I took were really multi– they went across disciplines, so they’re multidisciplinary and we worked on things like lifecycle analysis. Again, before that was a real– before a whole lot of people talked about life cycle analysis, we were doing lifecycle analysis in class and also studied economics and politics. It was really not just the science of the environment but it was also the entire ecosystem of environmental management and so it did prepare me for thinking about these things again from multiple perspectives, not thinking in a silo as we were looking towards solutions here.

I would say, I think, yes, of course Yale is on the cutting edge of this, I was able to work with incredible professors as well as incredible colleagues and other students who are now leaders across the entire globe in this field. So, incredible experience, really grateful for it. In terms of the role of Chief Sustainability Officer, really like the sustainability profession, you are absolutely right, it’s very much evolved and actually it’s not always the same, it doesn’t mean the same thing in every company.

John: That’s exactly right.

Robyn: Yeah. I started my career as the manager of corporate social responsibility and then there was no manager of sustainability at that point in time and I think also at one point had a title that had Environmental Health and Safety in it. Right. Now I think it has evolved to be this really cross functional role over time and I do know the number of CSOs in the US has really skyrocketed, so I looked back and apparently in 2011, according to Alan Weinrep, who’s a great recruiter in this space. She does a study every year, and in 2011, there were only 29 CSOs chief sustainability officers in the US and then in just one year, between 2020 and 2021, almost 400 CSOs were appointed, so to show you kind of the level of importance that this has brought.

John: Think about it this way, though, when I started this show in 07 as a radio show back in the day, they didn’t exist, the role didn’t exist. So, I’ve had the luck and the honor to have so many wonderful people like you representing so many great brands like you represented now at Wells Fargo, that you were the first. It’s always wonderful, and I want you to share a little bit about the first, because the first can mean a lot of things, first thing, it’s very daunting to show up, and there’s a blank page.

I mean, literally, you’re the first, but obviously the world has evolved around us. Like you said, you have so many pivots now where sustainability was a little bit siloed or parochial in its vision back 15 20 years ago, it’s now so integrated and multidisciplinary that you can now go and choose what are the key elements that you want to cover. Talk about being the first and the blank page, but also then talk about how then did you straddle the opportunities of Wells Fargo that you felt was important for you and your colleagues to tackle in and around what is now called sustainability, linear to circular economy, ESG what is it, planet positive, all these wonderful terms that we’re all sort of working on to decarbonize the world and make it a better place for all of us. How did you choose walking into that position, coming out of your other position that you’ve been at since about 2011, what your now focus would be at Wells Fargo?

Robyn: Yeah, that’s a good question. I do want to back up to one other kind of interesting proof point around the growth of the chief sustainability.

John: Sure.

Robyn: My older son is 16 years old, and he did a career survey at school where he just filled out a survey and he came home and he said, mom, I did this career survey, and one of the careers they think I would be really good at is Chief Sustainability Officer.

John: That conversation wasn’t being had at your dinner when you were 16 years old.

Robyn: No.

John: Time to change.

Robyn: The evolution. I think that–

John: It’s also an honor to you. In a very subtle, sweet way, that’s such an honor to you. That email, Mom, I might follow in your footsteps and he sees what you do as you’re a cool mom. You’re doing great work and important work and that generation, your son’s generation, sees it as such.

Robyn: That generation definitely sees it as such. I’m not sure he would ever call me or my work cool, but we’ll get there.

John: That’s what he feels, because he would never have that conversation with you if he didn’t feel that way. So, that’s wonderful.

Robyn: He is very sweet. Yes, of course. So, what I would say in terms of how we’re focused at Wells Fargo is first, I would say that while the role of Chief Sustainability Officer is new sustainability, wells Fargo isn’t new. It’s something we’ve done for a very long time and I would say what we’ve done is really tried to make it more defined, to try to be more transparent about what it is we’re doing and then really clearer in the areas where we are focused. We do have, of course, operational sustainability goals, and actually, we refresh those for 2030 and that’s like, I don’t want to say almost every other company, but that’s not unique to financial services or banks. We’re focusing on reducing our emissions, reducing our energy use, our waste water use and we’re actually also really focused on driving new renewable energy projects so that we can meet 100% of our annual purchased electricity needs by 2030, which is a really ambitious goal.

John: Wow.

Robyn: Like other companies, we engage our employees and we engage our supply chain, and we work on that piece and I think what’s different for Wells Fargo or a financial institution is our customer base, that’s really where there’s a huge opportunity and we have a huge presence and whenever I share these statistics, I think most people just kind of are shocked by this, but Wells Fargo serves one in three US households. One in, three US households.

