Dr. Stuart Poore is Chief Environment Officer at Cognizant, a global Fortune 200 IT professional services business, where he is responsible for leading the Company’s sustainability strategy and delivery, including through a Net Zero emissions reduction goal. He has over 20 years of experience in corporate sustainability through leadership roles spanning the corporate and NGO sector. Stuart’s corporate roles have covered a diverse range of sectors including imaging technology at Canon EMEA, digital media and telecommunications at Virgin Media and defense, security and aerospace at the QinetiQ Group. He also led corporate sustainability at the World Wildlife Fund (WWF), where he worked closely with large businesses committed to sustainability transformation. Stuart has a Ph. D in International Relations and is a former Chair of the Global Association of Corporate Sustainability Officers.

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John: Welcome to another edition of The Impact Podcast. I’m John Shegerian, and I’m so honored to have with us today Stuart Poore. He’s a Chief Environment Officer of Cognizant. Welcome to the Impact Podcast, Stuart.

Stuart Poore: Thanks, John. Great to be here.

John: And you are sitting today, Stuart in UK and I’m in Fresno, California, is that correct?

Stuart: That’s right. Yes, I’m down in Hampshire on the south of the UK.

John: Well, thanks for joining all the way across the pond with us today. It feels like you and I are sitting sort of next to each other in the same room. That’s the beauty of technology. And we’re going to get talking in a second about all the important things regarding the environment that you and your colleagues are doing at Cognizant, but before we get there, Stuart, can you share a little bit about your background? Where’d you grow up and how you get on this journey that’s very important and actually really helping make the world a better place?

Stuart: Yeah, so thanks, John. The stories for me started certainly when it comes to sustainability anyway, started around sort of 2003. I’d spent a long time in academic life getting a doctorate and teaching at a university and so on. And then I took a jump into the big wide world outside of academia. I started out in an organization called WWF, I think in the US it’s still called the World Wildlife Fund, and that was around 2003, and I was doing some work in public affairs and campaigning at WWF, I think, fair to say, generally regard as the biggest environmental NGO in the world, one of the most credible, certainly. And my role was to run a series of campaigns around climate change, which was quite tricky at the time given, but climate change back in 2003 wasn’t really quite so prominent on the agenda as it is now, but working across some other impact areas as well. And that’s really was my first taste of the environmental sustainability agenda and I got to grips with because of the very credible scientific approach that WWF takes. I was able to really grasp the essence of the environmental challenge, both in terms of the sheer sense of urgency facing the natural world and the crisis that it was already facing back in 2003. It’s obviously in a much worse state now. But also, perhaps more relevantly in terms of my subsequent career, the learning about the role of business in the environment is that need to manage their impact, but also come up with solutions to helping enhance sustainability. And so I took a view having campaigned for a while at [inaudible]. I wanted to see how things look from the other side so hopping over the fence, working inside an organization and getting my hands on the leaders of change where I could actually drive impact for myself and actually see an outcome. So that’s what I did and that led to a series of in-house corporate sustainability roles. I actually popped back to WWF back in 2016 for another stint, just to rejuvenate myself a little bit. But I find myself today in Cognizant large professional services business with a large impact of its own. And I’ve not really looked back since those early days. I would say the agendas have changed quite a bit from when I first started out. So when I was first working with businesses, the emphasis was much more around risk management and philanthropy and supporting the local community, what used to be called CSR, corporate social responsibility. In many ways, the agenda has grown up and I think that’s largely as a consequence of rising expectations on business in view of the environmental crisis. We’re facing a much greater pressure on businesses to be more transparent about the impacts they have, and then to find solutions and risk management strategies for those impacts. And so I think business is much more sensitized to the agenda. You’re seeing a very different type of person coming into these roles now and lots of different roles within their organization. And so it sits much more fundamentally at the heart of the business model now than it did back in those early days for me.

John: What year did you join Cognizant?

Stuart: So I joined Cognizant, actually right in the middle of Covid. I left a large Japanese imaging technology business called Canon, which you may have heard of.

John: Sure…

Stuart: …and printers, and moved into Cognizant around 2021. So yeah I went from looking at a scream, a Canon screen one day to the next day looking at a Cognizant screen, but still sat in the same seat on one of those Covid switches.

