John Shegerian: Get the latest impact podcast right into your inbox each week. Subscribe by entering your email address at impactpodcast.com to make sure you never miss an interview. 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 For more information on how ERI can help your business properly dispose of outdated electronic hardware devices, please visit eridirect.com. This episode of the Impact Podcast is brought to you by Closed Loop Partners. Closed Loop Partners is a leading circular economy investor in the United States with an extensive network of Fortune 500 corporate investors, family offices, institutional investors, industry experts and impact partners. Closed Loops platform spans the arc of capital from venture capital to private equity, bridging gaps and fostering synergies to scale the circular economy. The find closed-loop partners, please go to www.closelooppartners.com. Welcome to another edition of The Impact Podcast. I’m John Shegerian, and I’m so honored to have with us today, Justina Nixon-Saintil. She’s the Vice President and Chief Impact Officer at IBM. Welcome Justina.

Justina Nixon-Saintil: Hi. Thank you. Thank you so much for having me.

John: It’s an honor to have you, and it’s always an honor to have a fellow NYU alumni on the show, so anyway, but it’s just great to have you today, Justina, and we’ve never had IBM on in recent times. So it’s great time to catch up about all the great things at Impact you and your colleagues are doing at IBM. But before we go there, I want you to share with our listeners and our viewers a little bit about your backstory. Where’d you grow up and how’d you get on this very wonderful and important journey that you’re on?

Justina: Yeah. So I am from a very tiny island called Dominica. It is in the Caribbean. It is in the Lesser Antilles. I would say 70,000 people on the island probably can fill Yankee Stadium. I came around the age of nine, settled in the South Bronx in New York, and actually lived close to Yankee Stadium. So I know a little bit about the area, and was a very curious child, very focused on taking things apart, putting it back together. My family saw that. My sister who was ahead of me in college, thought I would be a good engineer. She said the students at school who have the curiosity that I had and the math course that I had usually went into engineering. So I eventually obtained a mechanical engineering degree from the university at Buffalo and I was the only black woman at the time. This was a long time ago. Over 30 years ago, only black woman graduating for mechanical engineering degree. I always say when I look back at my experience, my background, I think I always had a focus on social impact. One of the first jobs that I had outside when I graduated from college was as an engineer looking at nuclear tanks. We had a nuclear facility right outside of Buffalo, New York, and my job was to make sure those vessels that had nuclear waste did not leak the waste into the local water supply and the local community, and that was one of my first engineering jobs. So when I look back, I think I was always focused on how do we make sure we protect people and make sure we protect communities and really focus on people and planet. So I think that was always a part of me. Then eventually I moved, I got a job with a company at the time called NYNEX, New York, New England Exchange, for those new Yorkers who remember that company, and it eventually became Verizon. At Verizon I moved from engineering to marketing, to eventually social impact and corporate social responsibility.

John: During that journey, did you go from engineering to marketing because you were looking to broaden your experience and you felt like you already had done what you could do in engineering? Why move around like that from engineering to marketing to corporate social responsibility? What was on your mind and what was your north star at that point?

Justina: I had really amazing sponsors and mentors when I was at Verizon, and they likely saw more in me than probably I even saw in myself at the time. It was a matter of, how do I broaden my experience across the company and continue to move up in different roles and positions at the company. So, started in the engineering area, worked on these products called ISDN and DSL. I know I’m dating myself.

John: I know what you mean. Those are are familiar acronyms to me.

Justina: Yes. Eventually, I moved to marketing to sell those products. So I started first with product development and engineering, moved into the marketing area to help sell those products to customers, and then I actually left the company for a few years focused on my three young children. I had a child who was born extremely early, and I wanted to make sure I took the time to help him develop. Then Verizon called me and wanted me to come back, and I had a great opportunity to work in the corporate social responsibility area, using my engineering mindset and my engineering discipline to move CSR to be more strategic for the business. That’s a huge focus of what I do today at IBM. But this was really around how do you look at someone who has talent, who has the skills and give them the opportunity to learn different areas of the business and continue to pour into them. I could say I had great mentors who enabled me to do that while I was at Verizon.

John: Talk a little bit about how many years ago was that when you joined IBM?

Justina: So I came to IBM four years ago.

John: Okay. We’re just going to level-set this for our listeners or viewers. I don’t want to ever assume anything, but for our listeners and viewers out there, IBM is one of the largest and greatest iconic American entrepreneurial brands ever to exist. Annual revenues north of $61 billion, over 282,000 employees, IBM serves in over 175 countries. It’s a very amazing and iconic brand. So you come over from Verizon to IBM and did you immediately take on the role of Vice President, Chief Impact Officer or what happened when you came over?

