Matthew Sekol is a former Sustainability Global Black Belt at Microsoft’s Cross-Industry team. He worked with Financial Services firms to understand their challenges through ESG data. In 2024, Matthew released an award-winning book called “ESG Mindset,” which is a guide for companies to think critically about ESG and take a holistic approach to the business. He also serves on the LP Advisory Committee of Morgan Stanley’s Next Level Fund, which invests in underrepresented startups and is a Senior Advisor for Enzo Advisors, an ESG consultancy. He also writes a weekly Substack called The ESG Advocate and is a contributor to ESG News.

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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, Matthew Sekol. He’s the Sustainability Global Black Belt at Microsoft. Welcome, Matthew to the Impact Podcast.

Matthew Sekol: Thank you, John. It is my genuine pleasure to be here.

John: Well, this is going to be a great and fun interview, and we’re going to talk a lot about Microsoft and about your book, your wonderful award-winning book that got awards from both Axiom and both from the Goodie Book award system. You won awards with this book. I’ve read this book. I want our listeners and viewers to get the gist of what’s going on in this wonderful book, the ESG, My Mindset. But before we do that, talk a little bit about where you grew up and how you got on this very inspiring journey that you’re on, Matthew.

Matthew: Oh, yeah. It was a windy and twisty journey to get here. I was, oh my gosh, in university taking English and trying to figure out what I was going to do with that. I really liked to read at the time, and I got connected in my sophomore year into a program that was helping mentor incoming first generation college students, and I couldn’t figure out why they picked me to do that. I was not first generation, but they saw something in me that I didn’t even see and I would work with these kids and try to make sure they were getting up, going to class, studying, organizing events for them and things like that. For a long time, I didn’t really come back to that, to be honest. I went into IT after that, and it wasn’t until maybe about 2019 when I was at Microsoft, I had worked to bring the Next Level Fund into Microsoft, which is a Morgan Stanley startup fund. It invests in underrepresented founders. At the time, I had this great manager, his name was Shaka Rashid, and he also saw something in me that I didn’t see in myself. I was like, “Wow, the CSG thing is really great. Hey, this fund is related to that with the social impact. How do I get this fund in?” He helped me along. Then when we got Microsoft Finance to agree to invest in it, I said to him, “Well, now what? Who runs this fund?” He’s like, “You’re going to run the fund.” I said, “What do you mean I’m going to run the fund?” I was more than happy to, I had leveraged some work that I had done previously to stand it up. I said, “I wasn’t sure about myself.” I was like, “This is for underrepresented founders. I’m a white guy. I am not this demographic. What does this mean? Am I taking an opportunity from somebody else?” He’s like, “First off, you did all the work to get this in here.” I did have a partner who’s no longer at Microsoft, who also I worked with, and he’s like, “These startups need somebody like you in the room to advocate for them.” When he said that, it was like a switch flipped on him in my head, and at the time I was focused on capital markets, listening to a lot of ESG conversations with my customers because it was the early 2020s as these things were tipping over, and it all just came together for me, and ever since I’ve been obsessed with this topic.

John: That’s great. First of all, I love your boss. It goes back to that old adage, no good deed goes unpunished. You wanted this, now you’re going to manage it, and I like that. That’s a great. That is a great message, and I like that. Talk a little bit, how’s it gone since you stood it up and your original idea of getting it funded? How’s that journey gone?

Matthew: Oh my gosh. It’s been incredible. We have a monthly call, and I tell Morgan Stanley this all the time, it’s my favorite 90 minutes every month because I get to talk about these startup companies that are doing a wide range of things, and it’s just fascinating to hear their perspectives, the business models, what they’re working on, try to help them identify their risks. I tend to be the ESG guy on the call obviously, like, “Hey, have you thought about this? Hey, they’re using AI and there might be some sort of facial recognition, are they thinking about responsible AI? How are they storing those images?” All sorts of different considerations that go into a startup that maybe they don’t have the expertise to think about. It’s been nothing but a genuine joy, honestly, to be on that fund.

John: How many companies are now impacted by that fund and the work that you’ve accomplished just in these five years or so?