John: Got it. And you came in as a Chief Environmental Officer then?

Stuart: That’s right. Yes, yes.

John: And was that the first time that that role was filled, or were you stepping into shoes?

Stuart: It was the first time that Cognizant had built someone in to have a dedicated focus on environmental sustainability, for sure. I think there was a real appetite of recognition at senior levels in our organization that we needed to establish a clear plan on climate action and to put in place a net zero goal, which is what I was built in to do. And so I think it was reflective. My hire was very much reflective of the business’s appetite to want to get to grips with the climate agenda, both from the perspective of reducing emissions, but also trying to get our heads around this rising phenomenon, climate risk, physical and transition climate risk on the organization and developing a transition plan in view of those wider changes.

John: And so, first of all, for our listeners and viewers who aren’t familiar with Cognizant, I’m just going to macro tee that up, Stuart. The annual revenue’s over 19 billion. The number of employees are over 350,000, and the number of countries served is about 35 countries Cognizant’s in. So this is a big role. You guys are a very big enterprise now, founded in 1994, now 30 years old or so. So this isn’t just a small enterprise. This is quite a very big enterprise. What I always like to know, when you jumped ahead a little bit, which is great, you were ahead of me, is at the proverbial white page. You came in and you had that proverbial white page as the first to hold that role. How did you obviously, you hinted that net zero was one of the priorities. How did you create the list of priorities and how has that gone now that you have three years in arrears to look backwards a little bit, which is sometimes a clearer vision than looking forward? How did that work and how is it working so far?

Stuart: Yeah, you’re right. I did have a blank sheet of paper when I arrived, but I think the business was always clear and I just think the codify[?], the fact that we are not a big manufacturing organization that’s creating a lot of another pollution and impact on site per se. We’re not selling lots of products out there that’s having an impact. We’re a professional services organizations. We’re all about the people that we hire and the expertise that they can take to our clients. So it felt fairly straightforward to emphasize the need for climate action, that that really is where the organization could make the most progress where its impact was executed. And I’m thinking there in terms of the energy that we source for running our offices and our beta centers and the latter is certainly a challenge in terms of the advent. I will perhaps come onto that a little bit later. And it’s also about the travel that our 350,000 people undertake. Now clients typically and much more now, given that we’re out of Covid, fortunately, demand often face to face relationships and so we’re under a lot of pressure to get on planes and fly that as an impact. So when I looked across our profile, looked across the things we do, basically operate in, the things we sell, the climate agenda certainly felt like the most pressing concern. And that’s why my time has been dedicated to setting and then delivering against this net zero goal which is very important to the organization, underpins so much of what we do and what we care about in the world of corporate sustainability. And it also underpins our credibility in the market as a company selling sustainability solutions to our customers.

John: So when you set that goal, what particularly was set? When is your goal to get to net zero for Cognizant?

Stuart: Yeah, so we’ve set a science-based target, in other words, a target that’s aligned with the 2015 Paris Agreement, which where we have the international consensus on the need to keep global average temperature increases to no more than 1.55 degrees. So our science-based plan is aligned with it and more practically that falls down to needing to harbor our emissions by 2030, 50% reduction in our total gross emissions by 2030 on the 2019 baseline, and then a 90% reduction by 2040. and that’s a really big concept. 90% reductions in the quarter of 20 years, these are real reductions because we want to lean into real decarbonization and see carbon offsets, which typically many businesses have relied upon as a first priority to claim what used to be described as carbon neutrality. We are putting that as a last resort and focusing in what the science-based [inaudible] obligates us to focus on real absolute reductions through, for example, increasing the amount of renewable energy, wind and solar electricity generation that we use in our operations. We’re going to be 100% in energy sourcing by 2026. That’s a big deal. Really doubling down on energy efficiency. So not just about the type of energy we use, but also the total that we consume and looking at things like the heating, ventilation, air conditioning that we have in our offices, but also thinking about our consumption in our data centers and making sure that’s sufficient as possible. Cutting out wasteful travel. As I’ve said, we have a footprint from air travel particularly, which we very much need to reduce. And then most importantly, overall, because it accounts for the biggest buckets of our emissions are the purchased goods and capital goods and services that we buy into the organization, which accounts in 50% of our total carbon footprint. That’s in the scope three of value chain-based emissions. And that’s involving a lot of engagement with our suppliers to try and reduce our emissions. And I think it’s fair to say, going back to my point earlier about how the agenda’s grown up, there’s been an increasing introduction of standardization in this space to help guide organizations like Cognizant on the part that needs to take to decarbonize, most known to be in this respect, I would give a mention to the science-based tax initiative, which is a consortium of NGOs doing [inaudible] that are committed to setting the best standards and frameworks for businesses and other organizations decarbonized. And that gives us a really nice framework through which to think about how we can ensure we stay on track with the sides and reduce our emissions to align with the need to get to net zero.

