As Executive Director, Global ESG and Regulatory Compliance at Lenovo, Mary Jacques is responsible for managing Lenovo’s corporate teams of SMEs charged with managing product regulatory compliance; Lenovo’s ISO quality, environmental, and energy management systems; and Lenovo’s corporate ESG programs. 
 
Within Mary’s organization, the Global ESG team leads the company’s efforts to drive Lenovo’s corporate climate change, product stewardship, circular economy and other environmental strategies. This group is responsible for publishing Lenovo’s key ESG communications including the ESG Report and investor and customer surveys. The Corporate Regulatory Compliance, Standards, and ISO team manages critical product compliance, standards and ISO management systems to support strong governance. Mary’s organization also includes an EMEA based team of ESG specialists focused on the European, Middle East, and African ESG requirements. Lenovo’s team of dedicated management system professionals focused on their China ISO management system (quality, energy, and environmental) programs also resides within Mary’s organization. 

John Shegerian: Hit the latest Impact Podcast right into your inbox each week. Subscribe by entering your email address at impactpodcast.com to make sure you never miss an interview. This edition of the Impact Podcast is brought to you by ERI. ERI has a mission to protect people, the planet, and your privacy, and is the largest fully integrated IT and electronics asset disposition provider and cybersecurity-focused hardware destruction company in the United States—and maybe even the world. For more information on how ERI can help your business properly dispose of outdated electronic hardware devices, please visit eridirect.com.

This episode of the Impact Podcast is brought to you by Closed Loop Partners. Closed Loop Partners is a leading circular economy investor in the United States with an extensive network of Fortune 500 corporate investors, family offices, institutional investors, industry experts, and impact partners. Closed Loop’s platform spans the arc of capital, from venture capital to private equity, bridging gaps and fostering synergies to scale the circular economy. To find Closed Loop Partners, please go to www.closedlooppartners.com.

John: Welcome to another edition of the Impact Podcast. I’m John Shegerian, and I’m so honored to have with us today Mary Jacques. She’s the Executive Director of Global ESG and Regulatory Compliance at Lenovo. Welcome, Mary, to the Impact Podcast.

Mary Jacques: Thanks, John. I’m delighted to be joining you today.

John: Well, we’re so happy to have you here. And before we get talking about all the important things that you’re working on with your colleagues at Lenovo in sustainability, circularity, ESG, and compliance, I want you to share a little bit about your background—where you grew up and how you got on this important journey that you’re on.

Mary: All right. Well, I have spent most of my life in North Carolina, and I probably shouldn’t admit this, but I did go to school in the Triangle area. It’s very polarizing, but I went to school at Duke, and I’m not saying that during basketball season, so that would be okay—but I managed to start my career in North Carolina at IBM. And I’ve been very lucky to have spent my entire career focused on sustainability—or when I started, it was really focused on environmental— but it evolved into more of a sustainability scope. And then more recently, we’ve really couched it as ESG. I’ve been really lucky to be able to do what I wanted to do, wake up every day excited to go to work, and to do it at some really progressive and interesting technology-focused organizations. So, starting at IBM, I went and spent several years at MIT in a staff role. And then, I’m embarrassed to admit this, but almost 20 years ago, I joined Lenovo and have been there ever since.

John: Wow, that’s wonderful. Well, talk a little bit about your time at Duke. What did you study at Duke?

Mary: So, I did an undergrad degree in environmental science and then a master’s in environmental management. I have known for a long time that this was something that I wanted to do and was able to create a career out of it after my academic experience.

John: A little-known secret is we have a facility in Baden, North Carolina. Now, before we opened that facility, I had never been to North Carolina. My wife and I went down there for the first time —for both of us—when we were opening that back in 2011. And we fell in love with North Carolina. It’s a beautiful, gorgeous state. It’s one of the gems of the United States. Did you fall in love with the environment as a child growing up because of the beauty of the outdoors in North Carolina? Or was it somebody else or some person or thing that gave you inspiration along the way in your childhood?