Justina: So, when I came over, I was the Vice President of Corporate Social Responsibility. I became the Chief Impact Officer later on when my role expanded to not just include our social impact programs, but also include our ESG strategy and disclosure, and to include the university relationships that IBM has across the globe. So eventually, I became IBM’s first Chief Impact Officer. What I really do as a Chief Impact Officer is really strategically align the business, the strategies of the business, the technologies of the business with the work that we do in CSR to have the most positive impact we can in our communities, and we focus on education and sustainability.

John: So let’s talk about a little about that. It’s that wonderful feeling of excitement and terror of being the first of anything. You had that proverbial white page in front of you, the whiteboard in front of you. So how did you decide with your team and the C-Suite to focus on education and sustainability, and how does that balance? Because as you and I know, impact and sustainability, both could be read very narrowly, very broadly, or somewhere in between. How did you decide how to start filling in that whiteboard?

Justina: So, I’m a big de believer that you can’t do a lot of things well. So when I first came on board, I looked at what are the strengths of the business? What are some of the areas that the company wanted to focus on in the future as well, and how could we then use all of our resources to really make an impact in those areas? So, IBM had a long history in education. We’ve always invested in that space as a technology company that’s accelerating new technologies like AI and hybrid cloud. We always wanted to make sure that we were not leaving populations behind, and that we were giving them the skillsets to be able to be successful in a company like IBM or with any of our clients, or governments. So we wanted to make sure that we provided the training, the skills that people needed to be able to get a good paying job. So that has always been a focus of the company.

When I came on board, we really looked at the opportunity to expand that work globally in a really big way. We were doing some very specific initiatives in different countries, but I came and I saw the opportunity across the business and I said, “Why don’t we make a commitment, like a really broad commitment to scale 30 million people by 2030?” Because we had the resources to do that, and we had the expertise and the partnerships to do that. So that’s the first thing, is made the commitment to skill 30 million people, and then started growing our program. The main program is called IBM Skills Build that provides free access to training, to content, and credentials that anyone can use globally. But we partner with very specific non-profit organizations and universities to be able to bring that access to populations who are at risk and to university students who we want to make sure we’re skilling so that they could be successful in jobs. So that was one area that we focused on, education.

John: So let me make sure I got this right. So you use the power of technology as your platform to democratize the education process?

Justina: Yes, 100%. Absolutely.

John: It’s called Skills Build. How do you decide and how did you work on the right curriculum to give them the skills for the future economy that’s coming faster than we ever thought before?

Justina: Yeah, absolutely. We lean on both expertise within the company. Number one, we know the types of people we want to hire. We have a research organization, a consulting organization, software, human resources. So when we look across the types of folks that we want to hire, the skill sets we want them to have, we build curriculum to focus on that because we know those jobs are going to be in demand. I’ll give AI as an example. We look at two areas of AI when we are hiring people. Number one, do people have AI fluency? Do they even understand just what AI means and how to use it to be more productive and efficient in their job? The other one is AI builders. People who are actually going to come and create large language models, understand machine learning and APIs, and really actually build the systems and solutions we need to be able to sell to clients. So then, if we look at that as an example, we create curriculum that is actually confirmed by university professors and other clients, and we get a lot of input from different people to say, this is the right curriculum to provide those types of skill sets to the people that we want to target the most so they can get a credential and be able to use that to get a job opportunity.

John: So basically a database approach to choosing the curriculum.

Justina: Yes, absolutely.

John: I love it. So when did you launch that Skills Build?

Justina: So we launched Skills Build Globally in 2021.

John: Talk a little bit of how it’s been going. How’s it been going?

Justina: It has been going great.

John: Has it been what you wanted it to be?

Justina: It has been exactly what I wanted. It has been expanding significantly. We’re a global company, so whether I travel to Indonesia or Sao Paulo or other countries, I meet with partners who are using the content, who have great stories of people who are now getting better jobs because they have a credential in AI or cyber or cloud or data analytics, and you see that they’re increasing economic mobility. Especially helping themselves and their families, you really see the impact of this work. So we very much focus on working with non-profits who are helping women move into tech fields and other at-risk populations, but also with universities. Because we want to make sure the students who are learning right now, who are going to be the leaders of the future as well, have the right technology skill sets as they learn.

John: About how many people a year have you been serving this democratized education process to?

