With over 20 years of experience in sustainability, environmental and social impact programs, Hilton’s Jean Garris Hand is a seasoned leader with deep hospitality sector expertise. As VP and Head of Sustainability, Jean leads Travel with Purpose, which is Hilton’s global enterprise-wide strategy to drive responsible travel across over 8,300 properties operating in 138 countries and territories. This includes global accountability for environmental, social, and governance strategy and delivering on ambitious 2030 goals, including science-based emissions intensity targets, and water and waste reduction goals, and delivering on social impact programs and targets.

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John: Welcome to another edition of the Impact Podcast. I’m John Shegerian, and we’re so honored to have with us today Jean Garris Hand. She’s the Vice President of Environmental, Social, and Governance and Global Head of Sustainability at Hilton. Welcome, Jean, to the Impact Podcast.

Jean Garris Hand: Thank you so much, John. It’s great to be here.

John: It’s great to have you. This is Hilton’s first time and your first time on the show, and we’re so honored to have you with us today. And Jean, before we get talking about all the important and impactful work that you and your colleagues are doing in sustainability and ESG work at Hilton, can you share a little bit about your background, where you grew up, and how you got on this very important career journey that you’re on?

Jean: Absolutely, John. I would say that my journey is like many others, that now, in hindsight, it all makes sense. But along the journey, I didn’t realize that I was on this path. It started as a young child, where I spent most of my time outside. At the time, I spent most of my summers enjoying parks and enjoying creeks and growing up outside of the D.C. area in the suburbs, which is close to Hilton’s global headquarters, where I work right now. At that time, my mom was in grad school, and money was very limited for babysitters. My dad was, and still is to this day, a mechanical engineering professor at George Washington University. And because money was limited for babysitters, he used to bring my brother and I to work with him. We sat in the back of his classroom while we had coloring books in front of us. We were listening to his courses, which included teaching energy to college students. And so having that firsthand view and kind of soaking up components of what he was talking about was very formative to me. At the same time, every other summer, we went with my mom to visit her side of the family in Bogota, Colombia. We visited my grandmother, my cousins, my aunts, and uncles, and one of our relatives had an incredible mountainside resort. And that resort gave me a real firsthand view of how a resort operates—like its own city. It’s like a mini little city. It also gave me a firsthand experience about hospitality and what it means to operate with hospitality towards guests, hospitality toward the community around you, and the environment around you as well. My cousins and I enjoyed poolside smoothies. We enjoyed room service. All of that was very different to how things were at home, but we also enjoyed the back of house, the offices, the kitchen, the laundry, and it really formed just a lot of adventures and a lot of memories. When I graduated from the University of Virginia, I really wanted to pursue a career where I was doing something good in the world, but I was also involved in mainstream business. So I wanted to be in the business world, but I really wanted to be doing something good. And soon thereafter, I found myself supporting the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s Energy Star program. And that program engaged corporations across the business landscape, involuntarily driving energy efficiency across portfolios. Initially, I supported the hospitality sector, and eventually led our support to the hospitality sector, as well as the healthcare sector. In those early days, I served as the account manager to Hilton, supporting Hilton to improve its energy efficiency to establish an energy reduction plan. I also supported Marriott, Starwood before they were acquired, Wyndham, and many other hospitality companies and major healthcare companies. So I’ve had that thread with Hilton during that time. I also had the benefit, over the 12 years that I supported the U.S. EPA’s Energy Star program, to lead our support for some major industry initiatives, including the development of the Energy Star benchmark for hospitality, as well as for hospitals and medical office buildings. But what that required was massive amounts of industry data, industry collaboration, engagement, and then the communications thereafter to promote these industry-wide resources, and also build the recognition programs to recognize and celebrate energy reductions. And of course, the emissions and the cost savings that come out of that can really drive poor business. Because of that experience with data at scale and industry collaboration across multiple companies, I subsequently had the opportunity of a career at that point in my career, which was to join Blackstone as a senior advisor. And Blackstone, as you may be familiar, looks at companies with an opportunity to really improve. So, good companies that can become great companies, almost like flipping a house where you’re making investments and then bringing it out to market to sell at a much higher profit. Multiple core elements helped Blackstone to improve performance across companies, such as IT, personnel, procurement, and these different core elements. I was the first one in my role to be responsible for driving utility cost reduction, which is what we called sustainability there at that time, but across the hospitality sector. So it was my responsibility to work across the six hotel portfolio companies at Blackstone, which included Hilton at that time, and to really leverage the collective scale, to identify the best practices, to identify core business opportunities for investment, and then deliver those cost savings, which were a win-win-win. We never sacrificed guest comfort. It was always to maintain or even enhance guest comfort, but deliver cost savings, which was a win-win-win for us, for the bottom line, for the environment, and the guest. So that’s kind of a theme that I’ve maintained throughout my career. After three and a half years at Blackstone, I decided to go out on my own and start my own ESG consultancy, which I did for 5 years. I was the right hand of—chief sustainability officers in private equity, healthcare, hospitality, and aviation. And then, when I had the opportunity to join Hilton, because I had the familiarity with Hilton, and truly being an iconic brand, and the opportunity to make an impact at scale with people that I really respected and be a caretaker of Hilton’s leadership legacy in this space, I jumped at the opportunity. At the end of the day, my aim is to leave the world in a better place and make a positive impact while also building up the next generation of caretakers, both for the environment and for communities. And I’m just so grateful that that’s something I get to do every day at Hilton.