Matthew: Yeah, I think we’re up to about 10. It’s not a super huge fund, but I always keep…

John: It’s 10.

Matthew: Yeah, it’s 10. Today it’s 10. I tend to stay on top of ESG trends, obviously technology trends with my background, and I’m always looking out for ways to help them. As a matter of fact, I just sent over an email today like, “Hey, I saw this, It’s related to this startup maybe we should get on the phone and talk about it.” It’s always on my mind.

John: That’s so great. I have to ask you, we’ve been doing this show Matthew, about 16 and a half years, almost 2000 guests, I’ve never had someone who’s a Sustainability Global Black Belt. I love the title, I just want to fully understand what does that mean at Microsoft and with regards to what you do at Microsoft, what does that truly mean?

Matthew: Yeah. Lots of people get excited when they hear Sustainability Global Black Belt. I have been looked at as if I was going to start ninja kicking the room around, that is not what it is. What I am focused on is I’m a sustainability subject matter expert on the commercial side, so in effect, I am in sales and what my day-to-day looks like is I work with our customers, our partner ecosystem, and I try to uncover really their sustainability challenges and talk about it at the intersection of mostly data today, but also how can technology more broadly help them achieve their sustainability goals.

John: Got it. What did you do at Microsoft before you became the Sustainability Global Black Belt?

Matthew: Yeah, so I was a capital markets industry advisor. We have really good titles over here…

John: Well, this place has some of the best titles ever, so I like this.

Matthew: Yeah. In that role, it’s actually how I came into ESG. I was a industry overlay for the field sellers because they can’t know everything about an industry, let’s say, so when they would get in conversations with specific types of customers that were more on the business side, me and my team would go in and we would talk the business, and it was capital markets. Again, this was the early 2020s, and all of the investors were trying to figure out how do we layer on ESG in some cases, how do we layer on sustainability in other cases? Sometimes it was a mix of both. Are we going to buy the data and build something? Are we going to build a solution and give it to our analysts? What was fascinating to me though was that there was this lens, I hadn’t realized that there was this lens out there on business that I didn’t know about and I just found it immediately, it made sense to me. I’m like, “Oh my gosh, my entire career, there’s been little pockets of this that I never saw before,” and so I started thinking about it more from the corporate perspective rather than the capital markets perspective. Like how were investors really looking at these companies that they were investing in.

John: As in terms of your classical education, do you study at old environmental engineering or science any time? Did you have mother, father, grandparents, uncles, aunts, or other? Where did you grow up? I wanted to say where you grew up?

Matthew: Oh, yeah. I live in the Lehigh Valley, and this is where I grew up. I briefly moved to Maryland for about seven years, but yeah, I’m in eastern Pennsylvania. I live in a rural area, but not really any connections to this topic. My dad was an actuary, which is heavily datadriven, but not necessarily this.

John: Got it.

Matthew: I think it stems from something about getting that English degree, and I took a lot of philosophy courses at the time and I just like to think about these topics. What I love most is they’re big, they’re thorny, and there’s no clear answers. You have to make a business decision based on the best information that you have, consider trade-offs, externalities, and you can barely ever move in confidence because it’s so complex and I love that. I thrive in that.

John: It’s awesome though to have you also as a mentor, since entrepreneurs are truly living in that world all the time of fear and loneliness and as you said, making contextual decisions, which are perfectly good decisions at that given moment, but might be a horrible decision the next day to have a mentor like you, making them understand, I understand your fear and I understand why you’re conflicted, and this is a decision you’re making with the best information you have but that information as you and I know could change tomorrow or the next week, or the next press conference. You never know what comes across the screen. Where was your aha moment then to write this wonderful and important book? The ESG Mindset, which I’ve read and I want to talk about, were you lying in bed or were you in a meeting? Where did you have the, “Hey, I got to really get this down into one place and I’m going to write a book about it.”