John: Your 50% goal by 2030 is sounds very reasonable. 90% obviously, sounds very, very audacious, which is, I commend you, but you also, it bears worth mentioning that this is while Cognizant’s going to continue to grow. So in theory, your emissions would be growing on a net basis while you’re trying to reduce them. You’re really reducing them during still a growth. So talk a little bit about the challenges that all chief environmental or sustainability officers face with. How do you grow a commercially viable and scalable business without growing its emissions while you’re actually trying to cut them? How do you gently do that delicate dance and high wire act of working within your organization and getting buy-in from across all levels to not hinder the growth, but to manage the emissions while the company continues to thrive and grow?

Stuart: Yeah, I think you’re touching upon the number of the challenge here, this concept of decoupling commercial and emissions growth. This is the big conceptual challenge that keeps people like me up at night. And there’s two ways that I try to encourage people to think about this in the organization and outside. Firstly, that investing in measures that decarbonize is a really obvious and easy way to reduce your operating costs. So by setting up, for example, long-term power purchase agreements for clean energy in India at the bulk of R energy is consumed, we get to acquire energy at cheaper rates than if we were just going to the bit that the grid buying it on a business-as-usual basis. So straight away, our energy bills go down by setting up long-term fixed price deals with developers for clean energy. So energy is going down and then coupling that with investment in new equipment, retrofitting and upgrading old equipment that we use to heat and cool and ventilate our buildings. That pays for itself over a fairly short period. Our energy bills go down because we’ve got better equipment that use electricity in a more efficient way. So this is first and foremost for me about an efficient operating model. I don’t have to spend a huge amount of time telling the business that employees should fly less wastefully to our finance team. They are shoulder to shoulder with me on that message, because it costs money to get on a plane to fly. It also costs our mission. So we’re together on that. We’ve got to be a little bit careful with that argument because when times are good and margins are quite so tight, finance may be inclined, our team isn’t, but finance may be inclined to walk away, wipe their hands and say, “Job done,” leaving me to carry the emissions problem aboard. But my central point here is that this is a way to save money. It’s a way to address the bottom line. The other way to think about this is that the green transition, the shift towards a low-carbon economy is a huge revenue opportunity. Clients are hungry for decarbonization solutions and circular solutions. But in the context of the conversation we’re having, I’m thinking about decarbonization, especially. That’s why we set up a dedicated practice to support clients with their sustainability commitments and to be able to really maximize revenue in that segment, we’ve got to walk the talk in our own backyard. Otherwise, we won’t have any credibility in the market. We won’t have any authenticity in the eyes of the client if we are not able to show that we are immediately pushing for net zero. Okay, so I see top and bottom line benefits. [crosstalk]

John: Yeah, go ahead. Go ahead. No, no, go ahead. Go ahead.

Stuart: I just want to finish on the point though that as compelling as you may find those two arguments, it’s also really hard, really important to point out this is really hard work. Businesses that grow, generally employ more people, they acquire more flat floor space, they travel more and they buy more stuff. All of that inflates carbon footprints. and so it goes very much against the grain to to bend the curve on emissions when you’re looking to grow the physical footprint of the organization. So this said it’s a really, really complex challenge.

John: Well, but you also just brought up to me one of the most important parts that sometimes A, doesn’t even get raised or highlighted, and in many times gets cast aside, which is, it’s as good for business, the fact that you are dedicated as the Chief Environment Officer, and you’re leading the way and walking the walk, like you said. Your practice at Cognizant, of course, the fun and the excitement of any business in any industry is to grow and scale and to continue to become a bigger success at what they do. You couldn’t have the credibility and like you said, your clients are asking for this consulting, for this guidance, for this leadership, but if you weren’t doing it yourselves, there would be a huge disconnect that wouldn’t lead to the growing of that part of the very growing practice that Cognizant has. So the fact that what you’re doing actually leads to more growth, which you then still have to manage on the other side, is a fascinating paradox, but still one that needs to be not only be shared, but also highlighted, because it actually grows the business. It grows the business.

