In 2022, Mary de Wysocki was named the first-ever Chief Sustainability Officer of Cisco. In this role, she leads the company’s sustainability strategy; oversees its progress toward public environmental goals; and helps Cisco drive long-term value for the business, its value chain, and the planet. With nearly twenty years of experience leading various corporate social responsibility (CSR), education, and sustainability initiatives at Cisco, Mary plays an integral role in executing the company’s purpose to Power an Inclusive Future for All. She draws on her diverse background in legal training, strategic consulting, and on-the-ground program management to help Cisco invest in impact-driven programs that enable social change and reimagine how technology and sustainability interact with the corporate world. Mary currently leads Cisco’s commitment to positively impact 1 billion lives by 2025 through its social impact grants and signature programs for non-profit organizations all over the world.

John Shegerian: Do you have a suggestion for a Rockstar Impact Podcast guest? Go to impactpodcast.com and just click Be a Guest to recommend someone today. 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 For more information on how ERI can help your business properly dispose of outdated electronic hardware devices, please visit eridirect.com.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 Loop’s platform spans the arc of capital, from venture capital to private equity, bridging gaps and fostering synergies. To scale the circular economy, the fine Closed Loop Partners, please go to www.closedlooppartners.com.

John: Welcome to another edition of The Impact Podcast. I’m John Shegerian and I’m so honored to have with us today, Mary de Wysocki. She’s the senior VP and Chief sustainability officer of Cisco. Welcome to the Impact Podcast, Mary.

Mary de Wysocki: John, thank you so much for having me.

John: Really excited to have you on. We’ve never had Cisco on before. We’ve never had you on before, so this is going to be a great conversation and we’re going to really have some fun here today. But before we get talking about all the great and important work you’re doing at Cisco with your colleagues over there, I’d love for you to share a little bit about your origin story. Where’d you grow up and how’d you get on this important journey that you’re on?

Mary: John, I come from a large family. I’m one of seven kids. But am I part of the older kids so I was the third, so that’s where you’re the old one but that forgotten middle child. I got lots of issues. So just a lot [inaudible] in New England, New Jersey, Massachusetts, New York now. I really own that New York sarcasm that I think is probably what [inaudible] my career.

John: Got you. Wait a second, so you grew up on the East Coast. How’d you get interested first of all, in this issue of sustainability, was it someone during your formative years growing up? Was it a teacher? Was it a parent? Was it your grandparents? Or was it just your general love for the environment that you were surrounded by at the time that you were growing up?

Mary: Yeah, I think it does always start with how you were brought up in your family and I mentioned I’m one of seven, so we were the free labor and we were constantly planting, transplanting on and on. So I did spend growing up a fair amount of my time outside. We were always coming up with new shows to put on for the neighborhood. Then I think it probably it starts with, to a certain extent, as you think about that career in college, I went to a liberal arts college and you learn to think there. In some ways I sometimes think you land where you are supposed to land in terms of not only what your career is, who you surround yourself with, where you live. I just kept saying yes. Yes to every job and every opportunity that came along. I’d probably say my path to sustainability, social impact purpose really started when I joined Cisco, which is hard to believe it’s almost 25 years ago.

John: Wow.

Mary: I have to tell the young people out there, and I know many, listen, I was born before the internet. So when I first started working at Cisco, we were the tech darling.

John: True.

Mary: Everybody was coming to Cisco to say, how are you digitizing these applications? Or what does it look like? So I had one of the most amazing roles. We were a pro bono consulting group that we were helping Fortune 50 companies digitize. As I’m listening to boardroom conversations and thinking about new business models using digital technology, I was like, gosh, I wonder if I could take all this learning and help everyone. That’s when I really started my path down in the social impact CSR sustainably space. I had one of the most amazing experiences where I spent two years in New Orleans after hurricane Katrina. We at Cisco had a huge response. One of the first things we thought about is what brings a community back. That’s where we really spent over five years working with the school districts in Mississippi and Louisiana, bringing technology to the school system, life changing, actually life changing, working with a community and really connecting theory to reality.

John, I’m just telling you how many of my great ideas, when you actually have to execute it on the ground, you realize the criticality. But I think that response, that traumatic response to significant weather really just kept me in this fear of social impact and sustainability. I think we now are all experiencing that weird weather. So there’s no longer that community that you don’t know, all of us are experiencing, whether it’s amazing amounts of rain that is flooding our subways in New York or just recently you think about floods, famine, drought, we’re all experiencing it. [Crosstalk]

John: Mary, it’s so true. I moved to Fresno with my wife and children in ’96. This summer there was more days over 110 degrees in Fresno than any other time in the history on record. So there’s nobody, as you said, immune to climate change now anywhere on the planet. Whatever the climate change means, every region is different. Go back to the relationship that you manage Cisco and the schools in New Orleans and Mississippi. Am I understanding this correctly by what you were doing you were bringing technology to the school systems? Ergo, the end result was democratizing the access to education and information to the students of these great schools so they could have the same access to information and education tools that everybody else does in other school districts around the United States.