Mary: Well, thank you for complimenting North Carolina. I agree, it’s a great place to live, and it’s a great place for Lenovo to have a presence. I think for me, it truly was just experiencing nature, whether it’s in North Carolina or elsewhere. And even today, I just love being outside, biking, hiking. I have a border collie that enjoys hiking as well. So, I think I find inspiration in the natural world, certainly.

John: So, when you started Lenovo, what was your position when you first entered Lenovo?

Mary: That’s a great question. It’s something that I’ve been thinking about because sometimes I get asked, “Gosh, you’ve been doing the same thing for so long and at the same organization. Isn’t it boring? Does it get stale?” And the short answer is no. One reason is because I have been able to grow. So, starting as an individual contributor and moving into management, and then eventually into the executive ranks, I’ve been able to expand my experiences and build my skills at this organization. But I think beyond that, one of the things that maybe some people don’t realize is just how much the field of sustainability and ESG has changed over the years and how much it has expanded. And so, when I look back almost 20 years ago, we were just starting to measure our scope one and two greenhouse gas emissions. We were putting together all these frameworks. I think at that time, there was probably the greenhouse gas reporting protocol. But a lot of stuff was—we were starting it from scratch, and we were building it out across the organizations, across our industry, and other industries as well, all at the same time. And then you fast-forward a few years, and you start thinking about things like scope three emissions, “Oh my gosh, how do we get our arms around all of the value chain?” We had the experience of setting science-based targets back in 2017 that included our scope three targets. But it’s one thing to set the targets, then you actually have to start to make sure you’re measuring and reducing it. Fast-forward to 2023, we had our science-based targets validated to the net-zero standard, which is yet another milestone that we achieved. But at each point in time—just using this one example —I, in my own career, was able to touch upon all different parts of the company. So, starting from things like really focusing on our own operations and working with our real estate and our manufacturing teams, to starting to think more about how we engage our suppliers? How do we incentivize them to come along with us on this journey? And then, most recently, how do we create meaningful partnerships with our customers? Because our use of sold products is one of our big emissions categories. And so, it needs to be a partnership across all parts of our value chain. So, it’s a long answer to your question, but I think just the evolution of how expansively we think about sustainability has really changed in the past couple of decades.

John: Yeah, it has. As you said, 20 years ago, it sounds long, but it’s really short.

Mary: Yes.

John: It’s really short. And that was before we were even talking about the massive generational shift from the linear to circular economy. That wasn’t being talked about then. And there was very few, if any, chiefs sustainability officers in 2005. And it was actually before ‘An Inconvenient Truth’ came out. So, just level-set everybody. Let’s just say this, you’re a sustainability OG. That’s how [crosstalk]. That’s how [inaudible].

Mary: I agree.

John: So, talk about your role today. You and I know sustainability can be read very narrowly and broadly. And as you said, the role of sustainability has evolved. Like you said, we went from scope one and two, now to scope three, now to talk about circularity—now the issue of compliance, and compliance not only here in North Carolina, United States, but compliance around the world. You run a worldwide brand. And just for our listeners and viewers to understand, Lenovo is a massive company, over 56 billion in revenue, over 69,000 employees in over 60 countries. How many markets are you in right now?

Mary: 180 markets. So, we’re truly global.

John: Truly global. Talk about your role today compared to 20 years ago, and how you set priorities for yourself and for your team so things get done and there’s a real path forward?