John: And you already knew them, and they already knew you from your work at Blackstone.

Jean: That’s right.

John: That’s really great. Talk about a retrospective. Like you said, sometimes when you’re living it, it doesn’t make sense. But now when you look back, in Bogotá and your dad’s class, right there, it all came together in terms of hospitality and energy. The path was already set from childhood.

Jean: That’s exactly right.

John: That is just a wonderful historical perspective on your career. So, how many years ago was that? When did you come over to Hilton from your own ESG consultancy?

Jean: It’ll be 3 years in January. So, it’s relatively recent. It’ll be three years in January, but it will be 24 years that I’ve supported Hilton and worked closely with Hilton.

John: And was somebody already in this role of Vice President of Environmental, Social, and Governance and Global Head of Sustainability, or was it the proverbial white page that you had worked on in your work at Blackstone? And then you came over, and this was a new role that was created. How did that go?

Jean: Well, there was certainly a leader of Travel with Purpose, which is our global ESG strategy, previously. I would say that right when I came on, there had been a little bit of a break due to the pandemic. So, for me, I had known many of my predecessors in the past and collaborated with several predecessors in the years prior. But there was kind of a pause during the pandemic, and that turned into a really incredible opportunity. Just knowing Hilton as a company, knowing about Travel with Purpose, and then having the opportunity to rebuild, reimagine, reinvigorate, and be that caretaker of the leadership legacy—because Hilton has prioritized this for such a long time, even dating back over a hundred years, John. The founder of Hilton, Conrad Hilton, was really ahead of his time in so many ways. His vision was that hospitality had the power to be a force for good in communities all around the world and that we have the responsibility to spread the light and warmth of hospitality—not just within the walls of our hotels, but outside into the communities and the environment. And, as a travel company, it’s core to our business to protect the destinations where we operate. As you know, we have 138 countries and territories where we operate, so it’s fundamental to our business. It’s really embedded in our culture. It’s something that is ingrained across our business and each department—something that we’re proud to advance each day.

John: Just for our listeners and viewers, as you said, Hilton is one of the most iconic brands in the world. I love staying at Hiltons. Everywhere I go, I’ve stayed at Hiltons around the world, and I’ve always had just wonderful experiences. Hilton, Jean, and her colleagues can be found, at www.hilton.com. We’ll also give some more specific ESG areas and impact areas so people can see your great work in our show notes. Hilton did over $10 billion in revenue last year. You have over 500,000 team members, and you’re working in about 138 countries. So, as you said, what I love on this show is when we have great people like you representing iconic brands like Hilton, the needle really moves because you’re doing things at scale. You’re doing things at scale. So, let’s get into that a little bit. It’s your first day. You’ve been an advisor already to Hilton that dates back, as you said, about 24 years or so, but now you’re part of the team. You’re there and on property and part of the team. As you and I know, sustainability doesn’t have a finish line, and ESG can be read narrowly or broadly, and so can the word sustainability. How do you decide how narrowly or broadly to read these titles and where to put your energy and effort to make the best impact in the first few years of your leadership?

