Liliana Esposito joined the Wendy’s Company in June 2014 and has served as Chief Corporate Affairs & Sustainability Officer since February 2021 to reflect her range of responsibilities across Communications, Quality Assurance, Customer Care, Public Affairs and Corporate Responsibility. She previously served as Chief Communications Officer from June 2014 to February 2021. Liliana sets the vision and strategy for all communications with franchisees and employees, public relations, government relations and corporate responsibility. Her work with the Quality Assurance function involves developing quality and safety procedures throughout our supply chain and restaurants to provide a safe and quality dining experience for all Wendy’s customers.

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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 Liliana Esposito. She’s the Chief Corporate Affairs and Sustainability Officer at Wendy’s. Welcome, Liliana, to the Impact podcast.

Liliana Esposito: Thanks so much, John. Great to be here.

John: It’s great to have you. It’s great to have such an iconic and big brand like Wendy’s on. I think I was sharing this with you off the air when we were catching up a little bit before that I’m not solely thrilled that you’re here today because it’s your first time on the show, but I think Wendy’s is our first big chain to come on that does burgers right and does all the great food that you have. That’s really important to us. I’m so glad you stepped forward and asked to come on the show, or we asked you to come on the show. It’s just great that you’re here today.

Liliana: Yeah. Thrilled to be here. Can’t wait for the conversation.

John: Before we get talking about all the important work that you and your colleagues at Wendy’s are doing in sustainability. Can you talk a little bit about the Liliana Esposito story? Where’d you grow up? How’d you get on this journey? Who inspired you and how’d you end up where you are right now?

Liliana: Yeah, absolutely. Early childhood was in Pittsburgh, so not too far from where I am now in Columbus, Ohio, but grew up in Pittsburgh and then Rhode Island. My football loyalties were formed in Pittsburgh and my love of the ocean in New England. Then along the journey really started out in communications and public affairs work. Over the years that has really evolved and food is the through line through all of it, and we can talk about some of those experiences, I’m sure. But the world of sustainability and corporate responsibility, I think just has become such an important part of so many organizations’ really business strategy. So I’ve grown up with that as part of my portfolio coming here to Wendy’s now 10 years ago.

John: So 10 years ago or so you joined, you became Chief Corporate Affairs and Sustainability Officer at about three years ago.

Liliana: Yeah, so I joined Wendy’s as the Chief Communications Officer, so responsible for communications and government affairs and items like that and certainly, corporate responsibility. Wendy’s has long been a responsibly run company. Obviously, we took our commitment seriously to be a good corporate citizen and all of those things. But it was really probably back in 2018, 2019 that we recognized that this world of sustainability and really I would say substantive corporate responsibility was just really important to our investors, it was important to our customers, increasingly important to our employees and really need to, we felt formalize the programs that we already had in place and also set some pretty aggressive goals in some areas around corporate responsibility. So I was able to take on that expanded portfolio and refer to that more as corporate affairs and sustainability.

John: You were officially the first, even though the brand had been doing sustainability work for a long time prior. In ’21, that was the first time they codified the role and you became chief sustainability officer then?

Liliana: That’s right.

John: I love when this happens because a, I call chief impact sustainability and all the alphabet soup of officers that fall under that sustainability umbrella the coolest fraternity in the world. But it’s even more fun when I get to interview someone like you who steps into that role the first time it’s actually codified and you have that proverbial blank page in front of you, because as you and I know, sustainability can be read narrowly, could be read widely, it has a whole alphabet soup of acronyms now that didn’t exist 10 years ago. DEI, ESG, and the list of acronyms go on. Where do you start? When you step into that kind of role at a such an iconic brand, how do you formulate how to put one foot in front of the other and start the whole official journey?