Mary: Yeah. That’s a great question. And the way I like to frame it is that my organization—I’m really lucky, genuinely, I’m so lucky to have the group of people that I have working for Lenovo and working in my organization at the corporate level, to think about: what are the commitments and goals that we need to set all across the company in order for us to actually be addressing our most meaningful impact. So, going back to the concept of materiality—are we chasing what really is important for us, where we can have an impact, where we can meet our customers’ expectations, where investors expect us to go? But we’re doing that at the corporate level. What’s really important is that we have support from across all the different parts of our business. Lenovo, as you said, is a really big company. We have a lot of different operations around the world. We have a large manufacturing footprint. But beyond that, we also have customers all over the world. We have suppliers all over the world supporting our manufacturing. And so, we rely upon a network of different teams across the company. That’s something that’s really evolved in the last 20 years, where we now have teams certainly within our development organizations, groups that are working on developing our products to be more energy efficient, to think about and reduce the product carbon footprint. But also, to your point, to think about how they support a more circular economy. And I can go into more details on that.

John: Sure.

Mary: We’re thinking about that from a hardware perspective. But then we also have a services side of our business. And so, how are we providing services that we can bundle with the products that we’re selling that help our customers across the whole lifecycle? So, whether it’s things like having more informed discussions at the time of sale so that customers can really understand what the impact is of the different decisions they make when they buy products. That could include things like how do they get it delivered? Do they want a low-carbon transport option for delivery of their product? All the way to the end of life, where someone might be concerned about: we want to buy all these products from you, but we’ve got all these legacy products. And this is probably near and dear to you—not just from a security standpoint, but also from an environmental standpoint—how do we responsibly manage the end-of-life equipment? So, we work with our services organization on that. But all of our progress requires partnership from these groups in development, these groups in the services organizations, and certainly supply chain has taken a bigger and bigger role as we’ve been thinking about our impact and where we can lead by example. It doesn’t end at our factory gates. Our impact really extends into the supply chain. And so, we have really great teams that have been expanding over the past several years within our supply chain organization to help partner with our suppliers and promote things like the science-based targets approach, CDP disclosures. RBA is something that we subscribe to at Lenovo and we promote for our suppliers. So, there’s all this activity going on across the company. My team at the corporate level is helping coordinate and set the strategy and the long-term KPIs, but really there are many, many groups across the company that are helping actually do the work to get the results.

John: I love it. And you produce an annual impact or sustainability report that shows all the progress that you’re making?

Mary: We sure do. Yeah, that’s something that my team does in conjunction with many people around the company. I am reminded every year how complex an operation it is. We’re in the middle of it right now. We’ll release it in June. It’s really one of those things that takes the whole company to make sure that we can get it done and get it done on time.

John: [inaudible]. It’s really so true. It’s so interesting. And that lives up on your website, techtoday.lenovo.com? That [inaudible].

Mary: Yes, you can find it there and in investor.lenovo.com as well.

John: Perfect. And that will be in our show notes for all our listeners and viewers. If they’re vacuuming now or driving their car, or walking, they don’t have to write it down. It will be there for them to just click on and look at. You brought up a real important term: materiality. What’s important for Lenovo and Lenovo’s mission? How do you create sustainability commitments that are material, but also keep the company moving forward with regards to their mission, but also the missions and the goals that you’ve created with regards to ESG and sustainability, and circularity? How do you balance those two interests and continue to create goals that are material, but also accomplishing great things with regards to sustainability and circularity as well?