Jean: Yeah, that’s a great question. ESG has become so broad, and the demand has come from every single direction, so there’s no shortage of demands pulling us in different directions. There’s new requirements that come in every day from different countries. When you operate across the world, there are regulatory and new legislation that gets proposed and passed very frequently, particularly nowadays, and then also, as exactly as you’re saying, John, we want to drive impact, and we don’t have infinite resources in the world. They’re very precious, and so our team is really focused on where we can drive the most impact. Our platform across our company to drive our ESG strategy is called Travel with Purpose. Travel with Purpose was established back in 2011, and within Travel with Purpose, we organize ourselves with the environmental pillar, the social pillar, the governance pillar. Within the environmental pillar, we have goals to reduce our emissions that are backed by science, informed by data, and it’s a 75% reduction target by 2030 across our managed estate and a 56% reduction across our franchised estate. We also have goals to reduce our water and our waste by 50%. Within the social pillar, we have goals to advance our careers, to advance our impact in communities, as well as to advance our responsible sourcing and what we call our responsible conduct. And so, we have a framework established with data-driven goals that we track. We develop tools, we develop resources for our hotels, for our owners, and then we track and report our progress through our platform called LightStay, which is a proprietary ESG data management platform. We use a lot of data from LightStay to help prioritize our efforts and where we can drive the most impact. Additionally, working together with our owners and with our ownership community is really critical, because with our ownership structure, many people may not realize that Hilton Corporate doesn’t own and manage every Hilton. When you go into a Hilton, the majority of Hilton’s are franchised properties, and so there’s a lot of very important components there where we’re developing our tools and resources, we’re delivering them to our ownership community, and we’re providing the guidance. So, we really prioritize our efforts based on data and based on the goals that we’ve set, and then we track and report those goals on an annual basis externally, and then we track and report constantly on an internal basis.

John: That’s fascinating. That’s something that a lot of people don’t realize. They think that Hilton owns every hotel that has your name on it. So, in terms of constituency, you have then numerous constituents that you’re walking a high-wire act. You have your corporate properties, you have your franchise properties, and you have, of course, the wonderful guests that are in your properties and also the employees that work on properties, both corporate. So, that’s a lot of constituents besides the public-facing constituents on the other side in terms of management and Wall Street. That’s a fascinating high-wire balancing act. When you look at the data, but then also have to consider all the folks that you’re going to be affecting when you come out with policies and procedures, how do you balance all of those interests?

Jean: Yeah, that’s an excellent question. We do have a lot of different stakeholders, and fundamentally, our mission is to deliver an exceptional stay for our guests. So, that’s the starting point of delivering that exceptional experience, and we’re always looking for different opportunities to support our different stakeholders. We have tremendous demand from our different stakeholders, whether it’s our team members, whether it’s our owners, whether it’s our investors. All of our different stakeholders—we feel the pull from all of them in different directions to deliver a sustainable experience and to provide components of what it means to have a stay and have that sustainable journey along the way. What we found to be essential is that the most impactful actions that we pursue check the three boxes that have been consistent throughout my career—just being a win for the environment, being a very smart financial decision, where from a core business perspective it’s checking the box there, and then also it’s either at least maintaining, if not enhancing, the guest experience. And so, a few different examples of that include when we implemented our full-size amenities that you may have seen, John, in your travels, and I’m so glad that you enjoy your stays at Hilton. But what that was, was the elimination of the mini shampoo bottles and the addition of the pumps in each bathroom. And what that did was it significantly reduced the amount of single-use plastic. I would say from a core guest experience—having a good amount of hair—it’s a lot easier to use the pump and shower than to squeeze out the conditioner from the tiny little shampoo bottles. So, both from a guest experience, as well as from a cost-saving perspective, and then the environmental impact of reducing single-use plastics, it was just a win-win-win. Another element is the digital key, for example, which is when you check into a hotel, you can get a plastic key card at the front desk. At Hilton, over 80% of our hotels have a digital key. On the Hilton app, just using your phone, you can skip the front desk, you can go straight to your room, and you can unlock your room with the app using the digital key. And for me, again, that’s just an enhancement to my stay because I normally am holding my phone anyways, and to not have to worry about the plastic key card is just a small little decision that one person can make that doesn’t seem like a big deal at all. On an annual basis, just last year alone, we diverted a hundred tons of plastic key card waste that would have otherwise gone to landfill by individual guests all over the world just making that one little decision. One other one that I want to call out is that we have another one that may seem a little bit small with LED lighting. We have a global brand standard to change every indoor and exterior bulb to LED lighting by the end of 2025. And that’s another one that might not seem like that big of a deal, but changing a light bulb is the number one maintenance request in any hotel. And so, nobody wants to open up their room and have a ladder right there with somebody changing the light bulbs right in front of them. Or if you’re dining at a restaurant, you don’t want the ladder right there. Light bulbs have to be changed out, but with LED lighting, they last about seven times longer than a traditional inefficient bulb. They save money, they save energy. And in many cases, just the lighting, when done properly, is brighter but enhances a modernized look in a hotel as well. So, it’s a win-win-win once again. From sitting in the Blackstone meetings way back in the day and participating as an owner in so many different capital projects, it was always very inspiring to me to see that the return on investment and the payback of so many energy efficiency projects, including LED lighting, is just one more thing that can really drive operational efficiencies and cost savings in a hotel and really can compete or exceed the investment thesis of any other competing investment on a property.