Liliana: Yeah, absolutely. You’re right. Frankly, the prominence of the Wendy’s brand was a really big part of that because we are very well known. In many cases, we were being asked or expected to get involved in issues that might not be particularly material to our business. Really when we started down this journey, and again, this is probably back in 2019 of, I will say formalizing our corporate responsibility portfolio, again, not starting it from scratch, but formalizing it and we went through a materiality assessment process. That was really designed to help us be informed by all of the stakeholders that care about our business and are impacted by our business to say, what are those issues that are most material to the company and our overall system? What are those issues that we can have the most material impact on and really focus our efforts around those areas? That was a really I think, important foundational first step in formalizing the work. Then out of that, what we developed was what we call our Good Done Right strategy, which is across the category. All of those material issues, and there’s lots of issues that again, they may be very important to the world and to society at large, but we, as the Wendy’s company and the Wendy’s system may not have as big of a dog in that fight. We took all of the issues that were on the table and narrowed it down to a couple of key categories of food, people, and footprint. Then we set some public facing goals against each of those categories, really to declare to the world what it was that we were about and where our journey was going to take us, but also to hold ourselves accountable and say we’re making these commitments, we’re not there yet. I think you would probably agree, sustainability I think is a journey, and it’s probably a journey without a final destination.

John: No finish line. Yeah.

Liliana: But we felt like we had to set some commitments to start us along that path.

John: Walk us through it, food, people, footprint. So take us through each subset food, people, footprint and what mattered most in each of those categories, and how did you go about working towards setting and then working towards some of those goals now that you’re about three years into this?

Liliana: Yeah. Again, food, people, and footprint. So it’s four goals in three areas. In food, it’s a commitment to responsibly source 100% of our top 10 food and beverage categories by the year 2030. We essentially identified what are those things that we buy the most of, and that have the biggest impact on the world around us. There’s 10 categories, and we have a commitment that between when we started back in 2021 and a goal date of 2030, that we would certify that those are all responsibly sourced. In the people area, it’s a commitment to increase the representation of populations that historically have been underrepresented across our company management, leadership, as well as in our franchise community. That is a goal to continue representation in some key areas of the business again, across management, leadership in our franchise community. Then in the footprint area, we have two goals. One is relates to our packaging. To sustainably source 100% of all of our customer facing packaging in the US and Canada by the year 2026. So we’re getting real close to that one coming up. Second it was to initially set a science-based target and then once we had the target set to obviously meet it for greenhouse gas emissions reduction, so across scope one, two, and three, across all of our footprint.

John: People say these kinds of things sometimes somewhat differently. Does that relate to net zero goals and things of that such in terms of carbon emissions?

Liliana: It is. We don’t have a net zero goal. We are science-based target. By science-based, meaning it’s aligned with the Paris agreement and what level of emissions reductions would be necessary to essentially keep global warming below one and a half degrees Celsius level. We set that target and had it validated by the Science-based Targets Initiative just last year, so 2023 and then have been working diligently against it because it’s a pretty aggressive target. It’s a target of a 47% emissions reduction across our owned operations, our franchise operations, and our supply chain by 2030.

John: Three years in how goes the journey? What went easier than you thought it would? What’s been more difficult than you thought it would be?

Liliana: Yeah. For me, I will say it’s never fast enough, and I’ve had to practice a little bit of patience. That’s probably the difficult piece, is that you always want it to be, you just want to get there faster. There’s a tremendous amount of groundwork that you have to lay and a lot of foundations that you have to establish. I would say three years in what I’m most excited about coming into 2024 was that we were really making progress, really able to deliver. In our corporate responsibility report that we put out just a few months ago, we’re really able to report not just the programs that we had in place and what the goals were, but actual progress against the goals. It took a year or two, not that you’re not making any progress but you’re establishing what your goal boundaries are. You’re determining for our responsible sourcing goal, for instance, who are the suppliers that are in scope of that? What’s the technology platform that you use to gather information? What are the standards that you’re setting that they’re going to be measured against? Really within this last year, we’ve been able to start making some I think very positive strides forward against all of those goal areas.

John: That corporate responsibility report is produced every year and it lives in perpetuity on wendys.com?

Liliana: It does.

John: Got it. For listeners and viewers who aren’t familiar with Wendy’s, which would be somewhat shocking, but it’s always possible. Wendy’s does over 12 billion a year in sales, has over 14,000 employees doing business in over 33 countries. So if you don’t think Liliana’s busy, she’s very busy on a regular basis. Talk a little bit about the energy challenge that you were part of creating. What does the energy challenge at Wendy’s mean, and how has that been going?

