Top Chief Sustainability Officers of USA and Canada Nominated

The names of the 20 nominated Chief Sustainability Officers of North America have been revealed today, together with the names of the Grand Jury that will select the three winners of the Futur/io CSO Awards North America. 

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The winners will be announced during the CSO Awards gala ceremony in New York City on September 22, during the UN General Assembly and New York Climate Week. 

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The 20 CSO Awards Nominees:

Aditi Mohapatra, Expedia

Ann Tracy, Colgate-Palmolive

Annika Dubrall, Tiffany & Co

Anu Piduru, Carters

Ara Erickson, Weyerhaeuser

Caitlin Leibert, Whole Foods Market

Carrie Sabin, Stantec

Deanna Bratter, Crocs

Emma Stewart, Netflix

Erik Hansen, Workday

Helene V Gagnon, CAE

Jackie Jung, Western Digital

Jennifer Motles, Philip Morris International

Kate Heiny, Booking Holdings

Kellie Ballew, Shaw Industries

Malisa Maynard, Mohawk Industries

Nicola Acutt, NetApp

Patrick Barron, Telus

Susan Uthayakumar, Prologis

Wendy Rentschler, BMC Software

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The Grand Jury, who will choose the three winners among the 20 nominees, includes nine stellar individuals such as John Elkington, known as “the Godfather of Sustainability”, Sandrine Dixson-Declève, honorary President of the Club of Rome, Vandinika Shukla, deputy director of Global Programs at the Obama Foundation, Nina Eisenman, VP of Corporate Sustainability Strategy & Reporting, NASDAQ and Michael Kobori, former CSO of Starbucks, and winner of the CSO Gold Award in 2024. 

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The CSO Awards North America is an initiative of the Futur/io Institute, a pioneering organization dedicated to nurturing and inspiring leadership in sustainable innovation and building the most impactful network of CSOs globally. The European version of the CSO Awards takes place every year during the World Economic Forum week in Davos. “The CSO Awards celebrates the human leaders who are championing change within the largest corporate enterprises in North America,” says Harald Neidhardt, CEO & Curator of the Futur/io Institute. “I’m honored to announce the names of the 20 nominees to the CSO Awards, and also of the members of the Grand Jury, who will choose the final winners. The members of the grand jury are some of the most inspirational voices in sustainability, and the combination of such incredible and diverse experiences, backgrounds and points of view will certainly bring powerful insights, shining a light on the next wave of sustainability leaders within the corporate world.” 

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“The purpose of having a jury in our CSO Awards is to integrate the human factor into the evaluation criteria for our CSO Awards. Besides, it can also help to identify and promote Chief Sustainability Officers who are not only effective sustainability leaders, but also ambitious, innovative, and capable of fostering positive change within their organisations and beyond.” added Harald Neidhardt.

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In August, Futur/io published a list of the Top 100 CSOs of North America, which included sustainability leaders from a diverse range of industries, including technology, consumer brands, services and retail, excluding fossil fuel industries like oils and gas. From an extensive database including all the Fortune 2000 companies of the USA and Canada, the most relevant names were selected using data-driven criteria, developed by Futur/io and with an ambitious NetZero goal by 2040.

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Futur/io Institute is collaborating for the data analysis with scientific partner the Leonardo Centre on Business for Society at Imperial College Business School, and supported by knowledge partners Denominator, specialized in human-centric data, ClimateGPT for public sentiment analysis and Rainforest Partnership, focused on biodiversity. The four quadrant model takes into consideration the maturity of corporate behaviours, regulatory performance on Environmental, Social, and Governance (ESG) and Sustainable Development Goals (SDG) criteria, environmental and human impact and also a self assessment survey. 

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Finally, the members of the Grand Jury will add the human factor to the selection process, using their expertise to choose the three final  winners, to be announced at a gala ceremony in New York City on September 22, during the UN General Assembly and New York Climate Week. The CSO Awards North America are organised in collaboration with Made in Sustainability and supported by premium partner IntegrityNext and Gold partners Vitra and CEEZER.

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