Stuart: Yeah. Yeah, that’s right. Yeah. we have a phrase, it’s made its way across the Atlantic. We have a phrase “eating your own dog food.”

John: That’s true.

Stuart: And that’s how I tend to think of it. We’ve got to really shove our own dog food back in order to be able to face up to the market and look credible.

John: Talk a little bit about the challenge, though. As you’ve said, there’s many initiatives that you’ve put in place to help stabilize and reduce the net emissions at Cognizant. But the fact of the matter is, although you sit in the UK, you’re doing business at least in 35 countries on numerous continents with, as you and I know, a patchwork quilt of challenges that come across with doing business across the planet, but also a patchwork quilt now of regulatory ideals that we’re seeing here with Gary Gensler in the United States, that you’re seeing in the EU and way beyond in LATAM and also in Asia. How do you manage that delicate dance of the patchwork quilt of commercial opportunities to reduce your emissions, number one, and also the regulatory frameworks that you face as you look across the planet?

Stuart: Yeah, the main focus with regulation, as you and your listeners probably know, organizations like ours is around the quality and the need for transparency in the way that we are impacting the natural world and communities, and getting much more granular in the data we provide to tell the story around that. And you’re seeing in, for example, the EU Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive, probably the most comprehensive piece of regulation that a seismic shift, really in the levels of disclosure that a company like Cognizant, which whilst listed in the US is operating in the EU and other markets as you’ve noted, needs to take in order to stay compliant. And we are going through the analysis at the moment to be ready to comply with the CSRD. And you are forced to dig really deep and provide all sorts of information that organizations have not been asked to provide before. And then alongside that, and as you’ve said, John, there’s similar types of regulation and typically under the age of the ISSB, which has absorbed a bunch of other standards, lots of standards in this space, as you’ll know, which other countries have aligned their own in-country reporting regulation with. And then you have the SEC Kleiner Blue[?] and the stuff going on in California and all sorts of regulation popping up like mushrooms in a field. And we’ve got to try to track all of that. We’ve got to track the transposition of the U-D-U C-S-I-B in member states as well. And it’s not a guarantee that each will be transposed in the same way, according to the same [inaudible]. So we’ve got to look across 27 countries in the EU to determine what we need to do by when, alongside this other global patchwork quilt of regulation. A lot of it’s very similar make, but there are some subtle differences and any company that just assume one-size-fits-all approach will potentially be in trouble. So my job and the job of others around me to keep a close eye on what’s required and to ready the business to acquire the data with the right sorts of controls to ensure that the data is accurate, reliable, and comprehensive, that’s not a given for big organizations, something we’ve worked really hard on, so that when we report a data point through our auditor to the market, you can really trust its veracity and its authenticity. So yeah, I do spend a lot of my time thinking about regulatory reporting perhaps a little bit too much. I hear a lot of my colleagues expressing some disquiet. So the amount of time they’re accounted to reporting attentionally, the expense of actual change management and delivery, that’s a worry. But I think at root, the concept of transparency, which in turn can lead to accountability, is a thing. We just need to get answer right in terms of being way resource being deployed for it.

John: For our listeners and viewers who’ve just joined us, we’ve got Stuart Poore with us today. He’s the Chief Environment Officer of Cognizant. To find Steward and his colleagues and all the important work they’re doing in the environment, please go to www.cognizant.com. Stuart, talk a little bit about external emissions, the emissions that sit with your suppliers. How do you champion your goals and your efforts with your suppliers, and get them to go along and get aligned with your mission and your goals, so this way, you can hit your goals at Cognizant?

Stuart: This is a big headache, not just at Cognizant or any company that set its science-based target. It’s not just stroke one and two, but also what we called scope three emissions, emissions that sit in the value chain. A lot of people struggle with the idea of really getting whole emissions that other organizations are responsible for, and that’s a big leap for companies to make. Nevertheless, we’ve acknowledged that it needs to be part of our footprint, and therefore, part of our reduction goal. And it’s a big part of the footprint. It’s nearly 50% of our total footprint.