Liliana: That’s a great program and is a great example of where even before we set our goals and formalized our corporate responsibility strategy, we were already doing work. Energy is an important input in a restaurant and you really can’t run them without it. It’s something that that’s costly and it also has an environmental impact. A number of years ago now, almost 10 years ago we got involved initially in the US and then subsequently in other countries as well, with the US Department of Energy’s Better Buildings Challenge. That was a voluntary commitment to reduce your energy use by 20% by the year 2025. We signed all of our company restaurants up. Wendy’s is about 95% franchise. Out of our 7,000 restaurants, about 400 of them are owned and operated by the company, and the rest are franchised. We initially signed the company up for the Better Buildings Challenge, and then subsequently were able to enroll franchisees into it as well. Really the promise of it was, hey, if we’re paying more attention to the energy that’s being used, we can probably get more efficient about that. If you’re not even looking at the electric bill every month when it comes in, you may not be recognizing where you have waste and opportunities to be more efficient. Then ultimately over time felt like we could get into more renewable energy sources as well which would certainly have the impact of reducing our overall emissions. But also we thought, and I think we’re proving that out, to have a very helpful economic benefit. Now we expanded that to be the Wendy’s energy challenge, and so we have about 2,700 of our restaurants now enrolled that they’re reporting their energy data every year. What we’ve been able to do is really reduce the energy that’s being used, and then also reduce the emissions that are being generated both through renewable energy as well as through more traditional energy and just using less of it. That’s been a really fantastic program. Everybody’s an environmentalist when the utility bill comes in because if you can get that usage down, it’s obviously going to have an economic benefit. For our restaurants, that’s a key operating expense for them that they can be a lot more efficient with. We’ve seen, no pun intended, a lot of energy in our system around the Wendy’s energy challenge.

John: Talk a little bit about the challenges and duality of being the chief corporate affairs and sustainability officer at a brand that has, as you say, approximately 400 corporate owned stores, and then the rest are franchisees. You’re dealing with entrepreneurs that typically are innovators and have their own mindset about things, but obviously, they signed up to be part of a system and then you have the corporate situation. How do you do the balancing act of a, obviously corporate I would assume is easier to, once you make a decision and your team makes a decision to move in a certain direction for those 400 stores, you get to move in concert. But when you share that decision making with the franchisees, since you are a communications expert, how do you go about communicating that this is not only the greater goods best interest being the planet at large, the corporation at large, and the greater infrastructure that you signed up for, but also individually, as you said, selfishly better for them as franchisees, so therefore they could be more profitable and be more successful entrepreneurs. How does that balancing act and your communication skills fit in with making that all happen and harmonizing corporate and franchisees?

Liliana: Yeah, you’re 100% right. I’ll say the franchise family in Wendy’s, and it really is a family is I think a towering strength of the brand. I do think that we are stronger because of our franchise structure and you’re absolutely right, it means that in terms of what we as the Wendy’s company have direct control over, it’s not all of it. In an area like energy, we’re not procuring electricity on behalf of our franchise restaurants, they’re doing that on their own. But what we can do is essentially, and it’s really how we use our company restaurants in many cases, is to be the front runner in the pilot to show where something works and then expand it to our franchisees and generally they will get on board particularly when it makes good economic sense, good sense for the customer, and good sense for the planet. That’s a no brainer. We do a lot of work just modeling and the reality is restaurants look and operate the same regardless of who owns them. Some of the programs that we put in place on the company side are directly relatable to our franchisees. In many cases, they’re adopting these things as we are. For instance, we went through a process of upgrading all of the lighting within our restaurants and our parking lots to be LED so that they’re more energy efficient, they’re more cost effective. You also don’t have to change a parking lot light as often as you used to with a conventional type. We can then model what the savings were, what the operational efficiencies were that came as a result of that and then our franchisees will jump on board with that. But it’s just a lot of communication, as you said influencing, and then just also making sure that we’re being good partners together. In most cases, really, in all cases where our company restaurants operate, we have franchisees in those markets as well, so we have stores that are side by side.