Justina: So when you look at our total commitment that we made, we made a commitment to scale 30 million people by 2030. As of the end of last year, we were already up to around 11.5 million. So we are very much on target, and although I can’t share those numbers yet, we have some really great numbers for the end of the year that we’re going to have in our impact report next year. But what I can say is that, we are going to be at least 50% or more to our 30 million targets. So we are very excited about that. Skills Build is just one of those programs that help us meet that target. IBM has a number of free skilling programs, even in Quantum, for example, that we provide to communities. So again, very invested in making sure that we provide those tech skills.

John: That’s wonderful. For our listeners and viewers who’ve just joined us, we’ve got Justina Nixon-Saintil with us. She’s the Vice President and Chief Impact Officer at IBM. To find Justina and all her colleagues and learn all about the great work they’re doing in Impact, please go to www.ibm.comimpact. That will also be in the show notes, so you don’t have to write it down if you’re doing something else right now. Justina, talk a little bit about, now the other side of the coin. You said you focused on two main things, Skills Build, obviously is the education side that you focused on when you started putting together your impact policy and goals and mission, but also sustainability. Talk a little bit about what you’re doing in sustainability and why that’s making such a big difference.

Justina: Yeah. So one of the great opportunities that I saw when I started at IBM is the types of technologies that we had that could really make an impact in our communities. When you think about AI and hybrid cloud, and we have environmental data, we have a great research organization that has a team that’s focused on geospatial analytics and all types of data that we can use to forecast and model environmental threats, to help you know, predict urban growth, I thought that this was a great way to help support communities that were having the most environmental threats. So we created this program called IBM Sustainability Accelerator. Through that program we use experts at IBM in addition to providing free access to our AI platforms, our hybrid cloud platforms and other platforms like our environmental intelligence suite, and we create products or iterate on products with non-profits and governments that we can implement that really help those vulnerable communities. We’ve done that since 2022. So we have a number of different initiatives that are focused, for example, on clean energy delivery, water management, sustainable agriculture. The latest one that we’ll be announcing very soon is on resilient cities. So this is a way that we focus on a very specific SDG, sustainable development goal and a very specific focus area with non-profits, and then we track and measure the results of these initiatives that we launch all over the world.

John: Again, is it AI-driven and it creates basically a roadmap of predictive analytics that you then get to leverage?

Justina: Yes, absolutely. It is all AI driven. The latest cohorts are also driven by gen AI. So we’re using our Watson X platform as a part of these types of programs, at least for the last two years. But even from the very beginning, the first cohort we launched was sustainable agriculture, and we worked with smallholder farmers to help them understand how to analyze data and how to make decision leveraging some of our AI platforms on when to water, because they were in drought-ridden areas, and we wanted them to be able to use data to make decisions, and this helped them increase yield. So this is just an example of how we’re using this. Just for that sustainable agriculture cohort, we’ve actually reached 65,000 beneficiaries. So we’re also tracking very carefully the impact of this program. But that’s a way that we’re using our technology and our expertise to really make a difference for farmers.

John: Got it. Talk a little bit about AI in general. Justina, there’s not a day that we don’t read the New York Times or Wall Street Journal, or watch Bloomberg or CNBC and AI in this… what I want to call maybe a hype cycle right now, if there’s such a terminology of just what it could do. Where do you think this is going to logically? Is there as much dangerous, some of the negative Nellys are saying out there about what AI… it can go too far and become smarter than humans and take over? Or is it really going to deliver on so many of the promises that have been made by some of the technologists out there? Where in that spectrum do you fall out because you’re living it and you’re right in the middle of it right now, and you’re part of that future, driving part of that future with IBM? What’s your thoughts on the future of AI and not only at IBM, but across the spectrum of different industries and different information that can help deliver to us to make a better world that we could all enjoy on a more sustainable and resilient level?