Mary: Keep in mind, this was back in the early 2000s when we ended up doing, and I lived on the ground, this is why it was amazing, a group of us from Cisco came and lived in the community. We brought interactive whiteboards, teacher laptops, data centers, access to the internet, helping teachers understand how you create differentiated learning using technology. Imagine sitting in a room where you’re doing that teacher professional development the first time a teacher ever opened up a laptop. But what was really probably one of the most impactful is having a student that might never have left their town, even across the Mississippi, to be able to video in to another student in Europe or around the world. So it really was an opportunity differentiated teaching, learning to really think about how can you create opportunities to hundreds of thousands of young people and really create that level of engagement with the teachers as well. Technology, even today, what is it? Three billion people are still unconnected.

John: Yeah.

Mary: So when you think about that, there’s so much opportunity to create that future. The purpose of Cisco is to create an inclusive future for all. When you think about it, what underpins it quite often is internet access, but then it’s what do you layer on top that really creates that value?

John: I love it. So 25 years, you’re almost there 25 years. Talk a little bit about your evolution there and social impact and all the great things you were doing on the ground back in the early 2000s. How did your position evolve to 2022? You becoming named Cisco’s first Chief Sustainability officer?

Mary: Once I spent time there using my technology skills, my consultative skills on the ground, I knew this was what I could really add the most value to the community, and quite frankly, back to Cisco and our customers as well. I continued on and developed different programs, collaboration for social good, how can we use our collaboration technology, how we’re communicating today to drive social impact. Even back then, our first impact report from Cisco was in 2005, where we were early in those days starting to identify what was our carbon footprint, how are we going to start using renewable energies to power our offices and our labs? Through this period of time, I took on more responsibility. What was our strategy. One of our most strategic CSR programs was the networking academy. This is, again, about 25 years old, creating educational content, technology content free of charge to education systems around the world. One of the things that you realize, is to create that future, that inclusive future, that sustainable future, you’ve got to really think about the talent that you have. Are we building the skills and capability? As you apply technology, are you always thinking about re-skilling? Where are we automating a particular task? What does that mean to our role? As we were reporting out on sustainability since 2005, we did in a very decentralized collaborative way coming together from supply chain, our own reporting as we did the CSR report, as well as that workplace resource group. But over the period of time, one of the things that has happened is I think we all are recognizing climate change is real, and how is that showing up? Often that’s showing up with countries, creating regulations, greening incentives, to drive that transformation to cleaner energy or more circular. What you’re seeing is companies are responding to climate change through goals, setting particular goals, as well as really thinking about how do they decarbonize their business. So through this period of time, we were just voluntarily reporting out what we did, but the world has changed. Now what used to be, what we would call voluntary disclosures are becoming [crosstalk] involuntary.

John: Yeah, codified.

Mary: Codified. Also thinking about your climate metrics or your social impact metrics the same way we do our financial. As all of a sudden, what was important and critical, also, we wanted to put the same rigor that we do around all of our financial reporting. That’s when they felt we needed one person and office to really shepherd this across the company, so we named the first chief sustainability officer. I always think about it this way as like, wow, the first one. The first moment you’re grappling with, well, how do I keep and honor what worked? How do I make sure that that collaborative sense across the company still lives in there? At the same time, I’m very, very accountable. I was thinking about it this way of like, I’m the first, so at this point, I got to be the best. There’s no one to compare myself to. Although I look at my peers as great role models in all different sectors. One of the first things we did is really started thinking through what goals we had and how do we start operationalizing that in the same way we think about how are we ensuring that we’re supporting our customers? One of the first things is identifying what our Net Zero goal was going to be, and that is across our value chain by 2040, choosing something that was ambitious.

John: That’s interesting. By the way, just for our listeners and viewers, to understand a little bit more about Cisco, over 55 billion in sales, over 84,000 employees around the world, selling your products in over 115 countries. This is a worldwide iconic brand. So becoming the first chief sustainability officer, not only, as you said, you self-mandated yourself to be the best, because I appreciate that, but wow, what a responsibility? As you pointed out there’s an alphabet soup now of acronyms out there, CSR, ESG, social impact, and the list is actually much longer. Choosing what you want to do and how you’re going to execute that is so interesting and so important. Net Zero you first chose as one of your top initiatives since everybody’s being impacted by climate change, and you’re so right about that. So it’s 2040 to get to Net Zero. That’s interesting. [Crosstalk] That is really interesting.