John: Understood. For our listeners and viewers who’ve just joined us, we’ve got Liliana Esposito with us today. She’s a Chief Corporate Affairs and Sustainability Officer at Wendy’s. To find Liliana and her colleagues and all the important work they’re doing in sustainability, you could go to www.wendys.com. You mentioned earlier, Good Done Right. Talk a little bit about what you’re most proud of in terms of the last three years as you say, it takes time to set the goals and then to actually make progress towards those goals and then report on them, which then of course is the exciting part once you start getting traction. What are some of the early wins in the first three years that your group and your team were able to achieve in sustainability at Wendy’s that you’re the most proud of and the most excited about and that were in the latest corporate responsibility report?

Liliana: I think probably the thing that I’m most excited and proud about is just how embedded this work has become within our business and within our business strategy. I’ve worked in other organizations and earlier in this journey and have seen as sustainability gets put on a shelf in a separate department, and there might be some good programs, but it ultimately isn’t sustainable if the business as a whole doesn’t really embrace it. I think we’ve seen it’s hard for me to even count how many parts of the business sustainability is ingrained in. I think what sometimes is missed or forgotten is that one, sustainability is not just an environmental concept. You’ve got an environmental, you’ve got a social, and you’ve got an economic component. Ultimately, I think if you’re doing this work well, you’re doing it in a way that is beneficial to your total business, to all of your employees, and to the communities that you serve. I don’t think I could have anticipated how quickly that would come into being, and how much of a point of pride it is for so many of our employees in particular. That when our corporate responsibility report comes out or when we announce a milestone on one of our goals, the positive engagement that I hear from our teams is just something that really makes me excited and it makes me proud. I think the second thing that I would point to is just actually making progress on some of these big goals. I mentioned that we had set a science-based target for our greenhouse gas emissions and that our goal is in our company operations. So our scope one and two is, as you would say, in the business to reduce our emissions by 47%. That’s a lot, almost cut in half the emissions that are being produced by those restaurants. In our most recent report, we said our baseline year is 2019. 2019 to 2023, emissions have been reduced by 26%. We’re getting there. We still have got a long way to go, but that is really exciting to see that work come into the world. In large part, that particular piece of progress is enabled by renewable energy, which without the goal, it wouldn’t have necessarily pushed us to say, hey, we can only go so far with efficiency. We’ve got to figure out a way to get into renewable energy. Well, we’ve now got I think close to 70 restaurants, 70 out of the 400 that the company owns that are either partially or fully powered by renewable energy. We’ve got community solar programs in Florida. We’re rolling out additional community solar programs now with franchisees in about four or five states. What we’re finding is that we can obviously make progress towards our emissions reductions goal, but it’s also really good for the economic model of the restaurant. We’re finding that we’re actually seeing cost savings with some of these procurement models, so that’s really exciting.

John: When I started the show 17 years ago when the word sustainability used to come up 17 years ago, c-suite people would just think that’s going to cost us money. So, like you said, let’s just tuck it away in a shelf, wait for a rainy day when we have nothing else to do. But as you just pointed out, sustainability today in modern times when done correctly, sustainability is probably just another word for resiliency.

Liliana: I think that’s right. I think that’s also why when we started down this journey, our investors were some of our most vocal constituents in terms of just asking what we were doing. Did we have programs in place? Had we made a climate commitment? Some of those things and I think that there’s risk associated. To your point, it really is about resilience and we report to CDP annually, and we’re just about to submit our report for this year. There’s a lot of impacts that we see in the business that are as a result of climate. Whether that’s more extreme weather events that are impacting restaurant operations or impacting our supply chain, there’s a business need to really have this work, I think, embedded into your strategy. This isn’t a charitable endeavor. This isn’t a philanthropy on the side. This is really critical to business performance and resilience and just making sure that your business is truly going to be sustainable for the long term.

John: Contrary to what people thought 17 years ago, c-suite people thought 17 years ago, it’s actually the opposite. If done correctly, it could be a total money savings opportunity, resource opportunity. Number two, going back to what you said about the employees, with the next generation, it’s an attraction and a retention tool to have the right sustainability practices in place. I think there’s such a sense of pride of how you operate. Last but not least, I think the clients that you serve are now voting with their pocketbook and supporting you vis-a-vis their own dollars. They want brands that care about the future of the planet. They want to support brands that care about the future of the planet. So I think people continue not only to support you because you have great food and it’s convenient, but it’s also, you’re doing the right thing along the way as well. I think there’s so many wins to be had when done correctly.