John: Jean, you’re a sustainability OG. So, I could say this to you—20 years ago, 15 years ago, when people brought up the word sustainability to the C-suite, the C-suite hair would be on fire because they think sustainability equaled spending more money with very little return. And the truth of the matter is, with your three great examples that are just win-win-win right across the board, it’s really that sustainability is truly what it’s meant to be—resiliency and probably a better company that gives a better experience to its client base, but also more profit, and everybody wins on every level. And it doesn’t mean anything like people were thinking 15 or 16 years ago.

Jean: That’s exactly right, John.

John: [inaudible].

Jean: This whole space has evolved so much back in the day. And I love that you referred to me as an OG because I definitely take pride in that. But back in the day, at the very beginnings, all of our efforts were around doing everything we could possibly do without anyone noticing it. And it makes sense when you’re thinking about hospitality. A guest goes to a hotel and is not necessarily thinking about all of the different things. Depending on the guest coming to the hotel, a guest wants to relax and enjoy their stay. In the healthcare sector, where I also started out, of course, a patient going to a hospital doesn’t want to be thinking about a timer or a sleep mode for some of the equipment. So, it was like everything that we could do without anybody noticing it. And then we also talked about how the core financial thesis was so strong that it should be something that’s discussed in the boardroom, something that’s discussed in the C-suite, as you said. We used to call it that it’s something worthy of going from the boiler room to the boardroom. That was in a lot of our materials, and we would talk about it in that context. And when you fast forward, the data just shows the win-win-win is possible. I have to admit that the first time I was walking into a Hilton board meeting 3 years ago, I had to really pause for a second and had chills that we’ve come such a long way that now this is an expectation as part of our governance. And it’s something that from the top level down is a business imperative. And it’s something that at Hilton is core to our roots, with the words of our founder. So, it’s evolved so much, and I’m glad that it has. It gives me hope for future generations, for sure.

John: For all the citizens and viewers who’ve just joined us, we’ve got Jean Garris Hand with us today. She’s the Vice President of Environmental, Social, and Governance and Global Head of Sustainability at Hilton. To find Jean and her colleagues and all the important work they’re doing in ESG and sustainability, please go to www.hilton.com. What I also love is on some of the great sustainability initiatives you have, you also give a measure of choice to your client base, such as the ability to ask if you want the sheets changed every night or on a what? Every two- or three-night basis, or something like that. Same thing with towels. It’s not a mandate. So, you let people—you sort of meet them where they are in their comfort level—so they can enjoy the experience the most at your hotels.

Jean: That’s exactly right, John. What we’ve seen is an incredible demand from our guests who are requesting this. And one of the areas where this is very evident is with our corporate customers who, when they are hosting a meeting or an event, want to have a more sustainable meeting. And so, as part of our Travel with Purpose umbrella, we have an offering called Meet with Purpose. What Meet with Purpose allows us to do is work hand in hand with our customers to deliver the most sustainable meeting with very specific choices, just to give our customers ideas of the types of things that they can do. Our group business and our business travel business is over 50% of our revenue. So, meetings and events are significant from a financial perspective, but also from our customers’ interest perspective. It’s a great opportunity for us not just to be achieving our own goals in our Travel with Purpose journey but to help our customers achieve theirs. As part of Meet with Purpose, one of the resources that we have is an environmental impact calculator. What that does is it estimates the environmental impact of a meeting or an event. It requires the number of breakfasts, the number of lunches, the number of dinners that will be consumed during a meeting, the square footage of the meeting space, the number of attendees, and the number of room nights—so the number of people spending nights in the hotels. It’s important to note that the average environmental footprint of a breakfast is very different than that of a dinner. So, the breakfasts, lunches, and dinners, all of it adds up, and we’re able to equip our customers with a beautiful report that shows the environmental impact.
It provides a breakdown of what that is, and we’re finding that many of our customers, during their event, the MC at the meeting will put up the report on a slide and describe to the attendees: “Did you know that this is the environmental footprint of our meeting and event? And because of the choices that we’ve made today, you’re going to notice that there’s water towers. You’re going to notice that during the break we have an array of options in the food, including some plant-forward foods or increased vegetables and fruits. There might be an impact activity, which is a component of Meet with Purpose, where many of our customers—particularly now, post-pandemic, when they do travel—want to have more purpose in their travel and oftentimes have an opportunity to deliver impact in the community and leave the community better because they were there.” The property will facilitate either an on-site or an off-site volunteerism opportunity that may align with the values and some of the priorities in community impact and engagement of that company. So, it’s Meet with Purpose, but it’s really a meaningful way. I think it’s very meaningful to our sales teams, to our property teams, to our food and beverage teams that they’re helping bring to life sustainability for our travelers and our meeting attendees. It’s really, really exciting—whether it’s our leisure guests or our business travel guests—to be able to bring sustainability, Travel with Purpose, and Meet with Purpose to so many.