John: That’s incredible.

Robyn: It’s incredible. We also serve more than 10% of small businesses in the US. Again, just thinking about that as, like, the lifeblood of our economy and how much impact we can have– there you go.

John: There’s my card. It’s there. So, not going to lie, I’ve had it for years, and I’m not going to give it up.

Robyn: I love to hear it. What we’ve done is thinking about who we are as a financial institution and who we are as a company is– okay, in this swath of all the things we could focus on, what are the six areas where we think that we as Wells Fargo because who we are as a business, who we are as a bank, can make the biggest impact and so when we’re prioritizing things and deprioritizing things right, because you can’t do everything, where should we really be focused and we’ve got three, I would say, like, environmental and climate focused areas, and then three more social areas. So, in the climate impact areas, we’re focused on scaling clean energy, sustainability where we work and live.

So that, of course, includes our operational goals, advancing climate finance and innovation. So, really integrating it into the way we’re doing business. On the social side, I think they make so much sense for us, is who we are as a bank, of course, financial, health, housing, access and affordability and small business growth. What I would say is those areas aren’t necessarily– they are six focus areas, but they’re interconnected, it’s not like we focus a lot on sustainable, affordable housing, integrating this into what we’re doing. Another thing that’s really cross cutting across all that we do and that we’ve worked a lot on to our climate philanthropy especially, is supporting an equity focused transition. We know that if we can’t achieve a sustainable future, if we don’t ensure that everyone has an opportunity to be part of it and so we’re thinking about and really investing in innovative ways for vulnerable communities to ensure that they are not left behind in this enormous energy and actually economic transition we’re going through.

John: Understood. For our listeners and viewers who’ve just joined us, we’ve got Robyn Luhning with us, she’s the Chief Sustainability Officer at Wells Fargo. To find Robyn and her colleagues and all the important and impactful work they’re doing in sustainability, please go to www.wellsfargo.com, you can also find their sustainability report and everything they’re doing at wellsfargo.com/sustainability. So, Robyn, let’s go into some of these six and talk about sort of now you’ve broken them out, how do you go about achieving the goals that you create with your team?

Robyn: Yeah, we have a goal of deploying $500 billion, that’s billion with a B, in sustainable finance by 2030 and the way that we look at the sustainable finance is both through the environmental and the social lens and so you’ll see it includes affordable housing, it includes renewable energy and that sort of thing, I guess that’s a focus area for us. We also have launched and issued two what we call Inclusive Communities and Climate Bonds totaling $3 billion and those bonds support housing, affordability, socioeconomic opportunity, as well as renewable energy. We’ve actually gotten an award from the Climate Bonds Initiative as the largest financial corporate sustainability bond of 2022.

John: Wow. Jeez.

Robyn: To show– something I’m especially proud of in this work, and again, showing the sort of interconnectedness of things and how we don’t think about these things in these silos is when we issued the bond, the bond included about 24 diverse firms across all tiers of the transactions underwriting. So, really being deliberate in being inclusive, not only in what this bond is supporting, but how we’re issuing the bond. We’re also a major financier of clean energy. We provided more than $15 billion in tax equity financing to renewable energy projects across the US. So, really major investor there and we’re seeing a ton of investment, of course, due to the Inflation Reduction Act.

John: Right.

Robyn: The largest investment in climate action in history and we’re really leaning into that.

John: Explain what you mean by that, so our listeners and viewers– explain the interrelationship between leaning into that and how that’s affecting the economy as a whole and how you then get a great chance to revisit all your clients and lean into that.

Robyn: We’re one year in on the Inflation Reduction Act. It has already spurred hundreds of billions of dollars in investment in clean technology. We’re seeing our clients and people deploying capital because of the Inflation Reduction Act and the incentives, the tax incentives that they have to invest in this area. The IRA was designed to be private sector led, so that means our clients, if they’re interested in making clean tech investments, they need a bank who understands their needs. We’re seeing clients, and I’m just speaking generically, not about any particular, but you know, there are battery makers who are opening up factories to serve the EV market, we’re seeing solar manufacturers setting up shop in states like Georgia.

There’s an entire transformation of our economy. We’ve got fuel cells, solar heat pumps, clean vehicles, vehicle charging. All of that requires capital and so for a company, a bank like Wells Fargo with a sustainable finance goal, what a great opportunity for us to meet our clients where they are, to help them finance these new investments and so kind of talking about my role, I wear a lot of hats.

John: Yeah, obviously.

Robyn: I’m not a banker, I don’t do deals.

John: Right.