Mary: Yeah. When I think about climate change, I think it is the crisis of our lifetime.

John: Yep.

Mary: I think those of us engage, we know this is the decade we’ve gotta take action for future generations. I always think about why do you do this? Quite frankly, everyone should look on their phone. What picture’s on your lock screen? I bet it’s someone you care about. For me, it’s my rescue dog. But I do think that actions we take today are going to ensure future generations have a healthy planet, a viable planet to live in. You can’t have an inclusive future without a healthy planet. So we even took a moment to say, is sustaining the current state good enough? That’s where we really thought, you know what? We want to move even beyond sustainability into regenerative. Into how can we create the conditions where both society and ecosystems can heal and thrive?
We think we can do that in a very collaborative way. So as we built out our strategy, we did it collectively with functions, all different people from supply chain and finance, from sales, our partner organization, our procurement team, our workplace resources. We really identified three key priorities to create that regenerative future. One, continue to accelerate the transition to cleaner energy. We know this is possible. We also think our products and solutions can help make that happen. This is where we can help our customers in their journey as well. Second, to further evolve our business from a linear model to circular. I grew up where we all lived a linear model. Someone would make it, I would take it, I would use it, and I’ll throw it out. We’ve got to create something where we’re really redesigning for reuse, designing out waste. Equally important, our third party is how do we invest in resilient communities? I’ll tell you, over the last, what? Four or five years, we realize how interdependent we are to the communities that we live, work, and create in. This again, is where I think technology can help us as we all have to adapt to a new climate reality. How do we build the skills and talent for that regenerative, that circular economy, and think about technology in the ecosystem to give us more information on shifting, changing climates and the ability to optimize resources. But I’ll tell you, John, underpinning it all is refined, I guess, governance. Going back to those disclosures, I want to make sure that any claim someone at Cisco makes about what we’re doing in sustainability you know it’s rigorously defendable. Whether that is through that subject matter expert, it could be an engineer who’s telling you how energy efficient particular product is, all the way to how we think about that carbon footprint. Ultimately, the vision is, sustainability is built into every role, into every decision an employee at Cisco makes.

John: For our listeners and viewers who’ve just joined us, we’ve got Mary de Wysocki with us. She’s a senior VP and chief sustainability officer of Cisco. To find Mary and her 84,000 or so colleagues at Cisco, please go to www.cisco, C-I-S-C-O .com. Let’s break down what you just laid out in terms of Net Zero, the linear, circular economy, resilient communities, and also defendable, sustainability strategies and goals and markers. First, the Net Zero, how difficult in terms of, say there’s a scale of one to 10, where do you see that level of difficulty on Cisco stretching to get to Net Zero by 2040? Just so our listeners and viewers can get a sense from you the hurdles that exist on that road over the next 15 or so years.

Mary: First when I use the term Net Zero, one of the things that I think your listeners should understand is that we chose to have that goal validated by an organization called the Science-based Target Initiative, SBTI. The reason we did that is they’re probably the gold standard of an organization that can look at corporate commitments and validate them. It’s underpinned by the climate science, which tells us we need to absolutely reduce carbon emissions. When we say Net Zero by 2040, that means we’re going to reduce our carbon footprint by 90%. What does that look like? These are things like using net new renewable energy, solar wind to power [inaudible] in our labs. It means employee vehicles being EVs, those type of things. It means that how we design our products, we are designing them to be as energy efficient as possible. So when you think about Net Zero, and I mentioned the entire value chain, this is to me, the beauty of carbon accounting and Net Zero commitments, is it creates an interdependency across your entire value chain. It’s the power my customers use to power up our equipment in their data centers. It’s the energy used by our suppliers to ship our products. We are all interdependent based on carbon accounting. So, John, one of the things that I think back of like, gosh, if I did this over again, when I made our commitment, I pulled together all the experts across Cisco. I probably should have pulled together our top suppliers and our top customers, our top public figures, and said, hey guys, what is it going to take for all of us to move together? Because there is such interdependency. When you look at our carbon footprint, and it depends on the sector in technology, our biggest footprint is the power used to power up that electricity, our products in the field. The way that I can help our customers understand and help support them in their journey, what we can do to green the grid, all of that is critical to move forward. But it’s everything from investing in sustainable aviation fuel. Everything from working with our suppliers and saying, let’s come up with a sustainability goal for yourself. It’s really thinking about and why the circular part is so critical, because that allows us to really redesign our products to be more modular, easily remanufactured. The carbon you emit by designing product for customer one, it’s zero for customer two. There’s a lot that you go into generally you’ll identify all the actions, everything from decarbonizing logistics to mode shift, thinking about when we ship our products, can they be on ocean versus air. Everything from thinking through partnerships and policies and advocacies. A big part though, at the end of the day, and a big focus over the last two years is what is the data that we need to make the most informed decisions? Because when you get into this space and someone says, well, hey, here’s a product. What is the carbon footprint? Often you’ll go look at a data sheet and it will say, here are all the speeds and feeds and the capabilities. Look at all the capability. You know what we usually put on the energy side is the maximum, which is often then overstating the energy requirements. A lot of what we’re doing over the last two years is what we call investing in a sustainable data foundation so that I can keep refining that information that we really know what materials and on and on throughout that entire value [inaudible] and digitize it. Then that allows me to model [inaudible] journey. It’s one thing that is interesting in this role because I got to think about near-term and long-term. I’ve got to think about what do we do in the next two to three years to connect to the corporate strategy as Cisco securely connects everything to make anything possible, but at the same time, well, what technology will be available in 10 years? How are you building out a journey, a set of pathways for 2025, 2030, 2040, 2050? It’s a really interesting scenario, planning underpinned with as much refined or rich data that you have available to you. That also helps with all of our financial disclosures, those voluntary and involuntary disclosures as well.