John: Wow.

Stuart: And so therefore, we need suppliers on board giving us two things, really, one, their data on their footprint, otherwise, we’re relying on estimates to calculate what they generate, and two, we need reduction commitments from them. So we need them setting science-based targets for reduction that we will start to see follow through into our blueprint over time. And really, for me, it’s about not trying to boil the ocean in the early stages. So we’ve got thousands of suppliers, literally, but I do not have the results to go after every one of those suppliers and persuade them to give us data and set production targets. So instead, we focus on the relationships that generate the biggest emissions and our top 150 suppliers account for about 65% of our total emissions. so that’s where we’ve really dedicated our focus and yeah, it’s about collaborating with them to, for those that are less mature and less appreciative of the requirements to help them realize the benefits that can be enjoyed, those benefits I talked about earlier in terms of top and bottom line, but also to emphasize to them the need for a values alignment. This is something that really matters to Cognizant. We haven’t spent the time and energy that we have into setting a net zero goal and gone through the pain of making real progress towards that goal and 47% reduction emission since 2019. That’s no mean feat. Okay, COVID had some bearing on that, but we’ve made really slow progress. We didn’t want to walk those hard yards and not have our partners come with us on that journey. We want them to really come with us hearts and minds and align. So we see it very much as a license to do business with Cognizant, just as many other big organizations are. Many big clients have demanded from us too. It’s not like we’re alone, a canary in the coal mine on this. We’re very much alongside our big partners, big businesses that we work alongside, for example, Microsoft, Salesforce, Google and others. They will demand the same from us and we will be pushing that down to our suppliers. And we’ve actually put some teeth into this as well, by virtue of calls that we put into new contracts with certain types of suppliers that obligates them to give us the data and set targets. So it is a mixture of carrots and sticks. It’s easier in some parts of the world and with certain types of suppliers than it is others. Some suppliers are really just struggling to get onto the starting block, then alone get off and then move it forward. Others are already there and doing this before Cognizant and so we’re having to learn from them as much as they are to listen to us. So there’s a real spectrum of different players in this space, but it is the next big frontier in the world of decarbonization, getting to grips with your scope three emissions, and specifically this big challenge of goods and services that you buy into your hazard.

John: That’s interesting. Stuart, I failed to ask you earlier, you’ve been there at Cognizant for three years now. Do you guys produce, does Cognizant Produce and your team produce an annual environmental impact report that gets published?

Stuart: Yeah, we do. We’ve been producing a substantive ESG report now for about the last three years nd we include in that data that’s been subject to limited assurance by our auditor of record. So I’d say it’s a very carefully thought through, carefully constructed for disclosure that stakeholders can really trust for its accuracy and reliability. So yes. And then check out the report on our website. We’ll be publishing another one next year. Of course, a lot of this will be shaped in the future by the new reporting requirements that I mentioned earlier, but we’ve already got ahead of those requirements in so many ways and disclose a lot of the stuff that the regulation would mind us anyway.

John: And it lives in perpetuity up on cognizant.com?

Stuart: Correct.

John: Got it. There’s not a day, Stuart, that you, sitting in the UK or me sitting here in California turns on our telly and sees either BBC or CNBC or Bloomberg or any of the other great broadcast channels, and we don’t read or learn about or hear broadcasting information about AI, the great AI revolution. Is AI overhyped a little bit? We’re going through a hype cycle with it now. Is it overhyped a little bit and what’s its application to the greater goals of most organizations, great organizations like Cognizant around the world that are in a race now to decarbonize? Is AI net positive, negative or sort of benign to the process?

Stuart: Truthfully, I’d say the jury’s out, which might sound like a strange thing to say from someone working in a generally AI driven business, but we should remind ourselves that, yeah, yes, it’s there, it’s omni-present in the news, but it is still only a couple of years since this stuff was really landing in any sort of meaningful operation sense. So it’s a little bit early, too early to tell. I think there are obviously upsides and downsides. I focus on the upsides firstly. It is undoubtedly a tool that, AI present tools that can accelerate decarbonization, for example, they’re optimizing energy consumption in a large operation and also as a way of improving and enhancing adaptation to the worst impacts of climate crisis. So understanding, forecasting extreme weather events more effectively for someone like me, the potential there is hugely seductive and one that I really want to grow out. Because I need to know what the future looks like to be able to encourage the business to think about the impact that these worrying trends physically in the physical world will have on our people and our operations and our supply chain as well. So enormous potential there to make our jobs easier, to give us better data, better insights in terms of how…

John: So net, let’s pause there, so net positive on the predictive analytics that it offers? Got it

Stuart: Yes.