Robyn: But we have a great centralized team which we call Sustainable Finance Integration and they work with our teams across the bank to really support them, bring up their knowledge base so that we can be there to support our clients and our customers as they want to make these investments so that our bankers are ready to meet our customers where they are. I just think it’s a huge opportunity and going back to your question a couple of questions ago around the politicization– sorry, of this topic, there’s really not a lot you can argue with in terms of helping clients advance their companies and actually making a profit for the bank and so it’s not a political issue when you’re talking about just integrating this into the way we’re doing business to support our clients in their transition. That’s where we’re leaning in and that’s where we can win.

John: That’s so smart because it’s job creation, it’s making the world a better place and a greener place. There’s nobody, no matter what hat they wear, independent, Republican, Democrat, or any other party that doesn’t want their kids and grandkids to drink cleaner water, breathe cleaner air, and just live in, generally speaking, a better world and a better environment. So, you’re just supporting all the great things that make up a great country like ours and I think that is so important with regards to the Investment Recovery Act and other federal climate change policies, has that accelerated your sustainable banking division tremendously, has that been a wonderful windfall and opportunity for your bank, like you said, to lean in and help really decarbonize the planet by starting here in the United States and funding all these kind of great companies like you said, battery EV, battery, recycling, companies and solar companies and others to do the important work that they’re doing?

Robyn: I think it will be, and I think it is and right now we’re really focused on that foundational knowledge of our bankers and relationship managers so we can be there and capture that opportunity. I would say sustainable finance is definitely a growing opportunity and like I said, through in the first couple of years of us counting our sustainable finance toward our 500 billion dollar goal, we’ve already deployed or originated around $129 billion. So, we’re really optimistic about meeting and I would hope to exceed that goal over time.

John: We’re known as the Innovation Nation, which is all of course, driven by the entrepreneurial spirit of America. My first big venture in 1998 with my partners Mike and Matt O’Brien was to launch a company called financialaid.com, now this was the year Google was founded and so we were launching a.com when there was really no history in the.com world, and Wells Fargo stepped up and was our first banker and literally gave us the opportunity to succeed as big as we did. How was that spirit still embedded in Wells Fargo, supporting small businesses and entrepreneurs in America to launch their visions and dreams?

Robyn: That is a great question. I mean, of course, as I said, we bank and provide services to 10% of small businesses across the United States, which is just when you think about it. We also have this really incredible program called the Wells Fargo Innovation Incubator and it’s actually a philanthropic program and it’s a $50 million collaboration with the US Department of Energy’s National Renewable Energy Lab and what it’s designed to do is to really speed the path to market for clean tech startups who are focused on sustainability and resiliency in the built environment. So, like the man made environment I know the built environment is sort of.

John: I like it. Right.

Robyn: As of last year, we had funded 65 portfolio companies and what we do is we give them nondilutive funding to fund their company as well as access to the National Renewable Energy Lab and their scientists to actually test their technologies, ensure that they could be commercially viable. What’s pretty incredible is that we’ve had 65 portfolio companies that have raised $1.8 billion in follow on capital since joining the program that we fund for the National Renewable Energy Lab. These portfolio companies raise more than $97 for every one dollars invested by Innovation Incubator. So, we think of that as a way to really spur innovation in the sector. We’re actually even testing some of the technologies from an Innovation, Incubator. Company in Wells Fargo facilities to see if they work. We just want to be there in this community and then down the line as they grow. We can help our customers and clients by educating them on financing options and that sort of thing related to these clean technology companies.

John: Well, ironically, that you brought that up and that how you’re intersecting sustainability, innovation, and entrepreneurship, which I love that you did the same– before there was a real Codified system that you’ve created with your colleagues at 1998, so figure this 25 or six years ago now, what you did was not only did Wells Fargo finance our company and was our bank and took a chance on us, they also became our first client because we were funding the student loans behind the scenes for Wells Fargo, part of them and you guys gave us a chance there. So, you actually helped us succeed both on the front end and on the back end, which is just the unfancy way or the least elegant way of saying what you just really elegantly put and how you’ve now wrapped it all up, and you’re really incubating the next generation of entrepreneurs, especially clean tech entrepreneurs. I love that.

Robyn: You were the OG.

John: I was the OG. Without knowing it.

Robyn: We got to go tell your story.

John: You’re a year into your tenure as the CSO of Wells Fargo, you’re young and you still have so much history behind you, but you have huge blue sky in front of you, what’s the future in terms of what gets you excited about what you’re working on and initiatives for the next three, five, seven years ahead at Wells Fargo in the sustainability and impact sector.