John: As you said of course, retrospective thoughts are always perfect, as you and I know. As you said, you wish you had done it a little bit differently back then, but now that we’re almost in 2025 and you’re three years plus into it, plus you also have tremendous history behind you. Really what you were talking about is the real descriptive nature of what really has become on a codified basis, scope one, scope two, and scope three.

Mary: Exactly.

John: Let’s go back to what you just said. There’s a fascinating nexus that you just bring up that is not discussed a lot or enough. The nexus between sustainability goals in almost a suspended animation, and then the relationship and connection therefore to the commercial enterprise and the success of Cisco or any enterprise for that matter. Isn’t there an argument to be made that all of your work, that you are doing important and critical work with your colleagues that are in sustainability and in the sustainability sector, is really always connected to the commercial enterprise and the viability of Cisco? Because sustainability is really just another term for resiliency.

Mary: Completely agree. That’s one of the things that I try to keep connecting people to business continuity.

John: Okay.

Mary: Just think about in the most recent past with Covid, and how did we quickly shift to hybrid work? What does that mean to your resilient supply chain? So absolutely, and this is again, one of the options a company can take is a deep financial analysis called the TCFD, the task force for financial disclosures around climate. If you’re really going, what are the assets that could be most impacted by climate change and severe weather? So I completely agree. I also would say when I think back to the initiatives I did on let’s say just pure social side, you got to look for the economic model that will create that momentum. If you think about crossing the chasm of any technology, you might have those early adopters, but to cross the chasm to that early majority, you got to come up with the financial viability as well. We mentioned a bit about the unconnected. You could create an internet connection, but if there isn’t an economic engine creating demand, you’re constantly looking for maybe donations or investments or nonprofits. So when I think about the future of companies, we are now living in a world of this adapting climate. It may not be your office or your data center, but I bet you it’s going to be your customer or your supplier. That interrelated nature of your entire value chain and how we think about it. One of the organizations that is part of our purpose organization is a crisis response team where you’ve got this truck embedded with communication technology that can either be pre-positioned or show up after a severe weather event to bring up that communication. But when I think about sustainability and I think about the future of companies, it is critical that we’re helping companies adapt to the new climate reality. The reality is, and maybe this is because I lived before the internet. I remember before the digital economy, there is what’s going to be a low carbon economy as well. I remember there were great brands that did not make that digitally and this is going to be another major transition to this low carbon economy. Have you thought about your business being decarbonized? There are just scarcity resources. So I do think it’s a business continuity, but it also, to me is a critical differentiator for your customers as well. When I look at the customer inquiries that come to our team to answer questions, whether those are RPS or FI, they are many, many around sustainability. I’m looking at our top 50 customers. They’re putting in requirements to say, you need to help us with our goals, so I need to see your plans. It is becoming a business requirement.

John: But it also become symbiotic. You’re not only helping them with their goals, they’re helping you with your goals as well.

Mary: Completely. Completely.

John: Right.