John: Jean, when you and your team come up with new processes or procedures that could be a win-win-win, as you pointed out earlier, how are sausages made at Hilton? Do you first try this out at a select number of corporate locations, franchise locations, or some combination thereof?

Jean: That’s a great question. I would say that being such a large company, we always test initiatives with pilots just because we want to see how our different initiatives work in a smaller environment before we spread them out to the broader portfolio. It’s a little bit more efficient to test out in our managed portfolio just because we are able to test things out with our Hilton team members before we spread them out to our broader community. But everyone within our enterprise is very important. One example of a pilot that was really exciting happened last year in the lead-up to COP28, where we had a presence—was with our Green Breakfast initiative. This was a pilot that started early in the year at 13 hotels, and then it started to grow and grow, and this year it’s continued to grow. It’s just an example of how one initiative began at 13 hotels in the Middle East. Essentially, breakfast is the number one most wasteful meal—not just at a Hilton hotel but at any hotel around the world. The aim of this was to really reduce the food waste associated with breakfast. The pilot involved 13 hotels. Instead of having—John, I’m sure you can relate to this—the big rectangular tray in a buffet of scrambled eggs where you’re scooping up the scrambled eggs, putting it on the white plate, grabbing the next thing, and instead changing it to a carefully curated individual portion size, where it was maybe a little bit of scrambled eggs, a little bit of salsa. Scrambled eggs, a little bit of cheese—almost like a yogurt parfait but with scrambled eggs. The message, essentially—doing that with yogurt, with fruits, and just having individual portion sizes—was really: “Did you know that 30% of food is wasted every year? We want you to enjoy this wonderful breakfast, and we want you to eat as much as you’d like, but please take what you’re going to eat and come back as many times as you’d like.” We used AI-informed technology to measure the food waste, analyze the food waste, and in the end, it was a 62% reduction in food waste that also delivered an enhanced guest experience. When we were at COP, I had the benefit of experiencing about six different Green Breakfasts. They were exquisite, just from a guest experience. Because our focus was on food waste, we had to eat it all—so I probably gained 10 pounds, but it was delicious. It was exquisite from a guest experience, it saved significant money, and it also informed procurement practices because we didn’t need to purchase as many of XYZ, as informed through the data with the platform that we were using, called Winnow, which is an AI-informed technology. So again, just finding those win-win-wins. Now, that program has expanded into our European operations, and it’s continuing to expanding the pilots little by little—but it’s growing because of those initial successes. There’s are a lot of components to it, so it requires time and training as it grows, but the results have been consistent as it’s growing. So, it’s really exciting.

John: It’s another one of those win-win-wins. Again, for human beings, it’s actually great to be reminded to eat with intention anyway, so it makes sense. But then, talk a little bit about the theory of “no good deed goes unpunished.” Now you have a big winning beta test on your hands. Do the franchisees start clamoring for it fast? And then, is it sometimes hard to keep up with the demand on winning programs that you put out, test, and have success? And then the word of success gets around, and everybody wants it—and it’s almost they want it too fast for it to structurally happen?

Jean: That’s a great question. I would say that’s an ongoing opportunity and challenge for us. Once you do find these, there is a lot of demand, there is a lot of excitement, and just having the training, having all of the different stakeholders align—being a global company, there are so many different stakeholders. It gets back to one of your original questions about prioritization. When we see those areas of impact, it’s really about being intentional and deliberate about how we’re allocating our limited resources to help the hotels who want to participate, to really be able to.

