How are you thinking about balancing immediate supplier needs, such as sourcing fuel alternatives right now, with developing future talent pipelines and partnerships with universities and emerging institutions?
Noel, American Red Cross: It starts with planning. You’ ve got to build out frameworks and ensure you understand what your future looks like, not a one-year future. For us, we have plans through 2050. Obviously, those aren’ t very detailed that far out, but we know what the path is going to be.
The short-term challenge is ensuring the mission continues to be delivered in the most sustainable way possible. That means perhaps not implementing the ideal solution immediately, but having a vision of what we can do right now to reduce as much as possible in the short term.
Lauren, United Airlines: Partnerships are really, really important. When we’ re in the business of establishing a foundation for the future, we need to make sure we have collective voices at the table to enable decisions around what is right, what is sustainable and what is low impact. If you ask a company like United alone, of course, we’ ll have a very industry-specific perspective. What we want is a much broader perspective, with nonprofits, academia and other suppliers, to understand what is within the realm of the possible, and then how do we take it just a step further.
Sirsij, Pfizer: I’ d add, anchor around the why behind the what. Our supply partnerships and any partnerships from a broader responsible business growth perspective are around product innovation, equitable access and pricing and driving the diversity and inclusion agenda across the company.
There are elements of the broader programme that are governed at board level and we are challenged to find the right partnerships, whether with academic institutions or suppliers.
We have what we call a supplier discovery and development programme, where we actually bring a supplier on board and, if support is needed, help that supplier grow with us.
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