Mary: John, this is another area of where I think sometimes when you build a strategy, you might go like, I’ve got to clear my competitive integration, I can’t tell anyone. This is an area we should be rapidly sharing. I mentioned that data foundation. We’ve built out a taxonomy, a strategy, so that’s something we can share with anyone. I think this is an area the faster we share what’s working and not because you got to understand if something’s successful, under what conditions was that successful, will it work in a different vertical in a different region, on and on. So to me, the more we share what’s working, what’s not. A great example is in power purchase agreements. We as a company we can invest in, I think our most recent one was in Spain that’s going to power up most of our offices and data centers in the EU. But there are some parts of the country here in the US for example, down in Texas where our footprint isn’t as big, but we combined with 10 other organizations, 10 other companies can come together and invest in net new renewable energy. So I do think this is an area ripe for partnerships, whether public, private, or collective action to help support us as a community.

John: I got it. Talk a little bit about the generational shift that we’re living through right now, because again, you and I both grew up in the go and throw. I’m 62, I’m going to be 62 this November. So you and I grew up in the go and throw, take and make society, not the circular economy, but we know the shift is now on, it’s not a momentary fad, it’s a trend that’s going to be here for decades and the rest of our lifetimes and well, hopefully our ancestors lifetimes are the people we’re leaving behind.

Mary: Yeah.

John: Talk about the level of difficulty or how you approach the shift from the linear to circular economy at Cisco.

Mary: First, John, you mentioned November. So’s my birthday.

John: Scorpio?

Mary: Yes, we know. Are we not the best? Are we not the best? [Inaudible]

John: 100%. Come on.

Mary: I appreciate every other sign, but we do know. When I sometimes think someone at one point [inaudible] the biggest challenge to create that climate future, that inclusive future, well, like, you know what? It’s us. It’s our behavior change, it’s our decisions. I think [inaudible] was one of those areas [inaudible]. So when you think about circular, this is really starting at the very beginning of how you design your products and packaging. I bet many of your listeners may choose a particular company because of how they design their products, but I bet we’ve all noticed how packaging has changed [crosstalk] over the last [inaudible]. Many communities are creating different incentives and different suggestions in terms of the use of things like plastic. So when you think about circular, starting right in the beginning of how do you design your products and packaging. So it’s things like make it more modular. Why? If we’ve got a let’s say the UCX server, we install it out at a customer. If we can just change a card or all we do is modify the software, you are eliminating a ton of waste. You’re saving carbon in a whole host of other pieces to that. So you think about modular, you think about the materials. So decreasing the use of virgin plastic, thinking about just accessories, the amount of accessories we all as a world have shared and sent when no one asked for it. Just little things like that decrease a significant amount of waste overall. One of the things, I’ll give you an example of just we used to paint our products. Now, for those of you who aren’t in the tech space or the telecom space, our products are usually behind a data center door or closet, no need to paint. That just saves a huge amount of pollutive capability. So it’s everything from the capability. A key part is driving the most energy efficient products out there. Our products use electricity, and the more people want more bandwidth, more capability, often it’s even down at that, at a chip level. We design our own ASIC chip silicon one, and looking at that where you can say, how can I provide 96% more bandwidth using 35% electricity? So it’s that kind of equation that you want to challenge your engineers on, and on and on. I think it just also made me think a little bit about the generation as well. I think one of the secrets of purpose or sustainability is how much it inspires people.

John: Yep.

Mary: It creates even more innovative thinking from an engineer. So imagine you’re asking an engineer, hey, I need you to solve this business problem or just that electricity. But now you add in sustainable as a whole another aspect that really creates really interesting innovation. When I think about a lot of our new hires, John, you know where they first go? Like in our days we might have looked at, well, we first probably would have to go get a hard copy of the annual report.

John: Yeah.

Mary: But now, they go to our purpose report. They go to the ESG hub, first and foremost to go, what do you care about energy really doing it?

John: Let’s pause there. So you’re saying to me, and you’re saying to our audience at large, sustainability itself is a great recruiting tool.

Mary: Absolutely.

John: It’s a great retention tool.

Mary: Absolutely.

John: Yeah.

Mary: Absolutely. I think, and this is especially with those individuals that are that digital native that have grown up in this world, they are showing this through not only who they choose to work for, but what products, what services, all. They’re educating us often in terms of the choices that we need to make as well.

John: Well, it’s almost like when you started talking about digital, you and I weren’t part of that. We weren’t digital natives. The young generation is. You and I really weren’t sustainability natives. This generation is.

Mary: Yes.