Liliana: Yeah. I think you can’t live without food, right?

John: Right.

Liliana: I think that we are all consumers of food and we all have opinions. I think what we see, and regardless of generation or background or any of those things, people care about what they’re eating. They really care about what they’re feeding their families, and they want to feel good about how that’s being done. When we look at for instance, our responsible sourcing commitment, that’s really the heart of it, which is to say, can we put our hand on our heart and have the receipts to back it up, to give our customers the assurance that we have done everything we can to make sure that what we’re bringing to you and what you’re bringing to your family was raised, grown, harvested, processed in a way that you can feel good about. That’s really at the heart of it, but I think you can’t just story tell around that. You really have to put the substance behind it to say what is the standard? What does responsible mean? And then how do we certify that in a way that is really credible and also verifiable by our customer or by others that have an interest in our business.

John: We were talking off the air a little bit about how we’re cousins because you’re an investor in the Closed Loop fund or one of their funds, and Ron Goldman[?] is a longtime friend of mine and also sits on our board of directors and is an investor in our company. The Closed Loop fund is, let’s just say, and now that I think back on it, I couldn’t get anyone to come on the show when I started the show. It was just a great little idea of mine. It was a radio show, so I, of course asked Ron, and Ron was so gracious and generous and such a good friend. He was actually my first guest on this show 17 years ago.

Liliana: Oh, interesting ago.

John: But I want to relate that back to your footprint and your packaging. Talk a little bit about how that’s been a major part of your sustainability efforts and how you’ve made progress there.

Liliana: Yeah. As I mentioned, one of our goals is to sustainably source 100% of our customer facing packaging in the US and Canada. We set that goal back in 2021. By the end of 2026 is when we need to get there and I’ll tell you, it’s hard to do. But we recognize that particularly as a quick service restaurant, the vast majority of our packaging leaves the restaurant. The customers either come in through the drive through or they’re picking up and carrying out, they’re maybe having a third party delivery service bring it to them. So our packaging doesn’t stay in our restaurant. We really felt like there was an opportunity to make a commitment that the packaging that we would provide would be sustainably sourced and then as much as possible that it’d also be either recyclable, compostable or reusable. We started that process back in 2021, and step one was assess where were we starting from. We were starting from zero, but we determined that our packaging portfolio was about 44% sustainably sourced. That meant that if your math is good, about 56% was not certified that way. In some cases, that meant that we had to go through a certification process, for instance, our fry cartons are a good example where we didn’t actually need to change the packaging, but we did need to go through a certification process. Now if you get French fries at Wendy’s, there’s a certification on the bottom that tells you as the consumer that this was sustainably sourced. But in other cases, we needed to completely change the packaging. Our beverage cups was one that we did that with and we previously have had white paper beverage cups. Sometimes there were different colors. We would do different promotions on them, but generally it was a white paper cup. We moved to a clear plastic drink cup. What we found was that the customer liked it better because it was a better experience. We have these fantastically colored drinks and our Coca-Cola freestyle machines, and you couldn’t see them in a paper cup. So the new cups were a better customer experience. They actually were able to do them in a more cost efficient way for our restaurants. So our operators weren’t spending as much on their packaging, and they’re more recyclable, they’re more recyclable than the paper cups were. Now we’re continuing to incorporate post-consumer recycled content into the cups and we’ll continue to increase that over time. That’s on that goal where we started with 44% of our packaging, meeting our sustainably sourced status. When we ended 2023, where now our goal was to get to 60%, we actually made it to 64%. So we keep chopping away at that but by 2026, we’ll be all the way there. I will say we’re in the tougher part of the journey now. You do the easier stuff first probably, but we’ve still got work to do. One of the things that you can see if you go to our website and look for our corporate responsibility report that just came out in May, we actually have what I think is a pretty helpful graphic that shows by category of packaging. So bags and carriers, straws, wraps, and foils, things like that by category, where have we already transitioned the whole category? Where do we have an alternative identified, we just haven’t implemented it yet, and where is there more research needed? We’ve tried to be really transparent about that to say we’re going to show our homework in terms of the journey that we’re on because it’s not easy, but it is important.