Matthew: Yeah, so it was about 2019 when I came into this space. Again, it was in capital markets and I was trying to learn as much as I could because I never saw a training class for this topic or anything, so I started buying books. All the books that I bought were financial focused, and they were largely ESG and or sustainable investing because that’s where this concept started. It was a financial services concept. Really, there was only one book for corporates, and it’s a great book, it’s called Gloom to Boom. The author wrote the forward for my book. But I couldn’t find information for corporates, and what happened was I would start going outside of capital markets at Microsoft and listen to other sellers and how they were talking about things like cultural alignment with their customers, like customers saying things like, “I feel culturally aligned to Microsoft.” I would be like, “Wow, I think that’s ESG.” They’re seeing something that we’re doing with our culture that aligns with their culture, that’s social, that’s ESG. I started talking to account teams about ESG, and then I would hop on the phone with their customers and try to figure out what is it about the culture that you enjoy? Can we use technology to somehow figure out what you’re chasing? I just started having these conversations. Then I joined the commercial team. We did have a commercial team at the time, and then in 2022, I still was finding that companies weren’t quite getting it and there was a lot of conflation between value and values, and both are great, but ESG is really more on the value side. I started writing a substack in 2022 that was focused mostly on corporates, but I covered like everything, financial services, politics and then realized I was writing about 2,500 words a week, so the newsletter was not short. I reached out to a friend of mine who had written a book, and I said, “I feel like this is maybe about a half a chapter.” She said, “It’s a little bit under that, but yeah, you’re probably close.” I thought, wow, I could probably write an ESG book for corporates. Instead of writing this newsletter, I can maybe pivot and start writing that and maybe this actually could happen. I was an English major, I had never attempted something like that before, and so I made my pitch to the publisher and they didn’t have any ESG books and they were thrilled to put it out to print. Yeah, that’s how that happened. I just kept writing about it. What I found in the writing, John, was I would learn things every week, and I still do. I still write my newsletter and I’m still learning things about this topic even as it evolves over time.

John: But that’s what’s supposed to keep us young. We’re supposed to stay curious, and as you and I know sustainability backslash ESG, there’s no finish line. What’s the finish line? It’s a journey, and the fun is in the journey. The gift is in the journey. Which brings me back to a point you brought. You brought up a fascinating word a couple minutes ago, and I was going to ask you this question anyway, the book is called the ESG Mindset, again, for our listeners and viewers, this is on Amazon, Barnes and Noble, all great bookstores. You can buy this book. Also, you can go to www.esgmindset.com, www.esgmindset.com. It’s all there. You call it the ESG Mindset, but you were just talking about culture. Do you find that really the way you meant ESG Mindset really is interchangeable at that point with the word culture as well?

Matthew: Yeah, it very well might be, I hadn’t considered that before, but that is where I started this journey when I heard that cultural alignment word. Even today as I talk with companies about this topic, it’s very clear that every company has defined this differently. They have their own perspectives, which is all fine, but I still don’t see a lot of what the core ESG value proposition is instilled in those mindsets. I haven’t seen, and it’s starting to change by the way, like it’s just starting to shift that ESG is becoming this outcomes driven, value based process. But I haven’t seen it really from the top down or the bottom up. I write about this in one of the chapters where I suggest that it needs to be mainstream throughout the employee base, from the board and management team throughout all the employees, effectively, to your point, trying to change the culture a little bit because even a frontline worker needs to think like that. You may think a frontline worker doesn’t impact the business, but if they’re not thinking about these things like, “Hey, I’m interacting with customers,” well that’s a social, that’s a stakeholder engagement that they’re effectively leading for you, how are they thinking about it? How are they thinking about things like brand reputation and grant? They don’t need to get terribly deep into that, but it should still be a consideration in every interaction that they have. How do we shift the culture to say, “Look, there are a lot of new environmental, social, and even governance risks and opportunities that are affecting the company, maybe everybody needs to focus on these things so that we’re all pedaling the same way.” I think you’re spot on. It’s very cultural.

John: You make a great point in the book that ESG is less about metrics or about mindset and culture. Talk a little bit about [inaudible]. As you said, and as you’ve mentioned already in this podcast, many firms have made it just a metric exercise instead of a cultural mindset exercise, explain why that’s a mistake and how it truly should be mindset or cultural and embedded in the DNA of the organization instead of just some sort of metric exercise that checks a metric box and once that’s done, it’s sort of like we did it.