John: Let’s go back to what you were just bringing up though. You’re working with engineers. My experience in the last 25 years in this industry, Mary, is that the OEMs that our company gets to work with when we started, the engineers, they were thinking about making the newest, the coolest, the best products they could and services that would change the world back in ’98 to 2000. ’98 dear Google was founded, 2000, 2002, 2004. But over time, things change. What I’m seeing now with this new generation of engineers, or even the older generation of engineers that, like you just said, have been educated by the new generation of engineers, they’re now new divisions at almost all OEMs underneath the sustainability department called Design for sustainability. How does that work at Cisco? What does that look like in terms of your engineers that you get to work with in terms of design versus sustainability? Tie it back a little bit also to the c circular economy story. Are they taking some of the recycled products that you’re able to buy back and recycle plastic and put it into some of your new products or recycle metals and put that into some of your new products?

Mary: One of our public goals for FY25, which we’ve just started, is 100% of all new products and packaging will include the circular design principles.

John: Wow.

Mary: So we started this, and this is the privilege I’ve had of being part of Cisco. I sometimes joke about my role, but I really am part of a community that have invested since the early 2000 and really on their shoulders and always want to highlight the work they do. But this is 100% of our new products and packaging. Every product is scored against the design principles, as I mentioned and then ultimately what’s interesting is probably another big buzz here in the community in technology is generative AI. That’s another interesting challenge that our engineers are grappling with is what can generative AI do and how do we design our products to be as energy efficient as possible the networking of AI data centers? At the same time, there’s also individuals, these systems engineer in the field who are saying, now how do we design it for this particular customer that can be really not only delivering those business outcome, but be more energy efficient as well. Then we’re actually creating more capability, what we call energy management. So you’re actually being able to monitor and optimize the use of energy kind of, the old days. This is when I know I’m really mature when I talk about having to walk to school through the snow as our grandparents always talked about. But we used to design things to be always on and super redundant. That is not needed anymore. [Crosstalk] So the ability to look at your technology, it’s idle, let’s turn it off. Or think about when is energy the greenest, or I’ve got the least amount of work going on. You know what? Let me upload the new software during those periods of time so that energy management actually puts the control, the information onto the technology team to make some choices. So I think when I think about not only how you’re designing the chips into how you’re actually building a solution, to how you’re designing it in the field, they’ll tell you, the newer data centers, if you kind of go what used to be to now, you can sometimes design the work, half the footprint is eliminated.

John: Wow.

Mary: You know what that means? Just less overall cost, less energy. They’re also playing around with a lot of interesting ways to cool the UEX server, one of the ones that I mentioned. They’ve got bidirectional thing. There’s all of these ways that we go to the engineers, we’ve done a net zero challenge multiple years and go, what’s your idea? And the top ones get funded. When you think about harnessing the creativity, harnessing the passion in this space is creating really interesting new ideas, new solutions.

John: I want to go back to something you brought up at the top of our conversation, Mary, how the governance of sustainability and social impact was informal when you started getting involved as it was when I started my involvement. But as you said, it’s gotten much more formal now. Talk a little bit about the challenges of formalized governance, the dynamic regulatory environment that we’re living in, and the fact that you do business in 115 countries. You are dealing with not only what’s going on with Gary Gensler here in the United States, but also what the EU’s doing, what Asia’s thinking about what Latem[?] is thinking about, what the UAE is thinking about. First of all, you juggle all that, but secondarily, because you are in such an important position at such a great and iconic brand, how do you become the voice of reason to help these regulators realize it’s better to probably harmonize what they’re working on than create disparate patchwork quilt regulations, which make great people like you and great organizations like Cisco absolutely cuckoo.

Mary: I think dynamic is a great word. We’re in a very dynamic environment. I think that’s where it’s super interesting to look at why I always think about what was and should be the response of governments or public sector entities to climate change. Often it’s both sides of regulation and incentives. So I think having a strong voice in both but also where we’ve had a privilege of having been reporting for so long. Then the ability to how do you actually take all the capabilities of, let’s say, how you might manage customer information and customer care abouts on the sustainability side. I do think I more than anything think about what our customers want and often that also supports our regulators. So our customers want to know things like, do you have commitments? Are you making progress? One of the groups that we voluntarily report to, which I would love for every organization to is CDP used to be called the Carbon Disclosure Project. This is where you put in here is our footprint. There’s a whole host of information that then become publicly available and we’ve been privileged to be part of the, a-list for a number of years. But to me, our customers are looking for what are your commitments? Show me progress toward those commitments that interdependency shows up. Often what we’re developing an answer for, our customers also support the regulators as well. I think we often come together as a community that we want transparency. Our customers want transparency.

John: Right.

Mary: [Inaudible] our investors about transparency. I think one of the key thing though is making sure that the people understand what they can compare. When you think about carbon, it’s different industries have different intensities, and so if you’re purely software, it probably might be easier to decarbonize than as we are a hardware evolving to you and now over 50% of software company. But there are very different verticals around the difficulty around carbonization. When I think about this, this is where we all have to move together, and I think that the ability for us to be transparent and reporting progress does help our customers choose us because their decisions today are five, seven years in the field.