John: Okay, keep going.

Stuart: That’s correct. Got it. Yeah. There’s a ‘but’ of course, and ‘but,’ which is in increasingly well documented is that to provide general solutions, you need a hell of a lot of computing power. That would improve as AI turns in on itself and becomes more efficient, but as things span, you’ve got to need a lot of computing power, which means you’re going to need a lot of energy consumption in data centers or water to keep data centers cool as well, so to give AI hungry clients what they need. And I need to look very far for some pretty clear and compelling evidence the impact was having. Look at recent amounts from Microsoft and Google about the way in which gen-AI is already blowing their carbon budgets and you can see just how material this gen-AI introduction is on carbon footprint. And the way I tend to think about the more immediate mechanisms for combating this are not, and there’s nothing noble about this, but what’s facing, nonetheless. Firstly, we’ve got to ensure that data sensors are powered with as much clean energy as possible. The good news is that the big hyperscalers, including the aforementioned, are investing very significantly in AI, but coupling that with a significant scale investment into clean energy generation as well. And interestingly I think only this week Google announced looking at some nuclear power solutions for data centers in the US. So I think the, wouldn’t say the pennies drop, but there’s a clear realization that that gen-AI equals, more power consumption means immediately double down on your renewable energy generation if you want to ensure that this remains low carbon. And I think it’s also about thinking sensibly about the siting of data centers in view of water stress and the need to ensure good water stewardship, because depending on the technology you’re using with data centers, you may need to consume quite significant quantities of water to manage the operation. So let’s think about where these operations are sited to ensure that they’re not adding stress to already troubled river basins. So we need to think really, really carefully about those two things. And then the third thing I would say, adding to that, and that’s fairly obviously, we need to think about applying green engineering solutions to the data center operations and sales. So thinking about how AI can be used to manage power consumption, manage peak rates of consumption in line with other energy requirements across the grid to ensure that energy is consumed in optimal and efficient way using sensors and monitors and various other techniques. Some weird and wonderful tech jargon like hyperconvergence and containerization, virtualization, sorts of techy IT stuff, which my colleagues can tell you much more about than I, but there’s lots of different ways and the solutions are growing exponentially for ensuring energy efficiency across these increasingly stressed out and in-demand data centers. So, as I say, still early days, I think we’re learning all the time, it’s fast learning, it’s machine to machine learning by definition, but I think what we can say to compliment[?] is, there’s a clear sense of understanding and appreciation that gen-AI does not come without its costs and impacts. If you are assuming a sort of BAU operational approach it’s got to be coupled with a full suite of decarbonization solutions along the way.

John: Makes sense. We talked earlier about you starting in 2021 and prioritizing the net zero mission goals of 2030 and 2040 that you’ve set. Talk a little bit about the other alphabet soup of issues and topics that you as a Chief Environment Officer are forced to also juggle and prioritize at large organizations such as Cognizant, such as DEI, ESG, the shift from the linear to circular economy. How do you prioritize those and where do you put them in the hierarchy of issues that you’re working on as you continue to just overall create the best suite of goals that are possible?