Mary: Yeah, and that I think brings me to a thought that I’ve had many times over the years, but as I was thinking about our conversation today, I think it’s so important for organizations to understand where they really can have an impact. Things like doing a materiality assessment for your ESG report—whether it’s a double materiality assessment that a lot of us are starting to do, or in the past, a single materiality assessment—I think really going through the exercise of looking at what’s actually important for your organization, for your critical stakeholders, is really key. Because otherwise, it’s easy to chase stuff that in the end isn’t going to have a whole lot of meaning. And so, there’s a lot of science and there’s a lot of technical knowledge that has to go into understanding where your impact really is. I think one of the things that I’m proudest of at Lenovo is that we’ve really tried to take a very credible, standards-based approach and base our commitments on science. We have aligned to international programs like the Science-Based Targets Initiative, setting our net-zero targets that were validated to their standard, and even things like disclosures to CDP or with reference to GRI and some of those standards. I think it’s critical that we are measuring ourselves in a way that helps our customers and our investors make good comparisons and really be able to understand the data. And so I’m proud of the fact that we’ve taken an approach that’s based in science, that aligns to these international standards. It’s actually helped us quite a bit too, because then we can go out to customers—and we have many customers that have very high goals for themselves and they have high expectations for their partners. And so when we can go to them and say, “We’re aligned, we see that you have very strong climate commitments or circular economy commitments—whatever they are—we’re aligned to these internationally recognized standards and disclosure frameworks,” it helps us really shorten the conversation. And so you have that SBTi seal of approval, the validation—”Okay, that’s it. That’s the end of the conversation.” You don’t have to have this big conversation about, “Well, you say this, we say this, I think it means the same thing.” I think that’s an approach that’s been really helpful for us to be able to make sure we’re meeting our customers’ expectations. And it’s really easy for our sales teams to be able to say, “Here, we have this validation.” You don’t have to be an expert to have a big discussion about it.

John: Nor do we need to sit and have a long debate about it either.

Mary: Yes, exactly.

John: Like you said, 20 years ago it was about scope one and two, and it was companies would white-knuckle it on their own, for lack of better terminology. But now, as you brought up, it’s all about partners, collaboration. And it’s much bigger. It’s scope one, two, and three, and it’s up and down the chain. And like you said, it’s creating your own standards and then holding your upstream and your downstream to those similar standards. Can you give a couple of good examples that you’re really proud of—of good and great collaborations that make a difference? Because what I continually find is that people think they have to do it alone. And really, it’s the partnerships and the collaborations that get you further, faster, and actually make more impact.

Mary: You’re absolutely right. I think it is a great analogy to think back. Scope one and two—everybody was really focused on that. For us, it’s a pretty small portion of our overall emissions. It’s less than 1%. Our vast majority of our emissions are with our procurement suppliers and with the use of our products when our customers are using the products. So we have to collaborate. If we want to meet our goals, 99% of our target is related to external factors. A couple of innovative things that we’ve been working on recently include partnering with our suppliers. So we have a lot of companies, we have suppliers that are big and very mature, and that we can learn a lot from. But we also have smaller suppliers that are maybe not as far along in their journey. And so being able to expose them to programs like CDP and to encourage them to be able to measure and meet CDP disclosure requirements is really important. In addition to that, we also have been doing some innovative things with our suppliers to help bring them together and join us in the purchase of larger volumes of renewable energy that they might otherwise not have access to. So those are a couple of things on the supplier side.

John: Got it.

Mary: On the customer side, we have an initiative through our sales [inaudible] organization, which we call the Lenovo 360 Circle. That [crosstalk] has brought together a group of different customers and other business partners.

John: Mary, I’m going to stop you for one second. Mary, let me just stop for a second.

Mary: It was slowing down.

John: Yeah, your screen froze. I want us just to get unfrozen.

Mary: Can we go back?

John: Yeah. I’m sure you were noticing too —it froze. I always want the guests to look their best. So sometimes it unfreezes quickly. Obviously, sometimes it doesn’t. There’s just the nature of, as you know, technology. We can’t [crosstalk].

Mary: Yeah, no problem. We can do over.

John: Yeah, let’s take it from the start again of that question about some of the collaboration partnerships that you’re the most proud of that give great examples of why it’s so important to collaborate and partner. Then you take it from there. And Eric, in post-production—who is our editor and post-production manager for years—he’ll fix that all up. I made a note of that. That was at about 30 minutes. So he’ll fix that up.

Mary: Okay, great. Do you want me to start with the [inaudible].

John: Do you think we’ll stay unfrozen? What do you learn about your own system there? Should we log back in? Or would you think we’ll stay unfrozen? How does it really work?