John: Speaking of it’s not easy as you know, since you’ve been in the position you’ve been as a chief sustainability officer since 2021, we can’t do this alone. No brand could do these journeys alone. Talk a little bit about the importance of your vendors working with you and also doubling down on their efforts to be more sustainable and also radically transparent. So therefore, you could do the important work that you decided to do with your team in terms of setting goals and meeting goals, but also being transparent about the progress you’re making. How much you leaned on the vendors and how has that been to herd and rassle them to fall in line and get aligned with your vision set in this journey as well?

Liliana: Yeah, no question. It is absolutely critical. We could not be successful I think, in any fashion without the partnership of our suppliers. As I look at our science-based target to reduce our greenhouse gas emissions, well, the lion’s share of our emissions come from our supply chain. So if our suppliers aren’t on this journey with us, then we’re not likely to make a lot of progress either. Same is true for packaging. The good news is, we have a fantastic group of suppliers that are really I think, along with us on this journey. I think in many cases maybe even in most cases, they have the same expectations on their business that we have on ours. They have their own investors and their own constituents and in some cases what may be in my scope three so to speak, so it’s in my supply, well, that may be their scope one. So if they’ve made a commitment to whether reduce emissions or improve the sustainability certifications in their supply chain or in their direct operations, that’s going to benefit me. But we have to stay in really close touch with them. That’s why when I said some of the early parts of the journey I had to be a little patient is one of the first things that we did was establish a technology platform for all of our suppliers that are in scope of these different goals. So whether you’re a supplier of one of those top 10 food categories that we’ve committed to responsibly source or whether you’re a packaging supplier, it’s about 150 suppliers that are in that universe. Step one was to say, hey, you’re in scope one. Let them know that we have a commitment and they play a key role in it. Tell me

John: [Inaudible]

Liliana: Yeah, absolutely. Second, make sure that we have a way that we can gather information from them. I think we were really not surprised, but just pleasantly informed how many of them were at either a similar point in the same journey or either just getting started or a little bit ahead of us. So I think I we’re all going down that path together.

John: Interesting. You are three years in, you’ve got some traction going, we’re coming into the home stretch of 2024 and headed towards 2025. What are some of the things that have you most excited that you could build upon some of the previous wins that you’ve been getting in the last three years that you intend to accomplish in ’25 and ’26 with your team at Wendy’s?

Liliana: I’ve a little bit of a bias, but Wendy’s is just a really, really special brand and it really starts with our food. We have such great high quality food. What I am so excited about is that as we are particularly in this area of responsible sourcing, 2024 and so into 2025 will be when we can first start to say we have transitioned entire categories of products to be able to say this is responsibly sourced. Where I think that gives us an opportunity is to tell the story of our food. Because I think when consumers hear and understand what does it mean to have fresh number of frozen beef on all of your hamburgers? What does it mean to freshly slice tomatoes in your restaurant for your customer’s sandwich? What does it mean to have salads that are made fresh every day? What does it mean to cook bacon in your restaurant, not microwave a pre-cooked option. It just gives me a lot of energy around just what we can bring to our consumers. I think we constantly have an opportunity to tell and retell the Wendy’s story, because I think when we do that well it’s just a great connection with our customers.

John: As I mentioned before, I think you’re part of one of the coolest fraternities on the planet, chief sustainability officers. Talk a little bit about how do you get inspired now, Liliana, and where do you look for inspiration? Obviously, you have lots of benchmarks within your industry and a lot of other great brands you compete with, but outside of your industry, where do you look for sustainability inspiration to keep your wheels turning as to what’s possible?