John: You just mentioned the leveraging of that great AI tool to help with this new Green Breakfast program. We can’t wake up a day, Jean, and put on Bloomberg, MSNBC, NBC, or pick up The Wall Street Journal or The New York Times without reading about NVIDIA, AI, and all this AI hype cycle we’re going through right now. What does AI and the leveraging of it look like at Hilton? Are applications being applied to many sectors at Hilton? And is it being leveraged beyond the Green Breakfast? Is that happening in all different divisions right now?

Jean: I would say that AI, as you point out, is going to have an indelible impact on our future. For us, at this time, our focus is on leveraging this AI platform to reduce food waste across our global operations. So, I would say that one of the things about having such a large scale—having our pilot with the 13 properties last year—is that we want to take that rich, impactful, effective win-win-win and continue to evolve that program as we go forward with AI. I’m confident that AI will have other applications in other places. But at this moment, that’s really our focus that’s core to our business and something that we can leverage AI for today to impact our food waste reduction.

John: You mentioned earlier you were the first major hospitality company to have carbon emissions reduction targets validated by science-based targets. How’s that going? What’s your target year for carbon emissions? And what other targets have you made that you’re on track for that you’re excited to talk about?

Jean: So, our environmental targets that I mentioned are our emissions target, where it’s a 75% reduction across our managed estate and a 56% reduction across our franchised estate.

John: Got it.

Jean: As of our last report, we have effectively cut our carbon emissions by a little over 45% in our managed estate and about 25% across our franchised estate. We’re a little over halfway through our 50% water efficiency or water reduction target. I’m really proud that we exceeded our waste reduction goal 6 years ahead of schedule. It was a 50% goal, and we hit over 63% last year. Whether it’s food waste or the other waste within our hotels, that’s an area where we’re proud to have exceeded that goal way ahead of schedule. Within our social pillar, we are very much focused on advancing careers—creating 5 million career and learning opportunities for our team members as well as for our community members. We’re also focused on meaningfully impacting the lives of 20 million community members by 2030. Just about all of our goals are through 2030, and that is our focus. For our 20 million community member impact goal, a lot of that work is done through our Hilton Global Foundation, which is focused on delivering impact in communities all around the world. And then also, we have a goal to impact communities with 10 million volunteer hours. It’s really about spreading the light and warmth of hospitality beyond the walls of our hotels and driving that impact in communities. At the same time, within our governance pillar, we’re focused on reporting with transparency, with integrity, and doing so on an annual basis, leveraging the tool that I mentioned—LightStay. LightStay gives us that accountability. It’s a global brand standard across all of our properties to report energy, water, waste, social impact, donations, and volunteer hours in LightStay. LightStay allows for best practice sharing, which helps to drive enthusiasm and action as well to help us achieve our goals.

John: I want to come back to reporting in a second and transparency. Talk a little bit about your impact report. You create an ESG impact report every year that lives in perpetuity up on Hilton.com?

Jean: We do. It’s called our Travel with Purpose report, and every year, we work really hard across the enterprise. We work with our cross-functional business partners to report on all of the different activity that’s happened toward our 2030 goals. So much of it is inspired by the hardworking team members at hotels all around the world. As you mentioned before, John, we have over 500,000 team members, and telling the story of how our 8,000 hotels—or how our team members at our 8,000 hotels—are really driving, whether it’s renewable energy, EV charging stations, the digital key, it’s a wide array of different initiatives. The Travel with Purpose report allows us to tell those stories and provide examples of how we’re advancing toward our goals. A big focus last year was around—we are growing significantly right now. On average, we are opening two hotels per day. Hilton is the fastest-growing hotel company. Last year in our report, we featured our commitment to building a more sustainable pipeline in our hotels and all of the different tools, resources, and guidance that we’re providing our development teams. We’re working together with our architecture, design, and construction teams, our AD&C teams, which allow us to provide developers and owners with a lot of different choices to make more sustainable decisions in the entire building process. That applies to conversions—when a building or a hotel was previously a different brand and is becoming a Hilton—or a renovation or a new build. So, we have a lot of different tools and resources. We featured in the Travel with Purpose report last year some of the information about these key resources, as well as all the different stories that help tell the story about our performance improvement in the environmental pillar, the social pillar, and advancing in governance as well.

John: And when does that report usually get published?

Jean: It gets published every May. It’s usually the middle to end of May, and it gets published at esg.hilton.com. We’re really proud of that report. The website also offers a lot of videos and different interactive components to learn more about what you can find on your travel journey that will help guests get engaged with sustainability in their travel journey. Also, there are so many behind-the-scenes initiatives that are always going on. The report also helps describe a lot of those initiatives as well.