Mary: I think we’ll stay unfrozen. I don’t know if it was a memory issue, a system issue. It can’t be the hardware.

John: [inaudible]. You wouldn’t believe, Mary, the stories I have of this happening over the years. It’s totally fixable and totally not a big deal at all. So don’t worry about it. Let’s just start from [inaudible].

Mary: I think we’re good. But if it does it again, we’ll log out. [crosstalk] So if you want, I’ll just pause.

John: Yeah. We’ll log out and just come back. You take it from about giving some great examples of collaborations and partnerships that are meaningful to you and that you’re excited to talk about.

Mary: Okay. Well, there are a lot of different collaborations that I’m excited to talk about. I think your point about collaboration being so important is so true. So, even just thinking about our own emissions or Lenovo’s overall emissions footprint—our own emissions are less than 1%.
So the vast majority of our emissions are within our value chain—whether it’s our procurement suppliers or the use of our products after we’ve sold them to customers. For us to actually move the needle and meet our commitments, we have to collaborate. What we’ve been focused on on the supplier side is really helping bring up suppliers who maybe are smaller and don’t have as many resources and help expose them to some of the different tools and programs that we’ve used along in our journey of growing from a novice to a somewhat more experienced actor in terms of setting and meeting climate goals. So things like bringing our suppliers along in the CDP process or encouraging them to respond to CDP or join the Science-Based Targets Initiative validation process. Those are things we’ve done with our suppliers. But more recently, what we’ve tried to do is give some of our smaller suppliers access to purchasing renewable energy as part of a bundling of volumes that they might otherwise not have enough volume themselves to be able to get access to good renewable energy contracts. So, we’ve been doing that for our own facilities and for nearby suppliers recently, and I think that’s been successful. And then on the customer side, that’s an interesting thing too, because we know many of our customers are really sophisticated in this area, and we have an opportunity to learn from them. So we have started a series of dialogues through what we call the Lenovo 360 Circle, and it’s actually being driven by our sales organization. It’s a partnership where we bring together customers and business partners to try to set common goals and to bring in experts to help educate and share expertise from within the group. But I think the idea of having common goals and speaking a common language is really important because that way we’re spending our energy on making progress instead of sort of negotiating where we want to go. And so, I think those two collaborations, those two aspects of collaboration, have been really important to us.

John: Mary, like you said, you’re in over 180 markets, 60 countries, 69,000 employees. This is a huge venture, huge company that you’re sitting in a very important role for. Talk a little bit about, in your position, working on circularity and sustainability across continents around the world where there’s no harmonization yet of the rules and regulations. How do you walk that delicate high wire, and get across the wire without falling off when you’re managing a patchwork quilt of regulations all across the planet right now?

Mary: Yeah. I think it’s interesting too, because sometimes some of this stuff is happening—like the whole journey from a linear to a circular economy—we were doing that already before we were talking about it in terms of circularity or being in response to certain regulations. We were doing it because we thought it made sense or we thought it was solving another problem. So, a great example of that—we always think about circular design. So when we’re designing the product, what decisions are we making to support longer product life, or to get recycled content that we’re using in our products? I think we were doing that, of course, because we had sustainability goals, and we thought it was a good sustainability feature. But when it comes to longer product life, our customers want the products to last longer. They want to be able to use them without having to send them back to a service depot to get fixed. And so that was something that has been in our DNA for years—to build quality products, to facilitate repair so that the products can be used longer. And so, yes, there’s a circular aspect to it, but it’s something we’ve done for a long time. The same thing with recycled materials—we have supported the recycling of our products all around the world in different ways for many years. One of the things that we saw from our recycling partners was that end-of-life plastics was just a problematic waste stream. What do they do with that? So our response was, well, let’s create a market for it. Let’s become a buyer of post-consumer recycled content—closed loop from used IT products—so that this stuff actually has value. And so we’re doing that to help solve a problem with our suppliers and to work together on that. But I want to jump back to the circularity example, because I think sometimes these things seem like they have to be addressed with high-tech solutions. Sometimes there are high-tech solutions to it, but sometimes it’s really low-tech. And so with circularity, we’ve always had a lot of communications that we put out there for how to repair our products. But within the past 2 years, we’ve put a more enhanced focus on: let’s make sure we have good repair videos. Let’s make sure we have really good repair information so that not just the experts at the service centers, but maybe people who want to do this at home can do it themselves. And so, kind of low-tech, but we’ve seen a huge uptick in the number of hits we’re getting to these service sites. I think that is good not just from a circularity perspective, but just in general, from a customer satisfaction perspective.