Matthew: Yeah. By the way, this is all Matt’s own opinion, what I’m about to say. The funny thing is, I wrote an article a couple years ago called The Great Disclosing, which was about the amount of sustainability regulations that were coming at companies, and I’ve seen and heard in talking with chief sustainability officers over the past five years has been, many of them are burned out. Some of them have left their corporate posts and the reason is because they went from having an impact to being carbon accountants. It’s not what they signed up for. It’s not anything remotely interesting that they wanted to do. They wanted to have that impact. Now, again, like I mentioned in the last answer, we’re starting to see another shift where it’s coming back around maybe to impact a little bit, but more focused on business value. What I write about in the book, in chapter two is the disclosures have really done something strange to us, because one, the disclosures have a specific purpose, which is for financial services firms to have comparable data to do capital assessments, to move capital here and there, they are not meant for a company to change their business, which is really what we need. Whether it’s ESG, and they’re looking at risk and resilience, or whether it’s sustainability, and we want them to save the world, the regulations, the disclosures are not meant to do that. What companies have done is this really interesting exercise where they’ve assigned their chief sustainability officer to go out, find all of the business’ activity data, all of the value chain data, and then report it out for external stakeholders to use, either a regulator, an ESG rating agency, an investor, a consumer. I won’t say nobody, not many are internalizing that data, bringing it back alongside other business data sets and saying, “You know what? This is an issue. We have this one plant and we have one piece of equipment on the factory floor that’s consuming 80% of our carbon emissions. How do we make a capital investment to swap that out?”

I rarely see actionable sustainable data. It’s become this data silo, so I really feel like the last five years have, I hesitate to say that they’re lost because many companies are still making good progress, but the disclosures have really gotten in the way of progress and it’s heartbreaking for me.

John: Well, when I talk to chief sustainability officers because of the show and also my day job running ERI, I get to meet lots of wonderful chief sustainability impact officers, et cetera. What drives them nuts is this, like you said, this onslaught of regulations that are absolutely sometimes on opposite ends of the spectrum, there’s no harmonization for the most part and so much of their work that was supposed to be spent on culture and mindset and driving, as you say, resiliency and all sorts of other materiality is spent answering European regulations versus US regulations. Then also living in anticipation of not only what’s being done today in the us but what’s to come and how do we get ahead of that, and then before they know it, they’re getting very frustrated for the lack of harmony among regulations around the world. In your mind with, in Matthew’s mind, when you’re both advising, mentoring or coaching chief impact or sustainability officers or chief ESG officers, what is the ESG Mindset in action? What should that look like versus what we just discussed in terms of too much regulations, too much anticipation, and no harmonization? What is a perfect version of what the mindset and culture should look like when it comes to ESG?

Matthew: Yeah. Well, so let me start off by saying, obviously it should go without saying that you still do have to comply with all jurisdiction [inaudible]….

John: 100%. Yeah. Right. Unfortunately, that’s where it goes. We don’t want anyone to be out of compliance but we also want them to drive true resiliency and materiality to the enterprise that they represent.

Matthew: Yeah. I always try to bring it back to two things, materiality and stakeholders, and we’re entering this interesting place right now where materiality isn’t quite in the mindset of sustainability officers or their offices at least. I’m not sure why, I haven’t quite figured out why this is, but I’ll give you an example of what I mean. I will talk with sustainability offices and they will ask me the carbon emissions of an email, and I’m like, “Well, why are you asking me that?” Because you are a bank, and granted, you probably have a heavy technology stack you don’t make something physically, so your carbon emissions are probably sitting in a lot of technology, but boy, you are making lending decisions and investment decisions that do have significant carbon impact. So why are you asking me about the carbon emissions of an email?” Because it’s not a material concern, and the trade off of you finding that out is to shut off your email system. We need to stop getting into the minutia of this measurement because it does have a diminishing return on value. You still have to send emails, or you’re going to be driving into work and meeting people in person and then using the gas in your car. It’s just a spiderweb mess, so how do we flip that to say, well, again, you’re a bank, how are you integrating carbon emissions into your lending portfolio? Are you doing sustainable finance? Are you offering some sort of favorable interest rate because somebody’s doing a project? Are you looking at climate risk in the buildings, the commercial lending that you’re doing? All of these things are more relevant to your business than what the emissions of an email is.