Stuart: Yeah, so within the context of environment, which is my area of concern, we can’t just think about missions. We’ve also got to think about water and waste and biodiversity as well. Now this is, I think it’s fair to say a less impactful area for Cognizant where we’re not, say we’re not running big manufacturing operations, so our levels of water consumption and waste generation are relatively low. Nevertheless, the regulations I described there, any other reporting regulations, among other things, demands much higher levels of transparency, embedded data to report on our impacts. And as I said, water is a pressing concern from a data center operation perspective anyway, and so thinking hard about the locations of our sites, the amount of water we consume, and where that could appear is with high levels of water stress in high-risk river basins. That’s something which the Chinese to spend time on. On the waste side, the big area of concern for me is actually e-waste. As an IT organization, it’s incumbent upon us to be managing our hardware. Although we don’t produce any of our own, we have 350,000 people using laptops every day of the week and local phones. We’ve got to make sure that we ensure that none of that stuff goes to landfill. And so we’ve set, in the last six months, we’ve set a goal to ensure that zero e-waste ends up in landfill by 2030. We’re already in very, very high percentages that don’t and part of the reason for that is that most of our e-waste is generated in India, which is where 250,000 of our 350,000 associates are based and the rules governing e-waste disposable there are pretty tight. And so we have, if we want to, we don’t have any brickle room in terms of irresponsibly disposing of equipment. Nevertheless, we’re trying to ensure that we’re as circular as possible with our IT operations that we’re bringing stuff back as much as possible, refurbishing it, and we deploy it. I’m talking to you from a refurbished laptop, very kindly polished up for me, and I’m very happy to be doing so rather than procuring a brand new laptop, which some people are still wanting, but we have to sort of punch through that mindset and encourage them to think about the fact that just because it’s got two scratches it’a still a perfectly workable and effective and cheap. So there’s a bit of a cultural shift required there. But also making sure that we’re utilizing as many different routes outside the organization as possible, not just providing it to establish the waste management vendors. It’s also providing it to local communities in India that can properly benefit from the use of perfectly functional and high quality IT hardware that for wider reason, we just decided we no longer need to use. So yeah, e-waste the water, are the two big areas when it comes to circular economy that we think about with regard to the climate and try to think about the interconnectivity between these areas as water waste and climate increasingly need to be recognized as a nexus concerns all under the umbrella of sustainability, and we obviously with social justice as a wraparound for all of that to ensure that we’re delivering a just transition, a socially just transition to no carbon, no waste societies.

John: Stuart, I have to give you a compliment because I’ve done now almost 2000 of these interviews over 20 years, and it’s very heartening for me now after 20 years of this journey, as you said, and you and I are the sort of OGs in this whole space. We’ve seen the, as you said, from the top of the conversation, we’ve seen the shift go from philanthropy and then just nice green environmental work to a much more complex world that we live in today and of course with all the complex issues that we’ve been discussing. But I’ve never interviewed yet until you, which thank gosh for you a chief sustainability or environmental officer who has highlighted both water and electronic waste, which of course I know something about the electronic waste side. And the other thing that comes with the electronic waste, obviously is the inherent risk now that didn’t exist when you and I started our journeys 20 or so years ago of cybersecurity and data protection as well. And that also is with over 300,000 employees and laptops and gadgets that they’re working on and continuing to drive the success of Cognizant and the growth of Cognizant, that’s just another risk because it’s not only their own, the data of the Cognizant, but it’s the goodwill on the data of your Fortune 100, 200 and 300 clients that you get to service around the world. So that issue of e-waste is, I couldn’t agree with you more, but kudos to you being the first to mention that and highlight that. And it gives me hope. It gives me hope that we’re headed in the right direction. You also have an academic background in international politics. We didn’t talk about today, the externalities of policy and regulation with regards to shaping sustainability efforts for organizations and countries around the world. How much does policy and regulation really play a role in this shaping? Or is it more self-driven from companies like Cognizant? Or is it a happy balance? Where do you see policy and regulation falling now as to the future of decarbonization and world sort of cooling off a little bit and and getting into a better place?