John: 100%.

Mary: Low-tech.

John: Yeah. It’s low-tech, but you’re actually using technology for what it was created for—to democratize information.

Mary: Yeah, exactly.

John: And so that’s wonderful.

Mary: And then on the other end of the spectrum, when you think about high-tech—same scenario—when we’re thinking about keeping products in service longer, we’re using AI and machine learning within our refurbishment operations to enhance what humans can do. And so in the past, when something was coming back to our service centers, ultimately, you were using some machines, but it comes down to people looking at a system, diagnosing it, and doing the repair. And so adding in this layer of AI intelligence to be able to look at something that’s coming back and determine exactly what’s broken and what needs to be fixed—that’s been great for a number of reasons. So, one, it really pinpoints exactly what component on the board needs to be fixed. So you’re not just replacing the whole board and then scrapping the old board—you’re fixing the component. There should be cost savings related to that, but it’s also faster. We’ve improved the number of systems that we can refurbish by more than 2x per hour. So that’s great too. That’s a high-tech example. And then the low-tech example is just getting the information out there.

John: I love it. So you actually beat me to the question, because I always love to know how people in your position are leveraging AI and robotics to improve and to further their mission and further their goals. But now let’s look at the other side of AI. We woke up today and one of the headlines in the business news was Google and Amazon came out and said that there’s no slowdown—in fact, there’s probably an acceleration of the need for more data centers due to the explosion of AI. And so everyone knows Lenovo, it’s an amazing, iconic brand, but we know it for the PCs that you create and the hardware. But you have a huge services division. Talk a little bit about the AI explosion and the explosion of your services division with regards to data centers and data controls.

Mary: Yes. It’s a question that’s top of mind for us. I think we do have a very large data center infrastructure business. So we provide servers that help power these data centers that are in the news all the time. What some people may not know is that data centers, one of the reasons why they use so much energy, is that you have to cool the servers. And typically, that’s done by air-conditioning the air, which is typically done through evaporation. So there’s a water element—losing water to air-condition air. And then you basically are air-conditioning the whole data center and blowing the cold air across the servers. The fans that are doing that use energy too. So what we have is a technology where we can cool servers using warm water. So it’s called our Neptune™ Liquid Cooling Technology. This is great because you no longer have to air-condition the whole building. You actually are just using warm water in a closed loop. So here’s no water touching the components, but in a closed loop—going over those parts of the server that are producing heat and pulling that heat off. And it allows our servers to be cooled with 40% less energy than you would with fans.

John: That’s great.

Mary: That’s great. From an environmental standpoint, you use less energy, but from a data center standpoint, it’s got two benefits. One, lower energy costs. But two, you can do more with the energy that you have available. And that is a concern: are we going to have enough energy to power these data centers? So being able to reduce the energy consumption by 40% through this technology is a big deal.

John: It’s a big deal.

Mary: So I’m excited about it. And in terms of services, we are thinking about how we can leverage AI within our own manufacturing operations to improve our own efficiency. And then ultimately sell this knowledge to our customers, but there’s all sorts of stuff happening in terms of forecasting and being able to make sure you’ve got the right parts where you need them, not too many parts, in order to be able to build products close to your customers and deliver them close to your customers. So that also cuts your CO₂ from transport footprint. In addition to that, we’re using digitization and Internet of Things within our own operations to have hundreds of thousands of sensors in a single factory that are monitoring energy use, water use, identifying areas where water can be reclaimed, identifying areas where heat can be reclaimed. We’ve had really good success with that. And so building upon that, and being able to sell this expertise and help our customers leverage the power of AI and digitization to improve their operations, I think there’s huge opportunity there.