Justina: So, I can tell you when I go and have discussions with partners, or a few weeks ago, I spent some time with a university and with their school of engineering dean and other members of the Dean Council talking about what do we need to do at the university level to make sure students are prepared. There is agreement across the board that if you are not providing some AI fluency for every student, this is not just about the engineering students or the computer science students, we’re going to be left behind because every company and every industry is focused on this. There are multiple studies that show that there is a lot of opportunity with AI. At IBM, we are using it across the board. We are using it to increase productivity and efficiency. Our HR teams had launched this initiative called Ask HR, where you literally can ask a question and the system will do the work for you. Think about how many people than you could really allocate to more higher level thinking, more strategic work that you could do out of business. So I think this is a place where you’re going to see a lot of opportunity. I think a lot of companies are focused on how we could drive customer service better, increase productivity and efficiency. Even on our side, with the work that we do in corporate social responsibility, we use AI to provide a better user experience on skills build. How do we provide you with the right learning pathway based on your experience, your background information we know about you? How do we provide the right learning pathways to lead to the right credentials? To lead to the right job opportunity? That is a great experience for our learners who are coming on the platform. Then in sustainability, like I mentioned, there are so many uses of it to help communities with forecasting and modeling, to look at where floods going to occur. How do we help those communities prepare for that or even evacuate those areas? Building insights. There’s so many different ways that we can use AI to solve some of the big challenges we have in society and help people. So I do think there’s a lot of opportunity and there’s going to be a lot of demand, but my focus, especially on the education side, is to make sure that we are getting people ready to be able to get those jobs. We do not want to leave those populations behind. I see it very similarly. I know I’m aging myself again, but when we all had access to the internet, and at the time, I was starting to come into engineering and the work that I was doing, and it was, if you had access, you could do better things for yourself, for your job, for your family, and their populations that just didn’t have access. They didn’t have access to broadband, they didn’t have access to internet, and that really hurt their prospects. They hurt their prospects from an economic perspective, from a livelihood perspective, this is an opportunity for us to make sure we are not doing the same as AI accelerates.

John: Yeah. Are you happy that you got your engineering degree? Has it served you well in terms of your critical thinking and analysis as you evolved in your career?

Justina: Absolutely. I credit a lot to my engineering degree. As someone who grew up in a very impoverished area who was able to get an engineering degree, did take me five years, not four, like some of my peers, but that was fine. I think it opened a lot of doors, but it wasn’t just the engineering degree. A lot of what enabled me to be successful were mentors even in engineering schools. Someone who looked at me and said, I think you should apply for this opportunity. Let me help you create the application or the resume. Then people at work at Verizon who really put a lot of time and effort in further helping me develop my skills. So again, I think the engineering degree or any type of degree is one step, but you need the mentors. You need the supporters who are able to further help you prepare for jobs and I think that is almost as important in some cases. Then I always tell people as well, and you mentioned it a little bit at early on about AI and is it something we could do responsibly? I actually think we could do it responsibly and I’m part of an AI ethics board, and I’ll make the connection here because of my role and my experience and where I am today, I can be on a board that talks about bias, that makes sure we are not developing products and solutions that are bias, that we are implementing AI in the most responsible way, and that’s really a part of it. The more people you have that are in those positions to make decisions, the better it is for everyone overall. So I think that’s important, and that’s why we need to continue to build that pipeline of people who could be successful in a corporate environment.

John: That makes so much sense. You’ve been now at IBM about four years. Talk a little bit about the challenges and the opportunities that you now have learned. Obviously, the education you’ve gotten on the job for the last four years has informed you about where you’re going to be going. What are some of the challenges ahead and opportunities ahead that get you the most excited on the sustainability education impact sector?

Justina: Yeah. One area that we’ve already touched on is AI. I’m a techie, you could probably tell.

John: That’s okay. Just so you know, I love nerds. Nerds win, man. Nerds win.

Justina: When I was at Verizon, I was actually super excited when I was responsible for figuring out how 5G can actually help the most underserved populations. That was a big part of what I was doing before I came to IBM. When I came to IBM, there were a whole new set of technologies. AI, cloud, cyber, and I really got excited about how could you use those technologies in social impact. So AI is the one that has demonstrated the most opportunity for us. So I’m excited for the possibility of this. How do we make sure on the education side, we’re using it not just to make sure we are democratizing education, but also providing the best learner experience and personalized learner experience for our beneficiaries. Then on the sustainability side, how do we make sure that we are using it to make a difference in our communities? We’ve partnered with organizations like Sustainable Energy for All around how do we model clean energy opportunities, or how do we make sure we use AI for building insights to make sure we’re reducing emissions in building? So I think there’s so much opportunity around AI, so I’m really excited about it.

Again, I think if you do it in the most responsible, ethical way, you can have a really positive impact. So that’s one thing. The other thing I would say is in this role, you have to always look at the global work that you do and implement, but make sure you’re having a local impact. One of the things I love to do when I travel is to meet those non-profits on the ground. They’re the ones that understand the communities. They’re the ones that understand how to deliver the programs and how to really demonstrate the impact. So that gets me really excited. This global role, but really local impact. I think all companies are really focused on that. When I talk to my peers, this is the same thing they’re thinking about. How to make sure you align with your business strategy. How do you make sure you’re using all of the resources your company has, but how do you measure that impact on the ground and know that you’re really changing somebody’s life. So I think that’s going to be extremely important for this type of work as well. The last thing I would say is as much as you can be, you want to be transparent, you want to be able to share the results of your work, you want to be able to share those stories of impact. I think it’s important for companies to be transparent around this work as well.

