‘Innovation Comes from All Over’ with Katie Leone, MAFS ‘13
Since graduating from Chatham with a Master of Food Studies in 2013, Katie Leone has spent her career building awareness, accountability, and alliances around the intersections that make sustainability more accessible in our society. In her new role as the Director of Corporate Social Responsibility at Hertz, Katie has already begun crafting strategies around environmental impact and longterm viability that will influence and improve this worldwide corporation. We caught up with Katie to learn more about her path to Hertz, her professional philosophies, and how a food studies grad wound up spearheading sustainable corporate strategy. Catch her insights below*—
*All of the opinions expressed in this article are solely Katie Leone’s, and not those of her employer.
Director of Corporate Social Responsibility at Hertz and Master of Food Studies grad, Katie Leone
Tell us about your new role as the Director of Corporate Social Responsibility at Hertz.
Katie Leone: I'm a couple weeks in and learning every day. I'm responsible for their corporate social responsibility (CSR) strategy as well as designing and coordinating with different folks to advance the company’s environmental, social, and governance (ESG) pillars. I'm thinking about the environmental footprint of the company and I’m working closely with our diversity and inclusion officer and our HR partners to think about how we embed diversity, inclusion, and equity into our key performance indicators as a company. For example, we are a very diverse company and are continually strengthening career pathways to help people ladder up. On the governance side, I’m working with our legal team and the folks who liaise with the board members to try to develop those key performance indicators (KPIs) across the company and ensure that we have good governance practices in place. [I’m also working at] having subcommittees and working groups that rally to achieve the goals we land on. It's really early but the company has done CSR for many years and there's a good foundation laid for me. I'm on a fast and furious learning curve; it's very exciting.
What is your personal definition for corporate social responsibility and what are some real life examples?
KL: When you think of corporate social responsibility, there are two ways you can look at it. You can look at it as companies needing to enhance the reputation of their brand and not do too much bad. I don't think of it that way. If you have kids or if you have small people in your life, you don't say, Hey, don't do too much bad. You try to teach them how to do the right thing and how to do good. I think it's more than just not doing bad. When you see companies who are innovative with corporate social responsibility, they're using it as a strategic framework to drive decision-making so that they remain relevant in the long term. In the context of where I work now, Hertz is a 100-year-old company and mobility needs have evolved significantly. I’m thinking about how our business can remain viable as mobility needs evolve. In the more immediate term, what does vehicle electrification look like and what happens when more cars are self-automated vehicles?
And your degree is in Food Studies?
KL: Yes. Sustainability is a concept as old as humankind, but as a field of inquiry that you can be an expert with a degree in, it's only about ten to twenty years old. Food was my interest. When I was working on my degree, I always imagined myself working at a foodservice company to enhance food systems supply chains upon graduation. With career paths, what you imagine and what happens are often two different things. When I was at Florida Gulf Coast University, they had a food forest and a lot of student interest in food systems and sustainability. I got to work on enhancing the KPIs in their dining contract. In terms of giving back, I recently sat on the steering committee for our region’s food policy council, which just launched and is already accomplishing great things for the community.
How did your time in Chatham’s food studies program inform or affect your career path?
KL: Chatham helped me really understand the interdisciplinary nature of any sustainability challenge. If you are working in a silo, you're never going to solve any problems. It sounds really easy to say, we're just going to focus all our time and effort on this one thing. You will never fix the problem if you do that. For example, if you're saying, I want to fix education; I'm going to hunker down on education—kids can't learn if they don't have food in their bellies, and they can't perform well if they don't have a good transit system to help them get to and from class. They're not going to perform well if they have to move all the time because they have housing instability. You have to tackle attainable housing, transportation, and food insecurity at a minimum and probably five other things, too. My time at Chatham helped me understand how to do that and have practical tools for doing that, whether it be at a community level or within an organization. I'm situated in the communications team here at Hertz which is great because it's the place where we ensure that we're connecting, coordinating, and cascading information in the correct ways. It's a large global company and the way that something works on the ground in Philadelphia isn't going to be the same as the way it works on the ground in Zurich.
How can individual employees influence their employer’s social responsibility?
KL: Champions come from all over. From what I've seen so far, there are a lot of different stakeholders who drive sustainability at different levels. There are shareholders who are asking questions, that's a lot of the reporting I do. It's not enough for companies to just report on their financial statements anymore because shareholders don't think that's a sufficient view of the company. Finance is just a sliver of long-term viability. It’s important to understand how a company will respond to climate change, and how it will be a community asset that builds resources rather than depletes them. Innovation comes from all over and a company being situated to have those relationships where people feel comfortable thinking outside of the box, sharing their ideas, and feeling like those ideas can be validated is really important. One of the biggest challenges is that people hear sustainability and CSR and they don't really know what I do. They think something that's maybe 10% of my job is 100% of my job. I need to figure out how to inspire people around the big important things so we don't get stuck on small things that don't move the needle.
If I don't have the ability to influence and inspire people to want to contribute to this, we'll never reach our goals. Much of my work centers on setting goals at a high level and figuring out what are the relational networks and strategies that we need to achieve those goals. You can't have miniaturized thinking, you need to think big and you need to think impact.
What advice do you have for graduates who are considering branching outside of their majors?
KL: The research shows that only 27% of grads land jobs directly in their fields of study. School is to teach you how to think. I would encourage you to reflect on the hard things that you’ve accomplished already, so that you know you can do hard things all over again. Chatham gives you the ability to figure out how to untangle the problem. The job that you have in 15 years might not exist yet. 15 years ago, most companies did not have corporate social responsibility directors and now the practice is commonplace. Keep learning, keep growing. You have a great foundation based on what you’ve accomplished at Chatham to go out in the world and do big, cool things. I graduated from my undergrad when the 2008 recession hit, so I would also encourage you to not get discouraged. It's exhausting looking for jobs. I know that feeling of being in a place where you're like, I did everything right and I can't get a job. That's out of your control so just keep going, keep networking, keep hustling. Don’t give up.
No matter where you are or what you're doing, you'll never have all the answers. It's so important to surround yourself with people who you can learn and grow from. There are so many professional networks where if you don't have the answer, you can figure out transferable lessons that could be applied to your work. Surround yourself with people who are smarter than you. Don't be scared, be inspired.
Special thanks to Katie for giving us a glimpse into her world. If you’re interested in exploring a program in food studies or sustainability at Chatham, we invite you to explore our Eden Hall Campus website.