John: So, Mary, you’ve been in this business. Like I said earlier, and I said it with absolute, it was a compliment and with warmth and with honor—you’re a sustainability OG, doing this. You studied this in college. You got a master’s degree in this in college. And then you’ve been doing this as a lifetime career. What eggs are out there for you to crack, and that have become your Rubik’s Cube, that you’re trying to figure out and get better at?

Mary: So, I think one of the things that I’m constantly telling my team is that sustainability, at its core, it’s a long-term thing. And so we have to be thinking long-term. There are very few other aspects of business where you set goals for 2050. So this is a long-term commitment that we’re making. While there are different challenges that we’re facing—whether it’s changes in our product portfolio, changes to where you make the products—that stuff comes and goes. But really what’s core is that we’ve set these goals, whether it’s climate-related or circular economy–related, because they reflect our values and they reflect what we think is really important to us as a company. It helps us meet our customers’ expectations. It helps us manage risk. It helps us thrive and survive. And so I think that’s one of the challenges—just navigating the day-to-day, year-to-year stuff that’s happening and keeping your eye on the long-term commitments that you’ve made, even when the spotlight’s not on you. So there’s a lot of splash when you first set the targets. And then there’s a whole lot of work that you have to do to actually get there. I think that’s one of the challenges. But I will say that I am genuinely excited about all of the opportunity—that the world is changing really quickly right now in some really exciting ways. I hate to go back to AI again, but I think that there’s a lot of coverage right now of AI and data centers and AI and energy use. Genuinely, I think there is so much opportunity for us to leverage AI and digitization to really make better informed decisions about what we’re doing—whether it’s these huge conceptual things like: How do you design cities? How do you design transportation routes? Or how do you run your factory to be more efficient? How do you evaluate a product when it comes back? Or have more informed discussions with your customers? There’s so much data, and there’s so much opportunity for us to sort through that data and do a better job of really understanding where our impact is and putting our focus in the right spots. So that’s one thing. That’s not a challenge. I’m not answering your question [crosstalk]. I’m excited about that.

John: Right.

Mary: But the other thing is the people. I’m super excited. I have the great privilege of having a lot of people who have started their career in sustainability. There are a lot of people who are getting advanced degrees in particular aspects. When I started, there weren’t any PhDs in climate science or circular economy. Now there are. There are people who are devoting their education to this and joining organizations because they really want to make a difference. And they’re really smart. They’re way smarter than me, and I learn from them every day. But even beyond the people that I have working for me, I just see the excitement across our organization, across my friend group, and their kids. Everybody is really passionate about making an impact, having purpose in their life, having purpose in their career. And I see that at the company. We have people working in all parts of the company who are coming up with ideas, and they’re thinking about it in terms of sustainability like, “Hey, wouldn’t this be cool?”
And a lot of it is really good stuff that our team, sitting in our little box, is never going to think of. So I think having this enthusiasm—whether it’s the next generation or generations that are already there, but are now thinking with a sustainability mindset, it’s really inspiring. I can’t wait to see where they take us.

John: It’s really cool to see, in the short 20 years, how sustainability has become a great recruiting and retention tool now at your company, right?

Mary: Yeah, absolutely. People want to work for a company that aligns with their values. I’m pleased that I think we’ve been able to attract some really great talent because of those values.