John: That’s so interesting. Even the brightest and the best of us can get caught up and trip over those little items. In the quest they’ll miss the big stuff.

Matthew: Right.

John: That’s just really a fascinating point to me. Let me just tell you, now that you bring this up, fascinating anecdotal point years in your spending interviewing people who are going to become chief sustainability officers, or they are chief sustainability officers on this show representing some amazing and iconic brands, never before, now I taped this show usually a month to two months before the show airs, just to keep a backlog and keep a cadence of the shows fresh and going. It just the last two months when I’ve taped shows have these great individuals who I call one of the best and greatest fraternities in the world, chief sustainability officers, chief impact officers, truly people who love making a paycheck, but love also making an impact and making the world a better place. They dig it, it’s in their DNA, they love it. Only recently have they shared on air the word materiality. I never heard it before till just the last two months. My point to you is your work is working and the tide is shifting because literally, this is a common theme I’m hearing. I’m hearing materiality, I’m hearing even double materiality, but this theme is becoming the overriding theme, and they’re starting to leave behind getting caught up with some of the terminology that you, and I know the alphabet super of terminology that’s been politicized, weaponized again, fruitless endeavors, weaponizing and politicizing those terms, because the truth is it’s all wraps up under sustainability anyway, and resilience and materiality. So we don’t even have to name them and wave a flag. Let’s just do the work of it. That’s what I’m seeing more and more, which makes me happy and gives me a lot of hope.

Matthew: Yeah, John, I’m seeing the exact same thing, pretty much in the exact same timeframe and what I think is driving it is in the backlash that’s currently going on, there’s a lot of hard questions that are being asked. Boards and management teams are looking at their sustainability offices and saying, “The only way I can defend myself to keep doing your work is if you’re providing some sort of business value, and materiality is exactly where that sits.” What’s so funny to me is when I wrote the book, I had visions of companies, oh my gosh, I totally get it now. What’s happened is somehow in the backlash, companies are getting it. I was completely unexpected.

John: Talk a little bit about that. I’ve got wonderful partners in South Korea since 2008 and Japan, so I get to go over to those cultures, get embedded in those cultures and learn from my colleagues and partners in my recycling business about how they think. What I learned in the last 15 or 17 years with both the Koreans and the Japanese as my partners, is they don’t get hung up. Of course, they have to be involved because if their companies are publicly traded, they have to talk about quarterly earnings and all that annual reports and all that stuff, but when I sit with them and we plan together, they’re always talking. I remember sitting in a meeting in 2009, and they were coaching me on how to think about 2020, and I thought they were bananas. I thought this was the craziest thing, but they brought me along in a very gentle way and made me think, “Hey, John, minimally think about five years, but ideally think about 10 or 20 or 30 years, and then think about your legacy, don’t think about this month as a failure. The whole business is a failure.” They make me think long-term and legacy, and I’ll tell you what, I think we need more of that. Explain what you think about that in terms of getting caught up in quarterly earnings and again, missing the big picture.

Matthew: Yeah. In the book, I thought that I was going to find all this research that quarterly earnings were hurting long-termism, but what I found in the book, and I did add it, was that that wasn’t necessarily the case, but something is creating short-termism and I do suspect that it might be the quarterly earnings number. But man, to get to the long-term vision right now is really tough, we are coming off of a two-year period where CEOs are stepping down from their posts because the work is becoming so hard and granted. We could get into conversations about CEO pay and everything else, but the fact is they’re stepping away from that pay because running a business is really hard all of a sudden. I suspect part of it is because of the extreme climate, shifting stakeholder sentiment, maybe in some cases, board members that don’t have domain level expertise for their business or for these new challenges. I’m not suggesting that we should replace boards, but I think we do need to recognize that operating a business post 2020, which I feel like we don’t talk about what COVID has done to business and all of us enough, but post 2020 running a business is a lot different than it was before 2020. It is not the same thing anymore. Even if you consider just artificial intelligence, in the past…

John: I couldn’t agree with you more.