John: Right.

Mary: So I do think that’s where I look at it a bit more of it’s just one added layer. And I think the ability for regulators to understand, and there’s always usually a communication back and forth and dialogue on, okay, what would it take and how do we build this out? I think it’s all good. I do think at the end of the day, we have to, as a world make changes and to me it’s through both public and private organizations coming together and going, how do we make this happen is going to be what’s critical.

John: I totally agree with you. I just get worried about overregulation. I have zero problem with regulation and good governance. I just get worried about over regulation and the patchwork quilt of regulation, which then creates almost a counterproductive effect on great organizations like yours where then you’re reporting more than doing. That’s a balancing I was talking about.

Mary: It’s interesting. Maybe it’s because I feel like we’re over that hurdle.

John: Okay. That’s fair.

Mary: Maybe that’s part of it where we did start really seriously thinking about this and building out the capability and the infrastructure. So John, I do think there are a lot of people out there that are struggling. That’s sometimes why you see pullback from regulation because people aren’t ready. We’ve had the luxury, I think in the fourth [crosstalk] we go, you know what, let’s start investing now because it helps us have better clarity on what steps we do need to take.

John: It makes so much sense. You know, Mary, when I was reading about you and all the great and important work you’ve been doing for so long at Cisco, I read that you helped launch the Cisco global Problem solver challenge. Can you explain to our listeners and viewers what that is and how that works and how that came to be?

Mary: Yeah, thank you. I mentioned an iconic Cisco program called the Networking Academy. It started 25 years ago, quite frankly, because we were building product and there was no one with the skills to install it or service it. So we had to build a whole host of individuals that had the skills and capability to install Cisco product and service it. We are now educating three million students globally every year. I remember back years ago, there was certain unrest around the world, and I really looked at who was disenfranchised, and it was young people, young people that were educated. That’s when I realized, you know what? We need something on top of that. I think most net new jobs are going to be small, medium businesses, but it’s not enough just to educate. How do you nurture those students, those early in career into small medium businesses and there’s just not enough patient capital in early stage ventures. There’s much more incentives and capital when a solution has been proven, and so there was such an opportunity to come in early. In fact, through the Cisco Foundation, most of our grants are in that early stage. There’s just not enough patient capital. Even on the climate side, we’re doing impact investing because we can be a little bit more patient than let’s say other later stage investors. By building this, it not only created a pathway of educated individuals, nurture [inaudible] businesses and it’s again about signaling that this green economy and interrelated inclusive economy is taking a hold. It reminds me, one of our first winners of the global problem solver challenge was a company called Remora. They had created this carbon capture device for long haul trucks and capturing that carbon and sequestering it. It just made us think about, gosh, imagine, well, what does this mean? What does it mean to gas stations along 95? Or the 405 going forward? Gosh, obviously they’re shifting to be EV charging stations, but they might be carbon capture entities going forward as well. So the ability to think through ultimately, I guess maybe John, I think about large scale change. To create that outcome, you got to almost really create a theory of change and go, there’s skills development, there’s economic empowerment, there’s making sure that basic human needs are met, that public private partnership, all of that coming together to really create a higher likelihood of success.

John: That’s really wonderful. I always say, Mary, that I get to have a really fun job doing what I do here at the Impact Podcast, because I get to interview really amazing and wonderful and special people like you who are chief sustainability officers or Chief impact officers, they’re called so many different types of officers now, but I say it’s the greatest fraternity in the world. How do you get re-inspired and also look at other industries for benchmarking purposes besides looking within your own industry? Where do you look for inspiration and what keeps you excited every day in terms of figuring out new and better ways to do things that then you could bring back to Cisco?