John: Since you’ve been doing this so long, I have to ask you this question. I love what you just said about looking forward, because some of the common themes in the last 6 months of my interviews have been exactly what you said today: materiality is what’s on everyone’s mind— impact officers, sustainability officers, ESG officers—that’s what everyone’s thinking about now more than ever before: focusing on materiality. But one of our chief sustainability officers who I recently had on the show also said, basically what you’re doing and where you sit is, you’re a futurist. Just like you just said. You’re really a futurist. You’re thinking about the future all the time: what you’re doing, how it affects the future, and what the future is going to throw at you so you’re better ready to handle it. So I think that’s so on point. But talk a little bit about your journey now. Where are we in our sustainability journey? Like you and I know, there’s no finish line when it comes to sustainability. But if sustainability is a baseball game, and to go back about 20 years, because you were pretty much at the beginning of this whole thing, are we in the bottom of the first or the top of the fifth? Where are we, Mary, now in this whole journey that only seems like it’s accelerating right now?

Mary: I think we’re still in the very early stages. I think that I’ve been doing it for 20 years, but the volume of information and knowledge that we have about the issues that we’re trying to address is just unlike anything we had. Today, we have so much more information than we ever did before. And so I think what it’s going to allow us to do—when I think about all the data that goes into evaluating whether it’s circular issues or climate issues—there’s just so much data, and being able to sort through that and make better decisions. We’re just at the early days of really being able to understand where the levers are that we can move. I think conceptually, we’ve got to address the supply chain and energy consumption but being able to really start to fine-tune it, I think there’s huge opportunity right now.

John: It’s [inaudible].

Mary: I think we’re at the early stages.

John: I would say you’re right. Mary, I get the privilege of having this podcast and interviewing really great people like you that are making the world a better place. But who and what inspires you now? You’ve been doing this for so long. Do you look at other OEMs and sustainability officers and other OEMs in your industry? Do you look outside of the industry? Where is your inspiration coming from, and how do you stay so excited and motivated all the time?

Mary: So I think certainly, there are other companies that are doing great things, whether it’s customers that we work with, and we’re constantly learning from them. I’m really lucky that we have very sophisticated customers, and we learn from each other. But I think genuinely I am inspired by the people who are joining this profession. The ideas and the rigor that they’re bringing to this profession is really impressive. The fact that people have devoted their academic and professional careers to very specific segments of this—there’s not a day that goes by that I don’t learn from whether it’s from someone on my team or someone working at another organization, people that are bringing this new enthusiasm, this new knowledge into the field. That’s what inspires me.

John: I love it. Well, Mary, thank you so much for spending about an hour with us today. You’re always welcome back. We know there’s going to be more great news for you to share with our audience in the future. So we’re going to have you back on the Impact Podcast to share the continued journey at Lenovo that you and your colleagues are on in sustainability, ESG, circularity, and also AI. Like you said, that’s going to be fun to talk about more in the future. For our listeners and viewers to find Mary and all her colleagues, and all the important and impactful work they’re doing at Lenovo, please go to techtoday.lenovo.com. That link will be in our show notes. Mary, more important than spending an hour with us today, thank you for— not only for that—but thank you more importantly, for making the world a better place. It’s people like you that we need more of, and all the impact you make on a regular basis, and you’ve made it for 20 years. I’m just honored to have you on with us today. Thank you for all you do. We’re really grateful.

Mary: Thank you, John, so much. This has been a true delight. Thanks so much.

John: This edition of the Impact Podcast is brought to you by Engage. Engage is a digital booking platform revolutionizing the talent booking industry. With thousands of athletes, celebrities, entrepreneurs, and business leaders, Engage is the go-to spot for booking talent for speeches, custom experiences, live streams, and much more. For more information or to book talent today, visit letsengage.com. This edition of the Impact Podcast is also brought to you by ERI. ERI has a mission to protect people, the planet, and your privacy. It is the largest fully integrated IT and electronics asset disposition provider and cybersecurity-focused hardware destruction company in the United States—and maybe even the world. For more information on how ERI can help your business properly dispose of outdated electronic hardware devices, please visit eridirect.com.