Robyn: What gets me most excited, really, is this sustainable finance opportunity and I think it goes back to a lot of the themes that we’ve talked about today, you know, as we transform Wells Fargo, I mean, Wells Fargo itself is undergoing a transformation, we’re also transforming in sustainability and looking for those opportunities and engaging early and career professionals who want to have a career in this space and helping our clients and communities as they transition. I think just looking for those opportunities to actually, like I think I also said earlier, finding those win-win solutions. No one wants me to say this, but I would love to blow our 500-billion-dollar sustainable finance commitment or a goal out of the water, that’s what would energize me, and I think the momentum we’re seeing inside the company to help our clients who are interested in this is just incredibly energizing.

So, that’s one area where I’m really excited about. I’m also very excited about the work we’re doing in climate philanthropy and focusing on ensuring that vulnerable communities are not left behind in this energy transition and I think there are so many opportunities, the Inflation Reduction Act, as the Greenhouse Gas Reduction Fund gets allocated right, ensuring that vulnerable communities are there and ready and have the capacity to actually get those dollars, invest those dollars in their communities and make a difference. That’s really exciting to me and I think very much aligned with Wells Fargo’s values and goals.

John: It’s easy, Robyn, to wake up in the morning for all of us and hyper focus on the news, most of it bad. Obviously, the mainstream media doesn’t cover stuf, this is why we started this show 16 years ago and are now busier than ever with it to have great and wonderful and important people like you and Wells Fargo on the show, but it’s easy to wake up and see what’s going on in Canada now on that smoke blowing down into Chicago and New York and then hearing that this is the hottest year of record ever in the history of our planet and then the tragedy and the horrific fires and tragic circumstances that happened in Maui, but balancing that out, are you given so much hope by seeing the next generation of Robyn Luhning’s that are applying for jobs at Wells Fargo to come work in your sustainability division from all sorts of universities and all sorts of diverse backgrounds wanting to one day be a Chief Sustainability Officer or Chief Impact Officer, whether it’s a big or small brand somewhere around the world, does that give you hope and energy every day, seeing that next generation come up behind you and get to actually mentor them and teach them and lead them to help make the world a better place?

Robyn: It absolutely does. I’ll say so for the very first time, my team had interns this past summer and then we hired our first set of analysts as well, so this is a new thing for our particular team.

John: That’s great.

Robyn: The energy that they brought and the intellect and the creativity and the fact that they had studied this in undergrad and sustainability. So, they come to the table really well educated on these things, that gives me great hope. I mean, again, the fact that my son, when he did a career inventory, that one of the careers that popped up for him was Chief Sustainability Officer, that tells me that this isn’t going anywhere, I think what also gives me hope is the fact that we know what technologies will solve this, we know what they are.

John: That’s right.

Robyn: Now we also have all of these incentives in the Inflation Reduction Act, where it’s often just a matter you don’t have to believe in any of this to actually make the change, it’s just good business, it’s just modernizing and so I think we’re at a point where I remain optimistic. I think we’ve got really smart people, I think the next generation we see in employee or in surveys right, that this is really important to them. If they’re not pursuing a career in this space, they want to work for companies who are committed and have goals in this space and it’s part of who the companies are. I think it’s evolved so much that I remain optimistic about the future.

John: I love it, and we do, too and we’re so glad you came on today. Now, Robyn, you’ve only been there a year now I mean a year in your new role, so there’s a long journey in front of you, so we want you to come back to the Impact Podcast in the future and keep sharing your continued journey in sustainability at Wells Fargo. For our listeners and viewers to find Robyn and her colleagues and all the important work they’re doing in sustainability and impact at Wells Fargo, please go to www.wellsfargo.com/sustainability. Robyn Luhning, we learned you’re a sustainability OG, you are also a cool mom, but most importantly, you’re making the world a better place. Thank you so much for joining us today on the Impact Podcast.

Robyn: Thanks, John.

John: This edition of the Impact Podcast is brought to you by Engage. Engage is a digital booking platform revolutionizing the talent booking industry. With thousands of athletes, celebrities, entrepreneurs and business leaders Engage is the go to spot for booking talent, for speeches, custom experiences, live streams and much more. For more information on Engage or to book talent today, visit letsengage.com. This edition of the Impact Podcast is brought to you by ERI. ERI has a mission to protect people, the planet and your privacy and is the largest fully integrated IT and electronics, asset disposition, provider and cybersecurity focused hardware destruction company in the United States and maybe even the world. For more information on how ERI can help your business properly dispose of outdated electronic hardware devices, please visit ERIdirect.com.