Matthew: Oh my gosh. How can you possibly, as a business leader stay on top of everything without seeking out domain expertise that understands the material intersection of those topics with your business? And that expertise is extremely hard to find. We’re talking about effectively reeducating our employee base to figure out what’s happening out there and it’s not an easy undertaking. There are some theories out there that I’ve read over the years, like, we need to rethink about the way that we compensate the management team and make it more stock based because in theory if you give more stock awards, that’s over time and maybe even hold those back until after the CEO has left to incentivize them to think long term. But boy, I can’t even get many companies to recognize the short term, and I’m talking two to five year climate risks that are out there. I actually remember, maybe four years ago I was talking with a pretty big company and we were doing interviews around the company to try to figure out how they thought about sustainability and I asked this one guy have you done a climate risk assessment on your facilities? His response was, “Well, do investors care about that. I don’t think they care about that.” I said, “Well, if you have 700 facilities in Florida and 40% go offline because a hurricane comes through, investors are going to care.” It was this really strange moment where it was a well-recognized brand, and I just could not believe that they hadn’t thought about climate risk and ever since then, I always try to work climate risk into a conversation and I swear over nine times out of 10, the company’s not thinking about it. Even medium term risks like that, they’re not thinking about, so getting them to the long term is so tough.

John: That’s so fascinating. Again, for our listeners and viewers, we’ve got Matthew Sekol with us today. He’s a Sustainability Global Black Belt on the commercial side and Microsoft, but to find Matthew’s book, you go on amazon.com or other great book sellers, this is a very important great book. You could also go to www.esgmindset.com. I’m not trying to pile on and give you another thing to do, because God knows what you do at Microsoft and it’s very important and keeps you very busy, but imagine if you had a course in this exact topic, ESG Mindset, ESG culture for CEOs, for folks like me and folks that run much bigger enterprises and organizations at Columbia or Stanford, NYU, Harvard it would fit anywhere. It would be unbelievably valuable. How would you lead that course now in 2025,? Like you said, COVID changed the math, AI has changed. Like I was telling someone the other day, I was around and started a .com that became very luckily, fabulously successful in 1998, the year Google was founded. Let’s take the year Google was founded as the year that information started to become democratized, and it just increased. Instead, AI, whatever year we choose as the AI explosion, whether it’s 2018, 2022, whenever it is, the advent of AI and the growth of AI and the explosion of AI is the democratization, the stakes have risen and more information on a more detailed basis is more available to us. Which as you pointed out, great points also has bad points and also creates a lot more confusion for leaders to make decisions on because they feel they’re on more quicksand more than ever. How would you go about now approaching teaching CEOs and other C-Suite people, the important topics that are covered in this book, given the times that we live in?

Matthew: Yeah, it’s a really great question because I don’t know. I have done some speaking at universities remotely for some of their sustainable or ESG classes, what I feel is needed is a reset on the broader pictures. What I mean by that is we’re not very good at systems thinking. I have a chapter in the book on the interconnected nature of ESG, you can’t just look at these issues as an E, S, or G issues, they have interconnected relationships, but I don’t think we’re very good at that systems level thinking. One of the examples came up recently with a partner that I work with in the LA wildfires. They were advising the state of California, and I hadn’t even thought about this, but with those wildfires, what they saw was an atmospheric river forming off the coast and while you might think, “Hey, that’s great, now the fires are going to stop.” What they realized was that all of the things that had burned, all the manmade things that had burned, were going to now be distributed across the local landscape and flow out into the coast and what does that look like? That level of systemic thinking is really what we need. Companies, policy makers, all of us need to have now because the world is wildly complex. First, I would take a little bit to try to figure out how to teach that. How do you teach systems level thinking? The next thing would be how do you get leaders to focus on that complexity? Right?

John: Right.