John: We’ll put that in our show notes. You mentioned regulations and transparency. You have over 500,000 team members, 8,000 properties opening two a day, franchisees, corporate-owned store locations, and you’re doing business in about 138 countries. Talk about a high-wire act and a balancing act of regulations that are coming out with regards to sustainability and ESG—in Europe, North America with the SEC and Gary Gensler, in Asia, LATAM, and the Middle East. Everyone’s coming out with staff, and it’s a patchwork quilt of regulations. How do you juggle and balance all of those stakeholders and stay in reg[?]? Is harmonization in our future, or is it going to be a little bit of the Wild West until we get to the other side, to some more harmonization of these regulations, since ESG and sustainability are still pretty new trends to come to the business world?

Jean: Those are really great questions. It’s something that keeps us very much on our toes, to say the least. Our small but mighty team is trying to drive performance improvement toward our 2030 goals. There’s a lot of time, care, and investment spent in trying to keep up with all of these regulations and ensure that we’re compliant as well. Luckily, across Hilton, we have so much engagement across the business. One relatively newer concept is that because a lot of the regulation has auditing requirements, for example, or is consistent with financial reporting, our finance team has become a really essential partner. I know that’s consistent across the corporate landscape, where sustainability teams and finance teams are working hand in glove today because so many of the processes that we’re now required to begin to adhere to are very consistent and work alongside a lot of the financial reporting. I would say that that has been a game changer for us in terms of understanding a lot of the specific timelines, requirements, stakeholders, and different components. Also, we have an exceptional government affairs team, as well, that is an essential partner in tracking, understanding, and increasing awareness of different legislation. I would say for us, it is a tightrope act. It’s a lot that keeps us on our toes, but I’m really grateful for the internal business partners that work together to make sure we’re on top of our A-game—whether it’s in achieving our goals or working together to respond to this complicated external landscape.

John: That’s where all your collaboration expertise—back from the Blackstone days—comes into great practice.

Jean: For sure. Collaboration is key, both internally and externally, because these goals are so ambitious and are so significant. And for any corporation, the sustainability team or ESG team is simply not going to achieve ambitious goals. It’s something that needs to be part of the organizational fabric and something that comes to life across the enterprise.

John: Can you tell us about the Travel with Purpose Week?

Jean: Oh, sure. So once a year—it’s usually in October—we have Travel with Purpose Week. And thank you, John, for asking about that. It’s really one of my favorite weeks of the year because, all around the world, everyone from all of our properties, our corporate offices, come together to make an impact in communities and demonstrate the whole of Travel with Purpose and our 2030 goals and how we’re advancing to deliver environmental and social impact. And so, it’s one of those weeks where just seeing the photos of so many team members all around the world making an impact in a community really is just so inspiring. And it’s things like, we went to a park in D.C. where we did a cleanup. When we got there, it actually looked kind of clean at the beginning, but as soon as we got to the outskirts of the park, where the wind blows all of the litter, we found ourselves picking up and cleaning up. And it was amazing how many bags of trash we were all able to work together to collect. We also put together hygiene kits here in our corporate office in McLean to help our community members through an organization called SOME—which is So Others May Eat—which is a shelter for people experiencing homelessness. We packaged up hygiene kits so that those community members would have shampoo, soap, toothbrushes, et cetera when they were in that shelter. So we did a variety of different initiatives. We also had a walk that was also in D.C. to support community members to eliminate the stigma associated with getting help for addiction. And so, just a few different ways of making an environmental impact, making a social impact, and coming together to work together, partner with really impactful organizations. In our cleanup in D.C., we partnered with Keep America Beautiful, who is working together with many organizations across the company in preparation for America’s 250th birthday—to make America as clean as possible to celebrate the birthday of our country. So, it was just a wonderful week—a really incredible impact. I’m just grateful and so proud to be part of it.

John: Jean, you’ve been there at Hilton about 3 years now. You’ve helped facilitate and create, as you said, numerous win-win-win situations, more in the pipeline. What gets you excited about the next 3 years ahead?

Jean: I would say what gets me excited is the increasing demand from so many different directions, the number of stakeholders that care about this work, the team members, and the next generation of caretakers that are so motivated and excited by making purchasing decisions based on companies that have similar values, that includes sustainability. One of the things that has been a consistent inspiration for me is just the fact that this is part of core business. When I joined Blackstone and alongside those different functions that are core to driving performance improvement, sustainability is that core. It just continuously inspires me and energizes me to continue to pursue these win-win-wins and opportunities because I know that they are making a difference and helping us together to make society better for the next generation.