Mary: First I’ll probably say I’m just so lucky because sometimes I go, like, I might be the person in front, but there are thousands and thousands of people behind me at Cisco. I’ll give you one example of an individual Angelo out of Italy, and he’s working with a Tanzanian coffee grower and researchers in Italy. What they’re doing is they’re putting IOT devices in the field and the ability to start capturing a whole host of data. When I think about IOT always thought about it’s capturing all sorts of information and sensors, but now it almost allows us to almost understand the language of plants because it’s capturing climate and [inaudible] and all sorts of information about the soil, the health of the plant, and sending that information that allows us to analyze and bring back to that coffee grower on, well, how do you optimize irrigation? Let’s really understand the impact of climate. How do we actually think about optimizing in this future world that we’ve got to mitigate and adapt? First, I sometimes look at the amazing things people around the world are doing that’s bringing back a great idea. I often think that some of the most impactful innovations are where there’s extreme conditions, that learning from the edge. That’s why when I think about our value chain, I’ll probably say next, it’s talking to our customers, our suppliers. One of our partners in France, Orange, they are a big technology provider in France, and we’ve created a new kind of partnership because we looked at our goals and went, we’ve got the same dates. We’re actually sharing our methodology, starting to how do we forecast our products and what their customers need as a big partner of ours so that we both can hit our goal and provide the opportunities our customers are looking for. Another partner who really sees this as a huge business opportunity, and how do we co-create that strategy. So interesting partnerships are coming together as we think about sharing our methodology and what’s working and not. I think another key area as I look across what other CSOs has just had the privilege of being at the White House around a particular USAID incentive around how we’re preparing the world to adapt. I was there with one of my colleagues here, I think you’ve talked to, but perhaps the CSO at MasterCard and listening to what they’re doing. Talking through what we’re doing. It’s interesting when you sit and talk to another sector and how they’re orchestrating that value chain. What’s working and not. So John, Climate Week always happens here in New York at the end of September, so there’ll be a huge convening as we all come together and start sharing information. Another area is in investing. I mentioned how in the Cisco Foundation we’re doing impact investing. I’ll tell you, it’s a community where we’re all talking about what is the newest startup and what should we do, and have you vetted it and what do you see? How do we come together to help support, whether it’s capacity building or investment, this new nascent organization to be able to cross that chasm. So, lots of different areas, but I’ll tell you a lot of the best and greatest ideas come from some of the employees that I’ve just the pleasure to work with.

John: You know, Mary, one of my best takeaways of today’s conversation with you is you’re never bored.

Mary: No.

John: There’s so much to do, and you love your work, and you’re interested in all of it, not just part of it, but you’re really interested in all of it. Where are you thinking about 25 is upon us, is coming sooner than we think, but also the world as you and I know is changing faster than even Al Gore predicted. An inconvenient truth, it’s changing much faster, and so our solutions have to be done with a sense of urgency. What’s your thoughts in terms of priorities for the vision of the future with regards to sustainability at Cisco? What are you thinking about for ’25 and ’26 more specifically?

Mary: I would say a big focus whenever you’ve got large net zero commitments is you’ve got the interim. So you mentioned scope, so our FY25, which we’re right at the beginning of a 90% risk reduction scope one and two by the end of this fiscal year and then the next one is FY30. But I’ll tell you, a big focus for me is going to be how do we define, enable these resilient communities? Because that creates the intersection of both business and purpose. It creates the intersection between talent and people. It’s an intersection between society, government, technology. I think that that ultimately the ability for us to really make it local and understand what’s it going to take to create resiliency, whether that from an economic or quite frankly, a climate shock, it’s critical. I think that pulls the community together and creates lots of opportunities. Whether that’s similar to using IOT in that community, to think through how do we reinforce biodiversity or understand the scarcity of things like water, those type of things. Are there ways that we can capture data? One of the things that I think is going to also unlock huge opportunities is the more, I’m going to use the word good, but maybe reliable, verifiable, might be better data will allow us to make more informed choices. Or if we make an assumption, it will tell us whether our hypothesis and our assumption is accurate. I think you’re going to see more data, more ability to analyze that and be able to think through the shift and change of weather and how do we adapt it? How do we create that resiliency in the community? I think that’s going to be a huge area for us to focus in on.

John: Well, Mary, I just want to say we need more, Mary. That’s what we really need. The world needs more, Mary, and I’m so grateful for you taking time with us today to walk us through your vision and accomplishments with your colleagues at Cisco in the sustainability sector and the social impact sector. It is just truly incredible and so important. I just want you to know you’re always welcome back on the Impact Podcast to continue to share your fascinating and very important journey that you and your colleagues at Cisco are on. Because as you know it’s great to talk about startups and I’ve had so many startups on this show over the last 17 years, and because they are the innovators and they’re driving the new economy. But it’s also critically important to have iconic and big brands like yours on, because when you guys make a decision or move in a direction, it truly moves the needle and the world does change. So I just want to say thank you for your time today. Thank you for all the work that you’ve been doing for the last 25 plus years at Cisco. For our listeners and viewers who want to find Mary and her colleagues and all the work they’re doing in sustainability at Cisco, please go to www.cisco, C-I-S-C-O.com. Mary de Wysocki, you are an absolute gem. We need more of you in this planet, and I just want thank you for not only your time today, but for making the world a better place.

Mary: John, thank you so much. To your listeners, together we can have huge impact.

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