Matthew: It’s not so easy because once you understand the problem, like I said earlier, you have to understand how to make a decision with the best information that you have but also consider things like trade-offs, externalities, internalities, if you’re dealing with a company, like how do you really look at a problem robustly and look at the solution in a manner that you’re not creating more of a problem? The third thing I think would be, oh my gosh, materiality, which I think we’ve covered. Then the last thing would be, and I’m hoping we see more of this in 2025, the last thing would be actual use cases. Use cases of failures, especially governance failures, and I’m not going to call anybody out, but businesses where we’ve had governance failures. But I think also where maybe ESG gave a company a little bit of foresight, and then here I will call out a company, which is Costco. Costco was one of the early pro D and I boards that came out and said, “You know what?” I wrote about their dissent against the shareholder proposal at the time, because it wasn’t just boilerplate, they actually went through and detailed why they were going against the anti D and I proposal that the shareholder sent in, and it seems to have worked out well for them. They seem to have increased memberships and foot traffic is up according to retail wire, but what I’m hoping we see is a use case that’s, here’s where we started from, here’s the idea we had, here’s how we took it to leadership in the board. Here’s how it got funded. Here’s the project work that happened. Here was the outcome. That story needs to be told, and I’m not seeing a lot of that breadth in CSR reports today, but I’m hoping that in 2025, like I mentioned, that defensibility is being asked about, we start to see more companies come forward with these use cases that are saying, here’s how we did it with a material lens and added business value and here’s how I was underneath it.,here’s how I was able to justify my job and my role in my office, my team’s job now going forward. That’s what I would teach if I was able to go back and teach a course on ESG.

John: Hey, someone’s going to watch this show and they’re going to ask you to teach a course [inaudible], what do you go back, go forward and you’re going to be doing it because there’s an obvious void in the marketplace. Talk a little bit about boards. When I got very attuned to boards, I have my own board of directors, A, what I’ve seen a lot with boards when in the readings that’s available to all of us in terms of publicly traded companies and even privately held companies, lot of cronyism and a lot of management and over management of reputational risk. Oh, this group threw mud at us, let’s hire this unbelievable PR firm that’s great at reputational management and reputational recovery, and that’s our big job. But as you and I know boards now are dealing with levels of expertise and issues. Let’s talk about some issues that were never brought up, never part of our vernacular or lexicon, there recently cybersecurity AI. As you said sustainability wasn’t a thing when we started this show, there was no chief sustainability officers. There was maybe someone in charge of supply chain that was being asked, “Hey, try to make sure we’re buying and selling things the right way. Let’s make sure we’re covering that. Let’s make ourselves more sustainable by saving money, by buying in bulk and diverting our waste the right way.” But this has all been codified just in the last 10 years and the rise of cybersecurity and the rise of AI together itself creates a convergence of exciting opportunities and exciting really bad events as well. How do we get boards thinking more about shareholder long-term value and not just mud slinging and reputation and press releases and sound bites?

Matthew: Oh my gosh, that was a great question. The expression that I would tell them to maybe sway them is, if you live by reputational risk, you will die by reputational risk, and we’ve seen examples. Again, I’m not going to shame any companies, but it is clear in the news who has made a reputational risk decision without considering stakeholders, especially because they’re at the center of a reputation in your brand, and now they’re paying the price for it. I really feel like that stakeholder focus is missing. What I usually see in CSR and impact reports is a focus on employees and talent, which totally material issue, but they’re also not the ones that are usually creating the problems for the company. It’s usually external stakeholders. It’s either actual stakeholders like consumers or B2B customers, or it’s now in the US especially, it’s certain politicians are going after companies, and if you only ever try to get on everybody’s good side, you’re never going to be on anybody’s good side because you’re going to be flip flopping. What I’d encourage them to also think about which comes up quite a bit, is what is the company’s purpose, lean into your purpose. The purpose doesn’t have to be some lofty goal, it’s whatever it is for your business. Center your stakeholder engagements around that purpose and ignore the noise. Just ignore it and find other ways. If you think reputational risk is going to grow your business, there might be a bump, but find real tangible ways to grow your business that is not this marketing exercise.