John: True. But because you are the Chief Impact Officer and you’ve got the skills build under you, the impact you have, the sustainability. Talk a little bit about the challenge of the regulations that are now being thrust upon great brands like yours that are doing businesses in over 175 countries. So you have the regs that are coming now out of the EU. You have Gary Gensler here coming out with his own set of regs. We know there’s new things coming out in LATAM and Asia. Where are we in that journey of a patch for a quilt versus hopefully down the road, some harmonization of these regulations so we don’t get caught up? Instead of getting caught up in paperwork, we’re actually focusing more on results. How does that work, and how big of a challenge is that for you sitting where you sit at IBM?

Justina: You touched on it. There’s always that discussion on, do you focus on the controls, the processes, getting ready for regulation or on making sure you’re having the biggest impact? I think we’re doing a really good job of both. I can tell you, IBM will always comply with regulation. We are getting ready for the CSRD that’s coming out of the European Union. Definitely, I am a fan of standardization across all of these different frameworks and regulations, but CSRD is very comprehensive, and we will comply for that regulation. We’re getting ready for it. I think we’re in a very good place, but that has not deterred us from making sure we are moving our programs forward. We are reducing our emissions. We are focused on where we are as a company around social impact and education and sustainability. As I mentioned, we are still focused, we are moving our programs forward, but absolutely, we’ll comply with the regulation and we have the resources to do that.

John: What I say to my listeners and viewers all the time is, I’ve been doing this now 17 plus years, and I’ve got to meet so many wonderful people like you that are doing this such important work impact work at some great, great brands. I think you have one of the coolest fraternities in the world. Where do you find your inspiration and aspiration? Do you benchmark against other OEMs? Do you look outside of your industry? Where are you finding your pearls of wisdom that you can leverage and then bring back to IBM and continue to drive all the success that you’re already driving at IBM, Justina?

Justina: Excuse me.

John: No problem.

Justina: Sorry. So I am a part of some amazing networks. I’m a part of the Aspen Institute, ESG forum. I’m a part of the conference board, also a part of CECP, and I think through those networks, you hear a lot and learn a lot from peers, and you’re able to share what you’re doing as well. So I get inspiration from having these types of discussions and learning from my peers and being able to share some of the great work that IBM is doing. Then just generally, I’m very passionate about this. I love being able to use technology. I love leading a team. I love looking at the results of our work in the field and talking to partners and talking to beneficiaries. So I do think in this work, you do have to have a passion for that and a background and experience that lends itself to it. It just cannot be tracking data. It just can’t be, okay, let’s create these programs and launch it, but you have to really care. I’m usually among people who care and they want to do good, and they just have to figure out how to make sure you are strategically aligned with your business, how to make sure you have the resources to support you. How do you make sure you have a great team that supports it and you can support them as well. So I have some really great networks that I’m a part of, and I am proud to be a part of them and learn from them, but share as well.

John: Justina, as you and I have learned over the years, sustainability doesn’t have a finish line, it’s a journey. Where do you think it’s going in the next 10 years ahead, besides what we’re already seeing with the huge shift from the linear to the circular economy and other important trends, where do you see it evolving?

Justina: I think that people are more aware today of what the issues are around climate, around sustainability than they ever were. So when you think about just the Hunger and Climate Week that occurred in New York a few weeks ago or a few months ago, all the discussions during that week were about how you can use AI, what’s happening in the global south, how can companies come together in partnership and in coalitions to solve this issue. So I think the awareness, the urgency is there. I also think we’re seeing more and more innovations and solutions that can help solve those problems. One of the biggest thing is how do you scale them. So they are great examples of what companies are doing, including IBM in very specific areas. How do you take the solutions and scale them so that you can have the biggest impact? That’s one of the things that a lot of companies are thinking about and focused on as well. But I think everyone is focused on solving this issue. I think there is a sense of urgency. I think, again, technology can help us solve it, but also partnerships and coalitions will be the way forward as well.

John: I love it. For our listeners and viewers, to find Justina and her colleagues and all the important impact work they’re doing at IBM, please go to www.ibm.comimpact. Justina, thanks for the time you shared with us today and all the journey that you’re on in IBM and all the great work you’re doing. It’s really important, but more importantly, thank you and all your colleagues at IBM for making the world a better place.

Justina: Thank you. Thank you so much for having me. Thank you.

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.