Liliana: I do look outside the food industry. I am in real close touch with all the other folks that have my job and all of my peer companies, and I think looking at other industries and other approaches. It just gives you ideas of what might be possible but the other thing that I would say is, and if you ask me where I get probably the most inspiration for this work, it’s probably at home, it’s having a 14-year-old and 11-year-old who this is part of their world. They expect that companies that they are engaged with are doing the right thing. That the dialogue around whether it’s social equity, whether it’s around environmental sustainability. I never wonder whether this is relevant. I never wonder if what I’m doing is something that’s going to have some staying power because I see through them how much it is and how much do they just take for granted that of course we’re recycling and of course we’re composting our food waste. It’s just their way of living in a way that I certainly didn’t have when I was their age.

John: If you didn’t have it, I certainly didn’t being 62. So it’s really cool to hear that because your children, my grandchildren are sustainability natives. Like you said, this is part of their DNA now, which is just fun. Talk a little bit about the next generation though, behind you. Obviously, even when I started the show, there’s very few chief sustainability officers, and now we have a whole cadre of young men and women that are actually going to get their environmental science degrees and the universities that are offering them and it’s a whole different world than it was 10, 15, 20 years ago when it comes to sustainability. There’s a whole group of young people watching this show around the world that are saying, one day I want to be Liliana. I want to do that at a brand that I live in in a different country. How does that work and how much overt mentoring do you do to the next generation behind us?

Liliana: To your point, I have no training in this area. This was not a discipline that least that I was exposed to through my education or even through my early career. Now I look at it and just the breadth of what you can get involved in, that’s, I think probably the first thing that I would say, which is that somebody that has an interest in this area there is no, there is no one size fits all of what does it mean to be a sustainability professional. I think, think about what you like and what you’re good at, and whether you’re on the more technical side, you’re on the more communication side, you’re on the strategy side. There are a lot of different, I think, entry points into sustainability work. As you mentioned I can’t think of an industry or vertical that is not on this journey in some fashion because we all share the same planet, we’re all having an impact on it and so there are contributions to be made there. So I would just say that I think the sky’s the limit in that regard. Yes, I will say I try to be very active from a mentoring perspective and probably pretty selfishly because I want to learn myself. I have a team now of sustainability professionals and all from different backgrounds as well that are really more formally trained in this area and are just continuing to hone their expertise and bring in additional outside expertise into the company. I think there’s a lot to like about it. I think it’s still such a maturing discipline, and so I think there, it’s a great time to get involved. You’re not coming into a field where it’s full of people that have been doing this for 50 years. In many cases, you are helping to chart what it means for this work to be done.

John: I love your background. I love the restaurant that you’re sitting in front of. If tonight you were there with your family in the booth that’s over your shoulder what would be your go-to order tonight at Wendy’s with your family?

Liliana: Tonight it’s probably going to be saucy nuggs. I shop pretty much across the Wendy’s menu, but right now we have saucy nuggs out in restaurants. So shameless plug, if you have not tried them yet, they’re fantastic and get them either with our classic or our spicy nuggets and four different sauces. Those are great. We have a grilled chicken ranch wrap that is a fantastic, that’s my day to day and then I you just can’t beat a Wendy’s hamburger. So for me, that’s usually a double stack with pickles and ketchup and side of fries to go with it.

John: Man, you talk the talk, but Liliana, you walk the walk. I love it. I love it. Hey, for our listeners and viewers to find Liliana and her colleagues and all the important work they’re doing in sustainability at Wendy’s, please go to www.wendys.com. Liliana, thank you for your time today. Thank you for sharing the journey of sustainability at Wendy’s, but more important, thank you and your colleagues at Wendy’s for making the world not only more sustainable, but a better place.

Liliana: Thanks for having me, John.

John Shegerian: 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.

As part of the Company’s broader corporate responsibility strategy, Good Done Right, Wendy’s just released its 2023 Corporate Responsibility report, which shares the Company’s progress, including the below highlights:  

• Extending the Wendys’ Animal Care Standards program deeper into Wendy’s protein supply chain, driving greater visibility which includes more than 20,000 farms, ranches and facilities. 
• Increasing the diversity of representation among senior leadership.  
• Decreasing Company GHG emissions (Scope 1 and 2) by 26%, and franchisee emissions by 11% per restaurant (Scope 3) – both compared to 2019 levels. 
• More than doubling the number of franchisees reporting energy data through Wendy’s Energy Challenge, compared to 2022.