John: Great point. I love that. Let’s go back to a little bit where we started from. Matthew, people watch you, they read your book and they say, “I want to be Matthew one day. I want to do great things like him.” Not only keep my lights on, buy groceries, have a house, have a wife, kids, all the wonderful things that make this country great, make the fabric of our culture in this country great, but also make an impact. Whatever I’m doing, I want to make an impact, leave a legacy. You are obviously living that. What can you tell high school students, graduate students, college students today that are looking to make a career for themselves, that includes sustainability, that includes technology, includes also a lot of the topics you cover in this wonderful book. How should they go about it? There’s so much information out there about why kids now shouldn’t even be classically going to college or trained the way we were coached to go to college and get classically educated first, how do kids find their way, and the next generation behind us, how will you coach them to find a path here?

Matthew: Yeah. Oh my gosh, John, that’s such a good question. Again, I was an English major that found my way into technology because it was 1998, the internet was booming, and again, I was fascinated. I just find fascinating topics that I like to pursue. My first level of advice might be what are you passionate about and chase it. There are jobs for pretty much anything you want to do, and I was an English major who literally the summer after I graduated, picked up a Microsoft book and studied Microsoft certification and got certified and went into IT with an English degree. Then years later in 2014 I was working at a company that ended up going through an M and A, I ended up going into sales. My career has not been sales, I spent 15 years in IT. I spent more time in IT now than I have been in sales. Then once I got to sales, I found ESG, and I was like, “Wow, this is great.” I guess don’t be afraid to pivot, but also don’t be afraid to follow your passion and recognize that your professional life will likely have these pivots. It also may not, that’s the first thing. The second thing is always be curious and always be learning. Which I wish somebody had said to me when I graduated. I didn’t even realize even that summer after I graduated where I was studying something else, I didn’t realize the importance of ongoing learning and it has been so valuable and the way that I learn now is I try to consume as much as I can within reason. I try to look at topics that I find interesting and then I write about them. I find in the writing, I learn about the topic. Yeah, but also if you’re looking for a role in impact, the one hard piece of advice I think would be pick your time. You need to have a life that is, we live in a capitalist society, you need to have a job, you need to pay the rent, I would not ever recommend you go into an employer and start badmouthing them loudly. But you’ll also notice on my LinkedIn, one of the headlines that I have is benevolent troublemaker. I do push this place around quite a bit internally, and if anybody’s at Microsoft who knows, like, I do not hold back, but I do attack fully. I think there’s a better way for us to do this. Here’s the evidence I’ve gathered, here’s the learning I’ve done. I think this would be a better approach, this would be the better yield. I do it not only as a seller, I’ve talked with our sustainability office about different ideas. I’ve talked with people globally will reach out to me inside Microsoft, outside Microsoft, and I’ll just sit with them and talk through their issues with them. That’s probably the last thing I would advise on. Like, take calls from people. I love taking call. John, I don’t know how many people are going to listen to this, more than happy to take calls [inaudible] as I can.

John: No good deed goes unpunished, you said it.

Matthew: I do take calls from people because even…

John: That’s great, though.

Matthew: Even when I meet people early in their careers, their perspective is so valuable to hear about what are they thinking, what are they seeing? I live in Pennsylvania, we talked about this earlier, I don’t live in a global south country or even on the west coast of the US it’s very different and I want to hear from different people because I don’t want to lead with my own perspective constantly. That’s not very nuanced or exciting. Yeah, lean into having conversations with other people as well. I think if you follow those three or four things, I don’t think it’ll go wrong.

John: I think that’s brilliant. I don’t think enough people understand that, because that’s basically an offshoot of just staying curious, having openness to other generations and other mindsets, I think is such a great way to stay fresh and relevant. I love that.

Matthew: Absolutely.

John: I love that. As we said earlier, sustainability and of course, ESG has no finish line, so Matthew, I just want to tell you, it’s not only delightful interviewing you today, but I just want you to know you’re always welcome back on the show because I know this journey is not over for you. There’s lots more to come, there’s lots more to write about. There’s lots more to think about, and there’s going to be a lot more to learn about this topic in the months and years ahead. I’d love you to come back and share the continued journey. For our listeners and viewers, buy this book, go to Amazon.com or a great bookstore near you. Buy this book, read it. You’ll get a lot out of it. I got a lot out of it. Or go to www.esg-mindset.com. Matthew, thanks for not only spending an hour with us today. More importantly, thank you for making the world a better place.

Matthew: Thank you, John. Take care.

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