Stuart: The answer to that question there is depending which day you talk to me. One day you could speak to me when I’ve had a client on the phone demanding clarity on our country-specific emissions here or our climate risk plan there or investors be on the phone wanting to know about our approach to renewable energy sourcing. And it feels very much like a growth engine, like a commercial growth thing, something that a business wants to deliver on because it matters to our brand, to our values, and to our client proposition. And then other days I’ll be looking at the EU taxonomy and the ESRS and then the ISSB standard as it’s playing out in somewhere in the far east. And I’ll be reminded of just how compelling the case for regulatory compliance is in perspective of time spent and resource supply. And so it ebbs and flows, and the truth of it is very, obviously, it’s a combination of both. The regulatory landscape largely led by not only the European unit, is unquestionably shifting as policy makers grapple with and tune into the need to transition to low-carbon, low-waste economies without question. And then that ripples through. There’s a symbiotic relationship, of course, being that. And then what businesses will demand of us as clients, what investors will expect of us as organizations spread to put capital into us. They’re responding to the same signals and all of that wraps up and snowballs into a package that we need to respond to. I think there is unquestionably a conversation that I’m witnessing from the other side of the Atlantic in the US about the the role of ESG and the importance that organizations should attach to it and what it represents and sits behind it, which I watch with interest sometimes with amusement. But I think if you take the long game there and you start to recognize the enormous opportunity that green growth can bring to organization, well, not just an organization, to communities, to countries around the world, then it becomes much less political and much more of a commercial imperative in many ways. So, yeah, it has changed enormously from those early days when I first got involved and where it was really about the hearts and minds and the do the right thing approach, very sort of altruistic. And so they think really tunes into what businesses set up to do and how they typically operate. We respond to markets and we respond to growth and commercial consideration. We have that now. We have that consideration in front of us, and it’s just about capitalizing upon it and making sure that we’re optimizing it and while it’s good for us, but also good for people and for the planet.

John: That’s wonderful. Stuart, I want to end with a question that’s really important. If I was your biographer and I was writing a book on your career, and you are going to be advising in this book to other corporate leaders who are looking to enhance their organizations or companies sustainability practices, now that, since I dubbed you earlier, one of the sustainability or environmental OGs that you’ve been doing it a long time. You were late on the train, you were early on the train. What would you say, if I was your biographer, what are your three to five key lessons to other sustainability leaders out there that are faced with all the complex challenges that you’re faced with at large organizations across continents, around the world? What are some of the great lessons and takeaways that you’d like to share with the leaderships out there that are looking for advice and for guidance?

Stuart: Well, the first thing I’d say is as an overarching principle is to remind ourselves that this is the critical decade and there is no room for soft pedaling complacency or stepping back. We need to show courage as sustainability practitioners, and we need to push the leaders in our organization to recognize the enormous opportunities that the green economy presents for us. And we need to do it in a way that’s socially just and equitable. So we need courageous people, smart people that can roll up their sleeves and get in there where it hurts to get the job done. So that’s my sort of overarching principle. And say when it comes to sort of making progress, if you follow the Cognizant example and one that I’ve adopted elsewhere across the organizations we’ve worked in, I think it’s important to stress need not to try and do everything on sustainability. These big reporting frameworks typically adopt a wide variety of KPIs and lead you towards a kitchen sink-based approach to reporting, and by definition, therefore management. And I think there’s a danger that extracts organizations from the really important cluttered issues that matter most to your business in terms of the impact you have. So to focus in, zero in on things that matter most and put in place a plan to address that, work hard with political intelligence to get the right stakeholders on board, get your leadership teams on board. If you don’t have your CEO on board, then you are likely getting in the water pretty quickly. So you’ve got to get into the upper echelons of the business, get the C-suite on side, persuade them of the merit of addressing these issues and everything will then follow. And don’t give them all from the principle of transparency and accountability. Be clear who’s doing what in the organization, what their roles and responsibilities are, and then communicate the head out of it and gain your stakeholders so that you are learning from and iterating with them on solutions required to change. So that’s the piece.

John: That’s perfect.

Stuart: What caught my head thoughts. It’s hard work. It’s yes, the agenda’s changed, it’s grown up, but it’s no less hard work now than it was. It’s just the terms of the debate, John. The stakes have gone up and the ability to wait and see just doesn’t really exist anymore. We’ve got to get stuck in and we’ve got to get stuck in files.

John: That’s so true. And my man, those are really wise words. Stuart, thank you for joining us today. For our listeners and viewers, to find Stuart and his colleagues at Cognizant, please go to www.cognizant.com. Stuart, thank you for the time you spent with us today. Your words of wisdom are well taken and very important for our listeners and viewers to hear, but more importantly, thank you for all the great work that you and your colleagues at Cognizant are doing to make the world a better and more sustainable place.

Stuart: Thanks, John. It’s nice to hear. And it’s been a pleasure to be with you today.

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See how our corporate citizen agenda contributes to the progress and prosperity of communities across the globe. Read our 2023 Sustainability and Corporate Citizenship Report at: https://www.cognizant.com/en_us/about/documents/cognizant-2023-sustainability-report.pdf