John: What pearls of wisdom and advice do you have for the next generation of sustainability leaders, especially young women that want to be the next Jean Garris Hand—that not only want to make a nice paycheck and, of course, help support our families and pay the bills, but also make a difference, make an impact, make the world a better place at the same time?

Jean: Absolutely. My advice, I would say, a couple of different things. For me, early on in my career, I was entrusted with a lot of different opportunities to be supporting the federal government, where cost efficiency in consultants and labor is so important. I was entrusted with a lot of responsibility. My advice would be to seek those opportunities to either work alongside someone or to raise your hand and volunteer to take on new and exciting projects, to roll up your sleeves and be willing to put in some extra hours to learn and just be excited about something. Through those opportunities, I felt like it led to more rewarding work, that what I put into it was really what I got out of it, which was deep meaning and respect for this field and for the opportunity to make society better. I would also say that early on in my career—you phrased it as what advice would I give particularly to young women—because energy efficiency was such a big part of this work 20 years ago, most of my stakeholders were engineers, and most of them were men. And that was the case when I went to Blackstone as well. I’m a younger sister. I have my older brother, Charles, and I always felt like having an older brother was a superpower for me because when I was in all of those different environments, I was never intimidated—not that any woman should be—but it was just one of those things where it was just very natural for me to be focused. I was always keeping up with my brother. And so I’d say the combination of raising your hand and taking on a variety of different work. The other thing that I would say is there are so many opportunities where, when you see somebody in the workplace or at a different workplace that’s doing work that inspires you, early on in a career, you might be a little shy to reach out, but it’s a nice form of flattery to somebody that somebody’s admiring your work. And so I would also encourage those straight out of college to not be shy about reaching out and just saying, “I’m really inspired by your work. If you happen to be at this conference or if you happen to have 15 minutes for a coffee, I’d love to just ask you a few questions or pick your brain.” And then I would advise, keep it to 15 minutes if you ask for 15 minutes. That can be the beginning of having somebody that is in your corner, and when an opportunity comes around in the future, they might think of you and just building those relationships. So I’d say raising your hand, reaching out, and then just keeping your head up high, knowing that your compass is something really positive. That’s bigger than you or your company, but you’re trying to make society better.

John: And Jean, you said at the top of the show, Dad’s still teaching mechanical engineering, right? He’s still a teacher?

Jean: My dad is still at GW. I don’t think he will leave until his final days. He’s still a mechanical engineering professor there, and he’s had me come as a guest lecturer.

John: He must be so proud. You got it in the back, and now you’re in the front of the class now.

Jean: Yeah. But I would say my dad is still, to this day, when I’m working on something very technical, my dad is a key partner for me—a thought partner and a technical partner. He and I have been to energy conferences together, and just a wonderful inspiration in my life for sure.

John: Please tell me—your cousin’s on your mom’s side—hotel still exist in Bogotá?

Jean: It does. Yeah. It’s a beautiful place, and it’s not a Hilton. So I’m not going to give any xx.

John: That’s okay. But still, your beginnings are still even in place. So you get to track back and look fondly back, but it’s not like back on memories that don’t exist anymore. They’re still working. They’re still in place. Both Dad’s still doing his thing, and that hotel’s doing its own thing. That’s just wonderful.

Jean: It really is. Thank you.

John: Jean, this has just been more than an inspiration and a joy to have you on today. You are truly, like I said earlier, a sustainability OG. And I only say that with mad respect because the truth is, the sustainability OGs that started when you did, when I did, in many ways almost got extinguished along the way or minimized to the point where I feel like—it’s almost like Netflix. Netflix was delivering those nice little discs to our homes, and we were all excited. And everyone thought it was going to go away and go by the way of Blockbuster. And then they came back and had their Hollywood moment, and now they’re one of the biggest studios in Hollywood, and they’re one of the shining stars in entertainment. That’s what’s happened to sustainability. That’s what’s happened to the impact world. That’s what’s happened to the ESG world. And then you all get to have your star turn, and that’s the beauty of the show, and that’s the beauty of having wonderful and inspirational people like you on. For our listeners and our viewers to find Jean and all of her colleagues at Hilton that are doing all this important work in ESG and sustainability, please go to www.hilton.com. Jean, thank you for not only your time today—that was wonderful—but more importantly, thank you for making the impacts that you and your colleagues make and for making the world truly a better place.

Jean: And to you, John, thank you so much for having me, and thank you for enabling me and many others to share our stories. I’m really grateful to be with you today and with your viewers. So thank you, John.

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